Physically, it’s not difficult to spot the family resemblance to its predecessor. The One M8 has a 5-inch display, making it marginally bigger than the 4.7-inches of the old HD One. Both displays have full HD resolutions. Andrew Hoyle/CNET HTC unveiled the HTC One M8 at a press conference Tuesday, showing off a slightly larger …

Lyft has launched “Happy Hour” rates — fares that are 10 percent to 50 percent cheaper than normal during slow business hours — to encourage more rides during those periods, the company announced Tuesday. Slow times are typically midday and after rush hour during the work week. “With Happy Hour, Lyft’s prices are fully dynamic, which is the way it …

Facing growing criticism over a car accident that killed a 6-year-old San Francisco girl, Uber extended its insurance policy Friday to provide coverage for independent drivers who have their Uber apps online but aren’t carrying passengers. In the past, Uber’s insurance for peer-to-peer service UberX only kicked in when an accident occurred while passengers were on a ride. It did …

Clinkle, the mobile-payments startup that doesn’t want to talk about what its product actually does, has snagged yet another noteworthy figure in tech: the guy who used to lead Twitter’s design efforts. Clinkle has hired Josh Brewer to be its vice president of design. This will be the fifth senior-level hire for Clinkle in the last six months. The company, …

Flipboard, the magazine-style news reading app, is buying competitor Zite from CNN, the companies announced Wednesday. The deal includes an advertising partnership between CNN and Flipboard, which will phase out Zite as a standalone app while adding the Zite recommendation technology into the Flipboard app. The majority of the Zite team, sans CEO Mark Johnson, will join Flipboard. Neither CNN …

About two or three weeks ago, recovering addict Edgar Aguilar walked into a tiny computer lab situated in the Mid-Market area of San Francisco — the new battleground for the friction between the tech industry’s wealthiest and the city’s most vulnerable residents. He had been checking out a new mobile site advertised by a flyer he spotted. It promised an …

Surrounded by hundreds of miles of icy water, Tina Haskins still found a way to connect with her dog, Kona, who was thousands of miles away back home in New Jersey. A marine scientist conducting research on plankton in Antarctica, Haskins used an app to track the activities of Kona, a blue-eyed Australian Shepherd, throughout the day. In this case, …

It isn’t everything the rumors promised, but Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S5 smartphone on Monday, touting faster data connections, a bigger display, an improved camera, and a built-in fingerprint sensor. The phone has a 5.1-inch display HD screen and a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera with a bunch of bells and whistles that are supposed to improve the experience of taking and …

Samsung fans will be able to buy Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S5 on April 11, the company announced Monday. The phone, along with Samsung’s new Gear devices, will be available in nearly 150 countries in April, Samsung Vice President of European Telecom Operations Jean-Daniel Ayme said onstage at Mobile World Congress. Wireless carriers T-Mobile and Sprint said earlier that they will …

Peer-to-peer ride service Sidecar is betting that not everyone is looking for the cheapest ride when it come to an on-demand car service. The company launched a new marketplace model Wednesday that lets drivers set their own prices, a venture that could help Sidecar drivers dip into the some of the surge pricing that competitor UberX is known for, or …