Articles by Katherine Noyes

McDonald's has signed on as an early user of Facebook's new location feature, which reportedly could launch as early as this month The new feature will give users the ability to include their location within a status update, but it will also be offered as a tool for marketers, AdAge reported Thursday. Using the new feature, the McDonald's app will ...

Users of Google Goggles can now put the technology to work translating text from other languages, Google announced Thursday Whereas a prototype demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year could recognize only German text, Goggles version v1.1 can read English, French, Italian, German and Spanish as well as translate to ...

Skype on Wednesday announced that it is launching subscription plans to more than 170 countries with substantial savings over the company's standard rates for calling mobile phones and landlines Starting Thursday, Skype's range of calling subscriptions will start from as little as US$1.09 per month and offer effective rates as low as $.01 per minut...

A newly rechristened Cloud.com on Tuesday unveiled its CloudStack Platform, an integrated software solution that lets enterprises and service providers quickly and easily build, manage and deploy Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing solutions. Formerly known as "VMOps," Cloud.com focuses on helping users deliver virtual data centers ...

Less than a month after Sony dropped Linux support from its PlayStation 3 gaming console, a disgruntled customer has filed a lawsuit, charging that the move was a deceptive business practice. He's seeking class-action status Sony Computer Entertainment America's disablement of the "Install Other OS" feature was "not only a breach of the sales contr...

"Avatar" director James Cameron is working with NASA on two 3-D cameras that could be used on the next Mars rover, known as "Curiosity." Earlier this month, Malin Space Science Systems delivered two cameras, known as "MastCams," that are similar but lack the 3-D capabilities. If the new pair developed with Cameron can be completed in the time rema...

Microsoft on Tuesday announced that it has signed a patent agreement with HTC covering the phone maker's Android-based devices, and it's talking with other phone vendors as well about its "concerns" regarding Google's mobile operating platform The deal with HTC provides broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for HTC's mobile phones runni...

The high-tech industry lost jobs in 2009 for the first time in several years, but the cuts were fewer than those experienced in the private sector as a whole, thanks in part to relative strength in the category of software services That's according to TechAmerica Foundation's 13th annual edition of the Cyberstates report, which was released Wednesd...

Targeting a market already replete with numerous contenders, a consortium of six Japanese firms on Monday announced plans to build a new mobile operating system that will be compatible at least with Linux and Symbian -- and possibly with Android too NTT Docomo, Renesas Electronics, Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic and Sharp have agreed to jointly develop a ...

In response to a raft of recent privacy changes at Facebook, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on Monday asked the FTC to design privacy rules for social networking sites, including clear guidelines on how information submitted to sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter can be used and disseminated. "Hundreds of millions of people use social net...

Twenty years ago Saturday, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low Earth orbit, beginning its journey to become NASA's best-recognized, longest-lived and most prolific space observatory To celebrate the milestone, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) released on Thursday a stunning new pho...

Two months after the launch of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, its first images are now arriving back on Earth with more detail about the sun than has ever been seen before Some of the images from the spacecraft reveal in new clarity the material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun's sur...

Taking its relationship with Drupal to the next level, the Obama administration announced on Wednesday that it has released to the public some of the custom code it's developed for the Whitehouse.gov website "This code is available for anyone to review, use, or modify," wrote Dave Cole, senior advisor to the CIO of the executive office of the pres...

Google may have been the primary target of a sharp attack by privacy commissioners from 10 nations on Tuesday, but later that same day, the company revealed a new tool that could effectively turn the tables on those and other governments Specifically, the company's new Government Requests tool is designed to reveal for all to see when government ag...

Garrett Heaton can't speak highly enough of his bank "USAA is a FANTASTIC bank, and their services and customer service are top-notch," he says -- especially its Deposit@Home feature, which lets users scan checks for immediate deposit into their account....

In the past two months since it originally surfaced, the Blake Robbins v. the Lower Merion School District school spying case just keeps getting bigger It turns out the Lower Merion School District took "thousands of webcam pictures and screen shots" of students in their homes using the LANRev "peeping tom" technology on school-issued laptops, acco...

President Obama on Thursday delivered a major speech at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida about his vision for human spaceflight in the coming years, affirming that he is "100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future." As part of a US$6 billion increase in NASA's budget over the next five years, the president aims to incre...

Obama on Thursday will speak at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida about his plans for drastically changing the direction of the nation's human spaceflight program Included in those plans is a decision -- originally announced back in February -- to end the Constellation moon program and shift NASA's focus to developing new technologies for deeper ...

If the Department of Homeland Security has its way, cellphones will soon do more than transmit calls, GPS information and a host of data from the Web. They'll also monitor the air for toxic substances that could be part of a chemical warfare attack ...

Apple's newly launched iPad may be taking up the majority of consumer mindshare in the tablet category following its launch earlier this month, but Google is furtively working on a device of its own that will be powered exclusively by Android That's according to a report in The New York Times, which cited comments made by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at...