Digital Lifestyle Technologies

Amazon.com is gaining too much control in the publishing industry with its purchase of Goodreads Inc., a social network for readers and a competitor in online book reviews, an authors’ group says.

Goodreads, which allows users to add titles to virtual bookshelves and track what friends are reading, has 16 million members who have written more than 23 million reviews, Amazon said in a March 28 statement. The company said the deal will probably close in the second quarter and didn’t provide terms.

Google search is making it more difficult to surface iOS applications using typical user queries, like "Whatsapp iTunes," "Whatsapp iPhone,"  or searches by app name, for example.

A team of scientists at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have developed the world’s smallest medical implant to monitor critical chemicals in the blood. The 14mm device measures up to five indicators, including proteins like troponin, that show if and when a heart attack has occurred. Using Bluetooth, the device can then transmit the data to a smartphone for tracking.

A new study showcases the dominance of "freemium" titles on Apple's iOS platform, as in-app purchases made through free apps accounted for 71 percent of total iPhone app revenue in the month of February.

If Apple plans to reinvent the way we watch TV in the living room, then it needs to start with a screen resolution that's better than 1080p, eliminate the remote, and the overall solution needs to be somewhat affordable.

Facebook just invited press to an event at its headquarters on April 4th to “Come See Our New Home On Android”. Sources tell us it will be a modified version of the Android operating system with deep native Facebook functionality on the homescreen that may live on an HTC handset. The evidence aligns to say this is the Facebook Phone announcement people have been speculating about for years.

What prompted this article was the announcement this week that the FirmTek miniSwap/U3 is shipping.

How does a USB 3.0 bus powered notebook size storage like the miniSwap/U3 compare to Thunderbolt bus powered notebook size storage devices? Other than performance, what features distinguish them?

Apple shipped five million Apple TVs last year. That’s $495M in revenue for the year just from the Apple TV. That’s not a lot of money for Apple, but it’s a business of considerable size,” Lal Shimpi writes.

“The Apple TV is an incredibly relevant device today,” Anand Lal Shimpi writes for AnandTech. “Apple famously refers to the Apple TV as a hobby, but I view it as more of an experiment.

Apple needs to finish up development of the low-cost iPhone it has been working on for the past few years, and bring the device to market now. Because to do otherwise is utterly illogical. There’s simply far too much revenue at stake.

Phil Schiller, the second most powerful executive at Apple, has made an extraordinary attack on Google’s Android software just before Samsung – the biggest user of the software – launches its new Galaxy S4 smartphone.

BlackBerry announced on Thursday it plans to offer a solution that will separate and secure both work and personal data on the most dominant mobile platforms: Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

BlackBerry's Secure Work Space will be available on platforms other than the company's own, as the smartphone maker looks to regain lost ground in the highly competitive mobile market. The Secure Work Space will be managed through BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, and is expected to launch in June.

On the evening that his company unveiled the follow-up to its best-selling Android smartphone, Samsung's new CEO spoke some harsh truths about the prospects of another of Samsung's software partners, saying demand for Microsoft products in the...

After meeting with Apple suppliers in a tour of China and Taiwan, one analyst now believes Apple will launch a television set this year with a new ring-shaped accessory that will allow a user to control the TV set by pointing their finger.

The rumors mills are in overdrive, with industry watchers predicting that Amazon and Facebook are both planning to bring out smartphones. The use case for a Facebook phone is the most questionable, while Amazon’s biggest hurdle with such a strategy is likely to be getting the device on retail shelves.

Google plans to make digital eyeglasses in the U.S. with Foxconn Technology Group according to a person familiar with the plans.

The eyeware, designed by Google and featuring software and cameras, will be made by the Taiwanese company at its factory in California, the person said, asking not to be identified because the plans are not public.

Apple has allegedly developed its own dedicated gaming controller for release at some point in the future, a development that, if true, could drastically reshape the face of the video game industry.

The buzz around the budget iPhone has grown deafening, with new reports about the device coming out on a weekly basis. This will be a product launch with a unique impact. If the budget iPhone really arrives this summer, it will drop smack in the middle of the tension created by slowing global smartphone volume growth and the extremely ambitious volume growth targets of the largest Asian vendors.

Could a future iPhone feature a wraparound display?

According to a new patent filed by Apple, patent application 20130076612, a potential smartphone design could include a full wraparound display and have no buttons. Enclosed within "transparent housing," a flexible display panel would be configured to display content at any portion of the gadget's frame.

Some think Apple's next big move will be an iWatch device, while others predict it will be a fully integrated Siri AppleTV. However, Apple's next growth segment will be launching the iOS Laptop.

The iOS laptop will run a clickable version of iOS so that you don't touch the screen but use a mouse or trackpad. The iOS laptop will use the same form factor as the 11" MacBook Air, but instead of running OS X, it will run iOS. It will start at $799 USD and come with 256GB of SSI storage and 2GB of RAM. The key to the iOS laptop is it will not run on an Intel processor but on a quad-core ARM A-series Apple designed processor.

I went from laughing to actually feeling embarrassed at some of the acting,” MacKenzie said in an interview with CNET. ”Watching the presentation, it looks like they invested a lot in marketing instead of innovation.”

The technical answer is yes. Android AOSP (Android open source project) meaning Android code that can be freely taken and used will be installed on more tablets than iPads in 2013. But the story isn’t that simple or clean cut. Data requires perspective and that is what I hope to provide around IDC’s latest press release and chart predicting that Android will be on more tablets than iOS in 2013 and beyond.

Samsung's Galaxy S 4 launch appeared poised to leverage Android to further distract the public's attention from Apple's iPhone. Instead, the company appears to have created its own apps and services to distract away from Android.

Though it was heavily hyped, Samsung's largely iterative Galaxy S4 flagship handset is not seen by market watchers as a device that will shake up the smartphone market or have a significant effect on Apple.