Home Tech

Dot is a smartwatch that may have life-changing implications. Rather than trying to convey information through tiny text on a small screen, Dot intends to provide visually impaired wearers with notifications through Braille. Four sets of the six dots that signify characters in the Braille system rai...

Marshall, best known for its guitar amplifiers and headphones, is moving into the smartphone market. Its first device, London, has dual front-facing speakers and a pair of audio outputs, making it easy to share what you're listening to with a friend who's also wearing headphones, assuming you're in ...

My wife and I just completed a move from California to Oregon, and it was far less painful than it could have been, thanks to technology. It used to be incredibly painful to move. While a lot of the pain is still there, technology has advanced a lot since we last moved -- about 18 years ago -- and a...

Dot is billing itself as the world's smallest Bluetooth headset. That might be mere marketing claptrap, but there's no doubt it's an impressive piece of kit. It runs for six hours of playback and nine hours of call time before it needs to recharge, and it has an 80-hour standby time. When Dot does n...

I enjoy music as much as anyone, though I'm no real audiophile and I have not an enormous passion for one format over another. I admire the romance of vinyl but find it unwieldy and cumbersome when digital recordings work just fine for me. The Floating Record turntable is beautiful, though, and I'm ...

Capable of pushing out sound levels that approach the edge of the infrasound spectrum, Devialet's Phantom speaker system finally reached the U.S. market last week. The 740 watt, 99 db base model, the Phantom, will sell for $1,990; the 3,000 watt, 105 dB Phantom Silver will sell for $2,390. Devialet ...

About seven months of invitation-only exclusivity for Prime customers came to a close on Tuesday as Amazon opened up sales of Echo, its digital assistant hardware, to anyone willing to spend $180 for it. Amazon will start fulfilling new Echo orders on July 14, but shoppers can prepurchase the cylind...

Beefed up and slimmed down, the new 1TB PlayStation 4 Ultimate Player Edition is scheduled to arrive in Japan before this month concludes and then launch in the UK in the middle of July, Sony announced on Sunday. The revised console, bearing twice the storage capacity of its predecessor, will arrive...

Google last week announced the formation of a new company that will develop technology to improve city life for residents, businesses and governments. Google has teamed up with Dan Doctoroff -- former Bloomberg CEO and ex-deputy mayor of economic development and rebuilding for the City of New York -...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Routers Becoming Juicy Targets for Hackers

Most consumers pay as much attention to routers as they do to doorknobs. That's not the case with Net marauders. They're finding the devices ripe targets for mischief. "We've seen a big increase in malware designed for home routers," said Incapsula researcher Ofer Gayer. "Every week, we see a new vu...

Aumeo is an attachment that's all about fine-tuning your earphones to better hear anything you listen to on your smartphone, tablet or other audio-emitting gadget. Using a smartphone app, it tests how well you can hear a number of different frequencies and provides you with a personal equalizer attu...

To cap off Monday's wide-ranging keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced a three-pronged music initiative. "Music is such an important part of our lives and our culture," Cook said, showing off Apple's famous "one more thing" slide. Apple ex...

There are things about working with large companies that can be really frustrating. For instance, when both Windows Vista and Windows 8 were coming to market, a number of us pointed out that things needed to be fixed before the product was released, but we were ignored, with catastrophic results. Th...

By the time you read this, I'll have finished swearing in the privacy of my office, and likely will have entered the acceptance stage of grief. Already, realization is dawning that I was right to withhold hope that Apple would reveal a new Apple TV at its WorldWide Developers Conference on Monday. I...

Media streaming is becoming an ever-crowded market thanks to players like Chromecast, Sling, Apple TV and Roku. We can add another player to the mix with Lenovo Cast, which will become available in August. The puck-shaped accessory can stream 1080p video to your TV from your smartphone, tablet or co...

Technewsworld Channels