Articles by Katherine Noyes

A new partnership between Sonos and Google means that users of the Google Play Music app for Android now can stream music to their Sonos speakers directly from the app itself Available in 25 countries, the new capability effectively eliminates the need to use Sonos' Controller app as an intermediary. It represents Sonos' first such integration part...

Twitter on Tuesday announced a redesign of its user profiles, hard on the heels of its launch of new photo-sharing capabilities late last month Included among the new features in the redesign are larger profile photos, customized headers, and an enlarged presentation of tweets that have been particularly popular. Users also can pin a tweet to the t...

Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music on Thursday filed legal proceedings against vKontakte, or VK, charging that the Russian social network operates a music service that deliberately facilitates widespread copyright infringement VK operates an unlicensed music service involving a large collection of copyright-infringing tracks that are stor...

The notion of a smartphone kill switch has received considerable attention in recent months, but new research spells out in plain financial terms some fresh arguments in favor of the idea A kill switch essentially is technology built into a smartphone that would allow it to be deactivated if it were lost or stolen, thereby safeguarding the legitima...

Astronomers this week reported what they believe to be the most-distant member of our solar system discovered so far 2012 VP113, a probable dwarf planet that was found to lie beyond the known edge of the solar system, was discovered by Chadwick Trujillo, an astronomer at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, and Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Car...

It's been eight years since Twitter first began to impose its 140-character regime on the social world, and to celebrate, the company this week launched a new, nostalgically minded tool At First-Tweets.com, Twitter users now can fondly reminisce about -- and, of course, tweet and share -- what they said the first time they ever took to the twitters...

Following months of speculation that Microsoft may be rethinking its approach to getting its beleaguered Windows Phone into the hands of more consumers, two reports came to light on Thursday suggesting that indeed may be the case First, echoing rumors last fall that Windows Phone could take up residence on an HTC phone that also sported Android, Hu...

The first Tizen phones may still be on the horizon, but at least one software provider is already planning ahead. This week at Mobile World Congress, Infraware Technology debuted software that can port Android apps to Tizen Both Android and Tizen are based on open source Linux, of course, but that doesn't mean their native apps are compatible. With...

TiVo cofounders Mike Ramsay and James Barton on Tuesday launched Qplay, a brand-new company that aims to bring a new level of personalization to Internet TV Comprised of an iPad app, a TV adapter and a dedicated cloud service, Qplay is designed to let users curate Internet video from across the Web and create "Qs," the company's name for personaliz...

When Saul Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals more than forty years ago, the world was very different from it today Protests and demonstrations were among the most common tactics for bringing about social change, and they were used on such a broad scale that they helped define the Vietnam War era and counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s....

A new space observatory expected to launch by 2024 will seek out Earth-sized planets and super-Earths orbiting distant stars, the European Space Agency announced Wednesday Dubbed "PLATO," for "PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars," it will use 34 small telescopes and cameras to search for planets around as many as a million stars spread ove...

The nascent wearable devices market so far has focused more on function than on form, but Tuesday brought word of a company that aims to change all that. Specifically, Cuff unveiled a new assortment of safety-focused fashion wearables its founders call technology "you'd actually want to wear." ...

After releasing its BlackBerry Messenger chat app for Android and iOS devices to considerable fanfare last fall, BlackBerry on Thursday announced that it had expanded the app's functionality on those platforms with two key features Previously available only to users of BlackBerry's own mobile platform, BBM Voice and BBM Channels are now part of the...

Amazon on Thursday announced the launch of Amazon Studios' brand-new pilot season of original comedy, drama and kid-oriented content New to this year's lineup are dramas from the creators of The X-Files and Harry Bosch, as well as comedies from Oscar-nominated Roman Coppola and Tony-nominated writer and director Alex Timbers. Featured stars include...

Asus on Tuesday announced a new Chromebox device priced at just US$179, a full $150 less than the Samsung product that's currently its principal competition ...

Nintendo is planning a new product offering that will take the company beyond traditional gaming and into the world of health, it announced on Thursday Coming hard on the heels of a grim earnings report that prompted a pay cut for President and CEO Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's announcement was described with only the barest of details at a briefing for...

Not much has been seen of Dell's "Project Ophelia" thumb PC since its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, but recently reports have emerged suggesting that the Android-powered device is now making its way to beta testers, with an official release anticipated in the next few months ...

After initially revealing its new Ativ Book 9 Lite ultraportable PC in June, Samsung on Monday announced that it is now accepting preorders for the Windows 8 device, which will be available in the U.S. on July 28 for US$799.99. Weighing 3.5 lbs. and measuring less than an inch thick, the Ativ Book 9 Lite offers a 13.3-inch touchscreen LCD display...

After launching Graph Search into beta earlier this year, Facebook on Monday announced that it is now beginning to roll the feature out to everyone who uses the social network's U.S. English version Billed as "a new way to find people, photos, places and interests on Facebook," Graph Search lets users perform searches on the social network that com...

The line separating the mobile and desktop computing worlds has become increasingly blurred in recent months, and HP on Monday unveiled a brand-new all-in-one PC that continues that trend Announced during its HP World Tour event in Beijing, the HP Slate 21 tablet is powered not by Windows but by Google's Android. It's also designed for use on the d...