consumer electronics - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• Can new smartphones rekindle the BlackBerry fire?

  'Not dead yet' could well be the new BlackBerry marketing theme, as the world prepares to hear about two new two new BlackBerry 10 smartphones to be announced Wednesday.

• High-tech homes: Fridges on Facebook and smart security

  George and Judy Jetson would feel right at home at the CES floor here. With smart washing machines, magic remotes, and refrigerators that blast Top 40 hits, the automated home has arrived.

• Computer convergence will be highlighted at CES

  After sparring for users' attention and wallets, PCs and mobile devices are starting to converge in size, style and how we use them.

• No Microsoft at CES 2013? No problem

  Microsoft won't have its signature mega-booth at International CES 2013 starting next week in Las Vegas, but that's not expected to lessen the trade show's impact, or largesse.

• Worst security snafus of 2012

  The first half of 2012 was pretty bad - from the embarrassing hack of a conversation between the FBI and Scotland Yard to a plethora of data breaches - and the second half wasn't much better, with events including Symantec's antivirus update mess and periodic attacks from hactivists at Anonymous.

• Most memorable tech industry apologies of 2012: From Apple to Google to Microsoft

  Tech vendors have been as bombastic as ever promoting the magical and amazing things their latest smartphones, cloud computing wares and network gear can do. When things go wrong, they're naturally a little less visible, but plenty of companies have sucked it up and done the right thing this year (perhaps with a little legal prodding here and there) and publicly apologized for minor and major customers inconveniences.

• Gartner: How big trends in security, mobile, big data and cloud computing will change IT

  When you go to a Gartner conference one of he main things you'll notice is the sheer volume of data they can generate on just about any IT topic. Last week's Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Fla., was no different. The conference, attended by some 9000 executives focused on the changes security challenges, mobile computing, big data and cloud will be bringing to IT in the near future.

• Intel working on 48-core chip for smartphones, tablets

  Intel researchers are working on a 48-core processor for smartphones and tablets but it could be five to 10 years before it hits the market.

• RIM still has fans among developers and administrators

  Research In Motion continues to struggle as it works to finish the BlackBerry 10 operating system, but the audience at the London edition of the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour developer event still thinks the company can play an important role in the enterprise.

• 2011's biggest security snafus

  Perhaps it was an omen of what was to come when the city of San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2010 couldn't get a backup system running in its Emergency Operations Center because no one knew the password.

• Car tech: The connected car arrives

  Automobile technology has become so advanced that today's cars are essentially computers with wheels. So why aren't we using them to surf the Web, communicate with other cars or order food at nearby restaurants?

• Apple and Samsung: What's behind the patent fight

  Samsung took a step toward finding a kind of "pax tabletica" with arch-foe Apple in an Australian court last week, offering to remove features from its Galaxy Tab to avoid a court ban on sales of the device in that country. But what's really interesting about the case isn't the technical litigation, but the underlying attempt to define how much of a product's design is actually protected under existing, fragmented international laws.

• Patent madness! A timeline of the Android patent wars

  History may look at Android as the tech industry's Helen of Troy: The OS that launched a thousand suits.

• iPad 2 and iPhone 5: What's coming?

  Kyle Wiens and his team at iFixit, a Web site that provides free repair manuals and advice forums, are some of the smartest Apple geeks around. They've taken apart countless iPhones, Macs and iPads to see what makes them tick-and, of course, to find out how to repair them.

• Android 3.0 tablet: Five key features

  Tablet application developers can rejoice now that Google has released its software development kit for Android 3.0, the new edition of the platform designed specifically for tablets.