Tech

This story is part of our Road Trip 2016 summer series "Life, Disrupted," about how technology is helping with the global refugee crisis -- if at all. When earthquakes crumble cities and tsunamis wreak havoc, Stephen O'Brien gets a call. As chief of emergency relief for the United Nations for the past year, O'Brien's job is to scramble aid -- fast -- whenever a crisis hits. That's why he knows that governments and aid groups can use all the help they can get when disaster strikes. The need for services, support and resources in all the humanitarian crises taking place around the world today is "eye-wateringly huge." It's one of these crises that inspired this year's CNET Road Trip project. Called "Life, Disrupted," the series looks at conflicts in the Middle East that have led 1.1 million people to flee Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq and seek shelter in Europe and other parts of the world. The goal: To find out how tech is helping with the refugee crisis, if at all. CNET's … [Read more...] about For UN, tech’s help is no ‘magic bullet’ in humanitarian crises (Q&A)

This is part of our Road Trip 2016 summer series "Life, Disrupted," about how technology is helping with the global refugee crisis -- if at all. The US tech industry is stepping up in the global refugee crisis. Tech leaders are among 51 companies "investing, donating, or raising" more than $650 million for the education, training and employment of 6.3 million refugees in 20 countries. Microsoft, TripAdvisor, HP and Google will help more than 80,000 children in refugee camps get an education, President Barack Obama said Tuesday at the Leaders Summit on Refugees at the United Nations. "You have companies like Accenture, Western Union, and LinkedIn that are going to help with internships, skills training and job placement," he said. "Today's commitment means that we're going to be creating employment opportunities for more than 220,000 refugees." The UN estimates that in 2015 alone, conflicts and persecution "forcibly displaced" 65.3 million people worldwide, the biggest forced … [Read more...] about Facebook, Google, other tech giants answer Obama’s refugee plea

This is part of CNET's "Tech Enabled" series about the role technology plays in helping the disability community. Imagine being excluded from an inside joke shared among all your best friends simply because you can't see the photo they're laughing at. It's a scenario Facebook engineer Matt King understands all too well. "Even the smallest and most trite of conversations can make you feel like you're not part of it," King said in a briefing at the company's London headquarters. King, who went blind while he was a student at the University of Notre Dame, was keen to improve the accessibility of the world's largest social network. Specifically, he was keen to give blind and visually impaired people a better experience of images. Two billion photos are uploaded to Facebook every single day, contributing to the very visual way users communicate with one another -- but as a form of communication, they don't speak to everyone. "They may be worth a thousand words to you, but … [Read more...] about How Apple and Facebook bring tech accessibility to the masses

Things just keep getting smarter. "Smart" doorbells, phones, speakers, cars -- even forks.But how do you know what's really the smartest stuff? What things inspire a sense of wonder, change our perceptions or make a difference in the way we live and work? And who are the people working on the future, today? We wanted to find out. So after months of research and planning, the CNET News team packed their bags to visit interesting people working on the kinds of gee-whiz, cool stuff that reminds us why tech is so much fun. More than a dozen reporters, photographers and videographers journeyed thousands of miles to find out firsthand what smart people are doing to make us -- and the world around us -- smarter.This is Road Trip 2017: The Smartest Stuff. We followed in the footsteps of Princess Diana, guided by an organization that's using Google Earth to sniff out land mines in Angola. We saw drones being used to deliver lifesaving medicines to remote clinics and doctors in Rwanda. We drove … [Read more...] about Here’s to tech making your life a whole lot smarter