Google Gives Up Scanning Personal Gmail

Google recently announced the end of its policy of scanning user emails for targeted advertising purposes -- a controversial practice that riled privacy advocates and spurred legal challenges. Gmail is the world's most widely used email provider, with more than 1.2 billion users. Google attributed its decision to gains it has made in the enterprise. Its G Suite business over the past year has more than doubled in size to 3 million paying corporate customers, who are not subject to the scanning process.

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At 10, the World-Changing iPhone Is Kind of the Same

Apple celebrated the 10th anniversary of its iconic iPhone on Thursday. Since former CEO Steve Jobs debuted the original device, the company has gone on to sell more than a billion handsets worldwide, and the iPhone has become one of the most successful product categories in the electronics industry. The iPhone proved to be a major disrupter in the mobile phone category after its unveiling on June 29, 2007. At the time, the industry was dominated by companies such as Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, and Palm.

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Google Makes It Easier to Create Virtual Reality Videos

Google has introduced a new video format, VR180, developed with input from its Daydream team. The VR180 format, which displays what's in front of the user only, delivers good video quality both on desktop PCs and mobile devices. While VR180 videos appear in 2D on desktops and mobile devices, they appear in 3D VR when viewed with Cardboard, Google's Daydream headset or Sony's PlayStation VR headset. Creators "don't have to choose between making a 360 video and/or providing new content for their subscribers," said Google spokesperson Liz Markman.

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Xinix Offers Linux Lovers a Path to Zen

Xinix is an innovative newcomer to the world of Linux distros. Now in beta, this distro has been spearheaded by a single developer who slowly is bringing other programmers on board to move things along. Despite its early development status, Xinix has potential for Linux fans who like to experiment with new platform concepts and do not mind trying out an operating system that is not yet fully functional. Essentially, Xinix is an interesting side project for serious Linux fans -- it definitely is not suitable for Linux newcomers.

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Cyberattackers Kick Down a Few Parliament Email Doors

The United Kingdom's Parliament on Monday reported a cyberattack on its email system over the weekend, when hackers attempted to access user accounts without authorization. Due to the "robust measures" in place to protect the legislative body's accounts and networks, fewer than 1 percent of the 9,000 accounts on the network were compromised, officials said. Accounts that were compromised had weak passwords that did not conform to guidance on creating strong passwords from the Parliamentary Digital Service. Individuals with compromised accounts have been notified and investigators are determining if the victims lost any data.

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The United States of Amazon

Amazon's significant expansion into yet another market -- this time, grocery stores -- dominated many of my conversations last week. Clearly, Amazon warned us. I've been here before -- you see, back in the 1990s, when Amazon was just books, I was running the company's e-commerce unit. I got into an argument with one of the analysts focused on Amazon, who believed the company wouldn't go beyond books. I argued that the model it was using could -- and would -- expand to other things, but even I wasn't thinking broadly enough.

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Rivals Rev Up as Uber Hits the Skids

As Uber reels from the fallout of a sexual harassment scandal that led to the ouster of Travis Kalanick and several of his top executives, the company faces twin dilemmas: how to clean up its corporate work environment and restock its executive ranks; and how to maintain credibility with its customer base and core team of street level drivers. Uber controls more than 80 percent of the domestic ride-sharing market, by many estimates, and it competes strongly in major cities around the world. However, rival firms are now nipping at its heels.

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DHS to Congress: The Russians Are Coming Back

The House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday conducted a hearing focusing on the impact of Russian hacking on the 2016 elections. Members of the committee heard testimony from former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, who was in charge of the department when the actual hacking took place during the final months of the Obama administration. During that hearing, Johnson reiterated that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the hacking with the intent of influencing the outcome of the U.S. elections.

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Google Launches Go-To Job Aggregation Site

Google on Tuesday announced a highly anticipated launch of its new job search aggregation technology. The initiative will allow Google users to search for jobs either on mobile devices or personal computers, and to use a set of filters to obtain highly targeted results pulled from many different sites across the Web. During his keynote presentation at I/O last month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted that the company has wanted to use its machine learning capabilities to find ways to make an immediate impact on people's lives.

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Trump Wants Tech Leaders to Help Save $1 Trillion

President Donald Trump aims to save taxpayers $1 trillion over the next 10 years with a little help from America's high-tech industry. "Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government's technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens," the president said Monday at a roundtable session of the American Technology Council, composed of the leaders of 18 U.S. tech firms including Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. "We're embracing big change ... and at far less cost," he declared.

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Microsoft Expands Linux Container Support in Windows Server

Microsoft has decided to expand its support for Linux containers in the next release of Windows Server. Linux containers and workloads will work natively on Windows Server, said Erin Chapple, general manager for the server operating system. The company also will extend Window Server's Hyper-V isolation capability, which was introduced in the 2016 release of the operating system. "This means customers will no longer have to deploy two separate container infrastructures to support both their Windows and Linux-based applications," Chapple wrote.

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Apple Centers Health Data Strategy on iPhone

Apple quietly has been strategizing to expand its growing healthcare business to include the management of digital health records, with the iPhone operating as a central data hub. Apple reportedly has been in talks with numerous health industry groups that are involved in setting standards for the storage and sharing of electronic medical records, in a way that would help consumers gain more control over their private medical information. The plan appears to be a natural extension of Apple's recent health industry strategy.

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The Art of Manipulation and Misdirection

Last week, I listened to an economist talk about Apple's complaints that Qualcomm had charged Apple too much for access to patents. What I thought was fascinating was that Apple had folks focused on the 5 percent that Qualcomm had charged it instead of on the massive profit that Apple made on each phone. The price of the iPhone 8 is rumored to be well over $1,000 -- but it could cost well under $500 to build. All other smartphone prices seem to be trending down, while Apple's appear to be trending up. This is an example of expert manipulation.

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Nintendo's New Lineup Electrifies E3

Nintendo previewed an impressive lineup of gaming content at E3 2017 this week, by many accounts. Its collection of new titles and targeted versions of some of the industry's hottest third-party content seemed to validate surprisingly strong sales of the Nintendo Switch console. Moving easily from a living room big screen to a mobile gaming device, the Switch already has gained a significant following. Nintendo unveiled a stream of new titles from some of its most renowned video game franchises, while adding new games that are designed to work specifically for the Switch, which offers a unique gaming experience.

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Cook Gives Up a Few Crumbs of Apple Auto Info

News about Apple's plans for the automotive market have been dripping slowly from the company for months, and CEO Tim Cook this week released a few more drops from the faucet. Apple's auto efforts are zeroing in on autonomous systems, he said. Self-driving is a core technology that Apple considers very important to its auto plans, but it's very challenging from an artificial intelligence perspective, Cook noted, characterizing it as "the mother of all AI projects." A major disruption is ahead for the transportation industry, he predicted.

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Art, History and 3D Printing

The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, last month debuted its Reboot Reality exhibit, which includes numerous installations with an interactive component. Visitors can don Occulus VR headsets to appreciate classical works of art in virtual reality -- a completely new museum experience. There long has been a debate on what constitutes "art" -- and opinions have differed as to how music, film, radio and TV fit in. In recent years, there have been compelling arguments both for and against the designation of video games as "art."

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Xbox One X: More Speed, More Muscle

Microsoft earlier this week announced the next version of its Xbox line of gaming consoles, ahead of E3 2017, now ongoing in Los Angeles. The new Xbox One X, which goes on sale Nov. 7 for $499, is slimmer than previous models and packed with power. With a 6-teraflop Scorpio engine, the One X has 40 percent faster graphics performance than its chief rival, Sony's PS4 Pro. The custom Scorpio engine in the Microsoft box burns chrome at 1172 MHz -- a 37 percent increase over its predecessor, Xbox One, and 28 percent faster than PS4 Pro.

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Securing Your Linux System Bit by Bit

As daunting as securing your Linux system might seem, every extra step makes a difference. It's almost always better to make a modest stride than let uncertainty keep you from starting. Fortunately, there are a few basic techniques that greatly benefit users at all levels, and knowing how to securely wipe your hard drive in Linux is one of them. Because I adopted Linux primarily with security in mind, this is one of the first things I learned. Once you have absorbed this lesson, you will be able to part with your hard drives safely.

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New Stem Cell Treatment Offers Dramatic Burn-Healing Potential

A med-tech startup has developed a fast and easy way to treat certain burn wounds with stem cells. RenovaCare harvests a variety of cells, including stem cells, from a healthy area of skin on a patient. Those cells are then suspended in a water-based solution, which is loaded into the company's SkinGun and sprayed onto the wound. "The sprayer allows us to have a generous distribution of cells on the wound," explained Roger Esteban-Vives, director of cell sciences at RenovaCare. The procedure takes about 90 minutes.

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Gadget Ogling: Apple at Home

Apple just pulled back the curtain on HomePod, its smart speaker that seeks to hold dominion over your home empire and all the gadgets that reside within. HomePod holds a 4-inch woofer and seven tweeters, and it has six microphones to pick up your voice commands for Siri, wherever you happen to be in the room. Apple powers it with an A8 processor, and it adapts the acoustics based on the surrounding environment. It can play podcasts, provide news and weather, and change settings on HomeKit-connected devices, but the focus here is on music.

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Hearing Crickets at Apple's WWDC and a Pin Drop in the Senate

The two mammoth events last week were the Apple developers conference keynote and ex-FBI chief James Comey's appearance at a Senate committee hearing. Now I'm sure a lot of folks didn't have the time to watch both events -- and particularly for the Comey event, I'm sure the coverage has the right and the left believing very different realities. Apple is becoming more and more like a typical tech firm -- that is, long on technology and short on magic. This year, its initial big focus was on how fast the Apple Watch can launch apps.

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'Arms' Could Help Nintendo Fight Its Way Back Into the Ring

Arms, the highly anticipated fighting game for Nintendo's Switch, will be available next Friday, and based on the early reviews, the company just may have found the magic bullet. Nintendo's Switch console, launched earlier this year, has been something of a surprise success. Prior to its launch, it seemed like a risky play for the company, which has been bobbing and weaving in its efforts to appeal to couch potatoes, e-sports enthusiasts and outdoor adventurers alike. The Switch needed a potential game-changer.

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E3 2017: Enhancements, Expectations and Perhaps Excitement

All of the major video game developers, publishers and console hardware makers, as well as many retail buyers and the gaming press, will descend on Los Angeles for E3 2017 next week. The annual event -- a showcase for computer, video and mobile games and related products -- will kick off officially on Tuesday and run through Thursday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. However, it actually will begin on Monday with press briefings from Microsoft, Sony, Bethesda, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft.

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Open Source Survey Exposes Community Troubles

GitHub this week released the results of its survey on open source software development, practices and worldwide communities. Responses from more than 6,000 participants show the importance of open source documentation and reveal some of the problems missing or poorly done documentation can have on users and project adoption. The survey also reveals an ongoing concern about nasty interactions among some open source developers, rudeness toward community members, and negative attitudes toward female programmers.

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Metis CDS Debbie Berebichez to Women in STEM: Chase Your Dreams

"I've helped shape the conversation," said Debbie Berebichez, chief data scientist at Metis. "It's empowered me to mentor young women and also to shape policy. At Metis, we offer a scholarship to women and minorities, so we do things actively to bring women in. I also try to recruit and hire women. Even though it's a tech company, over 60 percent of the employees at Metis are women, and they also occupy a lot of leadership roles. I always try to do things that change the conversation."

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Apple's iOS 11 Makes Siri a More Natural Woman... and Man

New voices for Siri and peer-to-peer payments are among the new features in the next version of Apple's mobile device operating system iOS 11, previewed at the company's annual Worldwide Development Conference on Monday. "With the new operating system, Apple has doubled down on many of the applications it has developed for iOS," said Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research. "Much of the enhancement of the OS has come via those core applications versus general new functionality," he said.

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With Audio Focus, Apple Side-Steps Smart Speaker Competition

Apple raised the curtain on HomePod, its upcoming smart speaker, during Monday's keynote presentation at its Worldwide Developers Conference. The company also announced some desktop OS features for the iPad, and revealed its plans to become an augmented reality powerhouse. "Just like iPod reinvented music in our pockets, HomePod is going to reinvent music in our homes," Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president for worldwide marketing, told an enthusiastic crowd at the San Jose Convention Center in California.

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The Max-Q: The Coolest Thing Out of Computex

I didn't attend Computex this year, and that was sad for everything but my budget, because there was a ton of cool stuff announced at the show. Dell, HP and Lenovo showed off new designs that were both attractive and compelling. Mixed-reality headsets hit; based on Intel and Microsoft technology, they were far more affordable than the strong virtual reality stuff already in market. New core wars broke out, as AMD's 16 Core Threadripper was challenged by Intel's 18 core i9. It seems that gaming was huge at Computex this year.

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Tech Titans Pledge Continued Paris Accord Support

Reacting to the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, several high-tech industry leaders have pledged renewed environmental efforts. "Disappointed with today's decision. Google will keep working hard for a cleaner, more prosperous future for all," tweeted CEO Sundar Pichai. "Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement is bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and it puts our children's future at risk," wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "We will double our efforts to fight climate change," tweeted Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

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Plex Advances Cord-Cutting Case With Live OTA TV

Video streaming service Plex on Thursday announced the availability of a beta version of its Plex Live TV. The live-TV streaming launch follows last year's introduction of the Plex DVR, which provides users with free over-the-air access to 86 of Nielsen's 100 most watched shows in the United States. The Plex DVR service allows users to manage their recorded programming via Android TV, iOS devices, Windows and Mac, as well a variety of set-top boxes, such as Roku, Chromecast, Amazon Fire and Apple TV, and the Xbox and PlayStation gaming systems.

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BitKey Unlocks Mysteries of the Bitcoin Universe

BitKey is a Debian-based live distribution with specialist utilities for performing highly secure air-gapped bitcoin transactions. This distro is not for everyday computing needs, but if you are obsessed with the use of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, this distro might be just what you need. I am a high-tech sort of guy with a keen interest in diving through Linux distros both simple and complex. I'm on the lookout for new twists to old desktop environments and unique use case distros. However, cryptocurrencies clearly are my match.

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Microsoft Partners Heed Mixed-Reality Call

Microsoft showcased a new series of mixed reality headsets from partner firms Acer, HP, Asus, Dell and Lenovo at Computex 2017. The preview marked the company's commitment to establish Windows 10 as a leading driver of mixed reality capabilities, as well as to open up the market to a wider variety of price points and consumer demographics. "These devices, coming to market this holiday, use Microsoft's platform to enable a single and consistent user interface, standardized inputs and a universal app platform for developers," noted VP Peter Han.

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