Out of all the 6,700 files in the FBI's virtual reading room known as The Vault, one towers above the others in popularity. It's not about Nixon. It's not about John Lennon. It's a one-page memo concerning flying saucers. The FBI recently released a memorandum on the memorandum, declaring the "Guy Hottel Memo" the most popular document in The Vault.

Hottel, then a special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington Field Office, wrote the note in 1950. It concerned a reported sighting and recovery, in Roswell, N.M., of three flying saucers with small, human-shaped bodies inside. That's all pretty exciting, but the memo goes on to say that no further evaluation by the FBI took place. That's a bit anticlimactic.… Read more

T-Mobile's salty, spirited launch of its better-late-than-never LTE network and new contract-free ethos may have felt like a sudden surge come from nowhere, but in fact, it was a well-calculated and slowly calibrated, years-long effort to save an ailing network.

Truth is, the fiery, passionate T-Mobile we saw during its "Uncarrier" event this week wouldn't have been possible without some failures and careful planning. T-Mobile's prognosis is also buoyed by an imminent clinch success: the federally approved purchase of prepaid carrier MetroPCS (the still hasn't been fully approved.)

T-Mobile … Read more

With 3D printing growing ever more powerful, it's really only a matter of time before a 3D-printed house arrives. So far, we've seen Dutch firm Universe Architecture announce its 3D-printed Landscape House, modeled after a Mobius strip. London firm Softkill pooh-poohed Universe's design, since it will use poured concrete in 3D-printed molds, and presented its own spiderweb-Skeletor ProtoHouse.

Not to mention the European Space Agency's plans to 3D-print a moon base, a sort of extraterrestrial abode for astronauts.

Now another Dutch firm has stepped up to the plate. DUS Architects has announced that it will make … Read more

When F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed that "there are no second acts in American life," he clearly didn't foresee the resilient career of the man who once headed America Online. Rita Braver reports:

He was the Boy Wonder of computing, co-founding the pioneering Internet service America Online while still in his twenties, and then helping make it the top-earning stock of the 1990s -- trying, he told CBS News back in 1997, "to build an interactive medium to inspire people's lives."

And if you've ever wondered what happened to Steve Case, look no further. … Read more

Gadgets sometimes have alternative uses.

You can hold up a phone at a U2 concert and show that you, too, can create a religious light source.

You can use a hair dryer to bring your iPhone back to life after you've dropped it in the toilet.

However, I have never heard of someone attempting to pass off a golf-ball finder as a bomb detector. There again, I never thought Harvard could beat anyone at basketball.

Excitingly, there is a trial currently in progress in which a British businessman is accused of fooling the military, the police, nay, even governments themselves into buying bomb detectors that were golf-ball finders.

I cannot imagine how the two might have been confused. But the prosecution alleges that 56-year-old Jim McCormick persuaded many important people around the world that these things could spot bombs, ivory, drugs, and even bits of human bodies.

He allegedly claimed they even worked through walls, under water, and even from planes. … Read more

It's not as if you need one more thing to worry about, but it is the weekend.

You shower at the weekend, don't you?

So here's a tale that might make you look a touch carefully at your shower head.

Simona Wilson, 34, of Redondo Beach, Calif., started to feel ill. She was tired. She felt sick and numb. She had no idea why.

That was until the day she touched her shower head and felt electricity course through her. She had recently remodeled her shower. It had previously been elevated, so she brought it down to … Read more

Rumors have been swirling about Apple and Samsung building smartwatches, but they're not the only ones. One Chinese company is reportedly looking to get into the time-keeping game Firefox OS.

Known for its e-readers and an Android-fueled smartwatch released last year, a subdivision of massive Chinese tech outfit Shanda called Guoke plans to sell a smartwatch in June called the Bambook Smart Watch. The Bambook will come in two flavors, according to TechNode. One will run Android, the other Firefox OS. Reportedly, the watch will cost more than $100, and will have an e-ink screen.

Like Samsung, Shanda has … Read more

AT&T has announced today that it's added support for new cell sites in downtown San Francisco, a city notorious for its infamously stringent network-building rules.

Coverage in San Francisco has been a thorn in AT&T's side since the carrier's exclusive iPhone launch back in 2007, when the carrier received sharp criticism for poor reception and dropped calls.

How could it be that the big city for high-tech products like Apple's iPhone also offered some of the worst coverage in the nation? It doesn't help when it takes years to approve a … Read more

In a world where you can walk into a store and buy the same piece of wall art as 1 million other people, it's nice to have options that are more unique than that. VoicePix is betting people will want to talk, laugh, and sing their way to a piece of art that no one else can replicate. The company takes an audio recording, generates a visual wave file, and prints it out in your choice of colors.

Though VoicePix officially launches March 26, you can get in early to play around with the product. Record into your computer microphone directly on the site or upload a file. It can take up to 48 hours for VoicePix to process your recording. After that, you can view it and choose whether to order it as a physical piece of art.… Read more