If you’re the kind of person who pays attention to devices in movies, you might have noticed that the phones and tablets in Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War” all belonged to a brand called Vivo. Vivo is not some fictitious brand created by the Marvel writers. It’s actually some canny product placement by a Chinese …

So you’re a “Game of Thrones” fan, and you know this guy David Benioff is one of the executive producers, and someone mentioned he wrote this great novel, “City of Thieves,” which sounds like your cup of World War II-era adventure tea. But, dang it, the Kindle edition costs $11.99, and you used up your spare cash subscribing to HBO …

Apple this week took the wraps off its newest store in San Francisco, or, to be more precise, slid open its huge glass doors. Two sides of the building feature massive sliding glass doors, with those in the front reaching 42 feet high and opening a space 40 feet wide. They make visitors feel like they’re out in San Francisco’s …

Addicted to Facebook quizzes? There’s an app for that. In fact, there are several apps that can help you create quizzes on Facebook. Quizzes for Facebook is one of the better apps for building quizzes because it’s simple and doesn’t post unwanted updates to your feed. To get started, go to the Quizzes for Facebook app and click Get Started. …

Google wants to go beyond being a search bar, instead providing its know-how anywhere people may want. To that end, the company’s annual I/O conference focused heavily on Google assistant, a digital butler that can fetch all kinds of information for users and help them complete tasks. The platform will first live in the new Google Home smart speaker and …

Nokia, the Finnish company that embodied the mobile phone revolution until Silicon Valley giants pushed it aside, will live on again as phone brand. Undoing a portion of its 2014 acquisition of Nokia’s phone business, Microsoft is selling off its low-end phone unit as part of a $350 million deal announced Wednesday that will see about 4,500 employees leave the …

For Microsoft, the phone woes just keep coming. On Wednesday, the software titan said it would unload its low-end phone operations for $350 million to a Finnish startup and a unit of Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn, which aims to revive the once popular Nokia consumer brand. Remember, Microsoft bought Nokia’s mobile devices business for $7.2 billion (yes, billion) in 2014. …

A Hong Kong-based company has launched a Kickstarter campaign for a “smartstrap” that aims to add up to a week of battery life to the Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel. Powerstrap on Tuesday introduced the Pal, a $79 strap for Pebble smartwatches that extends battery life and adds GPS. Every Pebble Time smartwatch features a small accessory port on …

Got a ton of pesky loyalty cards you can never find when you need them? Samsung’s got you covered. You can now add your merchant membership and loyalty cards to the Samsung Pay mobile-payments service, allowing you to receive promotions, rewards and other offers right from your Samsung Galaxy smartphone. See also Samsung Pay now lets you withdraw cash at …

Looking for a brain-calming work break along the lines of popping bubble wrap? How about watching gigantic bubbles whirl and float, bloom and merge, and then explode like liquid fireworks? That’s the mesmerizing four-minute escape posted Tuesday by “Shanks FX,” a Web series produced in association with PBS Digital Studios. Joey Shanks creates Hollywood effects with simple household products, in …