The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to move forward with a plan to allow airlines to permit passengers to use mobile phones during flights, but another agency may protect travelers from hearing the loud phone conversations of their seatmates. While the FCC approved a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, seeking comment to allow airline passengers to use devices for texting, emailing and surfing the Web, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced it will initiate a proceeding to ban in-flight voice calls. ”Over the past few weeks, we have heard of concerns raised by airlines, travelers, flight attendants, members of Congress and others who are all troubled over the idea of passengers talking on cell phones in flight—and I am concerned about this possibility as well,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in statement. The DOT will look at whether in-flight voice calls are “fair to consumers,” Foxx said.
You'll still have to call your carrier if you want to free your phone, however.
Ford tricked out its Automated Fusion Hybrid Research Vehicle with enough sensors to see more than a driver ever could—so the car can help the human drive better.
Don’t be bothered by those annoying non-gaming friends always trying to invite you out to social events when you’re in the middle of a boss raid. Razer Comms, Razer’s in-game communications offering, is now available as a free Android app for connecting gamers on the go and rejecting anyone with enough gall to call you. Monitor and reject calls from inside your game, then send back a friendly excuse via text message of why you couldn’t pick up. Using the app, PC gamers can text or voice chat with mobile users without minimizing a game. When the phone is synced to a PC, gamers can use remote functionality to send and receive text messages, see call notifications, and auto-reply via text message when you inevitably ignore the call from the desktop’s overlay. Android users can stay connected on the go by joining any of the voice channels; they can also take part in chats with PC users. Push notifications will alert the user when new messages appear.
Have we reached peak social media? Are serial entrepreneurs creepy? Will people on the Internet pay for anything? And what's on our tech holiday shopping lists? These questions may or may not be answered by Dan Moren, Jason Snell, Philip Michaels, and Susie Ochs.
A nonprofit group of Airbnb hosts and users is stepping up its awareness campaign about New York’s laws against short-term rentals.
If your inbox looks anything like mine, it’s likely rife with newsletters from companies urging you to buy things. I know, I know—I Thursday is likely to ruin me and my bank account. Google updated Gmail so that it will automatically display photos that are embedded directly into email messages on both the desktop version of the service and through its mobile apps. The company posits that this will actually make your Gmail account safer. In an official blog post, John Rae-Grant, product manager of Gmail, explains that before, Gmail asked you if you wanted to see photos to actually protect you from unknown senders who were attempting to compromise your computer or mobile device with an infected image. Now, instead of loading images directly from the original sender’s external host servers, Rae-Grant writes, “Gmail will now serve all images through Google’s own secure proxy servers.” Images will also be routed through the same spam filter as other messages sent to a Gmail account so they can be checked for any known viruses or malware. If you’d rather images not show up automatically—say, to avoid data overages on your mobile device or to keep yourself from buying things you before it displays those external images under the General tab in Settings. The option will remain the default for those users who previously selected it, too. The new Gmail functionality will begin rolling out Thursday to the Web; Gmail’s mobile apps will get an update early next year.
In-flight cellular in the U.S. may be closer to reality than some consumers realize, with foreign airlines poised to extend services they already offer elsewhere. But evidence from overseas suggests the odds of being trapped next to a chronic caller are slim. At its monthly open meeting Thursday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission will discuss whether to issue a proposal for legalizing on airliners. Such a plan would be subject to public comment and wouldn’t take effect until well into next year at the earliest. If enacted, it would end a decades-long ban that has preserved airline cabins as rare cell-free spaces. Yet based on reports from overseas, calls in the cabin might prove to be rare and brief. Actually allowing voice calls in flight would be up to the airlines, and most U.S. airlines seem unlikely to do so, let alone invest in equipment to carry cellular voice or data. Most have Wi-Fi for data already. But foreign airlines that already offer cell service elsewhere could probably start allowing calls over U.S. airspace fairly soon if an FCC rule change takes place. How it’s handled overseas Pulling out a cellphone in the air and dialing up family and friends is already legal in many places outside the U.S. British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Air France, KLM, Emirates, Aeroflot, Virgin Atlantic and other airlines offer cellular service, though some, including Lufthansa and Aer Lingus, prohibit voice calls. These in-flight services go through small, specialized cellular base stations installed on planes, which talk to the main cell network via satellites. The so-called picocells prevent interference with cell towers on the ground, which was the reason for the FCC’s longtime ban.
Dell has established a $300 million venture fund that will promote the development of technologies important to the company’s product portfolio. The fund will invest in early-growth companies in storage, cloud computing, data, security, mobility, and next-generation data-center technologies, said chief financial officer Brian Gladden during a keynote at the Dell World conference in Austin, Texas. The venture fund, announced Thursday, comes a few months after a in which CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners acquired the company for $24.9 billion. As a private company, Dell can now focus on growth areas important to the company without the distractions of quarterly earnings that “clogged” the company’s operations, Gladden said. The fund will play a role in driving growth and help the company stay ahead of the technology curve, Gladden said. Some of Dell’s past acquisitions were related to areas in which the company is looking to invest.
The entered its third day on Thursday after hardware issues in one of Yahoo's data centers knocked out mail service for many users on Monday night. The Mail problems are ironed out for most people, but anyone who accesses their email with a third-party desktop or mobile app may still have issues. In an update sent out late Wednesday, Yahoo said it has restored POP mail access for all affected users that access their mail using a third-party client. The company was still working on restoring IMAP service, which (like POP) allows you to retrieve mail with a third-party program. As of 11:00 a.m. ET, the company has not yet said whether IMAP was completely restored. For anyone who uses IMAP to get at their Yahoo Mail, the company is advising users to access their mail through the Yahoo Mail app for Android or iOS, or on the web. As of Wednesday night around 70 percent of messages sent during the outage had yet to be delivered to recipients. Yahoo says the remaining mail should be delivered by Thursday afternoon Pacific time. Some users may also be missing mail from their inbox dated between November 25 and December 9, Yahoo said earlier Wednesday. The company is currently working to restore any missing mail.
Whether it's a last-minute gift or something you've been planning to give for a while, online stores are a great source for digital presents during the holidays -- if you know where to look.
Instagram Direct lets users privately send photos and videos in what is widely considered a shot at trendy messaging app Snapchat.
Google fans no longer need the Internet to count their inventory or tabulate a budget. The company recently rolled out a new update to Google Sheets, the spreadsheet web app in Google Drive, that finally——includes offline editing support in Chrome. The new feature will be a welcome addition to Chrome OS users and other Chrome fans who keep all their data in Google's cloud. Offline editing is already available for Docs and Slides, making Sheets the last of the three major Google Drive apps to get the feature. But the new Sheets offline implementation isn't perfect. Google says offline editing will only work with spreadsheets created you switched over to the new version of Sheets. Anyone who needs offline access may have to do a little copying and pasting into a new document to edit their older spreadsheets when an Internet connection isn't present. Offline support was just one of several changes to Sheets that Google introduced. Sheets now supports millions of cells on a single sheet and Google dumped the limitations on how many columns and formulas you can use. Limits on the number of cells you can copy and paste are also gone.
When we talk about "drives" labeled C:, D:, and so forth, we're actually talking about sections of the physical drive. Every hard drive in use has at least one partition. You can shrink that partition and create new ones out of the extra space. You'll find this useful if you want to install more than one operating system, or if you want to truly separate programs and data. But first, you need to take some precautions. If you don't already have one, make a full of the entire drive. Disasters happen.
A widely used security feature intended to protect access to online bank accounts is becoming increasingly ineffective, as cybercriminals develop advanced malicious software for Android devices, according to a released Wednesday. Many banks offer their customers two-factor authentication, which involves sending an SMS message with a code that’s entered into a Web-based form. The code expires in a few minutes and is intended to thwart cybercriminals who have a person’s login credentials. But there are now multiple mobile malware suites that work in tandem with desktop malware to defeat one-time passcodes, wrote Ken Baylor, research vice president for NSS Labs. ”Do not rely on SMS-based authentication,” the report said. “It has been thoroughly compromised.”
Eine Abmahnwelle gegen deutsche Nutzer des Porno-Streamingportals Redtube hat international für Schlagzeilen gesorgt. Jetzt haben die Betroffenen eine Gegenklage eingereicht.
Schon im nächsten Jahr soll das erste Smartphone mit dem offenen Betriebssystem Ubuntu auf den Markt kommen. Ein ähnliches Projekt ist diesen Sommer gescheitert.
Mit einem kostenlosen Angebot für Smartphones und Tablets will der Musik-Streaming-Dienst Spotify neue Abonnenten gewinnen. Die Gratis-Nutzer müssen jedoch mit Einschränkungen leben.
Chinas Grossstädte haben mit Smog-Problemen zu kämpfen. Der Super-Rechner Tianhe-1A soll nun früh vor Verschmutzungen warnen. So soll schneller auf Notfälle reagiert werden können.
Es mangle im Kampf gegen Terror an Alternativen, erklärte NSA-Chef Keith Alexander. Man sei allerdings offen für eine andere Lösung als die flächendeckende Überwachung.
Auf Augenhöhe: Nachdem Sony in kurzer Zeit mehr als zwei Millionen PS4-Konsolen verkauft hat, zieht Microsoft mit der Xbox One nun nach und vermeldet auch einen Absatzrekord.
Ein Forschungsprojekt der Universität Zürich untersucht, wie Jugendliche ihre Handykamera einsetzen. 14- bis 20-Jährige haben den Forschern dafür ihre Filmchen zur Verfügung gestellt.
Die WLAN-Kamera BSW 100 von Switel überwacht das Zuhause, schlafende Babys oder den Hauseingang. Dabei streamt sie die Bilder jederzeit aufs Smartphone.
Das französische Videoportal Dailymotion will in Zukunft den eigenen Videoplayer verbessern. Dies soll mit der Übernahme des Waadtländer Start-ups Jilion gelingen.
Tanzende Babys, Tiervideos, die Frage nach dem Fuchs und immer wieder Miley Cyrus: Diese Youtube-Clips haben Schweizerinnen und Schweizer im Jahr 2013 bewegt.
Der Nachrichtendienst Twitter hat ein neues prominentes Mitglied. George H. W. Bush zwitscherte anlässlich Nelson Mandelas Beerdigung zum ersten Mal.
Der kalifornische Smartphone-Hersteller Apple hat seine Technologien für Nachrichtendienste nicht vom Rivalen Samsung abgekupfert. Zu diesem Schluss kam ein Gericht in Seoul.
Von wegen Tablets verdrängen die klassischen Computer: Gemäss einer Studie von Microsoft liegen die flachen Rechner in der Nutzung nach wie vor hinter Laptops und PCs.
Mit einer Hand lässt sich Nokias neuer Riese nicht ohne Fingerstarre bedienen. Trotzdem überzeugt das 1520 mit XXL-Display, Quadcore-Chip und neuen Apps im Alltag.