Netflix Takes Aim at the Cable Guys, With a Promise to Start Firing Tomorrow. What's Next for You?

Schumer urges look at security in Sprint deal

NEW YORK (AP) — Sen. Charles Schumer urged regulators to "use extreme caution" when reviewing the proposed acquisition of No. 3 cell carrier Sprint Nextel by Japan's Softbank, saying the Japanese company's use of Chinese networking equipment could open up U.S. networks to snooping and hacking.

Yahoo joins growing list of bidders for Hulu: sources

By Ronald Grover and Greg Roumeliotis LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc has submitted a formal proposal to buy Hulu, joining a growing list of bidders for the video service owned by News Corp and Walt Disney Co, two sources with knowledge of the bid told Reuters on Friday. Yahoo just this week announced a $1.1 billion acquisition of blogging service Tumblr. It now joins rival bidders for Hulu, including Time Warner Cable Inc, DirecTV, former News Corp president Peter Chernin and Guggenheim Digital Media, sources have said. It is unclear how much the Internet company bid. ...

Tiger Global invests $50 million in Automattic's WordPress

By Sarah McBride SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Automattic, the company that operates blogging service WordPress, announced a $50 million investment from hedge fund Tiger Global on Friday. The investment comes on the heels of Yahoo's $1.1 billion acquisition of blogging company Tumblr, showing the high prices fast-growing services that targeting Internet users can command. The valuation for WordPress was similar, Fortune reported. A spokeswoman for WordPress declined to comment. WordPress powers the blogs at companies such as CNN.com and Techcrunch, a spokeswoman said. ...

Early Google Glass user describes it as ‘creepy-looking,’ says it’s likely to fail

The common knock on Google Glass has been that it’s far too dorky-looking for normal people to want to wear. David Pogue, writing at Scientific American, says that he got a chance to play around with Google Glass recently and came away with a somewhat different take: Google Glass is too creepy. In particular, Pogue says that people who are wearing Google Glass instantly make everyone else around them uncomfortable if they’re not also wearing the headset. Pogue came to this realization after he “ran into a Google employee wearing it in public” and had a “screamingly uncomfortable” conversation with her. “There she was, wearing this creepy-looking, faux-futuristic forehead band — with a built-in video camera pointed at my face,”

News Corp. OKs poison pill, buyback before split

LOS ANGELES (AP) — News Corp. said its board of directors has approved plans to split its entertainment and publishing businesses into two separate companies. The company also adopted a shareholder-rights plan designed to prevent a hostile takeover in the volatile trading period after the split is complete.

There's No Reason for Cops to Panic About 3D-Printed Guns

A bit slow to warm up the engines, law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Australia have begun issuing warnings to law enforcement agencies and the public about the dangers of 3D-printing guns. Pro: Video of a printed gun exploding! Con: Their concerns are misplaced.

Unhappy with how your fave series is faring? Amazon gives you a say

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon is once again shaking up traditional publishing models. This time, it's giving fans a chance to add their own personal touches to their favorite fiction - and get paid in the process. This week, Amazon.com Inc announced "Kindle Worlds," which offers aspiring writers an opportunity to pen their own takes on franchises in books, TV, movies, even games and comics. The world's largest Internet retailer plans to license content, then accept submissions online that may then be sold through its Kindle ebook store. ...

Galaxy S4 camera found to outperform iPhone 5, Lumia 920

A French firm that specializes in camera optics and image sensor analysis has found the camera on Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone outperforms the iPhone 5 and Nokia’s Lumia 920. DxO Labs ranked the Galaxy S4′s camera as the second highest rating among smartphones it tested. The firm praised the 13-megapixel camera for its fast and accurate autofocus, good auto-exposure, rich colors in different lighting conditions and impressive detail preservation in bright light. The Galaxy S4 scored a total of 79 points out of a possible 100, ahead of both the iPhone 5 and Lumia 920, which scored 74 points and 64 points, respectively. The iPhone 5 scored higher when it came to video, however. The Galaxy S4 was found to shoot

Google eyes Waze as Facebook circles hot Web maps property

By Sarah McBride and Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc is in talks to buy Waze, an Israeli mapping start-up that has held discussions with several large technology companies, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. Google's discussions with Waze, which one of the sources told Reuters remained fluid and could change in tenor at any time, come amid reports Facebook is willing to pay $1 billion for the crowd-sourced service, which relies on information provided by its 47 million members to craft its mobile-oriented maps. ...

Why I don’t want iOS, Android or any other OS to ‘win’

One of the most annoying traits of many technology fans is their conviction that their favorite technology platform should by all rights crush rival operating systems and become the dominant OS in the smartphone or tablet market. In their narrow-minded little worlds, all rival technologies should go the way of webOS so that everyone can bask in might of their favorite operating system, thus proving that their personal preference for a particular type of technology was right all along. The big reason I find this mentality borderline repulsive is because most of us are old enough to remember the last time an operating system definitively won the market place and effectively set up a monopoly for itself that it’s taken