Obama to Congress: Pass housing bill
5:04PM EST September 29. 2012 – Seeking to make Congress a major issue in his re-election bid, President Obama called on lawmakers today to pass a bill designed to help struggling homeowners refinance their properties. “Last week, mortgage rates were at historic lows,” Obama said in his Saturday radio address. “But instead…
Chicago looks to Twitter for answer to gun problem
CHICAGO — The city of Chicago is asking residents with ideas on how to get illegal guns off the streets to share their thoughts – in 140 characters or fewer on Twitter. The initiative is part of Chicago Ideas Week, an annual forum for innovators, artists, scientists and others to share…
Robot Carries Objects on Serving Trays: Robo-Butlers Around the Corner
After watching the Woody Allen classic, Sleeper for the 1000th time, I assumed that we’d all have cold, impersonal robot butlers in our homes by now. Well, it turns out that one of the main challenges for robo-butlers is their lack of ability to carry items on a tray without…
Robot Roulette
Welcome back for another round of Robot Roulette, our new interview feature where creators spin the virtual roulette wheel to find out what questions they’ll answer. We’ve got 36 possible questions, and each week I will select at random which of those questions our guest gets to tackle. This week we…
HDTV and Home Theater Podcast Podcast #550: Solid Signal HD Blade
Every time we publish a story about cutting the cord we get a ton of interest. Whether it be a new online service or a new antenna to be used for pulling in free, over-the-air HD signals, our listeners and readers respond with great feedback. So when we found out…
Foursquare partners with OpenTable to offer in-app reservations
Foursquare has partnered with OpenTable to offer an in-app reservation service for its users. In a move that is entirely unsurprising except for how long it took Foursquare announced it will be partnering with OpenTable to enable restaurant reservations. With Foursquare’s update to its recommendation engine being pushed through just…
Another iPad Mini Physical Mockup on Video
Mactakara posts some photos and a video with hands on a mockup of the rumored iPad Mini. The video isn’t particularly revealing, and we’ve seen video of these mockups before, but provides another frame of reference for the size of such a device. The photo below shows the relative size…
Jay-Z helms star-studded Barclays Center opening
Jay-Z performs the inaugural concert at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Friday.(Photo: Evan Agostini EVAN AGOSTINI/INVISION/AP)Tags 12:01PM EST September 29. 2012 – What did Jay-Z do last night? Oh, nothing much, just opened the Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets, of which he’s a Is there…
Nokia cuts smartphone prices before new models arrive
HELSINKI (Reuters) – Struggling phone maker Nokia has knocked 10-15 percent off the prices of two of its top of the range smartphones, hoping to boost sales before newer models arrive in markets in November. Nokia has cut the price of the Lumia 800 by around 15 percent and the Earlier this…
BlackBerry stock closes higher but enthusiasm wanes
Enthusiasm over Research In Motion Ltd.’s better-than-expected second quarter results cooled somewhat Friday as investors took stock of the challenges that continue to face the BlackBerry maker. “Nothing in our thesis has changed,” TD Security analysts said in a note to clients. “We are still concerned that the device…
