Gadgets

By Darrell Etherington The temptation of a smartphone for a thief is dropping, thanks to Apple’s decision to implement a remote kill switch via Find My Phone that can erase and disable a phone once it’s been stolen or gone missing. A new report from Reuters found that iPhone theft dropped by 50 percent in…

By Darrell Etherington Samsung’s next flagship device is going to be revealed in just a few short weeks ahead of this year’s Mobile World Congress, and the head of the company’s camera division is already teasing us about its photo capabilities. In an official blog post, Samsung SVP DongHoon Jang provided a survey of the…

By John Biggs There was a section so common in big name CES tech presentations that it was almost comical. After announcing some widget or the other, a cheerful CEO would stand on stage and talk about how smart everything would soon become thanks to the SmartAppliance Framework or some such nonsense. The television can…

By Natasha Lomas Following a storm of criticism relating to a creepy-sounding privacy policy covering its smart TVs, Samsung has today published a rebuttal and a more detailed explanation of the workings of its under-fire voice recognition feature. It has also edited the wording of its privacy policy to avoid sounding quite so eerily similar…

By Jordan Crook JetBlue has become the first U.S. airline to accept Apple Pay in-flight, meaning customers can use their iPhone to purchase snack boxes, premium items, etc. from the airline. The idea here is that some people tuck their wallets away in carry-on bags, stowed in luggage compartments above, and hold up service to…

By Kyle Russell AI-powered remote control car maker Anki today unveiled Anki Overdrive, the next generation of its play sets that will let kids (and the adults who inevitably have to play with them) create their own tracks from various tiles. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By Darrell Etherington Google purchased Boston Dynamics last year, which means it now owns the company’s ongoing robotics projects, including BigDog. Today, the Google subsidiary posted videos of a smaller dog-like robot, aptly named Spot, which weighs around 160 lbs, has an electric powerhouse and can operate both indoors and outside. The robot, as you…

By John McCann Hands on: Honor Holly review The Honor Holly is the latest smartphone to come out of the Chinese startup and it follows in the footsteps of the Honor 6, offering better-than-expected specs for the price tag. While the Honor 6 is the flagship device, the Holly falls at the opposite end of…

By Natasha Lomas One of Europe’s busiest airports, Amsterdam’s Schiphol hub in the Netherlands, is trialling Google Glass for use by airport authority officers as a hands-free way to look up gate and airplane information. Read More …read more Source: TechCrunch Gadgets

By Sarah Perez Wearables for women are already having a big year. Companies like smart ring maker Ringly and jewelry maker Cuff have both raised significant rounds of new funding in early 2015, as they work to bring their attractive smart jewelry to the mainstream. Now, a new competitor Trellie is poised to enter the…

By Steve O'Hear Breed Reply, the London-based Internet of Things (IoT) incubator run by Italian publicly-listed Reply, has announced that its backed three new startups in the smart home, health and energy sectors: Cocoon, the UK smart home security startup; BrainControl, an Italian startup that has developed an assistive technology to let disabled people control…

By Darrell Etherington SpaceX is aiming to launch the Deep Space Climate Observatory, also known by the acronym DSCOVR, today during a launch window that kicks off at 6:10 PM ET (and you can watch live above). The NASA-contracted mission is designed to launch a satellite that can monitor solar storms and provide full Earth…

By Natasha Lomas As the number of connected devices — aka the Internet of Things, aka the sensornet — proliferates so too does the number of devices leaning on voice recognition technology as an interface to allow for hands free control. But the potential privacy intrusion of voice-activated services is massive. Read More …read more…

By John Biggs Bitcoin mining is not a pretty business. It requires lots of specialized servers that are essentially unusable for normal computing and lots of cooling. But when you bring thousands of miners together in the same room, things really get ugly. Motherboard has some fascinating footage of a bitcoin mine in Liaoning Province,…

By Jordan Crook,Greg Kumparak,Matt Burns,John Biggs,Darrell Etherington We were all physically in the same room for this podcast, which is the first time that has ever happened. That said, we covered a multitude of topics, including the new Nintendo 3DS, the potential Swatch smartwatch and the first-world problems of folks who own multiple IoT products.…