Late last month a Galaxy S III owner in Ireland posted complaints that his new phone had burst into flames spontaneously, complete with images of the phone's charred case. Samsung has now provided an update on the situation, and it appears the phone was not to blame after all. According to Fire...
Friends don't let friends microwave their phones
The International Telecommunication Union is planning on hosting a "patent roundtable" on October 10th in Geneva, where it hopes that major industry players can have an open discussion on all of the patent lawuits going on around the world. The...
From its hardware to its data centers, Apple is known for touting its environmentally-friendly bona fides — but the company has modified that stance when it comes to its hardware. This past month Apple pulled its 39 products that were featured in the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) registry, telling the organization that it would not be submitting future items for...
It's the end of week two, but due to Wednesday's US holiday, only episode numero nine — not a very pretty even number, which admittedly bugs us more than it should. None of that really matters, though. What does matter is a rumored Amazon smartphone, new Nike+ shoes, and the long-awaited return of the Furby. To be honest, we're pretty bummed "British Airways is stalking you on Google" was cut in place of breaking Galaxy Nexus news.
With this episode, we'll have passed the 800-second mark — an important time in any 90-second daily web show's life. We'll celebrate with cupcakes, but please don't think we're grown up yet. We're still just getting started at this. Tell us what you like, what you hate, and what you want to see next in the comments. We'll be back on Monday.
Furby: the musical!
Amongst the many products Apple unveiled at this year's WWDC was Passbook, an app that collates a user's coupons, tickets, and payment cards for easy access. It's a distinctly pared-down app compared to what some of Cupertino's competitors are offering, but according to a recent Wall Street Journal article the path to Passbook consisted of many months of internal debate that had senior...
Apple's in no rush
My sister helps take care of a 7-year-old, who recently asked "what is the internet?" It's a good question. She (the 7-year-old) thought it meant computers and phones. I remember chuckling at the expense of elders who thought the Internet Explorer icon on their desktop was the internet. Will a future generation chuckle at me while I maintain a concept of the internet that was conceived in the...
Samsung has released an over-the-air update for international Galaxy S III phones that promises "improved stability" and adds a brightness slider to the notifications drop-down menu, Slashgear reports. The 72.68MB update brings a much-needed addition: a new widget that allows you to toggle automatic brightness adjustment and manually adjust the brightness using a slider. We encountered a few problems with the GS III's automatic brightness adjustments in our review, notably that the display tends to be a little dark and adjusts rather abruptly, so we hope to see the update soon on US...
Pandora has just pushed out version 3.2 of its iPhone music streaming app, and while a mere point update usually doesn't suggest major changes, the company has packed plenty of new functionality into this release. The app's user interface has received a visual makeover and now features a design that adheres to a Facebook-like color scheme. Song lyrics can be displayed when tapping a square icon located in the upper right portion of the app, and this is where you can also now review (and rate) the track history of whatever station you're listening to. On that note, a new "I'm tired of this track" option will temporarily prevent a song from...
Google's latest version of the Android operating system is here and will be rolling out to a precious few devices later this month. Unlike the last iteration, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is more about refinement than revolution, but a new feature called "Google Now" has the potential to finally achieve some of the promises we've all heard from smartphone companies for years now. Beyond that, if you're one of the (sadly small) number of people who...
Google's ecosystem comes together
After all the hype and hoopla of last month's E3, you might be forgiven for thinking that consoles are the only way to game. And yet, the stalwart PC continues to defy exaggerated reports of its demise with hugely popular series like Battlefield, Crysis, Diablo, StarCraft, and Total War offering...
SIM-free versions of Sony's Xperia S, P, and Sola handsets can now be purchased in the United States. For $479.99, you can pick up the Xperia P from the Sony store, or you can save some money by getting it at Newegg for $388.99. The Xperia S and Sola are also available from Newegg for $469.99 and...
Mozilla has been rapidly pushing out new versions of the open-source email client Thunderbird lately, including version 13 just one month ago. The cycle's come to an end, however: Mozilla has announced it will be stopping development of the...
The Droid Incredible line on Verizon has always been a sleeper favorite. Although the series never seems to have gotten the full marketing muscle from the carrier, HTC gave the original Incredible and the Incredible 2 decent specs and unique design language that garnered a...
It's been well over a decade since Furby first hit store shelves, but the wildly popular toy is attempting a comeback. The new and improved robotic buddy is due to hit store shelves in September, and unsurprisingly it's much more technologically advanced than its predecessors — it features LCD...
We've chronicled the Samsung Galaxy S III as it trickled to carriers across the US, so it's only fitting to close the book on one of the top two. AT&T, which has been accepting pre-orders for the phone since a month ago, finally released the Galaxy S III today: it's currently selling for $199.99 on contract in both white and blue. We already anticipated the phone would go on sale today, but considering how many...
Tiny Wings 2 is releasing on the iOS App Store on July 12th, according to a teaser trailer by the franchise's creator, Andreas Illiger. That's next week!
The teaser uses an old-timey music box to pluck the theme song of Tiny Wings as a hand-drawn bird flies across familiar hills and oceans. It's...
Since RIM's dismal earnings report and its delay of BlackBerry 10, CEO Thorsten Heins has sometimes come off as being in deep denial about the...
Twitter announced some updates to its search function on its blog this afternoon. In a post titled Simpler Search, the company highlighted a number of changes. The search function will now have...
Nissan recently launched an update to its Japanese smartphone and web-based apps for the Leaf electric car that assists users in gauging how much electricity they'll need to get to and from their...
In February Time Warner Cable unveiled a new plan called Essentials, which offered customers $5 off of their monthly bill in exchange for giving up unlimited data and agreeing to a 5GB cap....
Facebook is planning a new ad product that uses data about what apps people use to serve ads, The Wall Street Journal reports. An increasing number of applications either integrate with Facebook or...
Last month it was reported that Facebook and Yahoo were close to settling their ongoing patent dispute, and it looks like today might finally be...
BitTorrent's peer-to-peer downloading system is widely used, but plenty of people have been confused or put off by the need to download desktop software for torrents. A new system announced today, though, may open up the protocol for social media, streaming video, or other uses. Torque is a JavaScript interface for a custom torrent client that makes it easier for web developers to use...
A game in the Chinese iTunes Store that depicts a decades-long territory dispute between Japan and China as a bloody fight against geisha and other stereotypes has drawn criticism online. Protect the Diaoyu Islands, one of two iPad games by China's Shenzhen ZQGame Company, tells players that the...
