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The iPhone SE will have marketing ramifications. — Apple Apple today announced its smallest smartphone ever in the iPhone SE, which comes in at 4 inches and is a cheaper alternative (starting at $399) to the company's iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.  Since studies have shown that small mobile screens challenge brand marketers' ability to communicate effectively with consumers, we asked industry players the following question: Is the new iPhone bad for mobile advertising? The answers were more mixed than one might anticipate.  Here are seven interesting points-of-view that they shared:1. This is bad for direct marketers. "There is a...

JUST LAST month, Akilah Johnson was “surprised and overwhelmed” when she learned that she was a national finalist in the “Doodle 4 Google” contest for grade-schoolers. Imagine how she feels now.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and a team of Apple executives will be holding their “Let us loop you in” special event today, March 21st, at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT. The special event will take place at Apple’s Town Hall auditorium on the company’s campus in Cupertino, California.It is widely expected that Apple today will unveil a new 4-inch iPhone, a new 9.7-inch iPad Pro with Apple Pencil support and a new, smaller Apple Smart Keyboard, new Apple Watch bands, iOS 9.3, tvOS 9.2, watchOS 2.2, OS X 10.11.4, and an iTunes update, as per 9to5Mac‘s Mark Gurman.Apple’s special event...

The Associated Press — The Supreme Court has agreed to referee a pricy patent dispute between Samsung and Apple. The justices said Monday they will review a $399 million judgment against South Korea-based Samsung for illegally copying patented aspects of the look of Apple's iPhone. Apple, based in Cupertino, California, and Samsung are the top two manufacturers of increasingly ubiquitous smartphones. The two companies have been embroiled in patent fights for years. The justices will decide whether a court can order Samsung to pay Apple every penny it made from the phones at issue, even though the disputed features are...

Recently, social media was up in arms when Marc Andreessen made an out-of-order comment on his portfolio company's failure to implement FreeBasics in India. The 1B Indian population was "offended" and lashed out in various outbursts. We pride ourselves in being free and open. On another note, we seem to be completely blind to some glaring inside issues in the India IT services industry and how it grinds the brightest of brains into slave-level drudgery. The biggest manifestation of this modern-day slavery is the H1B Visa game played by the large multi-billion dollar firms.On April 1, 2015, the USCIS received...

How many slaves do you own? Most Americans own between 5-7 slaves. I'd bet you own upwards of 20 slaves. Here are the slaves you most likely already own: I know I'll be called crazy for this. I don't care. Who would have thought 30 years ago that homosexual marriage would be a reality? Now look where we are. Do you really expect that the Supreme Court would side with reality on this? When does the court ever side with reality? Watch this video: Sophia the RobotWhen the robot said the word "yet", it hit me. "But I'm not considered...

The outcome comes after two weeks of testimony in a first-of-its-kind case where discussions of newsworthiness and decency dominated. Scott Keeler/The Tampa Bay Times via AP, Pool, File Weighing free speech against privacy, a Florida jury has decided to uphold the sanctity of the latter by turning in a $115 million verdict against Gawker over its 2012 posting of a Hulk Hogan sex tape. Hogan brought the case three years ago after Gawker, a 13-year-old digital news site founded by Nick Denton, an entrepreneur with an allergy to celebrity privacy, published a video the wrestler claimed was secretly recorded....

In a world of PCs dominated by Windows and Macs, Dell's line of "Project Sputnik" laptops with Ubuntu Linux have secured a cult following. The latest Project Sputnik laptop is the XPS 13 Developer Edition, which shipped last week. With its sleek design, the XPS 13 brings a new, sexy look to otherwise dull Linux laptop designs. The XPS 13 DE is also significant because it brings new technologies from the Mac OS and Windows to Linux laptops. The XPS 13 DE models have 4K screens, Intel Skylake chips and the Thunderbolt 3 interconnect, which are new to Linux laptops....

Robots have changed our lives in many ways, from advancing our healthcare and automating our factory lines, to taking on dangerous tasks and even taking our place in warfare. Now Domino's have developed possibly the greatest use for robots yet - safe and secure pizza delivery in what the company claims is a world first.

When listing all the ways humanity is going to ruin the future, one that doesn’t often come up is the sun being blocked out by a horde of drone advertising blimps. But that hasn’t stopped one Swiss firm from working hard to make it a reality. Skye Aero is a project to build 10-foot helium-filled balloons, with small propellers attached to give better control than your average blimp. The benefits are a much bigger aircraft—useful when you want to advertise to people—and one that won’t crash the second it loses power, or bumps into anyone.

The sixteenth annual CanSecWest security conference is underway in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, and researchers participating in the Pwn2Own computer hacking contest have already discovered multiple vulnerabilities in OS X and the Safari web browser on the desktop. On day one of the event, independent security researcher JungHoon Lee earned $60,000 after exploiting both OS X and Safari. Lee uncovered four vulnerabilities in total, including one exploit in Safari and three other vulnerabilities within the OS X operating system, according to security firm Trend Micro. JungHoon Lee (lokihardt): Demonstrated a successful code execution attack against Apple Safari to gain root...

Note: I've posted numerous threads on the "Get Windows 10" nagware situation, and almost passed this one up -- but it's far and away the best I've seen, most complete, and most likely to be accurate. So have at it... - dayglored Subtitle: Here's how to nuke this persistent menace Microsoft uses techniques similar to aggressive malware to promote its “Get Windows 10” offer. As many readers have discovered, the persistent and constantly changing methods Microsoft uses to continually reintroduce its “Get Windows 10” tool, or GWX, onto computers means it’s extremely difficult to avoid. Windows users who decline to...

American Express has notified US authorities that some of its card holder information was likely compromised almost three years ago after an unauthorised person or group accessed one of its merchants' systems. The breach took place on 7 December 2013, but Amex said it had only now become aware of the intrusion. The payments card giant asked members to take steps to protect their sensitive data as a result of the data breach, including monitoring their accounts for suspicious activity. Customers won't be liable for any fraudulent activity, Amex said. In a notice to customers filed with the Californian Attorney...

I recently picked up a new laptop as my old one was after 7 years finally showing signs that it was about to go tits up on me. But I really really hate Windows 1. Think Vampires and Holy Water kinda hate. The bleeping machine keeps going to sleep if I don't move the mouse in a 3 minute or thereabouts period. And some of the files I migrated from my old computer won't open on the new one. I keep getting a message that says I don't have permission to view the file. Other than using the bleeping machine...

Alphabet's Google has quietly scored a major coup in its campaign to become an enterprise cloud computing powerhouse, landing Apple as a customer for the Google Cloud Platform, multiple sources with knowledge of the matter told CRN this week. Since inking the Google deal late last year, Apple has also significantly reduced its reliance on Amazon Web Services, whose infrastructure it uses to run parts of iCloud and other services, said the sources, who all requested anonymity to protect their relationships with the vendors. Apple has not abandoned AWS entirely and remains a customer, the sources said. According to the...

Echo Voyager, Boeing’s latest unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV), can operate autonomously for months at a time thanks to a hybrid rechargeable power system and modular payload bay. The 51-foot-long vehicle is the latest innovation in Boeing’s UUV family, joining the 32-foot Echo Seeker and the 18-foot Echo Ranger. The size of the new Echo Voyager is in the middle of the German U-Boat lengths which were 40-60 feet long depending upon design. U-boats dominated the seas for several years due to the fact that thousands were produced. A militarized Echo Voyager could have a similar role if they were mass...

The robots are called microTugs and they’re the creations of scientists at Stanford University’s Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Laboratory who have been working for some time on tiny-yet-strong robots. In 2015, they unveiled one weighing less than half an ounce that can pull up to 52 pounds. Another one weighing 9 grams uses its super-strength plus gecko-like sticky feet to pull a 2-pound object up a wall. ... The microTugs use the adhesive foot-power of the gecko robots, whose feet have minute rubber spikes that grip firmly by bending when pressure is applied, thus increasing their surface area and stickiness....

Artificial intelligence is poised to automate lots of service jobs. The White House has estimated there's an 83% chance that someone making less than $20 a hour will eventually lose their job to a computer. That means gigs like customer-service rep could soon be extinct. But it's not just low-paying positions that will get replaced. AI also could cause high-earning (like top 5% of American salaries) jobs to disappear. Fast. That's the theme of New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper's new feature, "The Robots Are Coming for Wall Street." The piece is framed around Daniel Nadler, the founder of Kensho,...

As minimum wages across the country rise and restaurants face increased labor costs, one fast food CEO is thinking about replacing human workers with robots. Carl's Jr. head honcho Andy Puzder wants to open a new restaurant concept that's "employee-free," reports Business Insider. Puzder was inspired by a visit to Eatsa, the futuristic San Francisco-born restaurant where patrons order via tablet and retrieve their food from automated cubbies. He believes the idea of a restaurant free of social interaction could be especially appealing to millennials, noting that young people seem particularly fond of ordering from kiosks over humans.