Past Articles by Steve Henn
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Google Mines Our Data For Future Product Ideas This week in San Francisco, Google held its annual developers conference. It was there that the search industry giant laid out its vision for its future and ours. |
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Google's Privacy Shift Powers New Customized Maps The new Google Maps features tailor-made results based on users' habits and search histories. The features were made possible by the revisions Google made to its privacy policies last year, a change that removed most of the barriers between its various services. |
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Google's Privacy Shift Powers New Customized Maps The new Google Maps features tailor-made results based on users' habits and search histories. The features were made possible by the revisions Google made to its privacy policies last year, a change that removed most of the barriers between its various services. |
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Facebook Users Question $20 Million Settlement Over Ads Facebook is expected to pay out $20 million in a settlement over its "Sponsored Stories" advertising service, after placing user images in personalized ads. But the settlement doesn't stop the service, and a legal expert says Facebook's option to let users opt out creates more problems. |
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Facebook Users Question $20 Million Settlement Over Ads Facebook is expected to pay out $20 million in a settlement over its "Sponsored Stories" advertising service, after placing user images in personalized ads. But the settlement doesn't stop the service, and a legal expert says Facebook's option to let users opt out creates more problems. |
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Google Fights Glass Backlash Before It Even Hits The Street From privacy concerns to technology saturation, Google's new technology has had its fair share of criticism — and it's not even on sale yet. The company wants to change those negative perceptions of its wearable computer before it goes on sale to the public. |
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Google Fights Glass Backlash Before It Even Hits The Street From privacy concerns to technology saturation, Google's new technology has had its fair share of criticism — and it's not even on sale yet. The company wants to change those negative perceptions of its wearable computer before it goes on sale to the public. |
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Will Tweaking Windows 8 Be Enough To Revive The PC? When Microsoft introduced Windows 8 last year, the software giant billed the new operating system as one of the most critical releases in its history. The system would bridge the gap between personal computers and the fast-growing mobile world of tablets and smartphones. But this week, the company sent signals that it might soon alter Windows 8 to address some early criticism. |
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Will Tweaking Windows 8 Be Enough To Revive The PC? When Microsoft introduced Windows 8 last year, the software giant billed the new operating system as one of the most critical releases in its history. The system would bridge the gap between personal computers and the fast-growing mobile world of tablets and smartphones. But this week, the company sent signals that it might soon alter Windows 8 to address some early criticism. |
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Deal To Protect Bangladeshi Factory Workers Still Elusive After deadly disasters in clothing factories, labor activists are trying to persuade at least two more retailers to agree to improve working conditions in Bangladesh. Two retail giants have already signed onto a proposal that would mandate that fire and safety inspections be made public and require retailers to pay for needed factory repairs. |
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Deal To Protect Bangladeshi Factory Workers Still Elusive After deadly disasters in clothing factories, labor activists are trying to persuade at least two more retailers to agree to improve working conditions in Bangladesh. Two retail giants have already signed onto a proposal that would mandate that fire and safety inspections be made public and require retailers to pay for needed factory repairs. |
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Deal To Protect Bangladeshi Factory Workers Still Elusive After deadly disasters in clothing factories, labor activists are trying to persuade at least two more retailers to agree to improve working conditions in Bangladesh. Two retail giants have already signed onto a proposal that would mandate that fire and safety inspections be made public and require retailers to pay for needed factory repairs. |
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Factory Audits And Safety Don't Always Go Hand In Hand One way Western brands have responded to consumer concerns about unsafe working conditions in foreign countries is to create an elaborate system of independent auditors. Despite that, incidents still happen. Last week a building collapse in Bangladesh killed more than 400 people. |
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Factory Audits And Safety Don't Always Go Hand In Hand One way Western brands have responded to consumer concerns about unsafe working conditions in foreign countries is to create an elaborate system of independent auditors. Despite that, incidents still happen. Last week a building collapse in Bangladesh killed more than 400 people. |
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Factory Audits And Safety Don't Always Go Hand In Hand One way Western brands have responded to consumer concerns about unsafe working conditions in foreign countries is to create an elaborate system of independent auditors. Despite that, incidents still happen. Last week a building collapse in Bangladesh killed more than 400 people. |
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As Its Influence Grows, Twitter Becomes A Hacking Target The Associated Press, NPR and the BBC have all had their Twitter accounts hijacked in recent weeks. Hacks of high-profile accounts have real-world consequences, and the security at Twitter is coming under increased scrutiny. |
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Social Media's Rush To Judgment In The Boston Bombings As Internet users injected themselves into the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings, false rumors began to spread about possible suspects in the attack. One of those falsely accused in social media was a 22-year-old Brown University student who has been missing. The general manager of Reddit has now apologized to the student's family. |
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Seeing The World Through Google-Colored Glasses The high-tech glasses aren't yet available to the public. But a select group of test customers have received the gadgets after charming Google with their ideas for how to use them. NPR's Steve Henn takes a look at what Google Glass might offer users of the future. |
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Seeing The World Through Google-Colored Glasses The high-glasses aren't yet available to the public. But a select group of test-customers have received pairs after charming Google with their ideas for how they would use the gadget. NPR's Steve Henn also took a look into what Google Glass might offer users of the future. |
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Speak Up! Advertisers Want You To Talk With New Apps Advertisers want to hear what you have to say, and many are about to roll out new kinds of ads you can actually have a conversation with. Marketers are hoping to leverage the power of voice and the kinds of technologies that power Apple's Siri to start selling us all sorts of things. |
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The Ups And Downs Of Cyber Currency Bitcoin Bitcoin is a virtual currency that's traded online. It's been on a wild ride lately, soaring in value during the Cyprus banking crisis. And this week, the price plummeted after a Bitcoin trading exchange was hacked. |
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Facebook's Online Speech Rules Keep Users On A Tight Leash Social networks now hold tremendous power to regulate online speech. Their rules for allowable comments, art and video govern billions of posts worldwide each day. And while Twitter users enjoy a great deal of freedom, Facebook has relatively tight restrictions on what users can say and see. |
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Tech Week Ahead: Rumors Of A Facebook Phone Steve Henn looks at this week's technology news, including a possible Facebook phone announcement on Thursday and a nod to the multiple April Fools' Day jokes on the Internet. |
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Solar-Powered Plane Uses Its Lightness To Fly In The Dark   Creators of a solar-powered aircraft hope to fly it day and night across the U.S. with no fuel, and eventually around the world. It's a quixotic — some might call it nutty — undertaking. But the creators hope the flight helps challenge assumptions about what solar technology can do. |
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Solar-Powered Plane Uses Its Lightness To Fly In The Dark Creators of a solar-powered aircraft hope to fly it day and night across the U.S. with no fuel, and eventually around the world. It's a quixotic — some might call it nutty — undertaking. But the creators hope the flight helps challenge assumptions about what solar technology can do. |
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Solar-Powered Plane Uses Its Lightness To Fly In The Dark Creators of a solar-powered aircraft hope to fly it day and night across the U.S. with no fuel, and eventually around the world. It's a quixotic — some might call it nutty — undertaking. But the creators hope the flight helps challenge assumptions about what solar technology can do. |
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Samsung's On A Roll, But Can It Beat Apple? The company's long-term position in the smartphone market is complicated because of its historical association with hardware. One analyst says that what really matters to consumers are the software and new experiences. |
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Samsung Is On A Roll, But Can It Beat Apple? The company's long-term position in the smartphone market is complicated because of its historical association with hardware. One analyst says that what really matters to consumers are the software and new experiences. |
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Samsung Is On A Roll, But Can It Beat Apple? The company's long-term position in the smartphone market is complicated because of its historical association with hardware. One analyst says that what really matters to consumers are the software and new experiences. |
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'Serendipitous Interaction' Key To Tech Firms' Workplace Design Executives have recently focused attention on Silicon Valley's workplace culture. While companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo operate by their own set of rules, what happens there may influence how many Americans work. The key components? Interactive learning and fun, one expert says. |
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'Serendipitous Interaction' Key To Tech Firms' Workplace Design Executives have recently focused attention on Silicon Valley's workplace culture. While companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo operate by their own set of rules, what happens there may influence how many Americans work. The key components? Interactive learning and fun, one expert says. |
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Tech Companies Like Google Build 'Serendipitous Interaction' Into The Workplace Two women executives, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, have recently focused attention on the workplace culture of Silicon Valley. While companies such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo operate by their own set of rules, what happens there may influence how many Americans work in the future. |
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The Life Cycle Of A Social Network: Keeping Friends In Times Of Change Facebook has unveiled a redesign of its News Feed, but any social network knows that drastic changes come with risks. Just look at Friendster, a site that fizzled after changes to the interface and a subsequent exodus made it less valuable to users. |
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The Life Cycle Of A Social Network: Keeping Friends In Times Of Change Facebook has unveiled a redesign of its News Feed, but any social network knows that drastic changes come with risks. Just look at Friendster, a site that fizzled after changes to the interface and a subsequent exodus made it less valuable to users. |
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Why The Library Of Congress Has A Lock On Your Phone Few of us own the music we listen or the movies we watch in exactly the same way we did a decade ago. And today if you buy a smartphone from a cellphone company, what you can legally do with it — how and where you can use it — may be proscribed even if that phone is fully bought and paid for. |
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Why The Library Of Congress Has A Lock On Your Phone Few of us own the music we listen or the movies we watch in exactly the same way we did a decade ago. And today if you buy a smartphone from a cellphone company, what you can legally do with it — how and where you can use it — may be proscribed even if that phone is fully bought and paid for. |
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Digital Locks Limit Access To Copyrighted Works Owning a copy of a movie or a piece of music doesn't mean what it used to mean. You have it for good on your digital device, but you can't sell it or give it away the way you could with a DVD or LP. And, the phone you may be watching or listening on is similarly out of your control. |
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Street Lights, Security Systems And Sewers? They're Hackable, Too Internet networks control more and more of our environment every day. And many of these things can be hacked. That's because over the past decade, the Internet and the mobile phone network have been layered on top of all kinds of technologies that weren't built with security in mind. |
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Non-Profit Hopes To Get Kids Excited About Computer Coding It's expected that more than one million software and programming jobs will open up in the United States between now and 2020. But the country's educational system is not on track to train enough people to fill those jobs. |
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Does Working From Home Work? It Helps If You Like Your Teammates Marissa Mayer's decision to ban working from home at Yahoo has sparked a debate about the effectiveness of teleworking. NPR's Steve Henn, who works a fragmented schedule from his Silicon Valley home, says research on what works is mixed, but success largely depends on the job and whom you're collaborating with. |
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Does Working From Home Work? It Helps If You Like Your Teammates Marissa Mayer's decision to ban working from home at Yahoo has sparked a debate about the effectiveness of teleworking. NPR's Steve Henn, who works a fragmented schedule from his Silicon Valley home, says research on what works is mixed, but success largely depends on the job and whom you're collaborating with. |
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Is There Room For Smartphones Beyond Android And iOS? Between them, Google Android and Apple's iOS account for more than 90 percent of U.S. smartphone sales, with Windows Phone, BlackBerry and a few smaller players rounding out the mobile market. But the tech world never stands still and other players are making a run for a piece of the growing mobile pie. |
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Is There Room For Smartphones Beyond Android And iOS? Between them, Google Android and Apple's iOS account for more than 90 percent of U.S. smartphone sales, with Windows Phone, BlackBerry and a few smaller players rounding out the mobile market. But the tech world never stands still and other players are making a run for a piece of the growing mobile pie. |
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Google Invites Ideas For Its High-Tech Eyewear Google says it will select several thousand "Glass Explorers" to test drive its augmented technology eyewear. The company is running a contest to find "bold, creative" people with imaginative ideas about how they would use the technology. |
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As 3-D Printing Becomes More Accessible, Copyright Questions Arise A 3-D printer allows people to easily create Yoda busts, Tintin's rocket ship — and even NPR action figures. But as this technology gets cheaper, the budding industry could face the same intellectual property battles that upended the music business a decade ago. |
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As 3-D Printing Becomes More Accessible, Copyright Questions Arise A 3-D printer allows people to easily create Yoda busts, Tintin's rocket ship — and even NPR action figures. But as this technology gets cheaper, the budding industry could face the same intellectual property battles that upended the music business a decade ago. |
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Electric Car Review Dust-Up May Put Brakes On Tesla Profits After The New York Times published a scathing review of Tesla's Model S electric car, the automaker's CEO took to Twitter to slam the reporter. Disputed facts aside, the timing of the spat could hurt Tesla, which is under pressure to improve its financial performance. |
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Electric Car Review Dust-Up May Put Brakes On Tesla Profits After The New York Times published a scathing review of Tesla's Model S electric car, the automaker's CEO took to Twitter to slam the reporter. Disputed facts aside, the timing of the spat could hurt Tesla, which is under pressure to improve its financial performance. |
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Dell CEO And Others Take Company Private In $24 Billion Deal Computer maker Dell is going private in a $24 billion deal that highlights the changing fortunes of the PC industry. The buyout is being led by company founder Michael Dell, software giant Microsoft and the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. |
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Dell Makes Deal To Become Private Company A $24.4 billion buyout that would take computer maker Dell private was announced Tuesday. The group negotiating to buy the company includes private equity firm Silver Lake, Microsoft and Dell's founder Michael Dell. |
