Latest news

Mozilla's brand new CEO Brendan Eich, hired earlier this month, has already seen employees publicly demand his resignation.

Eich, who is one of the creators of the JavaScript language, donated money to California's Prop 8 (a proposal to ban gay marriage) in 2008, and protests over his anti-gay views have been increasing, especially since his promotion.

Several prominent employees have already called for the CEO's ouster, and three Mozilla board members stepped down this week, as well. Former CEOs Gary Kovacs and John Lilly, along with Shmoop CEO Ellen Siminoff, have all stepped down. The board members stepped down because they had been looking to bring in an outside CEO with better experience in mobile. This did not happen. Mozilla says one of the board members had decided to leave at the end of the CEO search no matter who was selected, and the other had plans to leave since January.

Mozilla has been trying to expand into mobile but the road has been slow and not fruitful to date.

According to the FT, Apple has been trying to poach top Swiss watchmakers from luxury brands in its efforts to bring an innovative smartwatch to market.

Apple is not the only tech giant trying to court watchmakers, however, with at least one company claiming to have seen advances from Apple, Samsung, Google and Motorola. The Swatch Group, the world's biggest watchmaker by volume, says it has little incentive nor want to working with tech companies: "We have been in discussions – not ever initiated by us – with practically all players in smart wearables up until today," Swatch CEO Nick Hayek said. "However, we see no reason why we should enter into any partnership agreement."

Rather, Hayek says, the company is looking to protect their IP for design, longevity and battery life against big tech rivals.

LVMH, the biggest luxury smartwatch maker in the world, recently accused Apple of trying to poach away staff at its Hublot brand, and from several of its part manufacturing companies. "Apple has contacted some of my employees – I saw the emails personally," LVMH President Jean-Claude Biver said. Everyone contacted rejected the proposals.

Despite Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR, it appears some of the brightest in the industry are not scared to join the team.

Michael Abrash, the lead expert for VR at Valve, has confirmed he is leaving the company to become Chief Scientist for Oculus.

Says Abrash of the move: "Facebook's acquisition of Oculus means that VR is going to happen in all its glory. The resources and long-term commitment that Facebook brings gives Oculus the runway it needs to solve the hard problems of VR – and some of them are hard indeed. I now fully expect to spend the rest of my career pushing VR as far ahead as I can."

Valve founder Gabe Newell hired Abrash in 2011, saying at the time that he had "been trying to hire Michael Abrash forever." The scientist is a long-time industry veteran, whose code is found in Windows, tons of video games, and other software. Abrash is the third VR engineer to leave Valve for Oculus this year.

Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood had some interesting speculation about the Apple TV, which is considered one of the company's biggest rivals in the streaming set-top box market.

"Apple TV is essentially an accessory for the iPad. They lose money, which is unusual for Apple," Wood noted. "If you're losing money, why would you want to sell more?"

Tim Cook, CEO at Apple, recently said that the Apple TV (which was once called a 'hobby' by the company) brought in $1 billion in revenue between hardware sales and the content purchased through it. That being said, the devices are very low-margin compared to their iOS devices, and does not fit with Apple's usual modus operandi.

In addition, Wood also thanked big tech companies like Apple for getting into the market, because consumer awareness immediately went up. For example, when the Apple TV was launched, Roku sales doubled, says Wood, as the company offered a cheaper price tag and more features.

A judge has given the OK for class action certification to a group of consumers who sued Apple last year for its violation of antitrust law in a major e-book scandal.

The company was found guilty of conspiring with five major book publishers to raise the price of e-books with the launch of the iPad in 2010.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote made the ruling, claiming that the plaintiffs had "more than met their burden" to be approved as a group. "This is a paradigmatic antitrust class action," wrote Cote in her ruling, with a trial set for later this year to determine monetary damages. Apple will likely have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to millions of consumers affected. 33 states will also be part of the class action suit on behalf of their consumers, with all the plaintiffs seeking over $800 million in damages from Apple.

As part of the price-fixing conspiracy, all the publishers settled and paid millions in fines and damages, but Apple took it to court before losing last summer to the U.S. Department of Justice. At the time, Amazon had a monopoly on the e-book market, and they began to charge whatever price they saw fit, sometimes offering the books for less than retail to sell more Kindle hardware. When Apple came around, they conspired with the publishers to change the pricing scheme, setting a strong floor for book prices and making it much more expensive for consumers.

According to a new Re/code report, Yahoo is looking to start its own video sharing site, poaching some of Yahoo's biggest stars in the process.

The new strategy could be launched in the coming months, and will provide popular video sharers with more revenue for their videos. The last point has been a major criticism of YouTube since its inception. It can sometimes take hundreds of thousands of views to your videos to receive any kind of compensation.

Besides individuals, Yahoo has also approached large networks that are currently on YouTube, offering better ad revenue or guaranteed ad rates for their videos. In addition, the company has also offered marketing for the videos, even on the front page of its Yahoo.com portal.

While the service will be similar to YouTube, it won't allow millions of users to upload whatever they want at all times. The service will instead offer hand-picked professional YouTube users and content. Yahoo tried to purchase French video-sharing service DailyMotion but was blocked. The company will likely create its own content management system for the service, but sources also suggested they could look into purchasing Vimeo, which sees over 100 million page views per month and has 22 million registered users.

Google has updated their Google Mobile Services agreement for Android phones, adding the new mandate that each device must have a bootup logo that states "Powered by Android."

The new logo has its own guidelines, as well, and must be present for devices to keep their access to the Google Play Store and other Google services.

This new move certainly makes sense for Google. Google is a globally known household name, but not everyone knows Android is the operating system on their, for example, brand new Galaxy S device. By adding the logo during boot up, Google hopes to make the operating system more widely known, no matter who is your OEM of choice.

On new devices, like the Galaxy S5 and the all-new HTC One M8, the companies are already using the new logo, underneath the classic green Android robot and their own name.

Last year, Sony released their Digital Paper e-reader/tablet in Japan to a niche audience. It will now try to reach that same niche audience in the U.S.

The device, which is part e-reader and part tablet, is aimed at legal professionals with extreme note taking needs.

Digital Paper devices have 13.3-inch flexible e-ink displays with 1600x1200 resolution, 3GB internal storage (with microSD slot for more), Wi-Fi support, a battery that lasts over three weeks on average and a design that is just 6.8mm thick and 0.79 pounds heavy.

The device also has optical and active digitizer touchscreens for both finger and stylus inputs. You can mark documents right on the screen, although the device shockingly only supports PDFs. Even with Wi-Fi ability, there is no way to add an email client or other apps.

Sony will sell the Digital Paper through document management company Worlddox for the hefty price tag of $1100, even more expensive than the highest capacity 4G-capable iPad Air.

Songza has announced a partnership with The Weather Channel in which the current weather in your area will be combined with your musical preferences within the app to create customized recommendations for you.

The service allows you to get curated lists of music from "experts" depending on the activity you are doing (trying to nap, jogging) or your mood (sad, happy), or just by standard genres.

With the new deal, Songza will leverage actual weather data to help curate your music. "With new data provided by The Weather Channel, we can more accurately predict your context, helping you enjoy more sunsets and weather more storms," added Songza CEO and co-founder Elias Roman.

For example (and pictured), you will greeted with a few options depending on your weather like "angry and brooding" or "Relaxing and Soothing" if it's thunderstorming out.

Every year, the rumors for the next-generation iPhone have been steady since the launch of the previous iPhone, and this year is no different.

The most prominent rumor is that of the size of the upcoming device. A new report in the Nikkei Asian Review states that suppliers are actually building two models, a 4.7-inch and a 5.5-inch screen variety, a huge jump from the 4-inch iPhone 5, 5C and 5S and the 3.5-inch iPhone 4S, which still remains on sale.

By comparison, nearly all Android phone makers have flagships with screen sizes at 5 inches or larger, some going as large as 6.3-inches.

As the company has been doing nearly every year, as well, the Retina Display resolution will be increased, as well, with reports claiming it will be above 1080p finally.

Speaking after the company reported another quarterly loss and revenue that fell under $1 billion for the first time in 7 years, CEO John Chen also provided a roadmap for BlackBerry's hardware.

First, the 5-inch BlackBerry Z3, the company's first smartphone to emerge from their strategic partnership with Foxconn, will be made available globally following its launch in Indonesia next month. Additionally, the phone will also have an LTE variant for use in North America. The phone will be priced at $199 in Indonesia, so there is a chance it could be under $200 when it reaches Europe, the U.S. and Asia.

Second, the BlackBerry Q20 Classic will be ready for launch in the Q1 2015. The device has a small touchscreen, a full QWERTY keypad, and a dedicated row of hardware buttons with a trackpad. The device runs on the most updated BlackBerry 10 OS.

Finally, the company is bringing back and increasing production of the BlackBerry Bold, which runs on the outdated BlackBerry 7 operating system and was released most recently in 2011.

The UK government has confirmed that copyright law has been revised to allow for legalized CD and DVD ripping/copying for personal use.

In addition, the revision will update other fair use provisions, including parody and quotation rights, says TF.

The proposed changes have been in the works for years but will finally be implemented in June.

UK's Intellectual Property Office released a guide for consumers to inform them of the new changes. "Copyright law is being changed to allow you to make personal copies of media you have bought, for private purposes such as format shifting or backup," reads the guide. "The changes will mean that you will be able to copy a book or film you have purchased for one device onto another without infringing copyright."

In addition, the Office says the changes will generate extra revenue for the tech sector(as much as £31 million per year), while making copyright law more reasonable for consumers.

BlackBerry has seen another setback in its ongoing efforts to rebound, as the company brought in less than $1 billion revenue for the first time since the financial crisis was in its early stages in late 2007.

Revenue fell to $976 million, down from $2.7 billion year-over-year.

The Canadian smartphone maker lost $423 million but excluding one-time items the loss was just $43 million, much smaller than expected. Regardless, the company's stock took a hit, dropping 7 percent for the day.

New CEO John Chen was lauded for cutting expenses so quickly, but with revenue falling so quickly it may not matter. Chen has moved away from the consumer hardware business, and instead is emphasizing the company's enterprise network, its embedded QNX operating system used in automobiles and industrial machines and the BlackBerry messenger software which has been expanded to iOS and Android. "I see this as a good turnaround plan," Chen said. "Knock on wood I'm hoping that it will also slow down the erosion."

The Denmark-based smartphone maker Lumigon has been working on a luxury device for some time now, and the phone has now been revealed as the T2 HD.

Although the specs are not high-end, the company has put together a slim, water resistant, stainless steel design with innovative features.

For example, the T2 HD has flash for its 2.4MP front facing camera, allowing for selfies in the dark. The device comes with a charging and data transfer dock that works in tandem with the device's "Behavior Control Feature" which allows you to customize features such as having the phone go to silent mode when placed on the dock. There are plenty of features that can be customized.

On the audio side, the technology was built by Bang & Olufson's ICEpower, promising powerful and clear audio through the stereo speakers or through the included Hi-Fi headset.

The 4.3-inch 720p display with Gorilla Glass 3 is powered by stock Android 4.4, a dual-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon processor, Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB RAM and has 32GB internal storage (you can get 64 or 128 as well). On the back there is a 13MP camera and the device has Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, LTE, NFC, FM radio, noise cancelling mics, an IR blaster and the touch display can be used even if wearing gloves.

Facebook has updated its Messenger app, adding some popular features from the old Beluga messenger startup it acquired in 2011 but then shut down.

The update for iOS will let you group contacts together and then send texts or stickers or pictures to them as a group, rather than individually.

Additionally, you can now forward messages and photos to users that are not in the conversation, a welcome feature.

Finally, the app will see typical speed, performance and stability improvements and fixes.