After leveraging its customers as a test audience, Amazon has begun choosing which of the 14 pilots it will produce as part of the company's first major foray into original programming. Viewer feedback and engagement have led to Alpha House (starring John Goodman) and Betas (centered around a...
"You guys successfully hated it out of existence." Zombieland writer/producer Rhett Reese
Now that Yahoo has officially unveiled its plans to purchase Tumblr for $1.1 billion, it's inevitable we'll see some user backlash. Rival blog host WordPress claims that backlash has already begun: founder Matt Mullenweg says that imports from...
A ruggedized variant of Samsung's Galaxy S4 might not be too far away from launching after new leaked images have captured the device in operation. Photos of the Galaxy S4 Active, acquired by GSMArena, show Samsung has significantly altered the design of the original Galaxy S4, adding three front screen hardware buttons and a reinforced rear shell with four screws on the back — though they...
Seamless and GrubHub — two internet food delivery powerhouses — have officially announced that they will join forces in a merger. Both services offer websites and mobile apps allowing users to order food online to their homes or businesses, enabled through thousands of partnerships with local restaurants. "GrubHub and Seamless share a common goal to generate more business for local takeout restaurants," said GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney, who will serve as CEO of the new organization.
In a combined announcement, the companies say that the merger will bring together GrubHub's more than 20,000 local takeout restaurants in over 500 cities in the US, with Seamless' more than 12,000 restaurants in the US and UK. Seamless and GrubHub say that the partnership will expand its ordering network and product offerings, and that it will accelerate...
Just one more order of Pad Thai...
I/O is Google’s biggest event of the year, a three-day soiree for the company and its developers to talk about the present and future of Google’s products. It’s also the week Google tends to make its biggest announcements — from the Nexus 7 to Google TV, Chrome to Glass and everything in between, Google plays its biggest cards every year in the middle of May.
This year’s rumors...
Three and a half hours of Google
Jolla has just unveiled its first smartphone, which will go on sale this year for €399 (roughly $510). Running the company's MeeGo-derived Sailfish OS, it features a 4.5-inch display, a dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel camera, LTE (in selected markets), removable back covers, 16GB of onboard storage, and a microSD slot. According to Jolla, the handset will be "compliant" with Android apps,...
If you run a website, you have access to a potential wealth of data about your visitors: their location, gender, approximate age, and maybe even their names, with the help of a simple cookie. If you run a retail store or a mall, that same data must be collected far less efficiently by an army of kids with clipboards. But what if stores could count patrons automatically, tallying up basic demographic data through a webcam installed at the register?
That’s what New York-based IMRSV is trying to do with Cara, cheap face detection software that can scan faces up to 25 feet away and determine...
After a relative lull in activity, it looks as though the Chinese hacking group uncovered in a February security report has resumed its attacks on US targets. According to new information that security firm Mandiant submitted to The New York Times, attacks against identical, but unspecified, targets have been gradually increasing over the past two months, now sitting at 60 to 70 percent of their previous strength. Obama administration officials say that the issue will continue to be revisited until it can convince the Chinese leadership that "there is a real cost to this kind of activity."
In recent months, President Obama’s national...
Samsung appears to be making good on its promise to port Galaxy S4 features to the Galaxy S III. A test Android 4.2.2 update, discovered by SamMobile, includes the lockscreen effects and widgets, enhanced screen modes, updated settings, and new S Voice control features found in Samsung's new flagship. Samsung previously said it would include updates that were "not dependent on hardware," ruling out gestures like Air View and the smart TV...
New lockscreen, S Voice, and more
Breaking Bad is on a brief hiatus in the middle of its fifth, final season, with shooting already wrapped on what may be the most anticipated eight episodes in recent television history. But for all the show's success, creator Vince Gilligan believes that things may have been very different if...
Google new Hangouts messaging service is quite impressive — it takes Google's old and neglected Talk service and upgrades it with always-on communication, support for images, video calling, and much more. But for all of the improved service that Hangouts offers, if you upgrade the Google Talk...
Barnes & Noble’s E Ink e-readers are getting an update next month that will add a web browser and email client, reports TechCrunch. Citing an unnamed source, it writes that the Nook Simple Touch and Simple Touch with GlowLight will start...
The first live video call from a smartphone at the peak of Mount Everest has been made by British explorer Daniel Hughes, as part of his effort to raise money for the Comic Relief charity. The call, made with an HTC One, is not the first mobile call made from Everest's heights...
Sometimes the simplest games are the most difficult. That's certainly the case in Rebound, a game in which the only goal is to get a pole as far to the right as possible, but where actually getting very far is incredibly challenging. The trick is that the pole's only means of propulsion is...
If you're both a gamer and a self-professed football fan, odds are you'll be buying Madden this year — just like any other. For those who've already committed to purchasing the $99.99 Anniversary Edition of Madden 25, Amazon is undoubtedly the best spot to place a pre-order. Because in addition to providing bonus in-game content, the online retailer has also partnered up with DirecTV for some exclusive NFL...
A new study from The Earth Institute at Columbia University projects that heat-related fatalities could rise steeply in Manhattan by the 2020s as a result of a warming climate, and that in some worst-case scenarios, "by 90 percent or more by the...
The AP reports that President Barack Obama will discuss the legality of his administration's controversial drone program, as well as other counterterrorism measures, during a speech on Thursday. The speech comes after mounting pressure on the administration from Democratic and Republican...
According to The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo's board of directors has approved the company's widely-rumored acquisition of Tumblr in an all-cash...
We all know the feeling. You're sleepless in the sad hours of the night or stumbling around early on a hazy weekend morning in need of something to read, and that pile of unread books just isn't...
Google and other tech companies have come under fire for exploiting a common tax loophole to book revenues through their Irish subsidiaries, but today The Sunday Times is reporting that a former...
Sometimes it pays to wait before spending your hard-earned cash on the year's best games. If you haven't yet played through BioShock Infinite, for example, Amazon just eliminated "price" as a valid...
Twice a month in California's Mojave desert, anyone can spend half a day in a war zone. The Fort Irwin National Training Center is meant to give soldiers a crash course in realistic combat before...
Valve is pushing out another update to Team Fortress 2, its 356th since it first shipped the game as part of The Orange Box in 2007. But there’s...
Today is YouTube's eighth birthday, and to mark the occasion Google is revealing new statistics that underline what a cultural sensation its video site has become. Most staggeringly, over 100 hours of video are now uploaded to YouTube each and every minute. One year ago on this day, that figure stood at 72 hours per minute (it was 48 hours in 2011). So aside from record-breaking viewership —...
Earlier this year, Verizon announced some new 3G prepaid plans for $60 and $70 dollars that offered 500MB and 2GB of data, respectively. Now, it looks like the company has silently bumped those allotments up to 2GB and 4GB without touching the price. Android Central reports that the changes go...
