Emerging Tech

Rumors of a super-duper, amped-up, big-screen "iPad Pro" have been floating around at least as early as this summer, and that's before Apple surprised the tech community with its 64-bit A7 processors in September. Overall, most of the rumors seem to surround speculative predictions, where a financia...

Flir Systems this week unveiled an iPhone case with a difference. The Flir One, which made its debut at CES, lets consumers view heat signatures through a thermal imaging camera attachment to the phone. It works by focusing the camera's attention on a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum t...

"A more robust entertainment delivery system will be a hallmark of Sony as we move into the future," Sony CEO Kaz Hirai said Tuesday in a keynote address at CES. "We will be offering customers a single source of entertainment that is less complicated, more cost-effective and more accessible than eve...

Pebble Goes Metallic

Pebble has unveiled new hardware and software designs, along with a wearable tech appstore. The Pebble smartwatch got its start last year with a successful Kickstarter campaign that resulted in sales of more than 300,000 devices worldwide. The company is kicking off 2014 with new products -- the Peb...

Nvidia this week announced the Tegra K1, a 192-core super chip that brings its Kepler architecture to the mobile space. Kepler is used in what Nvidia claims is the fastest GPU on the planet, its GeForce GTX 780 Ti. Because the K1 will support the latest PC-class gaming technologies -- such as Direct...

CROWDFUNDING SPOTLIGHT

With Graphite Electrodes, Heatworks Gets Water to Heat Itself

Traditional water heating equipment uses fuel as an energy source to heat a rod-like element in the water tank. The element then warms the water. If you've ever reheated a hot beverage by placing it in the microwave, you'll have an idea as to the alternatives. Microwave ovens heat liquids by moving ...

Devices ranging from the sublime to the strange are debuting this week at International CES 2014. Products unveiled at the show suggest growing trends toward wearable health-tracking products and increased human-gadget interaction. There's a bed, for example, that tells owners how they slept the pre...

Intel Leaps Out of the Box

CEO Brian Krzanich laid out the road map for Intel's future in his first Consumer Electronics Show keynote as CEO. Krzanich, who took over the top job last May, focused on wearable technology -- including some products designed internally -- as well as dual operating system tech and Intel's McAfee ...

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. That seems to be what Canon is saying with its announcement Monday of a new PowerShot camera model, the N100, which includes several features popular on smartphones. For example, the shooter has front and rear cameras. Combined in Dual Capture mode, a picture-in-pict...

LG Electronics has revived the webOS operating system for its latest line of smart TVs, the company announced on Monday. In fact, LG will use webOS on more than 70 percent of its smart TV lineup this year, the company said. "The beauty of webOS is that it provides so much freedom and is so simple to...

One of the biggest bugbears for gamers has long been the need to use a joystick to both track a target and control the motion of their avatar or weapons, but at International CES 2014 next week, Tobii Technology will demonstrate a new solution. Tobii has teamed up with SteelSeries, the companies ann...

OPINION

4 Unsettling Prospects for 2014

As New Year's Day approaches, I'm reminded of the Chinese curse, "May you be born in interesting times," because 2014 is likely to be a very interesting year. I expect the Democrats will be trying to distance themselves from their failed Affordable Care Act, while Republicans will be doing their bes...

It is time to look back on 2013 and consider what we've learned about technology and human nature. Both Apple and Dell were massively changed, and Google went from a company that wanted our private information to one that wanted our jobs. The U.S. government decided, through the NSA, that laws don't...

TECH TREK

Japanese Robot Shoots Breeze With Astronaut

A humanoid robot named "Kirobo" has had a chat with a Japanese astronaut on the ISS. The robot, also from Japan, is designed to process questions and construct answers from its vocabulary bank, as opposed to regurgitating preprogrammed responses. Asked if he could handle zero-gravity conditions, the...

Google Glass Just Got Creepier

Google on Tuesday released XE 12, the latest update to its Google Glass product. One of its new features lets users take a photo with a wink. "If I were Google, I'd keep quiet about ... how quickly people can take photos of unsuspecting targets," said Joshua Flood, an analyst at ABI Research. Privac...

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