Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin said the company is already moving past dependence on Twitter. Richard Nieva/CNET AUSTIN, Texas — The talk of the South by Southwest festival here has been Meerkat, a fast-growing app that lets people stream live videos from their phones, and its tussle with Twitter. But Meerkat CEO Ben Rubin says he …

Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, W3C leader for mobile-Web activity Stephen Shankland/CNET BARCELONA — Dominique Hazaël-Massieux is on the front lines of a struggle that will determine whether you’ll get your next app by visiting a website or by heading to an Apple or Google app store. Hazaël-Massieux comes down on the Web side of the divide. For the last seven years he’s …

NBN Co NBN Co has officially launched a pay-to-upgrade program, allowing individuals and communities to apply to speed up their broadband connection as part of the national rollout of the NBN. The scheme, known as Technology Choice, was announced in November last year — the same time that NBN Co confirmed it was officially killing its Fibre to the Premises …

Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET It’s a fact of life: sometimes, you just can’t be there for the important stuff. This was the case for Perth, Australia couple Alison and Jace Larke, when Jace had an unavoidable work commitment at the time of his baby’s dude date that would place him 4,000 km (2,485 miles) away in the remote Queensland mining …

AUSTIN, Texas — Turns out nobody can remember their Yahoo passwords. Now the company wants to make it so no one has to. Yahoo on Sunday launched a new service called “on-demand” passwords, which lets someone log into a Yahoo account using a short password the company texts to their phone instead of having to remember their own password. Here’s …

Square Square’s latest mobile experiment is slated to shut down after a quiet year on the market. On March 20, the company will phase out Order, an app designed to help consumers beat long lines by placing orders ahead from their smartphones, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Order never expanded beyond New York City and San Francisco. Since its …

Editors’ note: On Dec. 14, 2017, the FCC, under a new chairman, voted to roll back the regulations described below. For more on the 2017 action and what it means, see this story: “What you need to know about the FCC’s net neutrality repeal.” Two weeks after voting to preserve the open Internet (also referred to as Net neutrality) the …

The Koss SP330 (left), and SP540 (right) Koss Koss is one of the oldest headphone makers in the US, and it has a number of models that have remained in the line for decades. I’m thinking about the Porta Pro on-ear headphones and the Pro4AA over-the-ear headphones, to name two. So when Koss introduces new models I’m all ears. The …

Shaquille O’Neal has some fun with the AT&T commercial. AT&T The price war between wireless carriers maybe cooling off, but their war of words still rages on. AT&T, the nation’s second-largest wireless carrier by subscriber base, will fire the next shot with a new campaign promoting its latest claim, “strongest 4G LTE signal,” featuring basketball legends Shaquille O’Neal, Julius Erving, …

Sarah Jacobsson Purewal/CNET Tech companies can have fun, too! Google is well-known for its nerdy sense of humor, which includes April Fools’ Day pranks (Google Apps for Business Dogs, anyone?) and Easter eggs hidden throughout the company’s numerous products. I’m not talking about the Easter eggs you hunt down on Sunday morning — I’m talking about hidden jokes created by …