As the entertainment industries move from an analog to a digital world, traditional media outlets continue to scramble to regain lost revenues. A perfect case in point are radio stations, who run the risk of losing listeners due to rising sales of both MP3 players and smartphones, which are becoming miniature home theaters. Some portable devices currently integrate FM radios, but if the National [...]

How you drive, where you drive and the weather conditions through which you drive an electric vehicle can change the vehicle’s range (how far the vehicle can go on a single battery charge) dramatically. That’s because batteries perform less than ideally in extreme hot and cold weather. For example, earlier this year former GM front man Bob Lutz said he only got 28 miles worth of [...]

Visa and Bank of America are reportedly partnering for a trial program that will allow customers to pay for purchases using only a smartphone. The test program begins next month in New York, says Reuters, and runs through the end of 2010. The mobile transaction market, already embraced by other countries, is starting to accelerate in the U.S., as multiple companies begin to vie for leadership and [...]

Nokia today announced the purchase of Motally, Inc., a San-Francisco-based mobile-analytics company with eight employees, for an undisclosed amount. Motally’s current tracking service, which supports iOS, Android, BlackBerry and web applications, will be adapted for Qt, Symbian, Meego and Java applications, although Nokia says current Motally customers and platforms will continue to be served. The [...]

In the span of just six months, e-books have gone from an interesting curiosity to what many think is the future, as well as the eventual cause of death for big publishing. No doubt, Apple’s iPad and a revamped Kindle lineup have accelerated the momentum of this large-scale shift towards digital publishing, as both the technology and publishing worlds watch consumers go from paper to digital [...]