Santa

We'd been expecting new Kindles to be unveiled almost any day, and now that day has been set -- Amazon has sent out invites for a press conference in Santa Monica, Calif., on the morning of September 6.

While it's unclear just what Amazon will roll out, it's a good bet we'll see a new Kindle Fire (or maybe even multiple Fires) and an e-ink Kindle with a built-in lighting option.

New Kindles: What to expect Back in late June, a source told CNET that the next Kindle Fire would have a camera and physical volume-control … Read more

Whoever broke into the home of the late Steve Jobs is probably now wishing that a different house had been the target.

The Palo Alto, Calif., home was robbed on July 17 of more than $60,000 in computers and other items, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office. Kariem McFarlin, a 35-year-old man, was arrested and charged with the crime.

And apparently it wasn't hard for police to catch him.

After some of the stolen computers were plugged in, the PCs communicated with Apple servers to perform needed upgrades, according to The Daily. That alerted Apple security people and Palo Alto police, … Read more

Since its relatively impressive launch last February, there's been a disconcerting lack of quality software titles available for Sony's powerful portable. Sure, there's a few notable games on the horizon including LittleBigPlanet, Call of Duty, and Assassin's Creed, but it's the downloadable efforts that really hold the true potential of the system.

Sound Shapes first debuted at E3 2011, where it headlined Sony's debut of the Vita. Since then it has slipped under the radar, quietly being developed by Queasy Games and Santa Monica Studio.

Now with the game ready to go, we're wondering if Sound Shapes is the shot in the arm that the Vita needs or if it's a disappointing casualty of its own hype machine.… Read more

In a post on Sony's PlayStation.Blog, game director Todd Papy has announced that the fourth God of War console game will be called God of War: Ascension and will come to the PlayStation 3.

Judging from the teaser-trailer, Ascension looks to be a prequel of sorts, telling the story of Kratos before he became known as the Ghost of Sparta, "a time when something other than rage consumed him."

Sony will have more information about God of War: Ascension on the PlayStation.Blog April 30, but don't expect to be playing the next Kratos epic until spring 2013. … Read more

NEW YORK--Today at the 2012 New York auto show, Hyundai debuted not one, but two new versions of the 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe for two different kinds of crossover buyers.

The first debut was the Santa Fe Sport, a small crossover that seats five. Under its hood, drivers have a choice between either a 190 horsepower direct-injected 2.4-liter engine that should net an estimated 33 highway mpg or the turbocharged and direct-injected 2.0-liter engine that outputs 264 horsepower at the expense of a pair of highway mpg. If these engines sound familiar, it's because they're the … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Just as Mobile World Congress was set to begin, Orange announced a new Android smartphone powered by an Intel Atom processor.

Code-named the Orange Santa Clara, the handset will launch later this year in France and the United Kingdom. At that time, Orange also will reveal pricing and the phone's official name.

Outside of the processor, which is pretty cool by itself, the Santa Clara brings a lot to the table. The candy bar handset measures 123mm long by 63mm wide by 9.99mm deep and weighs 117 grams. The 4.03-inch display has 600x1024-pixel resolution and shows … Read more

Any budding Dr. Frankensteins in the house? Here's a robot that's not only good for DIY surgery, it's open-source too.

The Raven II was developed at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of Washington and modeled on a system originally designed for military use. Five newly completed systems are being shipped to test centers throughout the U.S.

While the da Vinci Surgical System has been widely used for prostate and other surgeries because it's minimally invasive, the machine is very expensive and not portable. It also uses proprietary software.

The Raven II is more affordable at about $250,000 and its Linux-based operating system lets users modify code. Seven Raven IIs at centers including Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University will be linked together for collaborative experiments, according to UC Santa Cruz. … Read more

If Ford engineers had their way, Santa Claus would be delivering packages to all the good girls and boys on Christmas Eve in a Ford sleigh concept.

The muscle car-inspired, bright-red, concept sleigh is powered by a 1.0-liter EcoBoost engine and boasts 125 horsepower, with 170Nm peak torque (with 200Nm overboost)--giving it the highest power density of any Ford production engine to date.

Ford engineers apparently presented the concept sleigh design to Santa and Mrs. Claus, along with its environmental and cost-saving advantages.

Each Christmas Eve, Jolly Old St. Nick reportedly circumnavigates the globe--124,421,727 miles--in a … Read more

Editor's note: This story originally ran in 2009. In the spirit of the holidays, we thought we'd run this touching piece again.

On a recent Christmas Eve, Jeff Martin found himself forced to explain to a Canadian general why, when Santa Claus passed through Toronto that night, Google Maps had placed the city in the United States.

Martin, then a senior marketing manager in Google's Geo group, was part of a huge team of people involved in the joint U.S.-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command's annual NORAD Santa tracker program, a long-running effort to … Read more