Facebook users, expect to see a whole lot more pictures in the news feed.

The social network quietly launched a new feature Wednesday that lets users attach a photo when commenting on status updates. The tool appears to enable JPEG and PNG image files to be uploaded and inserted. Although animated GIFs can be uploaded, they'll display like a still image.

Although not a direct stab at Twitter, the feature will give users an easy way to crowd-source images – something Twitter users have been able to do for a while. Facebook also introduced hashtags, another popular feature for Twitter users.

And on Thursday, Facebook will hold an event at which it will reportedly bring video-sharing to the photo-sharing app Instagram. Vine, a video-sharing mobile application owned by Twitter, has rocketed to popularity since launching in January.

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Twitter is also creeping into Facebook's territory. On Wednesday, Twitter acquired Spindle, an iPhone app that enables...

Need to buy a friend a birthday gift soon? Amazon.com doesn’t want you to go at it alone.

The online retailer released a new feature this week that allows a group of Facebook friends to collectively buy an Amazon.com gift card. Once logged in, Amazon users are prompted to link their account to their Facebook profile. That pulls up a page that lists all of an individual’s friends, sorted by the days left until their birthday.

The user picks a friend and can seed the gift card with $1, $5, $10 or $25. Then, the user chooses his or her Facebook friends, inviting them to contribute. The combined total is delivered on the birthday. Amazon will credit $3 to users who buy and deliver three gift cards by July 21.

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Although a growing number of people are turning to online gift cards, a surveylast year by market research firm Market Strategies International found that 43% of consumers are either unlikely or highly unlikely to buy an online gift card...

HTC has unveiled a large smartphone, the Butterfly S, that features the most powerful battery the company has ever packed into a mobile device.

The Butterfly S is an upgrade of the Verizon Wireless-exclusive Droid DNA and will come with many of the same news, photo-shooting and video-capture features as the HTC One, which launched in the U.S. a couple of months ago. But at 5 inches, the Butterfly S towers over the 4.7-inch One or the 4.8-inch iPhone.  It also has a faster processor than the One.

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Among the hardware specifications: 1.9GHz Snapdragon 600, 4-megapixel UltraPixel camera, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of built-in storage, with a microSD expansion slot available.

The version announced Wednesday will launch in Taiwan on Wednesday and doesn’t feature support for LTE networks. A U.S. launch date was not announced

If battery life is an important factor, Verizon customers might consider holding off on purchasing an HTC One and seeing if the Butterfly S...

Sensitive financial and healthcare information is stored on Web browsers, making it easily accessible to hackers, a new analysis has found.

Web browsers – Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer – often save images and other content on a user's hard drive, so that the content does not need to be downloaded again the next time a user visits the same website. This makes pages load faster.

Though websites generally try to block sensitive data from being saved, Baltimore-based security consulting firm Independent Security Evaluators says that many websites are using methods that no longer work.

“Non-technical users likely believe that if, after visiting a site and viewing personal data, they logout and close their browsers, that their data will be safe,” ISE said in a report released Thursday. “Our findings prove this assumption incorrect in 70% of the cases tested.”

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ADP, Verizon Wireless, Scottrade, Geico,...

The HTC First, a smartphone that features Facebook front-and-center, has been a flop. So now Facebook is reportedly turning to Samsung, the world’s largest phone maker, for help.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg met with Samsung Mobile counterpart Shin Jong-kyun on Tuesday in South Korea to discuss potential partnerships, Shin said after the meeting. But Samsung is “unlikely to be considering the request for a Facebook-platform phone in a positive light,” industry watchers told the Korean Herald.

Samsung is looking to position itself as a high-end brand as it battles with Apple. Facebook just isn’t as premium of a brand as say Jay-Z, whom Samsung struck a marketing deal with this week.

Facebook has sought to keep mobile ad revenue growing. The HTC First was the launch phone for the company's new Facebook Home feature, but the phone and the feature received lackluster reviews. Facebook Home brings status updates, photos and other Facebook content to a...

Many days late at night, Skyler Rojas, a rising junior at UC Berkeley, finds himself exchanging messages on Skype with a good friend. The conversations tend to focus on cybersecurity -- how to protect and break into computer networks.

Trading tips and tricks in a constant quest to improve his skills has paid off for Rojas. The 19-year-old from Highland Park picked up a $2,000 award from the Information Systems Security Assn. of San Francisco at the Cornerstones of Trust conference in the Bay Area on Tuesday. It's an honor rewarding him for pursuing a career in cybersecurity. His dream job would be a "penetration tester," working from the inside to find vulnerabilities in a network.

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The supply of cybersecurity professionals has not kept up with the rising demand globally. Programs have popped up nationwide to address the issue. Rojas was introduced to cybersecurity through the CyberPatriot competition in high school.

He went on to start a cyber defense...

Many Wi-Fi woes could soon be coming to an end.

An industry group will begin certifying products capable of running on a faster and more reliable wireless network technology, the group announced Wednesday.

The launch of the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification program is expected to lead to a flood of more advanced routers, smartphones, tablets and computers hitting the market in the next couple of months, said Greg Ennis, the alliance’s technical director. 

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The draft standard -- 802.11ac -- is as much as four times faster than the current standard 802.11n technology. And it will run on a new frequency band, moving from 2.4-gigahertz to 5-gigahertz.

Ennis said the improvements were akin to increasing speed limits and opening a new freeway.

“We expect that the users will see a significant increase in the performance of their applications,” he said.

The changes should mean that routers will be able to accommodate more devices at one time...

Silicon Beach Fest, aimed at boosting the growing Los Angeles technology scene, is back for its second year.

The four-day tech entertainment festival officially kicks off Wednesday with an opening party and a start-up demo day.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday will feature panels on topics including ad tech, digital content, branding and marketing, e-commerce, gaming and design. There will also be events such as a start-up showcase, food truck lunch and meet-and-greets with local venture capitalists.

The majority of events will take place at tech co-working spaces Cross Campus and ROC in downtown Santa Monica.

Festival director Kevin Winston came up with the idea for Silicon Beach Fest last year after returning from South by Southwest Interactive in Austin.

With L.A. home to scores of new start-ups, "I got back and was like, 'Why don't we have anything in L.A. that celebrates the tech scene here?'" he said. "This isn't meant to duplicate South by Southwest; it is a tech fest that...

Google is petitioning the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for approval to reveal detailed information about the amount of national security requests it receives.

The company filed a motion Tuesday seeking permission to share the information as it and other large tech companies attempt to shield themselves from the growing backlash over damaging revelations that they turned over user data to the National Security Agency's clandestine PRISM program.

Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple have all shared information on government requests they've received in recent months, but Google said that information lumps together national security requests with criminal requests and doesn't help users gain a better understanding of the situation.

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Google, which already issues an annual transparency report detailing law enforcement requests, is seeking "declaratory judgment" that it has rights, under the 1st Amendment, to detail the exact amount of national...

FiftyThree, the developer of the app that won Apple's iPad app of the year award, has raised $15 million in funding, led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The developer, with offices in Seattle and New York, rose to fame late last year when Apple selected its app, Paper, for the award. Paper is a free app that turns iPads into digital sketchbooks. Within the app, users can buy different types of tools so they can make more detailed sketches and draw in different colors.

Paper has been downloaded more than 8 million times, but with the newly raised round of funding, FiftyThree will now focus on creating more tools for mobile productivity.

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In a blog post, Andreessen Horowitz's Chris Dixon said Paper is just the tip of the iceberg for FiftyThree.

"They’ll be expanding their engineering teams in New York and Seattle, and will broaden their offerings across software, services, and hardware," Dixon said.

FiftyThree draws many of its...

Huawei rolled out a smartphone Tuesday that it claims is the thinnest smartphone in the world.

The Ascend P6 smartphone is 0.24 inches thick, which is slightly slimmer than the 0.29-inch iPhone 5.

But that's not the only appealing feature of the phone. The device also comes with a 5-megapixel front camera, which is much better than most other smartphones on the market, which usually have 1- or 2-megapixel front cameras.

The high-resolution front camera makes the Ascend P6 "perfect for ‘selfies,’ " Huawei said in a statement. 

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The rest of the device is also top-of-the-line. The Ascend P6 features a 4.7-inch HD screen, a metal body and an 8-megapixel rear camera.

The Ascend P6 runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and it uses a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor.

Huawei said the device would be available in black, white and pink and will launch in China in June, followed by Western Europe in July. No word on when or if it will come to the U.S.

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