Hayley Tsukayama

Amazon.com stepped into the smartphone ring, unveiling the Fire Phone, a 4.7 inch device with 3D capabilities, a 13 megapixel camera and free photo storage. Users can control the phone by tilting it, adding a three-dimensional element to its screen.

They can also navigate through menus or maps just by moving the phone from side to side. The Fire Phone even employs eye-tracking technology, so that the image on the screen changes as the users moves his or her head.

The phone is Amazon's bet that it can take on Apple and Samsung, while drawing more customers into its Prime subscription service universe. It plugs directly into Amazon's Prime Video, Prime Music and cloud storage services. It is also closely integrated with the company's Kindle reading apps and Audible audiobooks services.

Amazon said the phone, which will be available exclusively through AT&T, will start at $199.99 with a 2-year contract for a 32 GB model. A 64 GB model costs $299.99. Without a contract, the phone will cost $649.99. Pre-orders for the phone begin soon, and the phones will be available starting July 25.

Schools around the country should start watching their mailboxes. Apple chief executive Tim Cook is starting to send out letters soliciting applications for its portion of a larger White House initiative to improve connectivity and technology in schools.

Apple, which has the most products in use by students in US schools, began sending the letters to various school districts inviting superintendents to apply for its portion of the ConnectED program -- the White House initiative aimed at getting 95 percent of American students on high-speed broadband networks by 2019.

Apple’s portion of the program is in providing iPads, MacBooks, software and technical training to schools with a high percentage of students in lunch assistance programs. The company’s $100 million investment in the program was announced during President Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address. Several other firms, including Microsoft, Sprint and Verizon are also participating.

Facebook came under fire from privacy advocates who say that changes to its ad network mark an unprecedented expansion of its ability to collect users' personal data.

The advocates are also criticizing the Federal Trade Commission for allowing Facebook to make the changes and argue that the network's size gives it too much knowledge about its users.

The social network announced the changes in an official company blog post, saying it will now draw information from other Web sites to inform its ad choices, mirroring the set-up that many other online advertisers use.

Facebook may simply be offering its own version of what other companies already do, said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. But it is a significant change in the advertising landscape because of Facebook's size, he said.

The network has over one billion users worldwide, and hundreds of millions of users in the United States. "It's true that everybody is doing all of this, and that's how the system works," Chester said. "But this is unprecedented. Given Facebook's scale, this is a dramatic expansion of its spying on users."

Chester said that he and other privacy advocates will raise their concerns in a previously scheduled meeting with Federal Trade Commissioner Edith Ramirez and will also be contacting regulators in Europe about the changes. He believes that the new changes should be considered a violation of Facebook's earlier agreement with the regulatory agency.

Facebook argues: "We can't speak for the commission, but we are confident that these updates comply with our legal obligations, including our commitments to the FTC.”

Google launched a Web form that allows European customers to ask for aspects of their digital histories to be expunged from the search engine -- but only in Europe.

This is Google's first response to a decision by Europe's highest court ordering the tech giant to review requests from users who say that articles linked from Google searches besmirch their reputations.

The ruling handed down chafed Google and several other search engine operators, who called it a form of censorship that forces them to make judgment calls about what should or shouldn't be on the Web. “The court's ruling requires Google to make difficult judgments about an individual's right to be forgotten and the public's right to know," Google said.

Someone submitting a request to Google must include a list of the links to be removed, a justification for the information's removal and a photo ID. The company will note when certain search information has been removed from results, similar to what it does when people search for things that have been subject to intellectual property claims. European customers searching for delisted information will see a note at the bottom of their results letting them know that something has been removed.

Google said it has already received thousands of requests to have information removed, but it has not released any details on how long it may take to review those requests. The company said it has also established an advisory committee to review the process.

Members of that review panel, the company said, will include experts on European data laws and Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales -- who has decried the decision, as the BBC reported. It will be co-chaired by Google chairman Eric Schmidt and the company's chief legal officer, David Drummond.

A Q&A with violinist Lindsey Stirling. She talks about her career, her fans and how using YouTube gave her a way to break into a tough industry.

Stirling, who first came onto the national stage in 2010 by reaching the quarter-finals of "America's Got Talent," now has 4.8 million subscribers on YouTube and just released a new album, "Shatter Me," which debuted as #2 on the Billboard charts. Stirling noted how YouTube has provided her with a side-door into the music industry.

“There is a connotation to being a YouTuber: that you’re a cover artist, or you're not legit. I'm very proud that I came through YouTube. It's exciting to be a part of this wave and to say, ‘Hey, this is a legitimate platform,’” she said.

Unsealed court documents show Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft are arguing that government gag orders that stop them from disclosing the number of national security requests they receive violate the companies' First Amendment right to free speech.

Leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that revealed how the government uses tech firms in its surveillance efforts have damaged their bottom lines and public reputations -- particularly overseas.

The companies have begun to push back against some government orders to stay silent. The gag orders, called "national security letters," compel Web and telecommunication companies to share information with the government while simultaneously prohibiting them from speaking about the request. Since the Snowden leaks, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft have fought to include more information about national security requests in regular reports they release on how much data the government requests from their servers.

In the court documents, filed in April with the 9th Circuit Court in California, the tech giants argue that the government is infringing on their First Amendment rights -- a form of prior restraint. The government has argued that companies have no First Amendment right to share information gained from participation in a secret government investigation, according to the filing. The case is now on appeal.

[Commentary] What does the AT&T/DirecTV deal mean for consumers? Details are still rolling in, but here is what we know so far. First, be on the lookout for price increases.

AT&T has said DirecTV customers will continue to pay standard, nationwide prices -- but only for three years. After that, there are no guarantees. AT&T is also committing to offer a stand-alone broadband service, which caters to customers who only watch video content online, for three years after the deal closes.

AT&T and DirecTV don't compete for television customers in most of the country -- U-Verse only reaches about 25 percent of the country. But some consumer advocacy groups are concerned that AT&T could drop one of the services. Getting rid of any option for consumers could drive prices up, or trap customers into service that doesn't serve their needs because they simply don't have other services to run to.

It's been over two years, but Miracom -- a Kansas firm that's developed an app to help the deaf and hard-of-hearing use mobile phones -- has finally gotten government approval to hit the market.

As The Washington Post reported in October, the Kansas firm had successfully designed an app, InnoCaption, to accurately transcribe mobile phone conversations in real-time. But it was spinning its wheels as it waited for the Federal Communications Commission to grant it access to a government fund that would allow deaf consumers to use the app for free.

The fund, known as the Interstate Telecommunications Relay Services Fund, reimburses companies for providing communication services to those with hearing or speech problems.

But after evidence that some companies were deceptively padding their reimbursement requests, concerns about fraud in the multi-million-dollar fund held up Miracom's progress and threatened to put the app on the ropes. Now, Miracom is planning a full release at the end of June.

"This is just tremendous," said Chuck Owen, Miracom's chief operating office. "We are very excited to be approved, be a part of the TRS community, very excited to offer a functionally equivalent solution to those that are in need and can make great utilization of this product."

The highest court in the European Union ruled that search engines such as Google have a responsibility to allow individuals the right to scrub their online histories.

The decision, handed down by the Court of Justice of the European Union, puts the onus on search engine operators to field and evaluate appeals from individuals who want to have links to harmful or unflattering content removed from their services, even if the material was published legally or as part of media coverage or government postings.

Along with its effect on Google, the decision has the potential to affect the operations of all search engines in Europe, including Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing.

The European court's ruling is unlikely to spark any fast movement among US lawmakers, who have long dragged their feet in producing privacy legislation, Fordham Law professor Joel Reidenberg said. But it does add ammunition to those fighting for similar provisions in America, he said, by providing "a degree of international legal support."

In the labs of George Washington University, students are laboring in labs covered in black-and-white dotted paper, puzzling out how to make a machine that understands images like the human brain.

It’s a question that Google is trying to tackle in typical Silicon Valley fashion with Project Tango, a smartphone that will use its sensors to map the environment around its users in real time. But this research isn't restricted to the secret labs of West Coast tech giants.

A piece of it is happening right here in Washington. The vision for Tango is to make a phone that can not only recognize places -- so you can, for example, navigate within a store to find a product on a shelf -- but also potentially tap into large-scale 3-D maps to help the phone better understand the scene. Think of it as more detailed version of Google Maps.

In a mall, a Tango phone could direct you to the nearest restroom by using a meaningful 3-D map of the mall. (Google hasn’t said when the phone could be released.) At George Washington, the scientists have been helping Google deal with the basics: getting the phone to understand its own sensors and the images it sees to understand how what its sensing matches up with what it expects.