The official calendar for Joshua Wright, a commissioner with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, shows he has had many meetings with technology company lobbyists, but none with consumer advocates, even though consumer protection is a major part of the agency’s mission. Wright, a Republican appointed as commissioner in January 2013, has had only a couple of meetings related to consumer privacy and none with any consumer privacy groups, according to the calendar, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Wright’s office disputes the allegation that he has failed to meet with consumer groups, saying he has met with more than a half-dozen consumer advocacy groups. Wright has met with the American Antitrust Institute, a consumer-focused antitrust enforcement advocacy group, and has discussed privacy and consumer protection issues with the National Asian American Coalition, according to his office, but those meetings don’t show up on his calendar.
The UK government has signed a £5.548 million contract with Microsoft for a year’s worth of Windows XP support after the operating system’s support reaches end of life on 8 April. Under the agreement, Microsoft will maintain critical and important security updates for Windows XP, Office 2003 and Exchange 2003 until 8 April 2015. Hints that the deal was about to be agreed were According to a Cabinet Office spokesperson, the deal will provide “continuity for all eligible government and public sector organisations while they migrate on to alternative operating systems”.
Sony's life-tracking wearable is shipping to customers, but it's just a useless rubber wristband until two apps go live in Google Play.
Microsoft has toughened its criteria for classifying programs as adware and gave developers three months to conform with the new principles or risk having their programs blocked by the company’s security products. The most important change in Microsoft’s policy is that adware programs will be blocked by default starting July 1. In the past such programs were allowed to run until users chose one of the recommended actions offered by the company’s security software. Interestingly, Microsoft’s crackdown on adware comes as it
It looks like Apple's free
3D Systems' CEO says modular parts for Project Ara will have basic circuitry at first but grow more sophisticated over time
It looks like a Chromecast, but packs all the channels of a full-size Roku box...with just a couple of trade-offs.
T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere said Thursday he was disappointed with BlackBerry’s decision this week to The Canadian smartphone maker said earlier this week it will not renew the license of T-Mobile US to sell its products when it expires on April 25. The decision is regarded as a fallout of T-Mobile’s email in February to BlackBerry customers, promoting Apple’s
Nest, the connected-home device maker Google agreed to buy in January, is disabling a feature that allows its Nest Protect smoke and carbon-monoxide alarm to be silenced with a wave of the hand. The feature, Nest Wave, is one of the key selling points of the device, but it “could delay an alarm going off if there was a real fire,” the company As a result, Nest is sending an update to the US$129 Internet-connected Nest Protect alarms that will disable the feature until it comes up with a fix for the problem. That’s expected to take between two and three months. Nest is also immediately halting sales of the device and said customers who didn’t want to keep the alarm could get “a complete refund.”
Amazon's Fire TV and the battle for the living room, why cord cutting won't work for sports fans, the new HTC One phone, and Cortana versus Siri versus Google Now.
Brendan Eich has resigned as CEO of Mozilla and left the board of the foundation that governs the nonprofit company after days of controversy over his support of California’s anti-gay marriage law in 2008. The company announced his resignation on its blog Thursday
