AMAZON has long talked about using drones to deliver parcels, but a patent recently uncovered shows its big-picture plan: airborne warehouses flying over cities armed with fleets of drones for delivery products on demand. The patent describes “airborne fulfilment centres” that hover over cities at 45,000 feet and use drones to deliver goods to homes below.

Apple has a hidden feature for you in its iPhones: call logs going back as far as four months are stored in near real-time in the iCloud. That's the warning today from a Russian provider of iPhone hacking tools, Elcomsoft, which claimed the feature was automatic and there was no way to turn it off bar shutting down iCloud Drive altogether. Whilst it was well-known that iCloud backups would store call logs, contacts and plenty of other valuable data, users should be concerned to learn that their communications records are consistently being sent to Apple servers without explicit permission, said Elcomsoft CEO …

Outside of the physical safety concerns many consumers have about self-driving technology, some experts believe the most pressing concerns about partnerships such as Honda’s recent one are cybersecurity demands. The two companies—Honda and Alphabet’s now independent self-driving car subsidiary, Waymo—recently announced that they were collaborating on an initiative to implement the latter’s technology into the former’s vehicles. And while the collaboration provides some much needed corporate ratification of self-driving technology’s advancement, many believe that, in order to survive this crucial period of public scrutiny, the two companies should engage in due diligence when it comes to the subject of cybersecurity.

In its typically elliptical style, Amazon is claiming another blockbuster holiday season, highlighted by strong relative growth in sales of its own gadgets. The Seattle-base company issued a press release today that indicates customers “gifted a record-setting number of devices from the Amazon Echo family, with sales up over 9x compared to last year’s holiday season and millions of Alexa devices sold worldwide this year.” “Echo and Echo Dot were the best-selling products across Amazon this year, and we’re thrilled that millions of new customers will be introduced to Alexa as a result. Despite our best efforts and ramped-up production, we still …

Cool new headsets? Check. 3D interactive, immersive experiences? Check. Customers? Um. There's been a lot of hype around VR over the past year, but for all the money being thrown at the virtual-reality market from Facebook, Google and Microsoft, among others, it's still not clear whether the next major change in how we think about computers is going to be driven by VR. The tech itself seems almost otherworldly. When you strap a pair of goggles onto your head, you put screens so close to your eyes that your brain is tricked into believing what you're seeing. Want to pilot a starship through an epic space …

Messaging app Snapchat is buying Israeli augmented reality startup Cimagine Media for an estimated $30-$40 million, marking Snapchat's first acquisition in Israel, the Calcalist financial daily reported on Sunday. Cimagine developed True Marketless Augmented Reality – technology that allows users to virtually place furniture and appliances they wish to purchase in the space of their home, on their mobile devices, at the click of a button.

Fitbit is no longer seeking to block the import of Jawbone’s products, the gadget said in a statement issued to Recode. “Fitbit had filed a complaint against Jawbone with the U.S. International Trade Commission, a government organization that has the power to stop products from being brought into the country,” it notes. Yet, as Jawbone explains: “Fitbit has moved to drop its patent case against Jawbone.”

Making good on its promise to publish AI research of its own, Apple recently released a paper in which it describes a technique for how to improve the training of an algorithm's ability to recognize images using computer-generated images rather than real-world images. “In machine learning research, using synthetic images (like those from a video game) to train neural networks can be more efficient than using real-world images,” Forbes notes.

With pilot programs, press events and demonstration videos, automakers and their partners have showcased just how far they've come this year in advancing connected technology. Regulators also made progress toward a connected future, with policy guidelines on deploying automated vehicles and vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity. Despite the progress, there are many questions left to answer, some of which won't be fully addressed in 2017 or in the next five or 10 years.

South Korea’s leading home appliance manufacturer Samsung Electronics Co. on Thursday unveiled a package of premium kitchen appliances supported with the Internet of Thing (IoT) solutions, targeting the burgeoning upmarket built-in home appliance market in North America amid intensifying competition from its Chinese rivals with budget electronics. Samsung Electronics’ high-end kitchen electronics were revealed two weeks before their official showcase at the CES, the world’s largest tradeshow for consumer technology, to be held in Las Vegas, the United States from January 5 to 8.