Volvo Personvagnar AB, in collaboration with sports gear maker POC Sweden AB and Telefonaktiebolaget L. M. Ericsson have announced a new connected safety technology that connects drivers and cyclists. The technology, to be formally unveiled at CES Las Vegas in January, consists of a connected car and helmet (via mobile phone) system that establishes 2-way communication offering ...

A purge of spam accounts on Instagram has resulted in not only millions of accounts disappearing, but a surge of complaints from celebrities and teens alike. The company announced December 9th that it would start to permanently ban spam accounts versus their previous practice of deactivating them. Perhaps foretelling the reaction, the company noted that the ...

Uber Inc. has suspended its service in Portland, Oregon for three months as part of a deal with city lawmakers to eventually make the service legal. Portland sued Uber December 8th after the ridesharing operator launched in the city the week before. In the suit, the city claimed that Uber was operating in violation of the City ...

Phones from Chinese maker Coolpad Group Ltd. have been found to have a backdoor manufactured into them. A report from Palo Alto Networks Inc.’s Unit 42 found that the phones, popular in China and Taiwan but sold globally, contained a backdoor dubbed “CoolReaper” that exposes users to potentially malicious activity. The researches found that the backdoor can: ...

Uber Inc. has announced that it will implement biometric scanning to screen the backgrounds of its drivers following a number of high profile incidents of its drivers attacking passengers, including a rape in India and a new alleged rape case in Boston. The company said in a blog post Wednesday that “putting safety first for ...

Sony Corp. has cancelled the release of movie The Interview following threats from hackers that are set to be confirmed by the United States Government as being sponsored by North Korea. The Seth Rogen/ James Franco comedy portrays two hapless journalists who are recruited into a CIA-led plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The cancellation ...

Sony Corp. has revealed a new display module that clips on to your existing glasses, turning them into something similar to Google Glass. The single-lens display module is powered by an ARM Cortex-A7 processor and sports a 640×400 OLED micro-display, giving a display field of a 16″ monitor two meters away, along with a micro-optical unit that Sony ...

Email newsletter provider theSkimm Inc. has closed a Series A round of $6.25 million led by RRE Ventures LLC, Homebrew Management LLC and Greycroft Partners LLC. Also participating in the round were Chelsea Handler and Irving Azoff. The New York-based startup was founded by former NBC employees Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin in 2012 and offers a daily email described ...

Time Inc. has started to accept payments in Bitcoin for a number of its magazines in a deal with Bitcoin payment provider Coinbase Inc. The deal, which Time suggests makes them “the first major magazine publisher to accept Bitcoin payments,” will see Bitcoin payment available for the purchase of publications Fortune, Health, This Old House and ...

Apple Inc. has suspended sales in Russia due to wild fluctuations in the value of the ruble, as the impact of declining world oil prices and Western sanctions continue to destabilize the currency. The Russian ruble dropped 19 percent in market trading Tuesday, dropping to a low of 80 rubles to the dollar. In late trading ...