Category: Tech news

Another solid entry into the world of smart home devices is Skylink’s iPhone-controlled home alarm system. You can arm/disarm it from your Apple handset, and see important notifications wherever you are. It’s also easy to set up.

The post Review: SkylinkNet Alarm System Kit appeared first on WIRED.

 Don’t look at the clock. Do you know what time it is?
Twitter sure as heck does. Turns out, people love to tweet about the time. So why not turn the Twitter firehose into a massive, crowdsourced clock? Read More

 The recent, successful human implantation of a 3D-printed vertebra at Peking University in China captured the public’s imagination. I read the news (and its quick spread) as evidence that medical devices are dare I say, cool again. Read More

 The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Bruce Richardson, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, December 12, 2014 in Menlo Park, California at the Salesforce Analyst Summit 2014. Analysts and Salesforce executives discussed the Summit’s theme of Continuous Transformation for 2020. Read More

 It seems that Facebook quietly removed Bing as its primary search provider over the weekend, announcing plans to debut its own search tool on Monday, according to Reuters.
The report says that Facebook’s new search tool will give users the ability to filter through old comments and other information from friends. Read More

 Shove over Tinder. Swiss startup Blinq has come up with a new twist on the dating app. The startup is incorporating beacon proximity technology into the mix so singles can do more meeting IRL and less swiping — thanks to select venues being kitted out with Blinq’s Estimote iBeacons. Read More

 If you ask a member of the business-tech community about the benefits of closed systems versus their open counterparts, one word that will almost certainly come up is “security.” There’s been a long-held belief in the tech industry that closed systems are more difficult to corrupt and, therefore, more secure than systems built on a philosophy of radical openness. Read More

 Databases are the spine of the tech industry: unsung, invisible, but critical–and beyond disastrous when they break or are deformed. This makes database people cautious. For years, only the Big Three–Oracle, IBM’s DB2, and (maybe) SQL Server–were serious options. Then the open-source alternatives–MySQL, PostgreSQL–became viable. …And then, over the last… Read More

 Lindsay Lohan’s The Price of Fame launched on both Android and iOS this week, adding LiLo to the short list of celebrities with their own, branded mobile game. It was a featured game at launch, jumping to No. 10 in games in the App Store. According to App Annie, it’s currently now at No. 400 in U.S. game app ranks. Wild first day fluctuations aside, the game is less about rising up… Read More

 Want the experience of a kinda-sorta-hover-board, but don’t have $10,000 and a copper halfpipe laying around? Fret not! As Texan Ryan Craven proves, you can pull off something of a similar vein with four gutted leafblowers, a sheet of plywood, and some gorilla tape. The disclaimers here are the same as the rest of the “hoverboards” of 2014: it’s neat, but it’s… Read More

 Curious to see what life was like with an affordable Windows gaming PC in the form factor of a console, I bought the $799 Alienware Alpha early last week. Read More

 This week’s tech news saw President Obama coding, the launch of the Samsung Gear VR, and Instagram surpassing Twitter in users. Read More

 Behavior health analytics startup Ginger.io has announced the launch of Utah SmartCare, a care management platform designed to help low-income Utah residents suffering from mental health issues. Utah leads the nation in depression and suicide. Doctors prescribe antidepressants in the Beehive state at nearly twice the average rate in the U.S. Speculation as to whether that’s because of… Read More

 This week, Sarah Buhr, Alex Wilhelm and myself chatted about the resurgence of the tech IPO over the last few days, game developers attaching celebrities to their freemium games, and the big news from Samsung and Google in the VR space. Read More

 Six months ago, mobile advertising startup PaeDae changed its name to The Mobile Majority, adjusted its business model, and raised some extra money. Now founder and CEO Rob Emrich is saying that the move has paid off, with the company hitting a $50 million revenue run rate in November. When I wrote about PaeDae last year, it had built a mobile rewards network and was looking to expand into… Read More