unveillance

LAS VEGAS--Ever since the launch of the Nest in 2011, programmable thermostats have become one of the hottest in-home technologies.

With its Apple-inspired interface and design, Nest gets the lion's share of the attention, but new competitors are hoping to steal some of the thunder. At CES 2013 here, Austin, Texas-based Allure Energy is hoping to join the party with Eversense programmable thermostat.

Eversense, which works on iOS and Android, is meant to give users the ability to automatically control their thermostats, not based on learned behavior, but on what they're doing in real time. The idea, explained … Read more

The questionable rumor that Apple planned to hold a special iPad 3-related event this month has been amended by its source, who now says that said event is taking place in March instead.

Japanese Apple blog Macotakara today clarified its original report saying that the "special event" it heard about from an "Asian supplier and a source from the United States" that would bring the official unveiling of the iPad 3 is actually taking place next month.

The site added that Apple was still going to have a "strange" event sometime this month, without … Read more

Karim Hijazi knew his nightmare was just beginning when he saw that a mysterious e-mail had arrived in his inbox at 3 a.m. on May 26 that included his e-mail password and the subject line "Let us talk."

That would mark the beginning of a weeklong saga of e-mail exchanges and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) discussions in which Hijazi says a group of hackers told him they wouldn't publicly divulge information they had gotten from snooping on his accounts if he revealed sensitive security information acquired by the botnet-tracking firm, Unveillance, that he launched last year. … Read more

These days, conferences are thankful for not having the word "economic" in their names. Yet the difference between the World Economic Forum in Davos, which, according to most accounts, was a pretty somber affair ("how did we get into this mess?"), and the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Long Beach, Calif., is not just a semantic one.

While both venues summon an elite group of thinkers and doers, TED is decidedly more optimistic. "The Great Unveiling" is this year's theme, and so far, the program has lived up to its promise: Bill Gates unleashed mosquitoes, … Read more