Can one chip make a difference in your laptop’s battery life? Yup, and hopefully it comes to Chromebooks soon. Data from connected pets can help their health while Sony countered Microsoft well with its new PS4. Read more »
For a deeper dive into the topics and technologies covered on GigaOM, check out the latest in-depth analyses on GigaOM Research, our subscription-based research service. This week: cloud security, SDN, and mega data centers. Read more »
The NSA (and who knows who else) has made a habit of perusing our collective emails, we now know. Which makes it a perfect time to brush up on electronic security. Read more »
Wearable devices will offer practical, novel and fun usefulness but will also be able to influence our behavior in ways good and bad, creating ethical dilemmas for designers. Read more »
First came the “phablet”, now we have the “phomera”: Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Zoom is part point-and-shoot with 10x optical zoom and part smartphone. A new Nexus 7 looks to be coming soon as does the HTC One Mini, perhaps by August. Read more »
Admit it: your contacts lists are a mess of double entries, missing data and old phone numbers. Here are some suggestions for cleaning up the contact lists associated with your traditional mail accounts. Read more »
Google has always had a thing for balloon-based Internet, blimps and connecting the unconnected. Five years after it first started talking about it, Google is finally launching a seemingly loony project called Project Loon in New Zealand. Will balloon-based Internet finally fly? Read more »
Whatever the details might be, it seems clear that dozens of technology companies — and perhaps even more — have co-operated with the NSA on its surveillance program. And they could pay a high price for doing so. Read more »
With speculation that Facebook might be launching an RSS reader at its press event next week, it’s important to think about why users loved the Google Reader experience. Hint: it wasn’t because Google Reader was social. Read more »
Facebook is now disclosing to the public the number of national security-related requests it received from the government for user data. Microsoft has released similar statistics. But Google has declined, saying it prefers a different approach. Read more »
Despite increased innovation in education technology, a new report from the non-profit Center for American Progress shows that U.S. schools are not doing enough to take advantage of digital tools. Read more »
Amazon Web Services outages have prodded customer Netflix to write software that can keep the service alive amid infrastructure issues. Now comes a new tool addressing issues around the Christmas Eve outage. Read more »
Mozilla’s ScienceLab wants the open web to transform science as much as it’s transformed the other areas of our lives. Read more »
Don’t judge a book by its content — at least not if it’s copy-protected: German researchers are working on a new DRM system that would change individual words of a story to track pirated book copies back to their original owners. Read more at paidContent »
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has told EU commissioner of justice Viviane Reding that the NSA is primarily targeting U.S. citizens and suspected foreign terrorists in its data collection efforts. Read more »
After a trail of breadcrumb evidence, an FCC certification report indicates that a new Nexus 7 is on the way. The device forgoes an Nvidia chip for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S600. Read more »
Unsurprisingly, there’s a crazy amount of interest in the biggest visual change to iOS since its introduction in 2007. Read more »
Recent recipient of an Apple Design Award, Ridiculous FIshing is, well, a ridiculous but really fun version of a physics-based fishing game. Read more »
Updated: Savvis will offer AppFog’s platform in both public and dedicated, private implementations to corporate customers. Read more »
This week, both Facebook and Yahoo detailed new efforts to manage real-time data flows within their myriad systems. Yahoo’s work is an open source implementation of Storm designed to run on the same cluster as Hadoop and even share resources. Read more »
Apple isn’t making it a requirement, but it’s something every developer should do anyway: because when you put an iOS 6-designed app next to an iOS 7-ready one, the difference will be incredibly stark — and not in a good way. Read more »
The full backing of the U.S. executive branch is now behind the idea of spectrum sharing, which would split time between federal and commercial users on the wireless airwaves. Read more »
On this week’s show, Sony scores with the PS4, the PRISM story keeps evolving and GigaOM turns seven years old! Read more »
The next big technology wave — the internet of things (IoT) — promises to transform how people interact with the world and make everyone from entrepreneurs to enterprises a ton of money in the process. With Xively’s IoT public cloud, you can easily capitalize on this huge opportunity. Read more »
Without any fanfare, the software giant has released the clumsily-titled “Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers”, which seems to do what it says on the tin. Read more »
A Bloomberg report suggests widespread cooperation between U.S. tech firms and the nation’s intelligence agencies that could help those spies hack into foreign computers. Read more »
With AppFog, Savvis will get a Cloud Foundry-based Platform as a Service to run atop its own VSphere or vCloud Director-based infrastructure. Read more »
Amid increased reports of cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities in healthcare, the FDA is calling on medical device makers to ramp up their safeguards. Read more »
A division of the Swedish government has prohibited government bodies from using Google Apps, giving more credence to privacy concerns around public-cloud services. Read more »
Exclusive: New usage data from Onavo shows that iOS users are taking to Chrome, to Twitter’s Vine and to Yahoo apps. Read more »
Some of the changes are barely noticeable, while others may cause some initial confusion for longtime iOS users. Read more »
TextNow today may be an also-ran in the crowded over-the-top communications market, but it plans to set itself apart by becoming a full-fledged carrier. It wants to be the first all-IP carrier in the U.S. Read more »
Boxee is looking to raise additional funding, the company confirmed Thursday. However, selling itself to a pay TV provider is also a possibility. Read more »
Connected cars will be a big business for cellular carriers as governments demand more embedded systems inside vehicles to meet safety demands. Tethering will also be big, but smartphone integration less so. Read more »
The annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is sold out – but you can still enjoy many of the festival’s top acts, thanks to an extensive live stream. Read more »
Online learning startup creativeLIVE is breaking in its new San Francisco studios with a special broadcast featuring several big names from Silicon Valley. Read more »
The UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has suggested that Google’s average payment of less than 0.1 percent in corporation tax may not be entirely legal. Read more »
Raymie Stata spent seven years working on the guts of Hadoop as a VP, chief architect and CTO at Yahoo. His new Hadoop startup, called Altiscale, has raised a $12 million from some prominent investors. Read more »
Archimedes asked only for a lever and a place to stand and promised he could move the earth. Maybe he was only playing 200 B.C. hype man for his mathematical musings on levers, but it’s a point worth taking: Work smarter and accomplish great things. Read more »
The Financial Times is quoting three senior EU officials as saying an “anti-FISA” clause was taken out of the EU’s proposed data protection legislation, after senior U.S. figures lobbied against it. Read more »
