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TECH TREK

Sony, China Strike PlayStation Deal

Japanese electronics giant Sony has inked a deal in China to manufacture and sell PlayStation consoles in the Middle Kingdom. The partnership creates two joint ventures with Shanghai Oriental Pearl, which will enable Sony to operate out of Shanghai's free trade zone. China's early-2014 approval of v...

Iran has released at least some of the people who appeared in a music video for a song by American pop artist Pharrell Williams. The video, set to the Williams tune "Happy," showed people dancing on rooftops of the capital of Tehran. The original video received more than 250 million views on YouTube...

Many shutterbugs are familiar with this bugaboo: They shoot scads of photos of a vacation or event, but they never quite get the time to put the pics in a form where they can be shared with friends and family. Google now has an app for that. It's called "Stories." Google on Tuesday added Stories to ...

A space-bound satellite designed to provide Internet access to remote regions in Russia and neighboring states was destroyed when its ride blew apart mid-flight. The Proton-M rocket, affixed with a European-built Express AM4R satellite, seemed to be doing well until nine minutes into the flight, whe...

If you have a story to tell -- even a dull one -- Adobe Voice can improve your presentation. The free app can't make your story more compelling, but it can give you a better shot at getting it across. Adobe Voice is available for the iPad 2 and above running iOS 7. To kickstart your use of Voice, Ad...

The big TV news this week is about hardware, with Amazon launching its Fire TV to rival Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast. For a while, speculation was hot and heavy that Amazon would launch its own pay-TV service, but that hasn't happened... yet. That's what the real TV wars likely will be fought over,...

Amazon Sets TV on Fire

Amazon on Wednesday put paid to the buzz circulating around its plans for a set-top box, announcing Amazon Fire TV at a New York event. The size of a CD box and just over half an inch thick, Fire TV takes on set-top boxes, the iPod, Apple TV and game consoles. It plugs into users' HDTVs to provide i...

Amazon is widely expected to reveal a new set-top video streaming device on Wednesday. It likely will introduce either a streaming stick like the HDMI Google Chromecast or a set-top box like the Apple Apple TV. Or, the company might produce both options -- like Roku's new Streaming Stick or more tra...

ECS -- Nvidia's Emerging Companies Summit -- is a place to check out some of the firms that could become the next breakout company. It didn't disappoint this year. Among the highlights: A firm that could redefine advertising connected to Web pictures and videos; a company that could put your entire ...

Japan invited hackers -- nice ones, that is -- to attack the nation's government departments Tuesday. The move is designed to expose weaknesses in cyberdefenses and bolster national security ahead of the 2020 Olympics. Britain employed a similar strategy ahead of the 2012 Olympics in London. Japan e...

How do you make Dish Network's Hopper HD-DVR system even better? That's easy -- you supersize it. Introduced earlier this year at CES, Super Joey has officially arrived, and for TV fans it more than lives up to its "super" moniker. Utilizing the same Hopper and Sling technology as previous versions,...

Photography, film, music and fine art are all noble pursuits. In this installment of All Things Appy, we take a look at the five best free artistic apps for the Chrome Web browser. Geared toward image showcasing and display across the Chrome ecosystem, our first choice, the 500px app, lets you brows...

The use of commercial drones in U.S. airspace is essentially legal, at least for the time being. National Transportation Safety Board Judge Patrick Geraghty this week nixed the Federal Aviation Administration's attempt to levy a $10,000 against Raphael Pirker for using a remote-controlled glider to ...

Roku has announced a new HDMI dongle for televisions. The Streaming Stick is a compact Roku player that plugs inconspicuously into an HDMI port, offering a streamlined look that Roku suggests is suited to wall-mounted TVs. It is paired with a remote control that can be used to navigate the Roku inte...

A student at Boston College may have cost her family $80,000 -- and herself a trip to Europe. The student, Dana Snay, posted a Facebook status update boasting of her father's victory in an age discrimination case. The father, 69, was the headmaster of a school for years, but his contract was not ren...

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