May, 2016

• 12 May

  Ownership of wearable devices has doubled since 2014, study finds

  

  Your desire to shed a few pounds has helped fuel a doubling in ownership of wearable devices in the past two years, according to report released Thursday. Since 2014, the adoption rate for wearable devices has grown from 21 percent to 49 percent, according to a survey released Thursday by business services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Of …

  Read More »
• 12 May

  TalkTalk sees profits halved following cyberattack last year

  

  UK telephone and broadband provider TalkTalk has seen its profits drop to £14 million, from £32 million the previous year, following a high profile attack last October, which cost the company £35 million. “We have significantly increased our spending on security. We take this extremely seriously,” TalkTalk CEO Dido Harding explained to the BBC. About 157,000 of TalkTalk’s 4 million …

  Read More »
• 12 May

  ​Skip the yard sale and hawk your stuff online

  

  Your stuff is perfectly decent, so you don’t want to throw it away and you do want to make a little extra cash. The only option is having a yard sale, right? Hold up! Before you go to the trouble of making signs, setting up tables, and making change, try selling your electronics, furniture and knickknacks online. Here are a …

  Read More »
• 12 May

  Facebook spells out what’s trending

  

  Facebook wants to set the record straight on its editorial policies so the topic will stop trending on the social network. The Menlo Park, California, company on Thursday made public its most current Trending Topics guidelines, part of an effort to combat reports that it’s politically biased. A 28-page internal document offered a glimpse at how Facebook chooses material that …

  Read More »
• 12 May

  How has Facebook decided what’s trending? Leaked docs shed light

  

  Turns out Facebook’s trending topics have involved human influence, not just machines. Documents leaked to The Guardian show that the social-media giant employed a small editorial team, in addition to algorithms, to decide what news should appear in its box of trending topics. The box sits at the top right of Facebook’s desktop page and is one of the most …

  Read More »
• 11 May

  We test the Air Case, the ‘world’s thinnest iPhone battery case’

  

  Innoants, a startup based Toronto, Canada, has an Indiegogo campaign up for a forthcoming product that should interest a lot of people: the Air Case, which doubles the battery life of your iPhone 6/6S or 6/6S Plus and is billed as the world’s thinnest iPhone case. At $39, it’s also affordable — at least if you get it at its …

  Read More »
• 11 May

  8 essential IFTTT recipes for every Android user

  

  IFTTT, the online connection service, now works with hundreds of different services and devices, connecting them to break the language barrier and help them work together. While both major mobile platforms — Android and iOS — have their own collection of dedicated channels, you can go a bit further and accomplish a little more with IFTTT on Android. Here are …

  Read More »
• 11 May

  ATSC 3.0: What you need to know about the future of broadcast television

  

  The next generation of broadcast TV is coming, whether you’re ready or not. Actually, no one’s ready, and that’s sort of the point. ATSC, or Advanced Television Systems Committee, is the group that decides what over-the-air (and more) TV signals look like. Last year about 76 percent of US households subscribed to cable, satellite or fiber for TV, while 21 …

  Read More »
• 11 May

  Android trounces Apple across the globe

  

  Android’s share of the smartphone market has surged throughout the US, Europe and China. Google’s mobile OS saw its smartphone market share rise in the first quarter in virtually all of the regions tracked by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the research firm said Wednesday. In the US, Android’s smartphone share grew by 7.3 percentage points year over year to 65.5 percent. …

  Read More »
• 11 May

  Windows 10 to kill Wi

  

  Microsoft is dumping a touchy Windows 10 option that lets you share your Wi-Fi passwords with contacts. The option is part of a feature called Wi-Fi Sense, aimed at making it easy to share your Wi-Fi network with family, friends, visitors and other people within range. The goal was to eliminate the hassle of manually doling out your Wi-Fi password …

  Read More »