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Your favorite tech company might be lying to you – and getting away with it
Should there be larger repercussions when companies get caught falsely advertising?
False advertising goes beyond being just an annoyance -- it's a sign of a rotten company with no integrity. It has real-world repercussions, and tech companies often seem to be among the worst false advertisers. Is it time to move beyond a slap on the wrist and start to consider serious legal ramifications when companies clearly break the law?
Martian Watches is a wearables company founded in 2007, most known for its mVoice line of hybrid smartwatches. We reviewed the original mVoice in early 2017, and later that year, the company launched a Kickstarter for the second-gen model. Unfortunately, Martian is now shutting down, after it failed to raise enough funds to complete production of the mVoice G2.
Many companies have tight restrictions on the apps that are installed on company phones, and now Google can help with that. For those preinstalled apps that can't be managed via the Play Store, Google is now allowing G Suite administrators to control the system apps that are enabled or disabled.
Anyone who's familiar with gaming, whether it be on PC or mobile, will know what a Humble Bundle is. The premise is that you can purchase a bunch of games with a similar theme on the cheap, all the while feeling good knowing that a portion of the proceedings will go to charity. Humble Bundle, Inc. has just been purchased by IGN, another entity that gamers will probably be familiar with.
Several years back this company called Square produced a product that let people accept credit card payments on their smartphones using this portable swiper-thingy that plugs into the device's headphone jack. PayPal saw this and decided that it wanted in on this action, so it produced a similar offering known as PayPal Here. The solution worked with phones, but many businesses relying on such products for point-of-sale like to use tablets instead. Now PayPal Here works with those too.
Last week a Wall Street Journal report suggested that Microsoft and Mojang were considering an acquisition worth upwards of $2 billion, and a Reuters article later stated that an announcement would come today, revealing an agreed price of $2.5 billion. Now it's official. Mojang's Chief World Officer Owen Hill has taken to its blog to confirm that the two and half billion dollar acquisition is definitely happening.
There's not a whole lot that one company can do to make the hellish miasma of American air travel better, but bless them, Southwest Airlines is trying. The latest update to the company's official Android app tweaks the interface yet again (the second time in a year), and adds a mobile boarding pass to save you just in case you forgot to print it out on old-fashioned dead trees before leaving.
When the CyanogenMod folks announced the formation of Cyanogen Inc. back in September, the young company had secured $7 million in funding to help it get off the ground. Now, with a few months of momentum behind it, the company has secured an additional $22 million. This money comes from the California-based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz along with pre-established partners Benchmark and Redpoint.
This afternoon, Motorola's Punit Soni shared a post on Google+ to follow up on the company's earlier "more to share soon..." post. Soni's post pointed users toward Motorola Mobility's online upgrade checking interface, which tells users whether or not their Motorola device will be receiving any planned updates.
We've known that something's up at CyanogenMod for a while, and now the cat is formally out of the bag. Today Steve Kondik and other prominent contributors to the CyanogenMod family of ROMs, along with investors and new hires, announced the formation of Cyanogen Inc. The new company first aims to make the CyanogenMod ROM more stable, more widely available, and easier to install on more devices. Investor Mitch Lasky is reporting that the company has secured million in startup capital, and has at least one hardware partnership in the works.
It's almost become trite to hear that Google has bought another company that deals in photo editing software. Yet, here we are again. Today, Vic Gundotra announced on Google+ that Nik Software, creators of the impressive Snapseed app that we saw demoed at CES this year, will be joining the Mountain View team.
[Updated x4: Official Word] OnLive May Be Closing Today—Or It Might Be Fine—As Conflicting Rumors Surface
Update 4: OnLive has finally issued the following statement: We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly-formed
Update 4: OnLive has finally issued the following statement: