Tech companies shower their employees with perks like dry cleaning, massages and haircuts. But there is one group for whom working at a tech company can be much more difficult than working elsewhere: parents. Facebook hosts all-night hackathons. Google has weekend laser tag retreats. Many start-ups...
When I was in elementary school, about 50 years ago, teachers used to stand in front of a class of 40 or 50 children and write on a blackboard with chalk. To make sure the material was absorbed, the teacher asked occasional questions and assigned...
Amazon’s Dash Button paves the way for a home that manages itself. Amazon has a bold new gadget, and it’s a button. It’s literally a stick-on, Internet-connected button that, when pressed, sends a “Bat-Signal" to Amazon to order more dog food, coffee, detergent or other common...
IBM is wasting little time when it comes to the Internet of Things. The company outlined a major Internet of Things strategy tonight with a series of announcements that included a $3B investment to establish an Internet of Things unit inside of Big Blue along...
Despite high-profile launches, these core apps are still trailing the field. The number of fronts where Apple and Google are battling directly seems to grow with each passing month: desktop OSes, mobile OSes, digital assistants, cloud-based office apps, smartwatches, maps, and so on and so on. Health...
Apple only gave a fleeting demo of how contactless payments would work on its new Apple Watch at its Spring Forward event on Monday, but it was an impressive one. You select a card from Passbook in the watch interface and then tap the wearable...
SEATTLE — Federal regulators have given Amazon a green light to begin testing drones, but it will most likely take years before the online retailer can start delivering packages from the air to peoples’ homes. The Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday gave Amazon permission...
Some major restructuring is going on at Google+, and it looks like it's the end of the social network as we know it—if that label was ever appropriate in the first place. Long-time Google VP Bradley Horowitz has announced that he's taking the management reins...
Microsoft has a little problem and it’s time we all admitted it. We have to gather the family in the living room, sit down Microsoft in the comfy chair and have a little heart to heart. Everybody can see it, except Microsoft — and it...
On Feb. 19, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took a huge step towards patient-centric medicine when it approved the marketing of genetics testing company 23andMe’s carrier test for Bloom Syndrome. This was a startling — and good — development because it affirmed the rights...