London

Facebook raises the curtain on its new U.K. engineering office

Facebook officially opened the doors to its London office today -- making it the social network's first international engineering center.

The social network was courted by the British government, which has been working to make the U.K. a place the tech industry can call home.

According to Reuters, the company's vice president of engineering, Mike Schroepfer, said that London is "rapidly emerging as a global technology hub" and a place that can both provide engineers as well as be a good place for engineers to relocate.

Facebook announced the opening of its U.K. engineering … Read more

A high-tech way to walk through rain and not get wet

The eternal debate about whether running or walking through rain gets you wetter has now become a moot point. An art and technology installation in London lets you make your way through rain without getting wet at all.

You don't need an umbrella or a Gore-Tex suit to achieve this feat. You just need to make sure you're visiting Random International's RainRoom.… Read more

Laundry additive turns shirts, pants into pollution eaters

Last year, we heard about the first article of Catalytic Clothing, an experimental dress that pulls pollutants out of the atmosphere. Now the technology is moving along to the point where it could be used as a liquid laundry additive and become part of our regular clothes washing chores.

According to a release from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the U.K., "Within just two years, we could all be wearing clothes that purify the air as we simply move around in them."… Read more

iPhone 5 launch-day mania

Friday's CNET Update visits the iPhone fanboys and fangirls:

Six years after the first iPhone, people are still excited and lining up at stores around the globe. The iPhone 5 launched in nine countries Friday morning, and Australia was the first to sell it. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was seventh in line at a store in Australia just to say he was one of the first in the world to get one. (That put him 17 hours ahead of customers in California.)

For today's show I interviewed the loyal Apple fans waiting at the iconic 5th Ave. Apple … Read more

BB10 smartphone images make their way to the Web

Codenamed BlackBerry London, the new pictures of this upcoming mobile come from Italian site BlackBerryItalia, via Pocketnow, and tell us something of what we can expect from RIM's last-gasp attempt to win back the smartphone crown.

The image lends credibility to another BlackBerry London image that leaked way back in February, suggesting that RIM has had this phone's design up its suit sleeve for a long time. The London will have an impressively high 768x1,280-pixel resolution, but subsequent touchscreen-only BB10 phones will all have 720x1,280-pixel screens, to help app developers.

BlackBerry 10 is the next BlackBerry … Read more

Hug Me Coat wraps its sad, warm arms around you

We've seen some unusual fashion statements around here before. There's a Wampa-skin dress and a jacket that collects rain, for example, but neither is quite as unusual or strangely unsettling as the Hug Me Coat.

The Hug Me Coat comes from Si Leong Chan, a London College of Fashion student. It's a bright green puffer coat with a row of hands with intertwined fingers running down the front. It gives the illusion of many martian arms grasping the model's torso.… Read more

If London were a circuit board

Wanna get from South Kensington to Piccadilly on the London underground? According to artist Yuri Suzuki 's Tube Map Radio, you'll just need to pass the capacitor and get off at the resistor.

Using an electronic circuit board, Suzuki created a radio that looks like a map of the London underground. He even strategically placed components to reflect London locales -- a speaker volume knob sits at the site of the famed Speaker's Corner, for example, and a power battery gets placement near the Battersea Power Station on the south bank of the River Thames. … Read more

BlackBerry 10 London leaked photo shows touch-screen phone

A new leaked photo of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone, or the "London," promises a completely different looking BlackBerry than the world is used to.

According to the BlackBerry news site N4BB, a photo of the device (which is designed by Porsche) shows a slender touch-screen phone that is the color "gun metal." Several apps are shown in the photo, including Facebook, BBM, and DocsToGo.

Another leak posted by BlackBerryItalia.it shows a video (see below) of the smartphone with a removable 1800mAh LS1 battery.

The London is the first BlackBerry 10 and is slated to have … Read more

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange granted asylum in Ecuador

LONDON -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been granted political asylum by the Ecuadorian government after taking refuge in its London embassy on June 19.

The asylum decision follows a U.K. Supreme Court ruling in May authorizing Assange's extradition to Sweden to face questioning over alleged sexual crimes.

Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patino said his government had given the matter "extreme and careful consideration."

Patino said that extensive talks were held with the U.K. to seek assurances that Assange would not be extradited to a third country -- read, the U.S. -- but that … Read more