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Apple CEO Tim Cook announced last week that Apple had acquired nine startups since October. And, Cult of Mac's Mike Elgan believes one of these companies could be the predictive search app Grokr.

While neither Apple nor Grokr has given any signals that this is the case, such an acquisition would indeed make sense for the tech giant.

Grokr is an app that can be used with iOS. Like Google search, it uses a type of knowledge graph that takes bits of information from across the Web and synthesizes it for users. In a sense, Grokr works a bit … Read more

It seemed like yet another corporate privacy flap: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer decrees that Yahoo Mail users will have their e-mail "scanned and analyzed" so relevant ads can be displayed.

That apparent revelation prompted dozens of news articles in the last few days describing the practice as "creepy" or "freaking people out." One wondered if it was an "aggressive invasion of privacy."

The only problem is that Yahoo hasn't, well, actually changed its policy. At all. A version of Yahoo Mail's terms of service adopted in 2011 gives the company … Read more

Last week we learned that porn is being developed for Google Glass, finally giving me reason to be creeped out about the new technology, even if it is still in the development phase and not yet ready for prime time.

The folks at Google (X) got in touch over the weekend to point me to the developer policies for the Glass platform that specifically prohibit "content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material."

Then today, the first pornographic and super not-safe-for-work app for Glass officially dropped. Even its name is NSFW, but let's just … Read more

Feedly, the feed reader whose developers are trying to pick up where Google Reader left off, announced Monday that the service will get faster, work on Windows 8, and function without a browser extension.

The Web service, also available as an app for iOS and Android, lets people read Web sites via their RSS and Atom feeds. It's a technology that's popular among those with voracious information appetites, but it hasn't made it to the mainstream. In March Google announced that it's killing its Google Reader site on July 1.

Google's table scraps are a … Read more

Your iPhone's camera is good for a lot more than just snapping photos. For example, it can translate foreign-language signs, menus, and other printed materials in real time. And grade the foods at your grocery store. And scan documents on the go.

CamFind turns your camera into a search engine, allowing you to look up information just by pointing the lens at any real-world object or location. And it's pretty darn cool.… Read more

Google on Monday released a small update to its Chrome app for iOS users. The update, which brings faster Web page rendering for slow or unavailable networks, also adds the ability to run a search on Google using your voice. And depending on the search, you may just get an earful back from Chrome with the answer.

To search with your voice in Chrome for iOS, make sure you've updated to the latest version, 27.0.1453.10, from the App Store. Once you've downloaded and installed the update, activate the omnibox as you normally would when you … Read more

As Chrome usage grows on mobile devices, the latest iOS version of the browser finally arrived Monday with the same voice search feature that its cross-platform siblings have.

Chrome 27 for iOS (download) incorporates voice search, which uses Google's own voice-recognition database and not the Nuance-driven Siri.

As with other Google services that use its voice search, including Google Now for iOS, voice search in Chrome for iOS will read back to you your query as it pulls up the familiar blue-link list of Google search results.

One interesting difference between voice search on Chrome for iOS and Chrome … Read more

I have a confession to make.

Please don't tell everyone, but I'd like to kiss someone who's wearing Google Glass.

In fact, if you really push me up against this wall and make me talk, I'd also like to kiss someone while wearing Google Glass.

It's not that I don't think Google Glass is stranger than walking up to a stranger and putting your finger in his or her ear.

It's precisely because of Google Glass's sheer strangeness that I want to know whether it would alter my approach to love.… Read more

Years from now, will historians pinpoint 2013 as one of those myriad present-at-the-creation moments when a new technology entered the mainstream? When it comes to wearable computing, we're not there yet. But it seems that we're getting close.

Asked last week to assess the state of this nascent market, Apple's Tim Cook described wearable computing as profoundly interesting, which might qualify as understatement of the year.

Perhaps more than any other of its many skunkworks, Google's Project Glass has fired imaginations about the prospects -- as well as the perils -- of wearable computing. Hype aside, … Read more