Source: http://ift.tt/eo5TIt - Monday, December 01, 2014
A Google-backed company that offers a personal genetic screening to test for diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s will be available in the UK from today despite deep public health concerns in the US.
from Top News on RSS Feeds http://ift.tt/1y7mu00
A Google-backed company that offers a personal genetic screening to test for diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s will be available in the UK from today despite deep public health concerns in the US.from Top News on RSS Feeds http://ift.tt/1y7mu00
If you thought Samsung's Gear S smartwatch could rid you of the need for your phone, think again. We reviewed the wearable, and as it turns out, you'll need a handset just to get the thing up and runnin'. That's not all we have today, though -- read ...
Hey, kids, are you digging the “Facecast” yet? Monday evening ABC News posted its first “Facecast: The One Thing” on Facebook, which you could easily have confused with an extended promo for “World News Tonight,” but which the network called a first-of-its-kind “newscast” for social media. So what is it, exactly? In a news release earlier Monday , ABC described the “Facecast” as “a one-minute news update…(that) will give Facebook users a round-up of the day’s top stories and trending topics shot behind the scenes at ABC News headquarters in New York City.” Well, okay. I’m not sure how many people would define “behind-the-scenes” as David Muir in a jacket–but no tie–anchoring not at the “World News Tonight” desk but in front of it. (more…) New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media .
Mozilla said last month that Firefox's highly publicized shift from Google to Yahoo search would occur in December, and we didn't have to wait long once the month began. Less than 24 hours into the final month of 2014 Mozilla unleashed the newest version of its browser, Firefox 34, which includes Yahoo as its default search engine and some other changes. Firefox 34 is available for Windows , Mac OS X , Linux , and Android . Hello, Firefox In the desktop browser Mozilla has added "Firefox Hello," the native calling feature first seen in a Firefox 33 beta, plus a new search bar that gives you suggestions in real time. The new Firefox search bar also lets you click on a customizable set of square buttons to search directly on specific sites. Android also got a notable feature with full Chromecast tab mirroring. All versions of the browser were treated to "various security fixes" as well. Some of these changes, like Yahoo being the default search, apply only to the US, while other countries will see other new defaults. Are you looking forward to CES 2015 as much as we are?
The '90s will forever be remember as the decade of Clip Art, as crappy drawings of printers and shamrocks decorated middle school science homework projects, billion-dollar business transaction presentation slides and everything in between. But Clip Art is dead, Microsoft has declared, taking up a new cry: "Long live King Bing!" Users who seek to "insert online pictures" in Microsoft Office desktop apps from this day forward will be taken to a Bing portal with a copyright filter that shows only images with Creative Commons licenses. The images are more up-to-date, Microsoft says , and no one will miss Clip Art. Right? More blips We wish we'd used more Clip Art in our blips while we still could. The Star Wars: Episode VII trailer has just debuted on iTunes Apple loses $24 million battle over decades-old pager patents This experimental game console could be the worst idea ever
You’ll pardon U.S. merchants for not throwing a parade for Apple Pay. Consumer research reports that came out in advance of the holiday season said that as many as a third of survey respondents indicated they’d like to use some form of mobile payment for their shopping this year. And a new study by Retale has stated that 56 percent (!) of people want to use mobile payments this shopping season. But the majority of the available mobile payment technologies use near-field communications (NFC), which would only let those people pay at 3 percent of the places they shop, researchers say. I’ve been using Apple Pay for a few weeks now, and while I enjoy how well it works from a technological standpoint I can’t help but wonder what merchants are getting out of the deal. Apple is hoping that as more of its phones have an NFC chip inside, more people will begin to consider Apple Pay an indispensable aspect of their phone. If such a groundswell of adoption happens, merchants like Joe’s Market on the corner might be forced to support mobile payments, or risk customers migrating somewhere that does. Merchants, in order to comply, have to invest in contactless point-of-sale systems that support NFC. This costs several thousand dollars and a lot of employee training. And whether the card is in a wallet or on a phone the merchant still has to pay the 2 to 3 percent interchange fee on every transaction. Some of the bigger retailers who were named