Wal-Mart Stores is creating what it’s calling a technology incubator in Silicon Valley that’s focused on technologies that will change how people shop. Dubbed Store No. 8, named for an Arkansas location where Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton tested new store features, the new venture will try out and possibly invest in technologies like virtual reality,…
Amazon’s Alexa has successfully challenged Apple on your home turf—literally. The Echo and other various Alexa-equipped devices are rapidly becoming the go-to when you need assistance at home, though Apple’s HomeKit has the edge when it comes to automation and security standards. But the real battle comes down to Alexa vs. Siri—which voice-activated assistant is…
The chances of you encountering malware on your Android phone is incredibly small, according to Google. By the end of last year, less than 0.71 percent of Android devices had installed a “potentially harmful application,” such as spyware, a Trojan, or other malicious software. That figure was even lower, at 0.05 percent, for Android phones…
Users waiting for Windows 10’s Creators Update, which is expected to release soon, may need to be patient. Data released Wednesday by AdDuplex suggests that Microsoft’s Windows 10 Anniversary Update took months to roll out to users after it was released last August, and the same pace could apply to the Creators Update. AdDuplex, which runs…
Need to book an appointment? Soon you won’t even need to leave the Instagram app to do that. In the next couple of months, Instagram is planning to give its users the ability to book appointments in-app, according to Bloomberg. Instagram hopes this new feature will give users more of an incentive to interact with…
Via Technologies is now shipping new 360-degree cameras for under US$100, making it more affordable for users to capture and play virtual reality content in headsets. The cameras — called Vpai by Via — are being touted as being “720-degree” as they capture everything within view horizontally and vertically. But effectively, the Via cameras capture…
Thanks to Vodafone, the Taurus-Littrow Valley will get its first mobile phone base station next year. It hasn’t needed one up to now, as the last visitors drove through in 1972, the year before the mobile phone was invented. Next year, though, it will get the very latest in 4G LTE coverage, when it receives…
YouTube’s already muscling in on Twitch’s territory, and now Facebook’s going after hardcore game streamers, too. Alongside news that live videos can now be shot on standard PCs, not just mobile devices, Facebook also revealed today that personal accounts are now able to live stream videos funneled through streaming software or external streaming hardware. Branded…
A group of hackers is threatening to wipe data from millions of Apple devices in two weeks if the company doesn’t pay them US$150,000. The group, which calls itself Turkish Crime Family, claims to have login credentials for more than 627 million icloud.com, me.com and mac.com email addresses. These are email domains that Apple has…
The U.S. Air Force’s top-secret autonomous space plane, the X-37B, is days away from breaking its own longevity record. The aircraft, which looks like a mini Space Shuttle, will on March 25 begin its record-setting 675th day in orbit, but we still don’t know much about what it’s doing up there. The X-37B looks a…