China’s Internet Population Hits 649 million – 86 Percent on Phones According to the China Internet Network Information Center, the country’s total Internet population increased by 31 million in 2014. The country had 649 million internet users by the end of 2014. Up to 557 million of those used mobile sets to get online. A […]
Crowdfunding Helps Singapore Literature Put Roots in New York
Posted January 30th, 2015 at 2:18 pm (UTC-5)
Crowdfunding, both charitable and for-profit, has financed everything from struggling arts projects to an Oscar-winning film to (absurdly) a batch of potato salad. Some of the grassroots money-raising platforms charge a percentage for facilitating the donations. Others do it for free. Donors get discounts and other gifts in return for their generosity. When the Singapore […]
Cortana’s Super Bowl Pick; the Wearable Future; the Dreaded AI
Posted January 29th, 2015 at 2:16 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Beware Rise of the Machines, Warns Bill Gates Adding his voice to physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla Motors’ CEO Elon Musk on the dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Microsoft founder Bill Gates said AI could pose a serious threat to humanity unless it is kept under control. Mozilla Puts Old Hardware to […]
Wikipedia Denies Purging Feminists; 3-D-Printed Food; the Linux ‘Ghost’
Posted January 28th, 2015 at 2:15 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: Wikipedia Denies ‘Purging’ Feminist Editors Over Gamergate Debate Wikipedia has been under fire since The Guardian and others reported last week that five editors opposed to Gamergate were banned from editing gender or sexuality pages. But according to The Verge, a Wikipedia statement today said that “press stories have mistakenly claimed that […]
Cuba’s Secret Internet; Wickr’s Cats; Twitter New Features
Posted January 27th, 2015 at 2:14 pm (UTC-5)
Today’s Tech Sightings: How Sensors and Drones Can Combat Global Hunger Author Shawn DuBravac argues that sensors, which have revolutionized mobile devices and are now empowering wearable technology, could potentially help alleviate world hunger. He suggests equipping food-supply wares and storehouses with sensors that raise the alarm once a shortage begins, rather than having a person […]
Apps That Connect, Apps That Help
Posted January 23rd, 2015 at 3:02 pm (UTC-5)
There is a mobile app for everything these days — from chatting to gaming, from learning to health and fitness. More recent apps glean users’ tastes to match them with others like them or parse their language to connect them with people they might be looking for. And then there are apps for emergencies that […]
A Gates’ Look at the Future; Microsoft’s HoloLens; WhatsApp
Posted January 22nd, 2015 at 2:01 pm (UTC-5)
Bill and Melinda Gates Bet Big on the Future Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda paint a rosy future for the world’s poorest in their foundation’s 2015 annual letter. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s outlook foresees mobile banking transforming lives and software advances revolutionizing learning, among other things. Gaming to Death: What […]
Ebola Internet Access; Internet in Space; League of Legends Trojan
Posted January 21st, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
Tech Firms Extend Internet Access to Help Ebola Treatment in Africa San Francisco-based non-profit, Inveneo, has launched a three-month initiative to connect 100 West African locations to the Internet to help fight the spread of Ebola. The group teamed up with Facebook’s data-science team to determine how to deploy its equipment in Sierra Leone, Guinea […]
Uganda’s Robotics Generation; 3D-Printed Buildings; Apple; Windows 10
Posted January 20th, 2015 at 2:37 pm (UTC-5)
Robotics Revolution Hits Ugandan Classrooms Fundi Bots founder Solomon King Benge is betting that a new generation of Ugandans can develop creative skills and learn from robots how to solve real-world problems. His company offers robotics training in 15 schools in Kampala and Gulu in the north that let kids tinker with robotics parts and […]
Help! I’m a Pirate and I’m Stuck in the Game!
Posted January 16th, 2015 at 1:00 pm (UTC-5)
Piracy accounts for 43 percent of all software installed on PCs, or about $62.7 billion in commercial value, according to BSA | The Software Alliance 2013 figures. And while developers have been using Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools to thwart pirates, some have taken a less-traveled anti-piracy path. Among them is Croteam, an independent game developer […]