Gadgetory

the quest for a kill switch continues as we get romantic with Google I'm Bridget Carey and this is your scene at update if your smart phone is stolen that's a big bummer but if there was a way to self-destruct your phone so the thief couldn't use it then there would be less incentive to steal phones right well that's the idea behind a new smartphone Killswitch bill that US senators are proposing some of the government want to require smartphones to have software with a kill switch that would render a phone as useless as a brick if it was stolen now nearly one in three thefts in the u.s. involves a stolen cell phone and in big cities like New York the rates are much higher so stopping this sounds like a great idea right well the wireless industry lobbying group and wireless carriers are fighting against the bill saying that a kill switch is a bad idea that could be abused by a hacker who might hijack and wipe all of our phones for ransom and they have a point but then again the wireless industry would make less money if there were less thefts and maybe we wouldn't care to buy insurance hmm expect this battle to heat up in the near future because California is also trying to push a state law requiring kill switches and with the arrival of Valentine's Day comes a bunch of new ways to use tech to be lovey-dovey and Google's social network Google+ just added a feature that will add animated hearts to any photo of kissing or hugging upload the photo from your desktop and Google will add the hearts automatically it even works with bear hugs the app love matically launched to help spread the love on instagram by automatically liking all of your friends photos for you but soon after launching Instagram broke our hearts and block the app so we're now still burdened with having to scroll and tap to like everything manually and if you want to get in the mood the chromecast hdmi TV streaming stick has a new feature a virtual fireplace when streaming google play music to the TV using the chromecast a cozy crackling fireplace can display on the television it's like you log 2 point 0 to turn it on go to the gear icon in the upper right corner of play music select labs and enable the chromecast fireplace visualizer and here's a high-tech pillow that just may save your relationship if you're sharing a bed with a snorer the one hundred and fifty dollars snore activated nudging pillow can detect sonic vibrations from snoring and it'll inflate three inches to encourage the snore to shift positions that's your tech news update we can get more details at cnet com / update and you can also stay updated by following along on Twitter from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey