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Pride in one's lover's bodily parts can lead to a fall in one's own bodily security.

That seems to be the lesson from the tale of an alleged hacker, Higinio O.Ochoa, a 30-year-old Linux administrator from Galveston, Texas, who was arrested by the FBI and charged with unauthorized access to a protected computer.

The accusation, as described by the Sydney Morning Herald, is that Ochoa hacked into several Web sites belonging to law enforcement.

Sometimes, though, the temptation to leave a calling card can be too great. So Ochoa allegedly used a Twitter account to direct … Read more

It feels almost quaint in this era of the smartphone (aka the new pocket watch) to see a company producing a wristwatch that's nothing more (or less) than a wristwatch.

Companies including Sony are producing smart watches, adding texts, tweets, e-mails, and the like to the information you can wear on your wrist. And with products like the Pebble appearing, it may be only a matter of time before the smart watch truly takes hold.

But there is something classic and clean about the simple wristwatch. It tells the time and that's it. That's a lot, however. The wristwatch provides us with a little ritual -- however quick and commonplace -- in which we pay our respects to the passing of time, with no other distractions.… Read more

Wi-Fi speakers that are compatible with Apple's AirPlay wireless audio technology are gradually expected to come down in price this year after coming out of the gate in 2011 with lofty price tags that scared a lot of consumers away. Case in point: iHome's $199 iW2 speaker with AirPlay, which the company says will begin shipping April 1.

This unit is about 25 percent smaller than last year's iHome iW1 ($299); it measures 5.83 by 10.52 by 3.03 inches (HWD). In many regards it's similar to the iW1, but it does not feature … Read more

BARCELONA--It's been an action-packed two years since Jeff Jaffe took over as the World Wide Web Consortium's chief executive, but more action is the order of the day at the standards group.

The W3C oversees the standardization of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), technologies that carry tremendous importance as the Web expands from a medium to publish documents into a foundation for applications that can run on anything from mobile phones and cars to TVs and tablets. These Web standards, combined with the JavaScript programming language and other related technologies, let programmers reach a … Read more

BARCELONA--Facebook would like to build more mobile Web apps and fewer mobile native apps. Really, it would -- but browsers just aren't up to it, the company has concluded.

Web apps naturally span the multitudes of mobile devices that Facebook loves to run on, but they support Web standards so inconsistently that it's a developer's nightmare, said Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor, speaking here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. So Facebook is trying to do something about it: "We're taking on mobile web standards," Taylor said.

It's a two-pronged effort. … Read more

Sorry to burst your bubble, folks, but it is fully tax season. So, if you haven't gotten your W-2s, 1099s, and 1040s all compiled and organized, you'd best get moving.

In any case, here are a few tax apps that you should check out, no matter where you are in the tedious filing process. Download them and enjoy. They will definitely make your life a bit easier. And who knows? They might even make your tax-filing experience fun! Maybe.

TaxCaster (Android | iOS) If you're not quite ready to file, but you want to see what your return … Read more

Let's talk a bit about the effect an incredibly high-resolution screen can have on a video game's presentation. And by video game, I mean PC game.

Thanks to powerful video cards, many PC games are capable of running at resolutions that dwarf what console-only owners are accustomed to.

Most PC gamers however don't get to experience the face-melting experience of a 2,560x1,440-pixel resolution and higher screen however, because of the usual high prices of extreme definition (XD-2560x1440) and extreme high-definition (XHD-2560x1600) monitors.

By offering an XD monitor for about $700, HP changes all that with … Read more

Microsoft, Google, and Netflix have proposed a standard for copy-protected Web video, but HTML editor Ian Hickson has dealt it a serious blow by calling it impractical and "unethical."

"I believe this proposal is unethical and that we should not pursue it," Hickson said in a mailing list message this week. "The proposal...does not provide robust content protection, so it would not address this use case even if it wasn't unethical," he added.

The Web video DRM debate--and this one isn't the first--shows the difficulties of reconciling open standards with the … Read more

If your tax situation is simple (no children, don't own a home, income under $100K, and so on), then you are likely filing a 1040EZ this April. If that's the case, then you may want to think about filing your taxes right from your mobile device.

With the TurboTax SnapTax app, you can fill out your 1040EZ tax form right on your phone or tablet. The app can even enter income information using your device's camera.

Before getting started, SnapTax asks if you'd like to create an account. You can work without one, which is nice, … Read more