The Niconico (“smiling”) website hosts video-sharing communities of various interests, ranging from robots, animation and cosplaying to politics, sumo and the military. The annual offline meet-up, at which display booths and stages are aired live online for those who can’t make it in person, last year drew about 125,000 visitors, with some 7.6 million viewers logged on to watch through …

  Homes with the accompanying tag of “smart” are often described as deploying devices that can tell the temperature and air quality as signals of the home’s health status. What about residents’ health status? A team from MIT believe that, as health-monitoring technologies advance, future smart homes will not only monitor the environment but also people’s vital signals such as …

Emails to and from President Barack Obama were read by Russian hackers last year in a breach of the White House’s unclassified computer system, The New York Times said Saturday. Earlier this month, US officials admitted there was a cyber “event” late last year, but refused to confirm reports Russia was behind the attack. However the incursion was “far more …

UK-based Williams Advanced Engineering, the technology and engineering services business of the Williams Group, has collaborated with UK-based Aerofoil Energy to develop an aerodynamic device that can reduce the energy consumed by refrigerators in supermarkets and convenience stores. For supermarkets, large consumers of power that are biting into operational costs are the stores’ refrigerators. Open-fronted multideck refrigerators which line the …

  A research project has been under way to explore a biometric authentication system dubbed Bodyprint, with interesting test results. Bodyprint has been designed to detect users’ biometric features using the capacitive touchscreen as an image scanner. As such, one would use Bodyprint as a convenient replacement for PIN codes for smartphones. The biometric scanner can scan body parts such …

  A group of former top Sony Corp executives has delivered an unusually blunt critique to the firm’s chief executive Kazuo Hirai, accusing him of losing sight of innovation by focusing on cost-cutting. At a meeting at Sony’s Tokyo headquarters last Thursday, five former executives, including PlayStation creator Ken Kutaragi, took Hirai to task for failing to encourage the kind …

Acer, besides launching its triple-SIM supporting Liquid X2 smartphone at its Next@Acer event in New York, has also launched a new Chromebook, three tablets and several notebooks and laptops in the market. The company also unveiled a new all-in-one PC. The tablets introduced are the Iconia Tab 10 (A3-A30), Iconia One 8 (B1-820) and Acer Predator Tablet. While the two …

  Motorola has made two metal-based Moto 360 smartwatch variants available to buy in India from the company’s exclusive online retailer, Flipkart. These are the first metal band variants for the Moto 360 to have been made available in the country. The metal bands introduced are the Light Chrome Finish Stainless Steel and Dark Chrome Finish Stainless Steel bands, both …

Soon after listing the Andi Uddaan Quadcore and Andi5 Stallion+, iBall has now listed the Cobalt Oomph 4.7D smartphone on its site. As of now, there is no word on availability and price details of the handset. The dual-SIM based iBall Cobalt Oomph 4.7D smartphone runs Android 4.4 KitKat out-of-the-box. The domestic handset brand promises that the smartphone is upgradable …

  Acer not only introduced its Liquid X2 smartphone alongside several laptops, tablets and one Chromebook but also announced three new wearables in the market. The fitness tracking bands, namely Liquid Leap Active, Liquid Leap Curve, and Liquid Leap Fit, will be compatible with Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices. The pricing and availability details of the bands however stay …