Tech Biz

New Yorkers grumble about the daily wake-up call they get when the city’s garbage trucks arrive outside their windows. But it wasn’t just the noise that bothered Sam Saha. Sometimes, Saha says, the trucks would make all that racket even when there wasn’t much to pick up. The thought of all that inefficiency–the wasted fuel, Continue Reading →

User interfaces present one of the most interesting quandaries of modern computing: we’ve moved from big monitors and keyboards to touchscreens, but now we’re heading into a world of connected everyday objects and wearable computing — how will we interact with those? Metaio, the German augmented reality outfit, has an idea. Augmented reality (AR) involves Continue Reading →

Google is working with Wi-Fi equipment maker Ruckus Wireless to build a large-scale Wi-Fi network in the cloud off of which any business could hang its wireless routers, according to a source familiar with the project who asked not to be named. Google’s plans to supply Wi-Fi services to small and medium-sized businesses was first Continue Reading →

If you wanted to enjoy hands-free Google searching from your desktop, your only option was to install an extension or become an early tester. The downside was that you’d have to accept some additional bugs might come your way. No more — Google has rolled out a Chrome update that integrates the company’s now iconic Continue Reading →

Game over. Google is now the master of the consumer cloud. The knockout punch was the successful deployment of Google Drive. Barely two years old, Google Drive has revolutionized the consumer and small-business cloud beyond recognition. Dropbox was the first reigning champion of the consumer cloud. Launched in 2008, Dropbox was an incredible leap forward. Continue Reading →

Every day companies collect data about their customers and industries, simply as an artifact of the act conducting business. As I listened to a panel on Big Data yesterday at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium in Cambridge, Mass., I had an epiphany: every company is a Big Data company, it’s just that some get it Continue Reading →

Facebook has a new weapon in the battle against Twitter to host lucrative conversations about media. A Shazam-esque opt-in feature coming to the iOS and Android status composer can activate your phone’s microphone, recognize a TV show you’re watching or song you’re listening to, and tag it in your News Feed post. Friends can then Continue Reading →

Astro Teller is the pony-tailed mad scientist leading Google’s efforts to merge the digital world with the physical world. He runs the quasi-secret Google X research lab, where the company is exploring everything from self-driving cars to internet-connected eyewear. These projects may seem like a stretch for a web company that cut its teeth with Continue Reading →

Apple on Wednesday enhanced its iWork suite of iCloud apps to include much improved collaboration, new document options, and more file storage. iWork includes the Pages word processor, Keynote presentation maker, and Numbers spreadsheet manager, and it is likely that supporting apps for iOS and OS X will become available in the near future. The Continue Reading →

They’ll be spitting white rage in Cupertino tonight. Why? Because Google has been declared the most valuable brand in the world. Which means Apple is no longer. Research company Millward Brown has decided that this is true. And when a research company decides, you can’t really argue. Indeed, looking at the research results, the evidence Continue Reading →