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Seven years out from the original iPhone’s introduction, and four years past the iPad’s launch, Apple has found its next market ripe for reinvention: the mobile healthcare and fitness-tracking industry. Apple’s interest in healthcare and fitness tracking will be displayed in an iOS application codenamed Healthbook. I first wrote about Apple’s plans for Healthbook in Continue Reading →

Microsoft on Monday announced the Surface 2 with AT&T 4G LTE support, a 64GB version of the Surface 2 tablet that also features mobile broadband. The device is available now for $679; given that the Surface 2 without LTE retails for $549, you’re paying an extra $130 to ensure you’re (almost) always online. Curiously, Microsoft Continue Reading →

Google has just started rolling out an update to the Play Store app on Android that, among other things, now offers more fine-grained control when making purchases. This change could very well be related to the class action suit that the company is now facing. Early this week, Google was hit with a class action Continue Reading →

Every year in mid-March, tens of thousands of people exchange business cards in Austin, Texas. After all, there’s no better place to mingle with the “who’s who” of the tech and music scenes than South By Southwest (SXSW), the annual festival of all things new, hip and cool. In fact, on March 11 rocker Neil Young Continue Reading →

Amazon on Thursday announced that the annual price of Amazon Prime will increase from $79 to $99 next month, and though it’s still arguably the best deal in tech, it’d be nice to get one more year at the old price. At first, it seemed that there was no way for current subscribers whose subscriptions Continue Reading →

Images of an Amazon-branded game controller have leaked, all-but confirming the existence of an Amazon set-top box for your TV. The images were first posted by media blog Zatz Not Funny, and come from a Brazilian regulatory agency similar to the FCC. They depict a traditional-looking game controller with media control buttons at its bottom. Continue Reading →

Besides adding new Maps, Healthbook, and iTunes Radio applications, Apple plans to enhance and refine the functionality of some of its current pre-bundled applications and features for iOS 8. Here is a list, provided by sources, of some of the refinements Apple is considering for select applications and system functions in iOS 8. Notification Center, the Continue Reading →

Should driving with Google Glass be allowed? There’s no precedent; technology is almost always ahead of strategy, tactics and the law. In my book Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV, 2nd Edition (York House Press, 2008), I looked for lessons from the Civil War: “Often described as the first modern war, the Continue Reading →

The issue of insurance has been a thorny one for ride-sharing services including Lyft and Uber — when their drivers are between fares, it becomes a gray area regarding responsibilities in the case of an accident. On Friday both companies have taken steps to address such problems. On-demand ride-sharing startup Lyft announced on Friday that Continue Reading →

With literally millions of phishing scams crossing the wires each day, media reports about individual ones are the quintessential dog-bites-man stories that are rarely worth the time of writer or reader alike. Every now and then, though, one comes along that’s clever enough to make it rise to the top of the massive steaming pile Continue Reading →