When Hackers Strike, Property Insurance May Not Offer Protection By Will Hadfield and Nate Lanxon Some policies written before cybercrime became rampant have outdated terms that can leave companies exposed. Companies used to rely on property insurance for cyberhacking claims. Insurers are balking at paying out claims for hacks and encouraging customers to take out separate cyberpolicies. When Mondelez...
The Future of Wearable Tech Is Called a Hearing Aid By Josh Dean The Future of Wearable Tech Is Called a Hearing Aid. Even if your ears are fine, you might want a device that translates 27 languages, tracks fitness, and monitors vital signs. In the next five to seven years, your hearing aids are...
Restaurants Are Using an App to Staff Their Kitchens By Kate Krader Jobs app Pared helps Bay Area and New York City restaurants find staff in a pinch. The service will expand to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., later this year. Pared helps owners fill vacancies in restaurants—where hiring and retention is hard—on a temporary basis....
This Wearable Pollution Monitor Detects How Dirty Your Air Is By Ami Kealoha Thanks to the development of inexpensive sensors, several products claiming to test air quality have hit the market in recent years. Flow ($179), developed by Paris-based Plume Labs SAS, is a portable pollution sensor that’s encased in aluminum punched with a pattern of asymmetric...
It’s Tough Being the First Birth Control App By Esmé E Deprez Natural Cycles is a fertility-tracking app the couple had built five years earlier. It’s also the first, and still the only, mobile application cleared for marketing as a certified contraceptive in Europe. For those who must or wish to abstain from hormonal contraception and its...
What the Year of the Tech Unicorns Means for the Bull Market By Michael P. Regan Do the impending IPOs of Lyft, Uber, Pinterest, and Airbnb signal that the good times on Wall Street are ending? That’s the vibe on Wall Street these days, at least among those prone to occasional bouts of what could generously...
Did Big Tech Get Too Big? More of the World Is Asking By David McLaughlin The rise of global technology superstars like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google created new challenges for the competition watchdogs who enforce antitrust laws around the world. The companies dominate markets in e-books and smartphones, search advertising and social-media traffic. The European...
Every Move You Make, WeWork Will Be Watching You By Ellen Huet A spate of acquisitions has given the workspace company tools to track and optimize office space. WeWork is acquiring businesses, such as conference room tracking software maker Teem, and developing tools to help companies optimize their office space.Before it’s here, it’s on the...
America’s Cities Are Running on Software From the ’80s By Romy Varghese The only place in San Francisco still pricing real estate like it’s the 1980s is the city assessor’s office. Its property tax system dates back to the dawn of the floppy disk. City employees appraising the market work with software that runs on...
Huawei Sting Offers Rare Glimpse of the U.S. Targeting a Chinese Giant By Erik Schatzker Diamond glass could make your phone’s screen nearly unbreakable—and its inventor says the FBI enlisted him after Huawei tried to steal his secrets. when Huawei, a potential customer, began to behave suspiciously after receiving the meticulously packed sample glass that was...