Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Market, and the app developers themselves aren’t providing enough information on what data the apps are collecting about children, claims a damning report by the Federal Trade Commission. The report, called ‘Mobile Apps For Kids: Current Privacy Disclosures are Dis-app-ointing’ [PDF], Google, Apple and developers…

Rihanna and Chris Brown, shown here in 2008, will appear together on a song. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)Chris Brown and Rihanna are collaborating? Vibe reports that Brown has recorded two verses for a remix of the Rihanna song “Birthday Cake.” The unexpected announcement comes days after Brown’s controversial appearance (and victory) at…

Some companies are almost entirely virtual, like blog host Automattic. Others grow through acquisitions, like what Groupon is doing in the Bay Area piecing together a tech team thousands of miles from its Chicago headquarters. Another strategy is to build strategic outposts, like Facebook’s new engineering office in New York….

A new iPad from Apple is expected in early March, and consumers are quite opinionated about improvements they’d like to see in one of the best-selling tech devices of the past few years. We reached out to consumers for feedback. In a nutshell, they want a USB port to connect…

Valentine’s Day is just two days away. So where are YOU spending it? BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Downtown Bethlehem Association is fighting back against Foursquare, a location based social networking site, after it deemed the city one of the lease romantic in the country. Last week, Foursquare said Bethlehem was…

Nearly 800 elementary, middle and high school students from across the state are expected to attend the Nebraska Robotics Expo in Ashland this year. The students will get a chance to experiment with robotics at the expo, to be held Saturday at the Strategic Air and Space Museum. Organizers say the…

Good news for BlackBerry PlayBook owners. The long-awaited software update is due on Tuesday, meaning you’ll be able to have native email on your tablet, run Android apps on it, and do much more. The bad news? It was originally due back in October. And in my opinion, the PlayBook…

SCIENTISTS have created a robot made from DNA that can be instructed to find diseased cells in the body and deliver a payload to kill or reprogram them, according to a study from Harvard University. The robot was made by folding DNA strands into a shape roughly like a clamshell….

The German company Fraunhofer will present the sketching robot at its booth at the CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany, in March. (Robotlab / Fraunhofer) By Deborah Netburn February 18, 2012, 8:00 a.m. Smile for the robot, honey! Scientists and artists have teamed up at the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and…

The Harper government, which took heavy criticism this past week over a bill to give police new Web snooping powers, is fighting back accusing chief rivals, the NDP, of using underhanded tactics to oppose the legislation. The Conservatives charged Friday that the New Democrats were behind a nasty and anonymous…