Steven Musil

Fitbit paid $23 million for wearable startup Pebble

Now playing: Watch this: Fitbit picked up Pebble for just $23 million 1:18 Pebble’s assets and intellectual property were acquired by Fitbit in December. Sarah Tew/CNET Fitbit, one of the biggest names in fitness trackers, paid $23 million to acquire the assets and intellectual property of Pebble, one of wearable’s early stars. The sales price …

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Disney develops room with ‘ubiquitous wireless’ charging

Disney Research is taking wireless charging to a whole new level. The scientific and tech arm of the entertainment giant has built a prototype room with “ubiquitous wireless power delivery” that allows several devices to be charged wirelessly in much the way we get internet access through Wi-Fi. By tapping quasistatic cavity resonance, researchers discovered they could generate magnetic fields …

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Leaked Lenovo Moto G5 images show metal body

Freshly leaked images of what is purported to be Lenovo‘s upcoming Moto G5 show what appears to be a metal body and suggest the phone will feature a removable battery. The handset, which is expected to debut later this month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, was shown in the hands-on images shared by Portuguese tech site Dudu Rochatec running …

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Samsung’s reputation plummets after Note 7 debacle

While Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 was going up in smoke, the company’s reputation was going down in flames. The Korean electronics giant came in at No. 49 in Harris Poll’s annual US Reputation Quotient Report, the market researcher said Monday. Last year, Samsung was ranked No. 7 in the corporate reputation rankings for the 100 most visible companies in the …

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LG G6 to feature new 6.0 mobile user interface

LG’s G6, its new flagship phone, will feature a new mobile user interface when it’s unveiled later this month, the handset maker said Wednesday. The new user interface, dubbed UX 6.0, will allow the device’s 5.7-inch display with 18:9 aspect ratio to shoot photos and review them simultaneously side by side in a new Square Camera mode. The new interface, …

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Apple granted patent for fingerprint

The iPhone’s home button may not be long for this world. Apple has been granted a patent for an “interactive display panel with IR diodes” — a method that would let users activate a device through a virtual home button placed within the touchscreen. The technology, described in a filing made public Tuesday by the US Patent and Trade Office, …

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Donald Trump’s phone security questioned by Democrats

Donald Trump’s phone use is raising security concerns among a pair of senate Democrats. Sens. Tom Carper and Claire McCaskill sent a letter last week to Secretary of Defense James Mattis about whether the president is using a secure device to make calls and post tweets. The senators, who both service on the Homeland Security Committee, worry that an unsecured …

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Amazon plans to open its first SF Bay Area bookstore

Amazon‘s first bookstore in the San Francisco Bay Area won’t be in The City but rather in a suburb 20 miles to the east. The store will be located in Broadway Plaza, an upscale, open-air shopping center in the city of Walnut Creek, as first reported Monday by the East Bay Times. A spokeswoman said the internet retailer is in …

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Google doodle honors American pilot Bessie Coleman

Bessie Coleman took women of color to new heights, even when many were trying to keep her down. On Thursday, on what would have been Coleman’s 125th birthday, Google published an animated doodle highlighting the life of the American civil aviator who was the first female pilot of African-American descent and the first woman of Native American descent to earn …

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Mark Zuckerberg ‘reconsidering’ lawsuits against Hawaiians

Mark Zuckerberg is apparently having second thoughts about a series of lawsuits he has filed related to a recent land purchase in Hawaii. The Facebook CEO has been the target of widespread criticism after filing quiet title lawsuits in December against a few hundred people who own or once owned property inside 700 acres of beachfront land he purchased on …

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