From PC World: The company behind the Snapchat messaging app has reportedly filed papers for an initial public offering that could value it at up to US$25 billion, according to news reports.

Snapchat changed its name to Snap in September to reflect the company’s growing interest in new markets...

From CNET: San Francisco has put the squeeze on Airbnb.

The city's Board of Supervisors ruled late Tuesday night that hosts can rent out their houses and apartments on the home-rental marketplace for only 60 days per calendar year. This legislation comes after years of haggling between the city and...

From InfoWorld: HP has been hoping that sleek, powerful hardware will lure Apple Mac aficionados to switch to its PCs, and now is aiming the new Z2 Mini mini-desktop at Mac Mini users.

The Z2 Mini packs the computing power of a full-size desktop into a box that can be held in one hand. Starting at...

From CNET: When Lyft first launched its ride-hailing service in San Francisco in 2012, it gave drivers big, pink, hairy mustaches to drape over their cars' grilles. The idea was to make it easy for passengers to identify Lyft drivers. That fad, however, did not last.

After rolling out other...

From PC World: Thanks to artificial intelligence, we have autonomous cars, chat bots, and speech recognition. Microsoft's CNTK (Cognitive Toolkit) is one among many platforms that trains computers to learn, and it's getting an upgrade.

CNTK drives the Microsoft services Cortana and Skype language...

From CNET: FaceTime and Skype have a new rival in the video-chat market: WhatsApp.

The maker of the hugely popular messaging and voice app said Monday it will soon add the ability to place free video calls from within the app. The feature, which is expected to be available in the coming days, will...

From CNET: Amazon Music Unlimited has launched in the UK -- and if you team it with Amazon Echo, it's one of the cheapest streaming services around.

Amazon Music Unlimited launched in the US in October and crosses the pond to launch in the UK, Germany and Austria today. Separate from the limited...

From PC World: Samsung Electronics wants to buy its way into the connected car market, with a plan to acquire Harman for US$8 billion.

It's the latest in a line of acquisitions by Samsung, as it seeks to diversify its business beyond the slowing smartphone market. Other recently announced deals...

From CNET: Earlier this year at F8, the social network's most important conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg detailed a big investment in chatbots, which use artificial intelligence to allow people to text with the software to help them do things like schedule calendar meetings or buy a pair of shoes...

From InfoWorld: Google’s major push into home automation and artificial intelligence has been sort-of realized with the Google Assistant. It lives inside of the Pixel smartphone and Google Home hub, but that’s just the start. The company wants to enable your favorite apps and services to connect...