New Sonos Speaker Costs $500 but New Smart Tuner Is Free

Sonos on Tuesday unveiled a new version of its top-of-the-line Play:5 speaker. The redesigned speaker includes three mid-woofers and three tweeters, and it can be set up in three orientations: by itself, or paired with another speaker -- either vertically for tight sound, or horizontally for a more immersive experience, the company said. Along with the new speaker, Sonos introduced Trueplay, an application for iPhones and iPads that's designed to make it easier to tune its wireless speakers to a room's acoustic profile.

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Google Lines Up a Batch of Marshmallow-Ready Hardware

Google on Tuesday introduced a pair of new phablets, a couple of Chromecasts and the first tablet it built by itself. The unveilings took place at the company's Nexus event in San Francisco. Months of leaks drew very accurate portraits of the $499 Huawei Nexus 6P and $379 LG Nexus 5X and other Android hardware, but Google filled in the details ahead of the expected Oct. 5 release of its next mobile operating system: Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Google has billed the Nexus 6P as its "most premium phone" to date.

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Black Hats Offer Million-Dollar iOS 9 Bug Bounty

Zerodium has posted a million-dollar bounty for juicy iOS 9 bugs or jailbreaks. Zerodium runs a market where exploits and vulnerabilities are bought and sold, according to Damballa. "While there is no insight into a specific buyer, we can assume if an exploit for iOS 9 is found, Zerodium will sell it for way more than $1 million," wrote Loucif Kharouni, senior threat researcher at Damballa. "Finding an iOS 9 security breach would have severe repercussions for millions of iPhone users."

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Found on Mars: Cool, Clear Water?

Dark, narrow streaks going downhill at four locations on Mars are evidence of water flowing on the planet. Called "recurring slope lineae," the streaks are approximately the length of a football field, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They are believed to have been formed by the seasonal flow of water. Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology noticed these lineae as an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona in 2010. His team's report on the research was published Monday in Nature Geoscience.

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Google to Expand India's Internet Access With Free WiFi at Train Stations

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Sunday announced a plan to provide high-speed public WiFi in 400 train stations across India. The announcement coincided with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Modi is expected to promote his Digital India initiative during his U.S. visit. One objective of the plan is to bring high-speed Internet to rural areas of India. Google will work closely with Indian Railways and with RailTel, which provides Internet service along the railway lines.

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VectorLinux Light Has That Old-School Linux Feeling

VectorLinux 7.1 Light Edition targets fans of the IceWM desktop environment who own older computers. VectorLinux released its latest light edition this summer. What makes it new compared with previous editions is the shift to the lightweight IceWM. Yes, IceWM is very old school. Still, it is a handy and functional alternative that serves legacy computers well. The standard edition of VectorLinux 7.1, which arrived several weeks prior to the latest light release, uses the Xfce desktop environment.

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Samsung Gear VR to Test Virtual Reality's Mass Appeal

Samsung last week unveiled a consumer version of a virtual reality headset adapter that converts Samsung smartphones into head-mounted displays. The move represents a first strike -- ready or not -- as top tech industry players begin to push virtual reality hardware into consumer markets. Taking what they learned from the developer version of the headset, launched last fall, Samsung and partner Oculus VR have imparted several improvements to the consumer version of Gear VR.

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Two Risky Strategies Could Threaten Apple's Long-Term Survival

One of the ironies of my technical career is that when I first went to work for a tech company, I specifically wanted to work for a firm that was breaking the mold -- not representative of it. So, in my initial interview, I was concerned that IBM was going to buy the firm because it was the mold at that time. I was promised it wasn't, and that there was a contract that said it couldn't. Then, six months later, it did. IBM nearly failed six years after that, largely due to two strategies Apple now has embraced.

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Gadget Ogling: Pebble Goes Round, VR Hits Movies, and Smart Locks Lose Keypads

The latest Pebble looks a touch different from previous models of the smartwatch. Instead of a square screen with rounded edges, it bears a circular watch face. The Pebble Time Round also is thinner and lighter than its siblings, but it's not as water-resistant. More importantly, the battery doesn't last as long -- a couple of days rather than a week. That earns it a black mark, as long battery life is critical for an effective smartwatch. That said, to my eye, it's classier than Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel and most other smartwatches.

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Lockscreen Bug Fix Conspicuously Absent in iOS 9 Update

Apple has released the first update to its new iOS 9 operating system to clean up some bugs in the original version of the software. Bugs addressed in the update, iOS 9.0.1, include a system freeze on the slide to update screen, alarms and timers that would fail to go off, and frame distortion in paused videos. One bug Apple didn't address in the first update to iOS allows an intruder to bypass a device's lockscreen and access photos and contacts on it. Still, compared to some past versions of iOS, the latest version appears quite stable.

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LibreOffice 5.0 Is the Office Suite Champ

LibreOffice 5.0, The Document Foundation's latest open source office suite, deserves to top the list of contenders for best performance in this category. The Document Foundation last month released LibreOffice 5.0 for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It is the 10th major release since the launch of the project, and the first in the third development cycle. The release coincides with the rollout of Windows 10 and positions the LibreOffice suite head to head with Microsoft Office. This is an important milestone for LibreOffice.

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Timeline

That trip down memory lane may never be the same. Those who feel their Facebook Timeline leaves out any important moments in their lives can call up Google Maps' Timeline to fill in the blanks. With tech tools like these, who needs enemies? There may be some things you'd rather not remember -- and there probably definitely are things in your past that you'd rather others didn't know. The existence of tech tracking tools means that whether users choose to take advantage of them for personal reasons or not, the tracking likely is going on anyway.

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The Rich Get Internet-Richer While the Poor Get None

Efforts to increase Internet access worldwide are falling short of targeted goals, according to a United Nations Broadband Commission report released earlier this week. More than half the world's population is still offline, according to the report, and growth in the number of people with access to the Internet is slowing. The digital divide has become a chasm. Internet access in rich economies is reaching saturation levels, while about 90 percent of the people in the 48 poorest countries have none, the report notes.

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Review Roundup: iPhone 6s Joy Depends on Where You're Coming From

Notices for the new iPhones have started appearing, and Apple's hardware once again is being bathed in critical acclaim, with just a few cries of discontent here and there. The new capabilities in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus may appear underwhelming to some observers, but not to Walt Mossberg. "These are things that improve the quality of the phone while generally making a fluid, powerful product even better -- and faster and easier to navigate and use," he wrote. "They secure the iPhone's place as the best smartphone on the market."

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Apple Car Talk Starts Making Sense

The Apple car rumor gained some legs this week with a report that brings some interesting new insight. Though a bit shy on verifiable details -- it cites unnamed people familiar with Apple's plans and vaguely refers to people inside Apple -- the report suggests the company will triple its current 600-person team to 1,800 people as it ramps up its car development effort, code-named "Titan." Previous Apple car reports have linked Apple's hiring of automobile experts to Titan, with some assuming Apple even poached Tesla employees.

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What Goes Around Comes Around: Russia Gets Hacked

Russia has been a prime suspect in recent cyberattacks launched against U.S. government targets. However, Russia has been poked with the other end of the hacker stick. For more than two months, hacker attacks originating in China have bedeviled Russia's military and telecom sectors, researchers at Proofpoint revealed last week. "We also observed attacks on Russian-speaking financial analysts working at global financial firms and covering telecom corporations in Russia," wrote Thoufique Haq and Aleksy F, authors of the report.

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Exploding Chip Could Thwart Cyberthieves

Researchers at Xerox PARC have developed a self-destructing mechanism for microchips embedded on a hardened glass surface. The glass can self-destruct upon command and could be used to secure personal data such as health and banking records. It also can be used to destroy encryption keys stored on memory chips in standard consumer, enterprise and government electronic devices. The research is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Vanishing Programmable Resources project.

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Malware Jumps Apple's Garden Wall

Developers who unknowingly used a malicious tool to code their programs uploaded hundreds of malware-infected apps to the iTunes App Store, China-based iOS developers reportedly discovered last week. Security researchers around the world have analyzed it. Called "XcodeGhost," the malware is hidden in an unauthorized version of a program Apple distributes to create iOS apps. "XcodeGhost is an example of compiler malware," said David Richardson, iOS product manager for Lookout Mobile Security.

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Patched Android Lockscreen Still a Threat

Google recently issued a patch for Nexus mobile devices to fix an Android Lollipop vulnerability that lets hackers bypass the lockscreen and gain control of mobile devices. However, it could take weeks to months for manufacturers and service providers to roll out the patch for other Android devices. University of Texas security researcher John Gordon discovered the vulnerability, dubbed "CVE-2015-3860," and posted details and a video showing the how the lockscreen is bypassed on a Nexus device.

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DMV Meeting Revs Apple Car Rumors

Apple executives reportedly met with officials from California's Department of Motor Vehicles regarding the company's plans to test an autonomous vehicle. Mike Maletic, senior legal counsel for Apple, had an hour-long meeting in August with California's autonomous vehicle experts, including the cosponsors of the state's autonomous vehicle regulation project. The California DMV team reportedly consisted of Deputy Director Bernard Soriano; Stephanie Dougherty, chief of strategic planning; and Chief Counsel Brian Soublet.

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Carly Fiorina vs. Donald Trump: The Fascinating Difference

Watching the Republican debates has been a fascinating experience for me, because I started following Carly Fiorina when she first took over HP. I thought then and I still think that Steve Jobs was the only one to match her on-stage presence and skill set. History has proven her assertion that it was HP's board, not it's CEO, that was the primary problem that needed to be fixed while she was there -- although that also points to her biggest credibility problem now.

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Gadget Ogling: Fresh Fires, Tablet Touches, and Underwater Drones

In case you didn't already know it, Amazon has designs on taking over your television, and Fire TV seems a strong competitor to the refreshed Apple TV. Fire TV's big advantage is that it can stream video in ultra high-definition 4K resolution, while Apple's device cannot. Nor can Roku or Chromecast. Fire TV also has voice control in the form of Alexa, which one could use to check the weather or sports scores while watching a show on Netflix. Storage is just 8 GB, but it's expandable with a memory card.

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Blue Origin Rockets Into Cape Canaveral

Blue Origin on Tuesday announced plans to launch rockets from a Cape Canaveral launchpad, which it has leased from NASA. "The site saw its last launch in 2005, and the pad has stood silent for more than 10 years -- too long. We can't wait to fix that," said Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos, who is also the founder of Amazon. It's the sort of thing the folks at NASA like to hear. People are interested in space again, and a reboot of the space race is playing out between two of the commercial spaceflight industry's top players.

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Apple Dresses iOS to the Nines

Apple on Thursday released iOS 9, the latest version of its mobile operating system. Although more evolutionary than revolutionary, it has some useful additions. The good news is that iOS 9 works on much of Apple's existing hardware. If your device can run iOS 8, it should be able to run iOS 9. However, some of the software's features are available only on the newest iOS devices -- the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and the iPad Pro. I installed the new OS on all of my Apple devices without much of a hitch. Apple Pay fans will find this version of iOS very friendly.

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ExTiX LXQt Breathes New Life Into Weak Hardware

The latest release of ExTiX offers a new spin on an old desktop environment and exhibits a passion for speed and ease of use. ExTiX 15.3, a fusion of the LXDE and Razor-qt desktop environments, has the economy of working in the LXQt desktop environment. LXQt is lightweight, modular, very fast and user-friendly. It is based on the popular LXDE -- that is, Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. I tried several early releases of LXQt on other distros and was pleased with their performance. LXQt proved to be a stable desktop environment.

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Pokémon GO Steps on the Mobile AR Gas

Nintendo and The Pokémon Company teamed up with Niantic on an augmented reality project, complete with a wearable Poké Ball that just might be the next best thing to filling Pokédex with pocket monsters. Pokémon GO players will have the opportunity to catch, trade and battle Pokémon characters wandering the wilds of the real world when the game launches next year. "Bringing the property ... to iOS and Google Play exposes Pokémon to exponentially more potential players than ever before," said IHS Technology's Christine Arrington.

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New Roomba Knows Its Way Around

iRobot on Wednesday unveiled its latest robotic vacuum cleaning system, the Roomba 980. The device combines adaptive navigation with visual localization, cloud-connected app control and increased cleaning power. It is the most capable model to date, according to the company, which has been a pioneer in robotic cleaning tools. The Roomba 980 includes new sensors that allow it to create a map of its environment, keeping track of where it's been and where it needs to go.

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Will the IoT Be Held for Ransom?

A perfect cybercrime storm is brewing, and two of the main ingredients are ransomware and the Internet of Things. Cybercrime has become an industry with all the operational trappings of any legitimate sector, McAfee Labs noted earlier this month. It has its own supply chain, market segments, service providers, and finance and trading systems. It has its own business models. On the other hand, the Internet of Things is young, McAfee pointed out. Smart device hacks and data breaches are just beginning to make headlines.

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Devs Shine Light on Halo 5's Overhauled Engine

Weeks away from the launch of Halo 5: Guardians, 343 Industries and Microsoft on Tuesday revealed some of the technical ingenuity behind what's expected to be the biggest Xbox One game of the 2015 holiday season. The game's developers have been raving about their playtime with the upcoming sci-fi shooter. For starters they're promising first-class digital tourism in Halo 5: Guardians, with galactic locales ranging from life-filled jungles to snowcapped mountains. Also promised is a compelling narrative.

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Facebook's Button Pushing: What's Not to Like?

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that Facebook may integrate an alternative to its ubiquitous Like button. Facebook users have asked for a Dislike button for years, and the company now is preparing to launch a test of something designed to respond to that user demand. The idea is not to transform Facebook into a forum where users could in essence vote up or down on particular posts -- that isn't the point. Instead, the idea is to provide a way for users to express emotions other than Like when posts may contain sad or disturbing news.

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IoT Can Open Doors to Cybercriminals, FBI Warns

The FBI on Monday warned businesses and consumers to be careful when deploying devices that connect to the Internet of Things. As more companies and consumers use IoT devices to improve efficiency and convenience, their connection to the Internet creates opportunities for cybercriminals, the FBI said in a public service announcement. The "Internet of Things" is a broad term that encompasses myriad devices that connect via cyberspace. Poor security measures, patching challenges, and a lack of security awareness give cybercriminals opportunities.

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Hackers Home in on Health, Education, Government Sectors

A New York healthcare provider, California's higher education system and the U.S. Department of Energy have become the latest targets of data bandits. The latest massive data breach at a healthcare provider reportedly took place at Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, which last week revealed that the personal data of more than 10 million people was at risk due to a penetration of its computer systems that dates back to December 2013. There's no evidence that the attackers robbed or have used any of the information -- yet.

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WiFi, Move Over - Here Comes LiFi

Disney researchers last week demonstrated Linux Light Bulbs -- a protocol for a communications system that transmits data using visible light communication, or VLC, technology. Linux Light Bulbs can communicate with each other and with other VLC devices -- such as toys, wearables and clothing -- over the Internet Protocol, according to Stefan Schmid, Theodoros Bourchas, Stefan Mangold and Thomas R. Gross, who coauthored a report on their work. The team modified common commercial LED light bulbs to send and receive visible light signals.

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Unassuming iPhone 6s Could Knock Some Socks Off

Muffled by the rumors Apple TV had gone Hollywood and the giggles the Apple Pencil provoked, the latest additions to Apple's core product line -- the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus -- had to settle for a smaller share of the headlines coming out of last week's Hey Siri event. Although the iPhones received less media attention this year, it was not due to any compromises over quality or lack of forward-facing features. For starters, Apple upgraded the iPhone 6s line to 7000-series aluminum.

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Google, Twitter Forge Open Source Publishing Partnership

Google and Twitter reportedly are collaborating on an open source project that focuses on helping publishers bring instant articles to mobile phone subscribers. Facebook launched its Instant Articles feature earlier this year. The Google and Twitter team-up "is a very important development," said Zebra Social CEO Jordani Sarreal. "While Facebook is keeping the traffic on their site with Instant [Articles], Google and Twitter are trying to be more appealing to content creators in that they can keep their website data with their content."

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NASA May Move Microsatellites Magnetically

NASA earlier this month entered an agreement with Arx Pax to use its Magnetic Field Architecture technology in hardware that will let astronauts move tiny satellites without touching them. The Space Act Agreement marks a major milestone for Arx Pax, CEO Greg Henderson said. "It's exciting to work hand in hand with NASA's brilliant team of scientists and engineers." Henderson and his wife, Jill Henderson, last year launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund development of a functional hoverboard based on the technology.

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Apple Figures Out Where Steve Jobs Got It Wrong

My big takeaway last week, when Apple launched the iPad Pro, was this: Apple just admitted Bill Gates was right and Steve Jobs was wrong. You see, years ago Steve Jobs went on about how the early Windows tablet, which was designed for work and had a stylus, was stupid. Steve was not a fan and pretty much dissed the entire tablet idea and then again dissed the whole idea of a stylus when he launched the iPhone. Well, Tim Cook effectively gave Jobs a royal raspberry with the iPad Pro, which is basically the Apple version of the Windows tablet.

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Gadget Ogling: All About Apple

The latest additions to Apple's iPhone line -- the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus -- are faster, stronger and smarter than the previous models. A zippier processor and faster Touch ID, LTE, and WiFi feature among the incremental upgrades. There are a couple of interesting new features with this generation, primarily 3D Touch. This makes the screen receptive to pressure beyond lightly tapping or holding one's finger on an icon. It adds deeper capabilities throughout, akin to a right-click offering secondary interactions.

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Acer's Revo Build Is a Puzzle of a PC

Acer last week announced the latest in its family of Revo small-form-factor PCs at the IFA 2015 trade show in Berlin. The Revo Build M1-601 consists of a cuboid base unit with a footprint measuring about 5 inches square and a set of easily attachable modules. There are two versions -- one with an Intel Pentium processor and the other with an Intel Celeron CPU. Both have integrated Intel HD graphics and up to 8 GB of DDR4 RAM. Acer plans to launch the Revo Build in Europe in October and in China December.

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Netflix Move Prompts Premature Antivirus Software Obit

Netflix reportedly is in the process of dumping its antivirus software and placing all its faith in an alternative solution to protect its more than 60 million subscribers from online nastiness, a move that prompted one pundit to pronounce the death of antivirus software yet again. Such dire pronouncements have been made for years, and they're likely to be made for many years to come. "Antivirus persists, so I think calling it dead is not prudent," said Jason Brvenik, the principal engineer in Cisco's Security Business Group.

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Nissan's 2016 Leaf Goes the Distance

Nissan on Thursday introduced the 2016 Leaf with an available 30 kWh battery, which provides the all-electric car with an EPA-estimated "best-in-class" range of 107 miles -- a range increase of 27 percent over the previous model. The new battery is standard for Leaf SV and Leaf SL models. In addition to the improved battery, this year's Leaf blows in with an enhanced IT system that is more user-friendly, Nissan promised, and provides drivers with greater vehicle connectivity.

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Raspberry Pi Gets a Touchscreen to Call Its Own

The Raspberry Pi Foundation on Tuesday announced the availability of a touchscreen that brings the low-cost tiny computer one step closer to becoming a standalone mobile device. The touchscreen was in development for nearly two years. The first round of screens will require some assembly of parts that arrive in a small kit, noted Gordon Hollingworth, director of software at Raspberry Pi. For those who can tolerate the wait, shipments of assembled screens will come later.

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Apple Levels up with tvOS

The refreshed Apple TV, tvOS and the Siri Remote Apple presented during Wednesday's "Hey Siri" event may not have been game changers, but the people pushing Apple's renewed focus on gaming are. Television's future lies in apps, proclaimed Apple CEO Tim Cook as he drew the curtain on the Apple TV's new iOS 9-powered operating system: tvOS. That line drew a chuckle from owners of Fire TVs and Rokus, but there's no denying the potential one of the world's most influential companies has when it puts its weight into a new product or strategy.

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Samsung Gear S2 Scores Points for Looking Like a Watch

Samsung last week announced the Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic smartwatches at the IFA trade show in Berlin. The product specs of the Gear S2 and Gear S2 Classic are the same. The main difference between the two is in the design of their faces -- the Gear S2 Classic looks more like a regular watch, while it's obvious the Gear S2 is a smartwatch with apps. They run Samsung's Tizen operating system and can sync with any device having 1.5 GB of RAM or more, running Android 4.4 or later.

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New Apple TV Goes All-In for Apps

Apple on Wednesday held a mammoth two-hour event to introduce a long-awaited new Apple TV set-top box, a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and the expected iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Further, Apple announced new Apple Watch colors and bands, and a special collaboration with Hermes. While the iPhone is clearly Apple's most important product, it's arguable that the Apple TV is its most important new addition. Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that TV "plays a huge role in our lives" but noted that the experience hasn't changed much in decades.

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Sauce Labs' Automated Mobile App Testing Gets Real

Sauce Labs on Tuesday announced the release of its automated mobile testing solution for real devices. The new option lets developers test mobile applications directly on the devices that will run them. About 80 percent of software and application testing is performed manually. Automated testing on real mobile devices brings enhanced speed, fidelity and cost-efficiency to the software development process. The total software testing revenue worldwide was $1.5 billion last year, according to Gartner.

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Verizon Floors the 5G Accelerator

Verizon on Tuesday announced that it was accelerating its efforts to boost wireless connections to 50 times faster than current offerings. The company has begun putting the components in place to enable it to begin field testing a new, speedier wireless technology, known as "5G," next year. "5G is no longer a dream of the distant future," said Roger Gurnani, chief information and technology architect for Verizon. "We feel a tremendous sense of urgency to push forward on 5G."

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Samsung's IoT Products Make Themselves at Home

Samsung last week plunged into the Internet of Things for the home market, unveiling a new hub to control connected gadgets, home and sleep monitors, and a smart washing machine. The company made the announcements at IFA 2015. The SmartThings Hub for home devices is based on technology Samsung acquired a year ago when it purchased SmartThings. It is built around a powerful processor that enables video monitoring, and it includes a battery backup that lasts up to 10 hours in case of a power outage.

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Laser Pointer Hack Easily Dupes Driverless Cars

A simple off-the-shelf laser pointer could be combined with a very basic computer to disrupt the multithousand-dollar laser ranging, or Lidar, systems installed in most self-driving cars, a security researcher warned last week. A setup that costs about $60 could trick the Lidar system, which autonomous vehicles use to sense objects in the road, into responding as though there were obstacles ahead in situations where there were none, said Jonathan Petit, principal scientist at Security Innovation.

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Microsoft Spiffs Up Skype Mobile Apps

Microsoft last week rolled out versions of Skype 6.0 for iOS and Android. The company redesigned the applications to be more natural and intuitive, and it added new features. Skype 6.0 for Android now has a floating action button, which makes it easy to start a new conversation. Its navigation is more streamlined, too. The new iOS version incorporates swipe gestures and makes it easier to share photos, Web links, emoticons and users' locations while on a voice or video call, as well as to start a group chat or a group voice call on the iPad.

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