The view of the Tibetan river is wiggly, the one of the Antarctic glacier subtle. The look at Bolivia’s Nuflo de Chavez province is downright kaleidoscopic. Welcome to the latest enhancement to Google Earth Timelapse, satellite images of our planet showing changes over time, which Google calls its largest update yet. Tuesday’s update adds four …

DirecTV Now, AT&T’s new set of skinny-bundle channel packages, goes live Wednesday. We discuss the benefits of the new plans, including a $5 monthly HBO add-on, as well as competitors like PlayStation Vue and Sling TV. Also, we delve into rumors that Amazon is planning a new Echo-like speaker with a touchscreen, plus the latest on Cyber Monday’s record online …

So you missed the Black Friday sale. And the Cyber Monday sale. And the Christmas-in-July sale. Doesn’t matter: There’s always another sale just around the corner. The trick, of course, is keeping tabs on items you want to buy and finding out when they go on sale again. Sure, you can subscribe to newsletters, which the stores love, but those …

Social Studies looks at what’s trending on social media throughout the day so you don’t have to. As you probably know, Reddit has subreddits for news, gaming, pics, jokes, movies and other ordinary topics, but sometimes the most interesting are the ones made by the community. They give the people of Reddit the ability to laugh at themselves and also …

Now playing: Watch this: Spectacles are worth snapping up 3:06 Enlarge Image Just one of the error messages you may get when trying to pair Spectacles. Screenshot by Lexy Savvides/CNET Sometimes your Snapchat Spectacles won’t play nice. Maybe you’ve connected Spectacles to a few different devices and now they won’t pair with your phone. The official support page only walks …

Jagdish Chandra Bose was by all accounts a modern-day renaissance man. Born in what is now known as Bangladesh in 1858, Bose was chiefly a scientist who made several contributions to various fields, including physics, biology and archaeology. But Bose is perhaps best known for his pioneering work in biophysics. To honor Bose’s achievements on his 158th birthday, Google published …

Sales worldwide of smartphones have flatlined in 2016, but strong growth for 4G smartphones in emerging markets remains a bright spot. In IDC’s latest forecast projecting sales for 2016, the market research firm reported worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to reach about 1.45 billion units. This represents a year-over-year growth rate of just 0.6 percent, a steep drop from the …

Twitter will offer Star Wars fans an exclusive sneak peek this week of the soon-to-be released movie “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” Twitter said Tuesday it will stream unreleased footage of the movie produced by Disney/Lucasfilm and will host a Q&A to offer some behind-the-scenes dirt with the film’s director Gareth Edwards and cast members moderated by People magazine …

Update, July 12, 2017: Telstra has updated its Travel Passes to a pay-per-day pricing structure. Read all about the new pricing here.  The telco has just announced that Telstra Air customers can get free Wi-Fi data at more than 19 million hotspots in 15 countries around the world, thanks to its partnership with international telecommunications company Fon. Overseas Wi-Fi connectivity has already …

Despite years of work from tech and payments companies, shopping on your phone is still a lousy experience. For this podcast, we discuss some of the problems with mobile shopping and the efforts to fix these issues. Also, Alfred Ng talks about his first week with Snapchat Spectacles, after waiting in line for six hours to buy them. The 3:59 …