The $1 Billion Blog: Yahoo Buys Tumblr

Yahoo is buying online blogging forum Tumblr for $1.1 billion as CEO Marissa Mayer tries to rejuvenate an Internet icon that had fallen behind the times.

The deal announced Monday represents Mayer's boldest move yet since she left Google 10 months ago to lead Yahoo's latest comeback attempt. It marks Yahoo's most expensive acquisition since the Sunnyvale, Calif., company bought online search engine Overture a decade ago for $1.3 billion in cash and stock.

Bungle in the jungle: John McAfee's Belize home burns to ground

Just when you thought the strange story of John McAfee was over….

The former island home of anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee burned down Thursday afternoon under circumstance he told FoxNews.com were “suspicious.”

It’s an odd choice of words from a man whom the Belize police found suspicious, following the November 2012 murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull, a well-liked builder from Florida who was shot at his home in San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye.

That incident led McAfee on a bizarre “Catch Me If You Can” flight from the police that took him into Guatemala and eventually back to the U.S. and Portland, Ore., where he now resides, hard at work on several books and movies about his life. McAfee chronicled his own exploits by blog and phone, turning the crime into farce.

The murder remains unsolved.

Read more in the full story at FoxNews.com.

Google Glass: What you can and can’t do

Don’t bother hunting for pornography with Google’s new wearable gizmo. There’s nary a naughty bit in sight -- not through the rose-colored world of Google Glass, anyway. But what you can see is a pretty incredible glimpse of the future.

A PG-13 glimpse, that is; the adult-film industry is taking a pass on Glass, for now.

"We've decided to take a wait-and-see approach to Google Glass,” Steven Hirsch, founder and co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment, told FoxNews.com. “We want to see how quickly our target audience chooses to adapt it before we make any decision to move ahead."

Peter Acworth, CEO of San Francisco-based Kink.com, told the Silicon Valley Business Journal that Glass "opens up new opportunities for reality-based films. You could film picking up someone at a bar and taking them home. It takes the whole genre of POV and reality productions one stage further."

What Glass will do is remarkable, however -- and it’s great for kids for now, thanks to what appears to be parent-friendly, “moderate” search filter settings and this laid-back attitude from the sex industry.

Read more in the full story on FoxNews.com.

RAF Museum to raise Nazi bomber from 1940 Blitz out of English Channel

A British museum has begun the process of lifting the only Nazi bomber to survive the World War II Blitz on London out of its shallow grave -- under 60 feet of water and shifting sands under the English Channel.

In the fall of 1940, the southeast coast of England was under heavy attack by the German Luftwaffe, as Hitler sent wave after wave of bombers to the country in his efforts to blast the country out of World War II.

In August, early in a campaign that would come to be known as “the Blitz,” a formation of German Dornier Do-17 bombers was intercepted and one was shot down. It landed on Goodwin Sands, a large sandbank off the coast of Kent County, the last bit of rolling English countryside before Britain gives way to the straits of Dover, 20 or so miles of cold sea, and ultimately France.

The aircraft touched down relatively safely, but as it sank to the sea floor it flipped upside-down. And there it stayed, buried by the English Channel, the sandbar, the tides and the decades. Until now.

Read more in the full story on FoxNews.com.

Google Glass demo, live on the Fox Business channel

Glass is a lopsided yet oddly comfortable hunk of plastic, silicon and titanium. The brains of my device were housed in two hunks of gray plastic, all on the right side (and no, there’s currently no option to swap sides). Google has versions in a variety of colors, including a gorgeous bright orange. If you’re going to call attention to yourself, may as well do it in style.

At the back is a battery and a tiny speaker that rests against your head, and uses the bones in your skull to amplify its output. The front contains the camera, processor and a tiny display screen -- your interface to the world of Google.

Google Glass hackers can see what you see, hear what you hear

Thanks to a glaringly obvious security flaw in the futuristic Google Glass wearable computer, a hacker could within minutes take control of the device -- seeing what you look at, hearing what you hear, experiencing life through your senses.

“If the camera is on your head and the microphone is on your head, I’m seeing through your eyes, I’m hearing through your ears. The only thing I can’t get access to are smells in the room and your thoughts,” Jay “saurik” Freeman told FoxNews.com.

Google Glass is the Internet giant’s vision of an always-on, digitally connected future, disguised as a pair of glassless eyeglasses. It’s a lopsided hunk of plastic, silicon and titanium with a video camera and microphone that rides in the glass frame over the user’s eyebrow.

And hackers can get on board Glass, Freeman said, thanks to 16 characters of XML code (“Allow backup = false”) and a simple fact: Unlike any Android-based tablet or smartphone, there’s no security built into Google Glass at present. No lock screen, no voice command code, nothing.

Read more in the full story on FoxNews.com.

Google Glass, live on Fox News with Megyn Kelly

I demoed Google Glass live on Air with Megyn Kelly today. Google cursed. Of course. Thanks for that, Google. Next time, I'm taking Siri with me.

Hands on: 18 hours with Google Glass

Today is my first full day as a cyborg.

I’ve spent the past 18 or so hours wearing Google Glass -- the Internet giant’s vision of an always-on, digitally connected future, disguised as a pair of glassless eyeglasses.

Looking past the double-takes and outright stares from everyone looking at me, it’s easy to see the potential of this crazy gizmo. But for now, well, it’s weird being one of the borg.

Glass is a lopsided yet oddly comfortable hunk of plastic, silicon and titanium. The brains of my device were housed in two hunks of gray plastic, all on the right side (and no, there’s currently no option to swap sides). Google has versions in a variety of colors, including a gorgeous bright orange. If you’re going to call attention to yourself, may as well do it in style.

Read more in my full story on FoxNews.com.

Smartphones have outgrown the average pants pocket

They're too big for YOUR britches.

Like flat screens and french fries before them, smartphones have been supersized, swelling in length and girth as more Americans use them to surf the web and send emails.

The Samsung Galaxy S from 2010 was 2.53 inches wide and 4.82 inches tall; the newly announced 2013 edition is 2.83 by 5.5 -- too big for the average pair of American khakis, said Doug Conklyn, senior vice president of global design for Dockers.

“We recently increased the size of our ‘coin pocket,’ which is the pocket-within-the-pocket on the wearer’s right, from 3x3 to 4x4 to accommodate today’s larger phones,” Conklyn told FoxNews.com.

Read more in my full report at FoxNews.com.

Samsung Galaxy S4 review: A powerful, giant, confusing smartphone

With more features than Batman’s belt has gadgets, the do-anything Samsung Galaxy S4 is an elegant, powerful smartphone as likely to confound as it is to amaze.

The flagship in Samsung’s lineup and easily one of the best Android phones on the market, the Galaxy S4 can tell where you’re looking (and turn the page for you), translate over a dozen languages in real time, make you a pro photographer, help you lose weight, and more.

And to support so many features, this phone has menus and buttons galore. Indeed, it has so many menus, it’s menus actually have their own menus.

Samsung has thrown so many features into its new phone that the company actually bakes in an “Easy mode” that simplifies the interface down to a handful of easy to read items. You can turn the world’s smartest phone into the world’s dumbest, in other words.

While the simplicity of such a mode is likely to be a godsend for new smartphone users and those flustered by features -- I found it to be a breath of fresh air -- those willing to dive into the deep end of the feature pool will be rewarded with some impressively powerful tools that the company has made clear efforts to make intuitive.

Read more in my full review at FoxNews.com.

Budgetary cost-cutting realigns military for cyberwar

President Barack Obama has released a $3.77 trillion, 2,000-page spending plan that cuts some cutting edge military technology projects in favor of a fifth domain for battle: cyber.

The White House on Wednesday proposed shrinking the portion of the budget spent on the Department of Defense to $526.6 billion in discretionary funding -- a decrease of $3.9 billion, or 0.7 percent, below the 2012 level. To enact those decreases, the Pentagon wants to cancel the Missile Defense Agency's Precision Tracking Space System, which is intended to intercept ballistic missiles, "due to high technical risk and greater than anticipated cost."

 In a nutshell, the armed services are shedding plans for some physical weapons to more actively plan for cyberwar.

“There’s a significant focus on the Defense Department to have the right levels to respond to whatever happens out there,” Michael A. Brown, the former director of cybersecurity coordination for the Department of Homeland Security,  told me. “In the military, there’s a significant pull to increase the number of forces trained to work in the cyber domain.”

Read more in my full report on FoxNews.com.

Windows XP death watch begins

If you or your workplace are still using Windows XP, it’s time to move on. Microsoft will officially end support for the 2001-vintage platform on April 8, 2014, just shy of a year from now. That means no more service packs, no more updates and, most importantly, no more security patches.

Smithsonian releases Wright brothers contract detailing 'first in flight' claims

Were the Wright brothers first in flight? Read the fine print.

A little-known 1948 contract between the estate of Orville Wright and the Smithsonian has the museum legally bound to call the Wright brothers first in flight: "The Smithsonian shall [not state] any aircraft ... earlier than the Wright aeroplane of 1903 ... was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight," it states.

One aviation historian claims that contract is wrong, however, forcing the museum to ignore the truth. And for the first time, the museum has released the contract publicly to FoxNews.com, to let the world make its own decisions.

According to most anyone you ask, Orville and Wilbur sailed into history books on Dec. 17, 1903, following their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Smithsonian features the Wright Flyer prominently today. But Australian aviation historian John Brown argues that a recently uncovered photograph proves German immigrant Gustav Whitehead flew first (over Connecticut, in the wee hours of Aug. 14, 1901). Brown says the Smithsonian is bound by that contract to ignore Whitehead’s feat. And the secrecy has to go, he wrote last week to the Smithsonian’s senior curator.

“With apologies to Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev: ... Mr. Crouch, tear up that contract!”

Read my full report at FoxNews.com.

Facebook child sex abuse video spurs nationwide alert for 'John Doe 8'

Police and FBI agents across the country are receiving reports of a disturbing video depicting child pornography on Facebook that has spread on the social network like a poisonous weed.

Reports began last week of a video showing a white male with brown hair and a dark circular mark on his right forearm sexually abusing a young girl -- a video that was reportedly shared tens of thousands of times and received 4,000 “likes” on Facebook.

The pornographic video itself is old and was first spotted online in May 2005, an FBI spokeswoman confirmed to FoxNews.com. Authorities are still searching for the perpetrator, known only as “John Doe 8.” Fred Wolens, a Facebook spokesman, told FoxNews.com the company has removed all known instances of the video from the site.

Yet disgust and outrage have spread from Las Vegas to Dallas to Connecticut as users post notes to each other’s walls, comments expressing revulsion and outright anger.

Read more in the full story on FoxNews.com.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Voyager 1 Has Left the Solar System -- Sorta

NASA's Voyager 1 probe is tantalizingly close to the edge of the solar system, but predicting when it will finally pop free into interstellar space is a challenging proposition, mission team members say.

Voyager 1 is plying new and exotic terrain at the limits of the sun's sphere of influence, and scientists simply don't know what to expect from these unexplored regions.

"We've never been there before," said Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "That's what makes it very hard. It's not unlike the first explorers sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. They thought they might know what they would see, but they saw things that were quite a bit different."