As reported on Wired. BY TIM MOYNIHAN Photos by Jim Merithew/WIRED You should be able to buy a new TV, plug it in, hook up a cable box, and be good to go. But no. Sometimes the settings get in the way. And these days, there are so many settings. If you don’t want to go through the sometimes-taxing process of calibrating your TV like a pro, you can still make a few quick adjustments…
As reported on The Verge. By Adrianne Jeffries The ethics of war machines By the time the sun rose on Friday, December 19th, the Homestead Miami race track had been taken over by robots. Some hung from racks, their humanoid feet dangling above the ground as roboticists wheeled them out of garages. One robot resembled a gorilla, while another looked like a spider; yet another could have been mistaken for a designer coffee table. Teams of…
As reported on The Verge. By Tom Warren Microsoft’s original Surface Pro isn’t even a year old yet, but it has been superseded by the Surface Pro 2. It appears that Best Buy still has some stock of the original model that it wants to move this weekend. We’ve seen some price reductions on the Surface Pro before — including cuts following the Surface Pro 2 release — but Best Buy is offering a massive $400 discount on the original retail price, bringing the Surface…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Alex Wilhelm After a search that stretched for months, reports are out today that Microsoft will select internal candidate Satya Nadella as its next CEO. Nadella is known for his work with cloud computing at Microsoft and deep technical knowledge. The company kicked off its hunt for a new head last year when long-time CEO Steve Ballmer announced that he would step down within a year. Nadella has long been a candidate for the…
As reported on Engadget. BY TIMOTHY J. SEPPALA Microsoft already gave Windows 8 users the option to boot their machines directly to the desktop, but a future update could make the classic interface standard. According to known leaker WZor, the latest Windows 8.1 test build skips over Microsoft’s tiled interface by default. Of course, those aren’t the only changes — WZor also posted screenshots showing that the OS’ power options (sleep, shut down and restart) have been moved to the Start Screen, and modern UI apps now feature a “minimize”…
As reported on Wired. BY CHRIS BAKER Need Text Will Disney Ruin Star Wars? Some internet geeks are up in arms about Disney buying the Star Wars IP from George Lucas. Angry Nerd advises them to chill out. Are they worried that Disney will add annoying cutesy characters to boost kid appeal, or reduce the movies to fodder for endless spinoff shows and cartoons and merchandise? WELL THAT ALREADY HAPPENED A LONG TIME AGO, YOU SCRUFFY-LOOKING NERF…
As reported on The Verge. By Dieter Bohn This morning, Facebook is announcing a new standalone iPhone app called Paper. Contrary to earlier rumors, it’s much more than just a news reading app — it’s a complete reimagining of Facebook itself. Once you’ve used it, you may never want to open the standard Facebook app again. Although it doesn’t replicate every feature of Facebook’s main app, it has enough to fill the majority of what people use it…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Romain Dillet This is the story of a city that keeps reinventing itself. Over the past three weeks, I’ve been walking around Paris to meet with the brightest minds of a tech ecosystem in the making. My experience is as personal as it is relevant about what makes a startup ecosystem work, and why Europe is the next frontier. When I first decided that I wanted to move to…
As reported on Engadget. BY MARIELLA MOON Amazon might still be working away on its far-out delivery drone project, but it’s also reportedly cooking up something else, admittedly a little tamer, too: a Kindle checkout system and a P2P payment service. Yes, the former’s exactly what it sounds like — a Kindle tablet equipped with proprietary software and a credit card reader (like Square), at least according to the Wall Street Journal. Amazon supposedly acquired GoPago (a mobile payment platform for…
As reported on Engadget. BY MICHAEL GORMAN Dell’s betting that a bunch of businesspeople want to be able to carry their work computer around in their pocket. Not literally, of course, but with the release of the company’s $130 dollar Wyse Cloud Connect dongle (formerly known as Project Ophelia), you can do just that. It connects to any TV or display with an HDMI or MHL port, and hooks up to mice and keyboards via Bluetooth or mini-USB. There’s also…