It's easy to imagine what comes after the smartphone if you disregard modern physics. Displays wouldn't be rigid. They would bend and wrap and fold, and then fit nicely in your shirt's front pocket like a square of paper. They could expand from the size of a wristwatch to the length and width of a 10-inch tablet. A flexible display is a glorious idea — and one explored by many a Samsung concept video — but it hasn't taken off in the realm of consumer electronics. That's mostly because those types of displays are, at the moment, an engineering impossibility

Blue Calypso and Yelp have entered into an agreement that dismisses the patent infringement legal battle in which the two were entangled for roughly three years. As part of the agreement, Yelp (NYSE: YELP) plans to explore the use of Blue Calypso’s KIOSentrix AC powered beacons in potential distribution to Yelp’s customer base. Yelp agreed to order 4,000 beacons.

Today, Google has revealed two new Chromecasts. One is for your TV. One is for your speakers. Both cost $35. And a new app can suck in all of your streaming subscriptions, search them, and get you watching them in seconds. It’s the anti-Apple TV approach. Google’s hardware is cheap, and purposefully forgettable. But more importantly, it uses the apps that are already on your phone to juggle all of the things you want to watch.

Last week, I attended a panel discussion sponsored by Jasper, in which Macario Namie, the firm's VP of strategy, queried representatives from ChargePoint,General Motors (GM) and LoJack about the state of technology in connected cars and what they see coming down the pike in the near future. Jasper plays a role in these firms' Internet of Things services by offering a cloud-based platform for managing electronic devices that transmit data via cellular networks and handling the associated subscription billing, sensor provisioning and troubleshooting. The panelists included Emad Isaac, LoJack's CTO; Ajay Agrawal, ChargePoint's CTO; and Steve Schwinke, who directs GM's advanced development and concepts for its Global …

We can thank a guy named Todd Harper, who managed to successfully capture foot-cam videos of 3D Robotics' chief Chris Anderson giving the keynote speech at the InterDrone show earlier this month and put them on YouTube. InterDrone is a conference and drone expo. 3D Robotics, or 3DR as it's sometimes called, is major drone maker, with some of its funding from Qualcomm.

US-based chip maker Qualcomm on Sunday said it would invest up to $150 million (Rs 9.8 billion) in Indian start-ups via a venture fund after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met top tech honchos in the Silicon Valley during his US visit. The San Diego based chip-maker made the announcement after its executive chairman Paul Jacobs met the Indian prime minister at the Digital Economy event in San Jose and said the venture fund was in support of the government's Digital India and Make-in-India initiatives.

China’s ecommerce giant Alibaba this week unveiled Pay Watch, a payments-focused smartwatch that it plans to crowdfund on its online shopping websiteTaobao (think eBay or Amazon) starting October 15. Update: Alibaba wished to clarify to VentureBeat that this smartwatch is produced in partnership with FiiSmart, and “not developed by Alibaba Group” per se. (Get the full update at the end of this article.) Prices will range up to about $160 for the YunOS-powered device that supports mobile payments through Alibaba’s Alipay platform. The main way it’s expected to handle this is by generating on-demand QR codes that retailers can scan at checkout.

Volkswagen is still reeling from the revelations that it lied to U.S. regulators and pumped nearly 1 million tons of extra pollutants into the air by installing software onto its cars to fool emissions tests. Now regulators, legislators and others are wondering how to prevent such a scandal from happening again. Open source software has been a suggested salve. So has random testing. But I think these are part of two bigger trends that will come together to prevent these sort of shenanigans going forward—the Internet of things and the development of a maker culture. 

If you thought Domino's Grand Prix-winning emoji ordering was a cool one-click trick, check this out from Netflix. The streaming service, working with Pittsburgh-based agency Deeplocal, created a button that—with a single press—turns on your TV, brings you right to Netflix, dims the lights, silences your phone and orders your favorite food.

The Wi-Fi Alliance is doing its part to make sure Wi-Fi remains a viable Internet of Things (IoT) technology in the connected home, adding a new level of membership for certain companies that make things like refrigerators, door locks and lighting systems. The new Implementer Member class addresses the needs of companies that do not specialize in developing connectivity technologies but want to deliver connected products with certified interoperability and security protections in categories such as smart home and IoT, according to the alliance.