Miscellaneous

Once you're famous, you get inundated with offers to appear in ads.

But which ones to choose? Should you peddle soap or Siri? Should you declare your love for Buick, while secretly pootling around in your Mercedes?

Stephen Hawking made an interesting choice to advertise auto insurance -- Go Compare's online auto-insurance comparison service, to be precise.… Read more

Samsung is planning to bring a television to the Consumer Electronics Show that looks, well, see-through.

On its blog yesterday, the technology company posted an image of a television that's sitting vertically instead of horizontally. The set also appears to be sitting on a landscape in which the viewer can look through the display to see what's behind it.

Samsung was slim on details, and only had this to say about the set: "A true innovation of TV design is coming up with an unprecedented new TV shape and timeless design."

The Verge was first to report … Read more

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has launched a new membership category to try and bring more startups into the consumer electronics fold.

The CEA -- which represents thousands of consumer electronics firms -- has created the new $95 membership category as a means of "fostering innovation" in a stagnant economy.

Regular membership fees begin at $850 per year and can go as high as $40,000, depending on a company's annual revenues. Membership includes free registration for the Consumer Electronics Show.

The trade association says it can better serve both "new and established" companies with … Read more

Android and iOS devices were apparently popular gifts this Christmas -- more popular than ever before.

Device activations soared from their daily December average of 4 million to 17.4 million on Christmas Day, a 332 percent increase, according to analytics firm Flurry. That's more than double the 6.8 million devices activated on Christmas last year, the previous single-day record holder. And in a first, more tablets were activated on Christmas this year than phones. Apple tablets dominated the category, but the Kindle Fire HD 7-inch made its strongest showing ever.

iPhone and iPad app downloads jumped 87 percent … Read more

Apple CEO Tim Cook received only $4.2 million in compensation this year.

A proxy statement Apple filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed Cook's base salary as $1.3 million with non-cash compensation making up the rest.

In contrast, Cook was given $378 million in overall compensation last year and $59 million the previous year. But the lower total compensation is all part of a plan.

As described by The Next Web, Apple's board gave Cook 1 million in restricted shares in August 2011 when it appointed him CEO. Worth around $376 million at that … Read more

Amazon continues to reign as the most popular online store for customer satisfaction, according to a report out today from ForeSee.

Measuring the top online retailers for the holiday shopping season, ForeSee awarded Amazon a score of 88 out of 100, matching the company's top grade from last year. Amazon has scooped up the highest scores in the index for eight straight years, in large part because of the appeal and variety of its products, ForeSee said.

"At this point, Amazon has been dominant for so long and has such a history of focusing on the customer, its … Read more

Santa is on the way. As of this writing, according to Google's new Santa Tracker, Kris Kringle and his reindeer are in Canberra, Australia, dishing out gifts and toys to the girls and boys down under faster than you can say, "Paul Hogan's your uncle."

Those lucky Aussies always get everything before the rest of us, whether it's making it through the Mayan apocalypse unscathed or landing some sweet Christmas swag earlier.

But wait, the long-standing NORAD Santa tracker (now powered by Microsoft's Bing maps) is also monitoring the fat man and his flying venison, too. The official U.S. government-sanctioned Santa tracker currently has him over Japan as I write this.… Read more

All joking aside.

It isn't easy, but I'll try.

Technology doesn't always represent progress. It just thinks it does.

Gadgets inspire an astounding degree of self-indulgence.

They make you believe you have 5,000 friends, when you're lucky to have 5. They let you swear at the president and the pope, without them knowing who you are. They let you taunt, abuse, flatter, worship, preen, boast, and whine. … Read more

It didn't take Facebook long to backtrack over controversial policy changes it intended to make regarding its photo-sharing app Instagram.

A public backlash was ignited by Instagram stating that had it the perpetual right to sell users' photographs without payment or notification. Under the new policy, Facebook claimed the right to license all public Instagram photos to companies or any other organization, including for advertising purposes, which would effectively transform the Web site into the world's largest stock photo agency.

"Instagram is now the new iStockPhoto, except they won't have to pay you anything to use … Read more