A small company in Arkansas is showing an unexpected side to Apple’s voice-based intelligent assistant Siri. This YouTube video shows various home appliances being controlled via voice command on the iPhone 4S, from adjusting the thermostat and light dimmers to turning on Blu-Ray DVD players. Little Rock-based Carnes Audio, which custom installs home automation systems, created its own promotional... 

It’s 4 o’ clock in Las Vegas at CES 2012, and you know that that means: it’s time for the second of our daily live podcasts straight from our stage in the Grand Concourse. We’ve got demos, interviews, and giveaways. You can win just by tweeting, or if you’re in the area, by dropping by and entering in person. Or both, why not? We’re all footsore, throatsore, and... 

LAS VEGAS — Swivl is a personal robotic cameraman that’s smart enough to pan and tilt on its own, keeping whoever is holding its electronic marker in the frame. As you see in the video, you mount an iOS device such as an iPhone to Swivl, and when you begin recording, Swivl will point your iPhone in just the right direction to frame you up in its shot, performing just like a human... 

The web, as we all know, was built for humans. A nice graphical interface to the internet, which has been around much longer. But as the web has grown from a nice way to display information to the largest computing infrastructure on the planet, we need to make the web friendlier for computers once again. Computers don’t want to look at pretty web pages. They want data. Of course, there are a... 

Spotify’s unlimited free streaming and sharing service was music to American ears when it launched in July 2011. Now comes a dissonant note: ten-hour monthly caps will be implemented on all free accounts when the six-month promotional period comes to an end for early adopters next week. “All new Spotify users, both in the U.S. and in all other countries in which Spotify is available,... 

It’s not exactly a surprise at this point, but Nokia has just officially revealed the long-awaited Nokia Lumia 900. Formerly known as the Ace, the Mango-powered 900 packs pretty much everything we expected it would — a 1.4 GHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and the same sort of 8-megapixel sensor as seen on its little brother the Lumia 800. Despite having the same camera, the 900 definitely beats... 

Buy-one, get-one free. Half off. Two-for-one. Consumers love getting something extra. Lenovo‘s new IdeaPad YOGA is being marketed as a four-in-one device. The chameleon-like computer can switch from a laptop to a tablet in three positions: flat, easel-like for touchscreen-based working, and a propped-up position. The company introduced the device at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Open... 

At this point, video is just a regular part of the web. But how is it gaining on regular TV watching. Just in terms of audience reach, Nielsen estimates that almost 145 million people watch video online in the U.S., compared to about 290 million who watch traditional TV. So the penetration of online video is already about half of the overall TV-watching population. Yet for all the video people watch...