It’s tempting to imagine that few online safeguards will stop NSA surveillance in its tracks but that’s not true. A new leak from Edward Snowden’s files reveals that there’s a surprising number of ways to thwart these snoops at least as of 2012. Wh…

With Android OS being the most popular target for mobile malware writers Verizon introduces a Mobile Security app to help users protect personal data stored on their smartphones. [Read more]

As soon as we saw Georgia Tech’s Shimi we wanted to how many sleepless nights we’d have to spend waiting for one to proudly display on our desk. And really that’s the whole idea behind the iPhone-enabled dancing robot: bringing some sophisticated robotic concepts to the consumer in an adorable little package. Now the wall-eyed “first musically intelligent robotic speaker dock” has hit Kickstarter ready to dance its way into reality. When finished Shimi will feature six-watt speakers on eit… [read more]

You don’t have to wait for an FAA rethink to use your iPad on an airliner below 10000 feet — if you’re part of an American Airlines crew that is. As of this month the air carrier is the first cleared by the FAA to use iPads in the cockpit at every point during a flight. The program starts just with Boeing 777 pilots at first but it should eventually grow to save $1.2 million in weight-related fuel costs per year across the airline not to mention a few trees and the strain of 35-pound fli… [read more]

‘Fake Steve Jobs’ calls the iPhone maker a copycat

Remember NEC’s LaVie Z Ultrabook we first heard about at Computex? It’s a super light (875g / 1.93 lbs) and thin (15mm / 0.59-inch) magnesium alloy system running Windows 7 that’s only available in Japan and we just spotted it here at IDF 2012 in San Francisco. Spec-wise you’re looking at a 1.9GHz third-generation (Ivy Bridge) Core i7 CPU 4GB RAM 128GB SSD with integrated Intel HD 4000 GPU driving a 13.3-inch 1600×900-pixel display. It features an SD card slot on the left side audio USB 2…. [read more]

Google is well-known for projects with unexpected origins. It’s almost natural then that the code Google used to build a web course has led to a full-fledged tool for online education. The open-source Course Builder project lets anyone make their own learning resources complete with scheduled activities and lessons if they’ve got some skill with HTML and JavaScript. There’s also an avenue for live teaching or office hours: the obligatory Google+ tie-in lets educators announce Hangouts o… [read more]

More Info Amazon announces 7- and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDs pricing starts at $199 Kindle Fire HD 7-inch hands-on (Update: video) Amazon Kindle Fire review It was 10 months ago that we had a doppelgänger in our midst. Amazon unleashed the Kindle Fire to the world and we spent much of the beginning of our review comparing and contrasting it to the (even then a bit long-in-the-tooth) BlackBerry PlayBook. Now finally we can stop making that comparison — at least for this… [read more]

Ultrabooks and just about any other Windows 8 device you can think of will come with touch Intel tells CNET. [Read more]

This week’s news includes the rare Common File Format for UltraViolet resurfacing as well as a new DHD initiative from Fox that could push downloadable movies forward faster than ever before. That’s before we even dive into all the news from CEDIA 2012 and take a peek at the just-released Ceton Companion mobile app for Windows Media Center. Also included: where our NFL Pick ’em selections went horribly horribly wrong and more 84-inch 4K displays than you can shake a stick at. Get the podcast … [read more]