Bob Brown

Apple historically has fought iPhone jailbreaking by warning customers that their device warranties will be voided if they muck around with the innards of their Apple products. Now Apple appears to be taking its disapproval of jailbreaking one step further by censoring at least some references to "jailbreak" in its U.S. iTunes store.

RELATED: 15 Apps and Tweaks That May Convince You to Jailbreak Your iPhone

AT&T Labs and Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a vibrating steering wheel that they say can help drivers keep their eyes on the road and off of distracting GPS screens.

The steering wheel can actually complement audio and visual feedback, though more so for younger than older drivers. (Perhaps the younger drivers like that Wii remote-like vibrating feedback?) Younger drivers were found to take their eyes off the road 9% less of the time and older drivers took theirs off the road 4% less.

Al GoreThirty-plus Internet pioneers, innovators and "global connectors" -- yes, even including Al Gore -- have been inducted into the first class of the Internet Hall of Fame.

The hall, which lives on the Web, is the creation of the Internet Society, which describes itself as a nonprofit outfit "dedicated to ensuring that the Internet stays open, transparent and defined by you." The society, celebrating its 20th anniversary, is holding its Global INET 2012 conference in Geneva this week.

Scott Borg, director of a cybersecurity research institute, kicked off the SecureWorld Expo Boston with an uplifting talk about the end of the cybersecurity world as we know it. Sure, more sophisticated threats are on the way, but those in cybersecurity also have new opportunities to defend threats and even enable economic growth.

But it was the head of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit's take on why cybercriminals are actually more conservative than you might think that got the biggest reaction from the audience of IT security industry professionals. In fact, Borg say his organization has sometimes been off on its predictions because cybercrime trends have taken longer to emerge than expected.

Judea Pearl, a longtime UCLA professor whose work on artificial intelligence laid the foundation for such inventions as the iPhone's Siri speech recognition technology and Google's driverless cars, has been named the 2011 ACM Turing Award winner.

The annual Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award, sometimes called the "Nobel Prize in Computing," recognizes Pearl for his advances in probabilistic and causal reasoning. His work has enabled creation of thinking machines that can cope with uncertainty, making decisions even when answers aren't black or white.

A Verizon Wireless executive has told Dow Jones Newswires that the carrier plans a huge expansion of its 4G LTE wireless network this year and plans only to roll out 4G-capable phones.

Word of Verizon's plans to be in "at least 400 markets across the country" by year-end follows AT&T's announcement earlier this week that its LTE footprint will double by the end of the year to 56 markets and 150 million-plus points of presence. AT&T has practically been begging customers to upgrade from 2G wireless to 3G or 4G.

Apple hasn't even announced the iPad 3 yet, but tablet watchers are already fretting that the company might not have enough of them to meet early demand due to a short of the high-resolution Retina Display screens expected on the devices.

A shortage of new iPads out of the gate wouldn't be unprecedented, as that has been the case with past releases, with expectant customers closely tracking shipment windows.

News reports out of Charlotte, N.C., indicate a "known suspect" swiped 25 iPhones from an Apple Store at Northlake Mall between Dec. 1 and Jan. 11.

The Charlotte Observer and WCNC cite a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police report that reads: "The iPhones were stolen from the Genius Room located inside the store. The suspect did have access to the Genius Room."

A Georgia Tech researcher's deep dive into some half a million Enron emails could some day result in smarter messaging software.

The "Enron corpus," as the database of employee emails revealed during investigations into Enron's massive fraud in the early 2000s became known, has turned into a gift that keeps on giving to researchers. For Eric Gilbert, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, the email database has shed light on which words are used most frequently in messages going up and down the corporate hierarchy (and yes, a conservative approach and many filters were used to ensure the types of messages examined would apply to a typical organization, not just a fraudulent one).

Depending on your taste in music and tolerance for others' tastes, President Barack Obama's latest social media move – sharing his 2012 campaign playlist via streaming music website Spotify – might be a case of over-sharing: Ricky Martin, REO Speedwagon and James Taylor all made the cut.

The president's staff shared his campaign playlist via Spotify, via Twitter and via Facebook. Obama's tweet regarding the list, issued Thursday, reads: "A little Wilco, a bit of No Doubt-check out what else made it onto the new official #Obama2012 campaign playlist."

Amazon has released a new advertisement that takes a shot at the price of Apple's iPad, emphasizing the lower cost of the Kindle e-reader and Android-based Kindle Fire tablet.

In the ad, seen below, a woman tells a man that her Kindle reader, which works well in sunlight, along with her kids' two Kindle Fire tablets, which offer access to games, videos and more, cost less combined than his iPad.

Apple has warned iOS developers not to use services that manipulate App Store rankings to make their iPhone and iPad apps seem more popular than they really are.

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