In the technology arms race between parents and children, kids have a new weapon: Yik Yak. A simple app for mobile devices, Yik Yak sets up temporary, anonymous chats among users who are near each other, based on GPS location. It’s less than four months old, but already, it’s causing [Keep reading]
Beginning tonight and into tomorrow, thousands of Americans will celebrate the National Day of Unplugging. They’ll attend music festivals where cell phones must be checked at the door. They will go on walks. They will talk to each other! You should try it to. If not for a day, then [Keep reading]
UPDATED — Twitter users took to the service late Monday evening to say that they’d been told hackers had attempted to access their accounts, and that Twitter was forcing them to update their passwords. At 1 a.m. ET, Twitter told me that reset notices were sent by accident. “We unintentionally [Keep reading]
Hands-free cell phone driving laws are widely ignored, almost entirely unenforceable, and illogical. Now they are also archaic, a California court has ruled. A California driver given a summons for using his phone with his hands while driving beat the ticket by saying he was using his phone’s map application, [Keep reading]
Skeptic that I am, I am also a sucker for the Olympics. There are a 1,000 reasons to dismiss the Games as a commercial fraud, but still, in every competition, amazing stories of perseverance, love, and achievement emerge. So I’ll be watching every chance I get. This time around, there [Keep reading]
You’ve had this sneaking sensation all along, haven’t you? That those security machines at airports don’t really do any good? That someone might be looking at naked X-rays of you and laughing? That a whole lot of money has been wasted on technology that doesn’t work, and that the best [Keep reading]
Add Michaels craft store to the list of retailers who’ve been shamed into admitting that hackers have possibly stolen credit card information from their systems. Here’s a pro tip: hiding this important information from consumers until a journalist finds out about it and tells everyone is bad for business. And [Keep reading]
(So happy to be back on CNBC and NBCNews.com again. I’m scheduled to be on television Friday night — NBC Nightly with Brian Williams — to discuss this story). A toxic combination of digital leashes, the hypnotic effects of technology, economic anxiety, and caffeine is encouraging workers to push [Keep reading]
(Editor’s note: Perhaps you saw the recent hubbub over a Princeton study suggesting Facebook will lose 80 percent of its users by 2017, and Facebook’s saracstic response that Princeton will lose half its enrollment by 2018. Here’s one woman’s story that — coincidentally — suggests Princeton may have the better [Keep reading]
I’m getting this question a lot, and I know most people are in a big hurry, so I’ll give you a short answer and a long answer. Short answer: Take Target’s offer. It’s a valuable service and it’s free, particularly given the ever-expanding web of victims in this hacker attack. [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan