Motorola Wants Everyone To Build Smartphones Like Lego Kits

Introducing Project Ara, an experiment from Motorola aimed to creating smartphones made out of modular open source hardware. Google has teased us before. Rumors swirled for months that Motorola would introduce a customizable smartphone that would let consumers decide what kind of hardware—a bigger battery, choice of processor, a better camera—they wanted. The notion of a consumer-grade open hardware platform quickened the heartbeats of geeks...

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Smoking really does make you look older, a twin study confirms

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery/American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The twin on the right is a smoker; the twin on the left is a nonsmoker. You know smoking doesn’t do any favors for your face – or your lungs, or your heart, or just about any other part of your body, for that matter! – but a new study of twins hints at the ways the habit makes you look older than you really are. In what is perhaps the best detail of the study, researchers...

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New Google Glass is on the way

(CNN) -- A new version of Google Glass, the company's breakthrough entry into the world of wearable tech, is on the way. Current testers, or "Explorers," in Google's parlance, will get a chance to swap out their current models for the new ones, the company said in a Google+ post.  The new Google Glass hardware will work with eyeglasses or shades, and include an ear bud to replace the speaker in the current model. The bone-conduction speaker, which, similar to some hearing aids, literally sends sound waves through the skull to the...

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Sprint unveils Spark, its ultra-fast 1Gb wireless service

Spark, which will start at 50 to 60 mbps and move to 1 Gbps, arrives in five markets to select Sprint phones, including LG G2 and HTC One Max. The HTC One Max will be one of the phones to run Sprint Spark. (Credit: Josh Miller/CNET) Sprint wants to get back into the network speed discussion badly. The company on Wednesday unveiled Sprint Spark, its brand for the ultra-fast LTE service that eventually will offer a wireless connection capable...

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Drive in Google Glass, get a ticket

(CNN) -- In what might be a first, a woman in California received a traffic ticket for wearing Google Glass while driving. Cecilia Abadie was pulled over for speeding on Tuesday in San Diego and given an additional citation for driving while wearing her Google Glass. The officer considered the head-mounted display a monitor that was visible to the driver. Shocked, Abadie posted a copy of the ticket on Google+. Traffic laws vary state by state, but many now have broad distracted-driving laws or bans on certain monitors that could...

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Google expands Google Glass sales, lets early users invite 3 friends each

Mountain View: Google is relying on a little social networking to put its Internet-connected glasses on the heads of more people. The expanded sales of the device known as Google Glass will come as part of an invitation-only program announced Monday. The roughly 10,000 Glass owners who began testing the device earlier this year will each be allowed to invite up to three people to buy the device. The early Glass users are primarily computer programmers...

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Growing Up Poor Changes Young Brains

Exposure to poverty in early childhood was associated with smaller brain structures later in life, but nurturing seemed to offset poverty's negative effect, researchers found. MRI scans showed that impoverished children had smaller white  and gray matter volumes compared with normative values in early adolescence, according to Joan Luby, MD, of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and colleagues. Poverty was also a significant predictor of left hippocampus volume (P=0.02), and left amygdala volume (P=0.01),...

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Teenagers more interested in Twitter than Facebook, study says

Facebook is starting to see a lot less face time. About 23 percent of 8,650 teenagers surveyed in Piper Jaffray’s 26th Semi-Annual “Taking Stock with Teens” Market Research Project cited Facebook as the most important social media platform, down from 42 percent the year before. Twitter was cited as the most important. But Bruce Floyd, UF’s social media specialist, said he’s skeptical about the research provided in the study and needed to examine it before agreeing with the trend. “What (teenagers) say they like is different from what...

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Firefox Add-On Helps You Find Out Who's Watching You on the Internet

(NEW YORK) -- Most Internet users are aware of the services or sites one can visit or the browsers that can be used to track some browsing habits in one way or another.Depending on the privacy settings that are enabled, sites and services might monitor clicks to show the user advertisements they might be interested in or collect other data for research.But Mozilla, the open-source software company that makes the Firefox browser, wants to make...

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LG Electronics unveils curved smartphone in race against Samsung

SEOUL: South Korea's LG Electronics Inc unveiled a curved smartphone on Monday in a move to catch up bigger rival Samsung Electronics Co. Curved displays and flexible screens are the new battleground for phone makers as the screens open up possibilities that could eventually transform the high-end smartphone market. Curved smartphones provide a more comfortable grip than flat-screen models, but the lack of must-have features...

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Samsung Galaxy S5 Rumors

Device To Release With 64-Bit Exynos Processor? Samsung Announces Chipset Is Ready To Be Manufactured The Samsung Galaxy S5 processor may be a 64-bit chipset. Samsung Exynos As we ease into the Samsung Galaxy S5 rumor season, reports from South Korea indicate that the manufacturer has now completed development of its 64-bit system on a chip, which will soon go into production for implementation in the Galaxy S5. Korean...

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AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon offers Samsung Galaxy S3 for $0.01

The top three US network carriers are offering Samsung Galaxy S3 4G LTE variant with two year service contract just for a penny. Verizon Wireless and Sprint has priced Galaxy S3 at $0.01 whereas AT&T is selling it for $9.99. Samsung’s current weapon to attack Google LG Nexus 4 is currently offered by AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile for less than a dollar with two year service contract. Without any doubt, Galaxy S3 is all round a nice...

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Samsung: Galaxy S 4 mini Available in U.S. in November

Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) said that the Samsung Galaxy S 4 mini, a compact smartphone featuring some of the Galaxy S 4 experiences, will be available in the U.S. beginning in November. In a release, Samsung noted:The Galaxy S 4 mini is just 4.9in x 2.4in and is packed with Samsung flagship experiences like WatchOn, S Beam and advanced camera features."Samsung continues to provide a wide range of products to fit consumers' needs," said Gregory Lee, president of Samsung Mobile. "The Galaxy S 4 mini continues that...

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Computer cracks CAPTCHAs in step toward artificial intelligence

Oct 28 (Reuters) - A technology start-up said on Monday that it had come up with software that works like a human brain in one key way: it can crack CAPTCHAs, the strings of tilted, squiggly letters that websites employ to make users "prove you are human," as Yahoo! and others put it. San Francisco-based Vicarious developed the algorithm not for any nefarious purpose and not even to sell, said co-founder D. Scott Phoenix. Instead, he said in a phone interview, "We wanted to show we could take the first step toward a machine that works like a...

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