Sie hätten am 15. Oktober einen sechswöchigen Kunstaufenthalt in der chinesischen Stadt Chongqing antreten sollen: Doch China verweigerte den beiden Schweizer Künstlern Christoph Wachter und Mathias Jud die Reisevisa. Gründe nannte das Konsulat keine. Wachter und Jud wurden mit ihrer Webapplikation "Picidae" (Spechte) bekannt, mit der sich Internetzensur umgehen lässt.
Neue Geräte und mehr Apps: Als künftige Microsoft-Tochter legt sich Nokia für die mobilen Windows-Betriebssysteme ins Zeug. Ein sechs Zoll grosses Lumia-Smartphone kommt noch dieses Jahr. Auf das Nokia-Tablet werden Verbraucher länger warten müssen.
Die Aufhebung der Sperre für brutale Enthauptungsvideos auf Facebook stösst bei der britischen Regierung auf Unverständnis. Die Betreiber des in den USA ansässigen Sozialen Netzwerks handelten verantwortungslos, indem sie derartige Aufnahmen ohne Warnhinweis veröffentlichten, kritisierte Premierminister David Cameron auf seiner Twitter-Seite.
Im scharfen Wettbewerb auf dem PC-Markt macht Apple das Betriebssystem für seine Mac-Computer kostenlos. Das kündigte Software-Chef Craig Federighi in San Francisco an. Die neue Version des Systems OS X mit dem Codenamen "Mavericks" sollte umgehend verfügbar sein.
Die Online-Enzyklopädie Wikipedia kämpft gegen bezahlte Manipulationen von Artikeln. Mehr als 250 Nutzerprofile seien gesperrt oder von der Seite verbannt worden, hiess es im Wikipedia-Blog. Mitstreiter der englischsprachigen Wikipedia-Version untersuchten Vorwürfe, dass Autoren unter falscher Flagge unterwegs waren.
Das Unternehmen Postauto führt nach einer Testphase auf dem Gebiet des Tarifver- bunds Nordwestschweiz (TNW) die Echtzeitinformation ein. Dies bedeutet, dass sich die Reisenden an Haltestellen mit dynamischen Fahrgastinformationsanzeigen und auf der Postauto-App über die tatsächlich zu erwartenden Abfahrts- und Ankunftszeiten informieren können.
Mit der "OneGov Cloud" hat der Verein "OneGov.ch" ein E-Government Cloud-Angebot für kleinere und mittlere Gemeinden in der Schweiz angekündigt. Lanciert wird die "OneGov Cloud" in Zusammenarbeit mit den Schweizer Partnerunternehmen 4Teamwork, Procloud AG, Seantis und United Security Providers.
Der US-Geheimdienst NSA hat nach den Worten des Enthüllungsjournalisten Glenn Greenwald alle Länder Lateinamerikas ausspioniert. Greenwald wandte sich gestern per Video von seinem Wohnsitz in Brasilien aus an eine Journalistenkonferenz mit 300 Teilnehmern, die in Denver tagte.
Beim Chip-Designer ARM geht es dank der ungebrochenen Nachfrage nach Smartphones und Tablets weiter aufwärts. Nach einem dritten Quartal mit Wachstum bei Umsatz und Gewinn gehen die Briten auch optimistisch in den letzten Jahresabschnitt.
Die an der Schweizer Börse kotierte Halbleiterherstellerin Micronas mit Hauptsitz in Zürich hat im dritten Quartal des Geschäftsjahres 2013 den Umsatz und Betriebsergebnis gegenüber dem Vorquartal gesteigert. Gegenüber dem Vorjahreszeitraum sank der Umsatz jedoch um 10 Prozent, wie die Limmatstädter wissen lassen.
, Apple has changed the game once again. “Thinness” is once again the watchword, and every upcoming tablet will be compared against Apple’s thinner, lighter tablets to see if they measure up. measure up. Quite well, in fact. They're just not made by Microsoft. those Microsoft’s tablets quite simply: excellent hardware, but crippled by a lack of apps. But by Tuesday afternoon, Microsoft’s Surface 2 (and especially the Surface Pro 2) looked clunky compared to Apple's new ultra-thin 9.7-incher. as well—but no one is going to remember it either. But there are some new Windows 8.1 devices that will help Microsoft's story in our new post-iPad Air world.
Qualcomm has changed the job profile of Chief Marketing Officer Anand Chandrasekher to focus on the emerging area of enterprises, which analysts said points to the company likely developing ARM server chips. Chandrasekher, who previously oversaw global marketing at Qualcomm, is “moving to a new role leading our exploration of certain enterprise related initiatives,” a Qualcomm spokeswoman wrote in a brief email. “With Anand’s experience in running enterprise businesses, he is well suited for this new role,” the spokeswoman wrote. Chandrasekher will retain his title and continue to report to Steve Mollenkopf, chief operating officer and president of Qualcomm. , and that 64-bit was important for computing on mobile devices and other form factors.
Apple's little tablet costs a lot more, but its thriving ecosystem makes it hard to beat.
Blackberry says its new app that opens up the proprietary BBM messaging platform to Android and Apple users was downloaded 10 million times in just over its first 24 hours of availability. The free app was launched Monday morning. Using it, people with Android and iOS can exchange messages with friends and colleagues using the BBM system. The system notifies users when each message has been read and indicates when someone is in the process of responding. Files and photos can also be shared over BBM. There are around 60 million active monthly users of BBM.
Pavel Durov, the CEO of the Russian social networking site VK, does not think very highly of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Edward Snowden instead is his personal hero. “Mark underestimates VK,” Durov said Tuesday, addressing dismissive remarks Zuckerberg previously made about VK. “He doesn’t use it very much,” Durov said. “VK is faster, easier to use, and has more functionality,” he said. mobile Internet conference in San Francisco, an event that drew multiple thousands of attendees from across the world.
In a fast-paced event Tuesday, Apple unleashed a bunch of new products across its iPad and Mac product lines, along with updates to over 20 apps and (oh, yeah) a new version of OS X, too.
To avoid legal difficulties when managing intellectual property for open-source projects, more tech savvy lawyers are needed, according to the Linux Foundation. Educating lawyers, however, is not the only solution, argued other open-source insiders at the LinuxCon Europe conference in Edinburgh this week. Open-source software adoption is outstripping the legal knowledge of parties involved in open-source projects who have difficulty dealing with copyright, patent, licensing and compliance issues, said Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin. During the conference’s opening speech on Monday, Zemlin said the open-source community needs more lawyers who have an understanding of the technology and how open-source collaboration works. Having lawyers with a better understanding of the technology involved in open-source projects would indeed be a way to overcome legal difficulties, said Deb Nicholson, community outreach director of the Open Innovation Network (OIN).
Businesses that want to improve their cybersecurity posture can take a number of steps, including conducting a risk assessment and prioritizing ways to address gaps in their security, a U.S. agency said in recommendations released Tuesday. , from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) calls on businesses to assess their current cybersecurity practices and aim for a higher level of sophistication in defending against cyberattacks. Compliance with the framework is voluntary for U.S. businesses, and many of the ideas in the document are drawn from existing best practices. But most businesses should be able to improve their cybersecurity efforts by adopting some of the recommendations, said NIST Director Patrick Gallagher. “There is absolutely no question that cyberthreats are increasing to critical infrastructure businesses and, indeed, the entire business community clearly needs strong, tested ways to officially protect their data and their assets,” Gallagher said during a press briefing. “We believe cybersecurity is good business.”
Lodging platform Airbnb says it offers a big boost for New York's economy, in the midst of a tax revenue fight with the state Attorney General.
Dell serves up long battery life and a touchscreen with its latest Precision 3800 laptop, which the company calls the “world’s thinnest-and-lightest” mobile workstation. The Precision M3800 has a 15.6-inch touchscreen and offers 10 hours of battery life, according to Dell. It is 0.7 inches thick and weighs a bit more than 4 pounds. The features of the M3800—including a high-end CPU, a separate graphics processor, and support for as much as 1.5TB of storage—match those of typical mobile workstations that are considered bulky and power-hungry. The laptop is designed for engineers and creative professionals who need strong application and graphics capabilities, Dell said. It can be used to make high-definition movies and computer-aided design applications.
on Tuesday, the company discontinued a couple of models from a forgotten product line: the non-Retina MacBook Pro. ). For $1199, you can buy a 13-inch laptop with a 2.5GHz dual-core Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz), 4GB of 1600MHz memory, a 500GB 5400-rpm hard drive, and integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 technology. Although the laptop doesn’t have a Retina display, it does have a few features that many users still want, such as a SuperDrive, a FireWire 800 port, and a Kensington lock slot. The laptop also comes with gigabit ethernet, a Thunderbolt port (not Thunderbolt 2), two USB 3.0 ports, and a SDXC card slot. , two 13-inch models and two 15-inch models. Eventually, Apple eliminated one of the 15-inch models, reducing the line to three laptops: a $1199 13-inch model with a 2.5GHz dual-core Core i5 processor, a $1499 13-inch model with a 2.9GHz dual-core Core i7 processor, and a $1799 15-inch model with a 2.3GHz quad-core Core i7 processor.
People are increasingly relying on smartphones and tablets for their computing needs, which means that those users also depend on the mobile browser for their Web surfing. A new compiles customer input to rank how users feel about the different mobile browser options. There are other browser apps available for the various mobile platforms, but the report from , and Internet Explorer. Of those five, Safari stands out in two categories: market share and usability ranking. With 58.12 percent of the mobile browser market, Safari has more than two-and-half times the market share of the second place Stock Android browser and nearly six times the market share of the third place Opera mobile browser. As for the usability score—an index assigned by FixYa based on the issues encountered by users and developers on the FixYa.com site—Safari wins the usability score with a 1.31, a score more than 50 percent higher than Stock Android, which is in second place once again. There are three things listed as “Pros” for the Safari mobile browser in the FixYa report. It notes that the user interface is clean and exceedingly simple. The report also highlights the vast options available for working with an individual Web page—bookmark it, add it to the home screen, send it via email, tweet it out via Twitter, print it, and more. Finally, FixYa cites the Reading List as a benefit of Safari, enabling users to store Web pages for offline reading at their convenience.
Amazon’s free shipping minimum went up Tuesday from $25 to $35 -- the first price increase in over a decade -- in an apparent play to boost Amazon Prime subscribers.
Hush hush, sweet engine: The hybrid Cadillac ELR uses noise cancelling to dampen the sound of the car's transition from electric to gas engine. Call us when it can drown out "are we there yet?"
its acquisition of the French company FlexyCore, best known for its performance enhancing software, DroidBooster. from Google Play) that gave slower and older smart phones more power and much-needed acceleration. The company said that it could enhance the performance of “any Android embedded code” and make it “ten times faster,” a claim which many felt to be a bit of an exaggeration. Apparently not Google, though, which paid $23.1 million for the company. , you can see the value of DroidBooster to the consumer right away. as FlexyCore’s code is folded into the core of Android, at least one observer has hopes that this will also mean decreased fragmentation among Android devices down the line.
Apple on Tuesday announced major updates to the , adding new processors, PCIe-based storage, and Thunderbolt 2. Apple offers five standard configurations of the new laptop. The new $1299 13-inch Retina MacBook has a 2.4GHz dual-core Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz), 4GB of 1600MHz memory, Intel’s integrated Iris Graphics, and 128GB of flash storage connected via PCIe. According to Apple, the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro weighs 3.46 pounds, 0.11 pound less than the previous 13-inch model. The new 13-inch model is also 0.71 inch thin, 0.04 inch thinner than its predecessor. Apple claims eight hours of battery life. That $1299 price tag is a $200 drop from what Apple used to charge for its entry-level MacBook Pro. Apple offers two other 13-inch standard configurations. The $1499 model has the same processor as the $1299 model, but carries 8GB of RAM and 256GB of flash storage. The $1799 model has a 2.6GHz dual-core Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz), 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of flash storage.
Power users with money to spend will have a present to buy for themselves in December: That’s when Apple’s new , will finally be available for purchase. The $2999 configuration includes an Intel 3.7GHz processor with 10MB of L3 cache and Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz, 12GB of 1866MHz ECC DDR3 RAM (installed as three 4GB modules, leaving one RAM slot open), 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage, and two AMD FirePro D300 GPUs (2GB of VRAM each). Apple also offers a $3999 model, which has a six-core 3.5GHz Xeon E5 processor with 12MB of L3 cache and Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz, 16GB of 1866MHz ECC DDR3 RAM (installed as four 4GB modules, filling all of the Mac Pro’s RAM slots), 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage, and two AMD FirePro D500 GPUs (3GB of VRAM each). Apple offers a number of customization options, but as of this writing, Apple has not made available its online configurator listing the prices for the upgrades. According to the technical specifications, processor upgrades include an eight-core 3GHz Xeon E5 with 25MB of L3 cache, and a 12-core 2.7GHz Xeon E5 with 30MB of L3 cache. The RAM is upgradable to 64GB, and additional flash storage is available at 512GB or 1TB. The graphics can be upgraded to dual AMD FirePro D700 cards, each with 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM.
There is nothing exciting about smartwatches. So, why all the hubbub?