James Farrell

James Farrell is the former editor-in-chief of Chiang Mai CityNews, where he wrote and managed daily news, features, op-eds and blogs on a diverse range of topics. Prior to this, in the same city of Northern Thailand where he lives, he was the longstanding deputy editor of the monthly magazine Citylife. He has written on culture, politics, travel, tech, business, human rights, for local, national, and international news services and magazines. He has a keen interest in the role technology is playing in the transformation of society, culture and politics, especially in developing nations. This is reflected in his not-so-successful first novel.

Latest from James Farrell

No ‘fast lanes,’ please: Apple finally chimes in on net neutrality

INFRA - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

Apple Inc. has spoken out at last on the ongoing issue of net neutrality, asking the government to keep the current regulations in place. In the four-page filing to the Federal Communications Commission, Apple laid out its thoughts on how the FCC should retain “strong and enforceable” open Internet protections. The message Apple sent emphasized ...

Google-funded think tank just axed a Google critic because he decried tech monopolization

INFRA - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

Google Inc.’s ethics are under fire today after the company recently put pressure on one of its sponsored think tanks to fire a prominent academic who was critical about Google’s dominant position in search. The Washington-based think tank, called the New America Foundation, has reportedly received more than $21 million from Google. The organization, reported ...

‘The Walking Dead’ zombie apocalypse is coming to a street near you – in augmented reality

EMERGING TECH - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

“Pokemon Go” shook the world last year with its lightweight chase-down game that had players flocking like zombies to public areas. Now, fictional zombies from the TV series “The Walking Dead” will come to life in a new augmented reality mobile game called “The Walking Dead: Our World.” Announced Tuesday by AMC and Next Games, ...

Athelas releases automated blood testing kit for home use

EMERGING TECH - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

Silicon Valley-based startup Athelas today introduced a smartphone app that it says can do simple blood diagnosis at home and return results in just 60 seconds. The kit itself looks a bit like an Amazon Echo device and is coupled with a smartphone app to reveal the results of the test. In a demonstration, co-founder Deepika ...

Google rolls out search feature to help people determine if they’re clinically depressed

APPS - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

Google Inc.and the National Alliance on Mental Illness want to help with the American epidemic of depression by rolling out a feature that will allow people to screen themselves online more easily. A Google mobile search result for a depression-related question will now bring up a pop-up box asking you if you’re depressed. If you hit ...

Justice Department amends demand for information on anti-Trump website visitors

NEWS - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

The U.S. Department of Justice today amended a broad demand for information that sought to identity visitors to a website that had served as a conduit for protest planning during President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Earlier this month, Justice had issued a warrant to web hosting provider DreamHost demanding that details be handed over on about 1.3 million people ...

UK warns it will prosecute online hate crimes the same way it does offline hate crime

NEWS - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

British prosecutors are taking steps to reduce the amount of online abuse that is hurled around by treating hateful speech online the same way it does face-to-face abuse. On Monday the Crown Prosecution Service published new guidelines in an attempt to crack down on online instances of “ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and ...

Photo editing app Prisma is now offering its services to other companies

APPS - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

Russian startup Prisma Labs, Inc., which is best-known for its popular photo editing app, is now planning to sell to businesses with the launch of a new website, prismalabs.ai, offering various artificial intelligence-related services. The Prisma app isn’t going anywhere, but the company’s focus now will be marketing its machine learning tools to other technology ...

Facebook takes another shot at killing clickbait by purging deceptive video links

APPS - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

Social media giant Facebook Inc. is taking more steps to purge clickbait content from its news feed, this time focusing on those irksome images of fake video play buttons that often lead to some kind of viral content. The updates are twofold, Facebook announced on Thursday. One will be to reduce the amount of those fake play ...

Privacy advocates blast U.S. government demand for details about anti-Trump website visitors

NEWS - BY JAMES FARRELL - 9 YEARS AGO

The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding that it be given details about 1.3 million people who visited a website that was created to organize protestors on President Donald Trump’s inauguration. In a blog post, web hosting provider DreamHost explained how the DOJ issued a warrant demanding that it hand over details on visitors to ...