Technology News

• Cicada bugfest closes in on city-dwellers
  Hordes of winged cicadas are coming out and turning up the music for their biggest party in 17 years, stretching from North Carolina through Virginia to New York — but experts aren't yet sure just how big the party will get.]]>
• Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4 vs. Wii U: Can one console rule?
  All three next-generation video game consoles are now official, but only Nintendo's Wii U has hit the market. In the months leading up to the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 launches, it's time to speculate: What will it take to win the new console war?]]>
• Collapsed I-5 bridge gone from Google Maps — almost as quickly as it fell
  On Thursday evening, a bridge along Interstate 5 in Washington State collapsed. Early on Friday, Google Maps already reflected the incident. Google's secret for such a speedy update? An army of volunteers.]]>
• iOS 7 likely to be flat ... and black and white?
  Apple has scheduled the WWDC keynote for June 10. On that day, we expect to hear the latest about the company's mobile and desktop operating system. It's the mobile operating system, or iOS, that has our attention in particular though, because the rumor mills are predicting some dramatic changes.]]>
• 3-D printer going to space station in 2014
  A 3-D printer is slated to arrive at the International Space Station next year, where it will crank out the first parts ever manufactured off planet Earth. The company Made in Space is partnering with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on the 3-D Printing in Zero G Experiment, which aims to jump-start an off-planet manufacturing capability that could aid humanity's push out into the solar system.]]>
• 'Facebook Phone' launch canceled in U.K. as Home gets facelift
  Plans to launch the HTC First, aka the "Facebook phone," in the U.K. have been indefinitely delayed and pre-orders refunded, according Facebook and the carrier that was to carry the device exclusively.]]>
• Cold-loving bacteria offer clues for life on Mars
  A microbe discovered in the Canadian high Arctic thrives at the coldest temperature known for bacterial growth — and holds clues to what might be necessary for life on Mars.
• 'Remember Me': Game for Facebook generation
  Game developer Dontnod doesn't just want "Remember Me" to be a game about punching things. Like "Watch_dogs," "Remember Me" is set in a dystopian near-future that takes some of technology's most pressing moral dilemmas and stretches them to their logical extreme. Only instead of smartphones, this game is about social media and the concept of oversharing.]]>
• Private spaceflight heads to moon
  Human exploration of deep space is looking more and more like a tag-team affair, with NASA jetting off to asteroids and Mars while the private sector sets up shop on the moon.]]>
• How the smartphone killed the three-day weekend
  It took labor unions 100 years to fight for nights and weekends off, some say. Smartphones took them away in about three years.]]>
• Big earthquakes create global-scale GPS errors
  Thirteen years of supersized earthquakes, such as Friday's magnitude-8.3 in Russia, have contaminated GPS sites around the world, a new study finds.]]>
• Chill, Mom! Snapchat's self-destructing messages are about silliness, not sex
  A service that lets you send images that self-destruct after 10 seconds? Why would parents freak out about that? While the initial furor over Snapchat has died down, an increasing number of kids are using the surprisingly addictive service.]]>
• Satellite's failure on eve of hurricane season ruffles meteorologist
  For the second time in less than a year, the main satellite that keeps an eye on severe weather systems in the eastern half of the United States has malfunctioned, according to government officials.]]>
• Floating robot tries to save polluted canal
  Pity the Gowanus Canal. A forgotten relic of Brooklyn's industrial past, the garbage-choked waterway is now home to a putrid stew of toxic waste. Help for the beleaguered canal, however, has arrived in an unusual form: a floating robot.]]>
• ITV news Twitter account hacked by Syrian Electronic Army
  British broadcaster ITV on Friday became the latest media outlet to have one of its Twitter feeds hacked by anonymous supporters of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, just days after Twitter beefed up security to prevent such attacks. Twitter said on Wednesday that it had started rolling out an optional two-step authentication program for its users to thwart hackers.]]>
• Battle-bruised King Richard III hastily buried
  The body of King Richard III was buried in great haste, a new study finds — perhaps because the medieval monarch's corpse had been out for three days in the summer sun.]]>
• TV-related tweets may attract ads with new Twitter campaign
  A new advertising method from Twitter will watch for tweets from you about certain TV shows and allow those shows' advertisers to target you. Of course, you can always ignore their tweets the way you ignored their commercials.]]>
• Microsoft's Xbox didn't violate Google patent, says ITC
  Microsoft won a round in a complex patent war on Thursday when the International Trade Commission said the company's popular Xbox entertainment system did not violate a patent owned by Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility. If the ITC had found that Microsoft infringed, it could have barred the Xbox from being imported into the United States.