Mozilla hopes to have its version of Firefox for iOS devices out by year's end as part of its push to grow its share of mobile traffic.
Mozilla already offers Firefox on Android, but the OS makes up just a sliver of total Web traffic on mobile, easily surpassed by Google's Chrome browser and Apple's Safari, according to data from StatCounter.
Overall usage of Firefox across desktop and mobile has fallen in recent years, according to Web analytics company W3Counter.
The next time "sincerely" won't do while writing to a prospective employer on LinkedIn, how about you try closing that cover letter with a big, round smiley face?
Buttoned down LinkedIn is adding a touch of modern to its messaging client, streamlining its design while also adding support for digital media like stickers, emojis and GIFs.
The changes amount to a significant overhaul of the interface for the professional social networking site's free messaging client, and its paid InMail service.
The changes make it feel and look less like a clunky email system and more like a mobile messaging app or group chat client.
Google-owned Nest is releasing a new version of its thermostat that has a larger display and is a little smarter than its predecessor.
The high-resolution display is 2 inches in diameter, or 40 percent larger than the second generation model, making it easier to read from a distance. The thermostat also has a slightly thinner profile.
There's a new feature called Furnace Heads-Up, which allows the device check in on furnace activity. Twice a year, the thermostat will look at furnace shut-off patterns to determine if there's an overheating problem. If suspicious activity is detected, users will be notified on the display, through the Nest app and in their monthly Nest report.
Google will for the first time take its marshmallow-shaped self-driving car beyond its home turf in California and onto the streets of Austin, Texas.
In the next few weeks, Google will start testing a few of its prototype vehicles in the area north and northeast of downtown Austin, the company said Monday. The cars will navigate the same area where Google's Lexus SUV self-driving vehicles have been for the last couple months.
Both sets of vehicles will continue to have human drivers on board for the testing, Google said.
The company said in July that Austin would be the next location for tests of its self-driving cars, but Google did not say whether the tests would include the Google-designed prototype.
Uber has failed to screen out criminals from its drivers, prosecutors allege, including 25 drivers who had been convicted of crimes including murder, sex offenses, kidnapping, and assault.
District attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco issued their charges in an amended complaint after accusing Uber in December of misleading customers over its background checks.
Since the initial suit, systematic failures in Uber's background check process have come to light through the discovery process, said the complaint, which was filed Tuesday in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco county.
Google will have to find a new way to attach the modules for its ambitious Project Ara smartphone because the device has failed a drop test.
The admission, made via Twitter, comes a week after Google said it is delaying tests of the phone until 2016. It had been scheduled to enter limited testing in Puerto Rico this year.
No more electropermanent magnets. #ProjectAra #FailedTheDropTest
Google, which likes to tackle big challenges, including human mortality, is at it again, this time taking on another global nuisance: notoriously complicated and ugly home Wi-Fi routers.
OnHub is a sleek, cylindrical Wi-Fi router that's meant to be placed prominently in your home, not hidden under a desk or on the floor, where most of these devices end up.
Judging by photos of the device, users might indeed decide to keep it out in the open. There are no visible antennas, though it has six 2.4 gHz antennas and six 5 gHZ antennas tucked inside.
There's a dimmable light ring at the top that indicates how the device is functioning, and a speaker that uses an audio tone during the setup process. It's just over seven inches tall, and weighs less than two pounds.
Google is delaying initial testing for its modular smartphone, known as Project Ara, to 2016.
The company plans to test the device in the U.S., according to several tweets posted Monday by the Project Ara team. Neither the exact location nor precise timing of the tests was given.
"We are looking at a few locations in the U.S.," one tweet said.
Where are we headed next? We are looking at a few locations in the U.S. #ProjectAra #newlocationcomingsoon
Mozilla wants to make private browsing truly private.
The company is testing enhancements to private browsing in Firefox designed to block website elements that could be used by third parties to track browsing behavior across sites. Most major browsers, Firefox included, have a “Do Not Track” option, though many companies do not honor it.
Mozilla’s experimental tool is designed to block outside parties like ad networks or analytics companies from tracking users through cookies and browser fingerprinting.
Apple and Intel are both making progress in their efforts to hire more women and minorities, according to figures released by the companies this week.
In the first six months of the year, more than 43 percent of Intel’s hires in the U.S. were women and minorities, up from 32 percent at the end of 2014, the company reported in its first mid-year diversity report.
At 43 percent, Intel said it was surpassing the 40 percent diversity hiring goal it set for itself for the full year.
Apple, meanwhile, boosted its hiring of women by 65 percent globally over the past year, to 11,000, the company said in its second annual report.
Two days after announcing a sweeping reorganization, Google has detailed its first departure. Niantic Labs, an augmented reality unit of Google, will be spun off into an independent company.
The split, which is unusual for Google, means that Niantic Labs won’t be part of Alphabet, the new holding company that is expected to be formed later this year to include Google and other parts of the company.
The move was announced by Niantic Labs in a Google+ post on Wednesday, and confirmed by Winnie King, a spokeswoman for Google.
She said the split would allow Niantic to accelerate its growth, “which will help them align more closely with investors and partners in the entertainment space,” but didn’t provide any more details.
Now you can really vent next time you want to say something privately on Twitter.
The company has removed the 140-character limit for its direct messaging tool, in a move that could increase its usefulness and keep users active on its site. The total character count for direct messages is now up to 10,000.
With the change, Twitter might become a stronger competitor in an industry jam-packed with other messaging services like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, Google Hangouts, and basic text messaging apps.
Removing the 140-character limit might prevent some Twitter users from using those other apps. The change arrives as the company faces persistent pressure to expand its user base and demonstrate value to investors.
Google is putting some of the most Google-y Android apps in the spotlight, and is sharing their source code to spur development of other apps.
The site Android Experiments is showcasing Android apps that perform novel and unusual functions. A compass app, called Landmarker, for instance, puts a spin on navigational tools by letting users explore nearby landmarks by rotating their Android device around them.
Another, called IOIO Plotter, is an Android tablet app that converts photos from the tablet’s camera into abstract drawings using physical markers suspended from strings.
There are also apps for smartwatches running Google’s Android Wear software. An app called Coubertin Rings displays animated graphics on the watch face to motivate daily physical activity. It uses built-in sensors on the watch to display rings that represent the wearer’s daily step count.
When Google announced on Monday that it would create a new holding company called Alphabet, of which Google Inc. will be just one part, Larry Page said the new structure would allow the company to get more ambitious things done. But there was still a lot that he didn’t say.
The move should free up time for Page and Sergey Brin to focus on Google’s forward looking projects like self-driving cars, and allow other leaders, like Sundar Pichai, to take care of the core businesses. It should also provide a bit more transparency for Google’s investors, allowing them to see better how those core businesses are performing.
But there are questions too, about how Alphabet will evolve and which other companies might get their own CEOs. Here are four knowns and unknowns about what happened yesterday.
Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft will take a new step toward combating the spread of child pornography, by blocking images identified in partnership with an industry group.
The companies will block images of child sexual abuse that have been identified by the Internet Watch Foundation, a U.K.-based nonprofit that aims to locate and stamp out such content online. The effort is aimed at speeding up the identification and removal of images of child sexual abuse worldwide, and preventing them from being uploaded in the first place.
Only known child sexual abuse images identified by the IWF will be blocked. Each company will download a list of images that have been “hashed” by IWF analysts, under a process that creates a digital fingerprint of each image. The hashes are created from images that IWF’s analysts have assessed, which come from various online sources like reports from the public, and the U.K.’s Child Abuse Image Database.