InsideTech

NEW YORK - Many large companies, especially those in the financial services, utilities and telecommunications industries, have cut their technology budgets this year because of the economic slowdown. In a report released Tuesday, Forrester Research Inc. found that 43 percent of large U.S. and European businesses it surveyed have cut their overall spending on technology products and services in 2008. Some ...

'New advances in power transmission would make Tesla proud.' - After decades of dormancy, interest in transmitting power wirelessly is finally heating up in the tech community. Intel recently demoed its new wireless charging tech which it says could power its next generation chipsets. Now, a former NASA researcher is revealing even grander plans to transform the business of power generation ...

'Big brother coming one step closer, or viable license that citizens want?.' - Residents in New York now have the chance to carry a new type of drivers license that is embedded with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip. People wanting the new license will need to pay an additional $30 processing fee - raising the price for a new license ...

'Dean Takahashi delves in to the causes of the Red Ring of Death.' - In a meticulously researched 11,000 word article, Dean Takahashi of Venture Beat has written about the chronological series of events that led to the hardware failures faced by the Xbox 360. Often called the “Red Ring of Death”, it is a condition that describes when three flashing ...

WASHINGTON - A key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking the nation's top four wireless carriers to justify the "sharply rising rates" they charge people to send and receive text messages. In letters to top executives at Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile, Wisconsin Democrat Herb Kohl said Tuesday that he is concerned that rising text ...

Microsoft Windows Vista is still considered relatively new on the market and some users have not yet upgraded from Windows XP to Vista for a variety of reasons. Microsoft is continuing to allow certain types of computers to run Windows XP thanks to its lower cost and overhead. Despite being released less than two years ago to the general public, Microsoft ...

CHICAGO - Katherine Graden doesn't really like shoot-'em-up video games. She prefers games on her Wii system that test her fitness and agility - the ones her guy friends tease are her "sissy games." "I'm like, `Fine! Go play your violent games. I'll stick with mine,'" the high school freshman from Chicago says, chuckling. It's a common scenario, according to a ...

'Google says energy woes the result of "total failure of political leadership" and that alternative energy justification is simple math.' - Google has already made it clear that it wants to promote alternative energy in a big way as part of its "Don't be evil" philosophy. Its initial round of funding included grants to solar and a high-altitude wind power startup. ...

GENEVA - Scientists will launch an experiment in a tunnel deep beneath the French-Swiss border Wednesday, hoping to find evidence of extra dimensions, invisible "dark matter," and an elusive particle called the "Higgs boson."

SUNNYVALE, CA - Yahoo is preparing to tweak several popular sections of its Web site, including its home page, during the next few months to accommodate more material from rival services as the Internet company tries to polish its tarnished franchise. The makeover outlined for reporters Thursday represents a key step in Yahoo's push to regain the momentum that it lost ...

'The University of Rochester with help from MIT pulls the wraps off the first true 3D processor.' - While quantum computers and fiber optic computers are certainly ideal candidates for a silicon PC replacement, they remain in the distant future. In the meantime, one key unexploited domain, which may give silicon a stay of retirement, is 3D chip technologies. Today virtually ...

'Drivers who text while driving are more dangerous than those under the influence of alcohol or marijuana .' - A British study done by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) for the British Royal Automobile Club Foundation indicates it's more dangerous to send text messages while driving even when compared to drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The study showed ...

'T-Mobile and Google will publicly display the HTC Dream handset, operating the Android operating system.' - T-Mobile has come forward and announced it will introduce the first Google Android-powered smart phone during a September 23 press conference in New York City. The HTC Dream Smartphone, or G1, is the first phone to use Google's Android OS, and is expected to launch ...

'E-waste is becoming a serious problem that the United States must begin to fight against.' - The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said the U.S. regulators aren't doing enough to stop used computers, monitors and other electronic products that have toxic materials which could cause safety hazards for foreign workers. To make matters worse, the U.S. and other nations are sending the ...

A malicious spam e-mail is spreading that claims to have a link to a sex video of Obama but is instead spyware that steals sensitive data from the computer, security firm Sophos warned on Wednesday.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - It's called "buckypaper" and looks a lot like ordinary carbon paper, but don't be fooled by the cute name or flimsy appearance. It could revolutionize the way everything from airplanes to TVs are made. Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form ...

'New 8 and 16GB Nanos, thin 120GB Classics, and a revamped iPod Touch that Apple's pitching as a great portable game machine will ship to stores today and be available shortly.' - Apple and Steve Jobs have wrapped up the event held today for press; as expected new iPods were the topic of the day. Apple revealed several updated iPods and ...

'Dual-core Atom may ease shortages of Atom parts in the channel.' - Intel is dominating the world of the netbook with its Atom single core processor. The processor running at 1.6GHz powers the vast majority of netbooks that are available to purchase right now. The tiny chip is perfect for the netbook market thanks to its low cost and low power ...

'Microsoft continues its creative improvements to everyone's favorite desktop pointing device.' - In July DailyTech, brought word that Microsoft was cooking up a new mouse design in the form of the arc mouse which could be folded in half for easy carrying. Then in August, Microsoft's X5 gaming mouse, also due out holiday 2008, was announced. Now there's even bigger mouse ...

'Watch out for e-Ticket related emails, they could lead to an attack on your computer.' - A devious new attack has debuted largely unnoticed and is infecting computers with trojans worldwide. The new attack, first discovered by anti-virus experts at BitDefender, uses fake e-Ticket emails to deliver malware to unsuspecting users. With the advent of online ticket sales, many users have ...

'Canon launches new cameras including EOS 5D Mark II D-SLR with 1080p movie mode.' - One thing the world of D-SLR cameras was lacking for most of the existence of the technology was the ability to shoot movies. Shooting movies was something that many point-and-shoot digital cameras had been able to do for a long time. Nikon changed that when it ...

'Graphene ultracapacitors could double the storage of existing designs thanks to breakthrough.' - While the continual progress of efficiencies in solar and wind seem to make these technologies ideal candidates to eventually replace fossil fuels further into the future, one key element stands in the way of their adoption. That element is variability of the power source. While one solution would ...

'But many consumers are pirating Spore to avoid DRM.' - Spore, the new evolution game from Electronic Arts, is one of the most anticipated and hyped games to be released in recent memory. Electronic Arts implemented a strict DRM (Digital Rights Management) copyright protection called SecuROM that limits the number of computers the game can be installed on to three. This ...

'Intel employee accessed documents while working for AMD.' - Intellectual property is one of the most closely guarded assets for most companies. Intellectual property is even more important in the technology industry where stolen information can give competitors a lead to market of months or even years. Boston.com reports that a former Intel employee - Biswahoman Pani - has been accused ...

'Repairs for broken LHC transformer may have been costly.' - Despite protests and even death threats to the team scientists, CERN's Large Hadron Collector (LHC) went online last week without the world ending. The world's largest particle accelerator zipped through warm-up tests firing proton beams. Scientists were eager to start experiments as soon as the end of the month and start ...

WASHINGTON - The hunt for the hacker who broke into Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account is shaping up to be a remarkably simple investigation, by the standards of major cybersecurity whodunits. U.S. investigators figure the hacker claimed responsibility in a detailed accounting that included his own personal e-mail address and that he tried to cover his trail ...

'First Nokia handset will be offered exclusively in Britain at Carphone Warehouse.' - Digital music is a booming business these days with consumers. Rather than owning a physical music disk that has to be stored, users want the convenience of simply downloading tunes direct to their portable devices. Apple has proven that the pure digital delivery format works wondrously with its ...

Hacker: impersonated Palin, stole e-mail password By TED BRIDIS WASHINGTON - Details emerged Thursday behind the break-in of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail account, including a first-hand account suggesting it was vulnerable because a hacker was able to impersonate her online to obtain her password. The hacker guessed that Alaska's governor had met her husband in high school, and ...

'iPhone developers are becoming alarmed with Apple's closed box policy.' - Apple's App Store, which sells programs for its iPhone and iPod Touch, has been declared an instant success, with over 10 million downloads of the over 500 applications available on site. Part of the charm of the system was that it allowed independent developers freedom to get in the sandbox ...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether people picked up on immigration violations also can face charges of identity theft if they use Social Security and other identification numbers that happen to belong to others. Federal prosecutors have increasingly been bringing the more serious identity theft charges against undocumented immigrants, including many who were arrested in raids on ...

'3M releases pocket size projector... way cooler than a pocket protector.' - Gone are the days of hauling a big cumbersome projector into your corporate meeting room or college lecture hall for presentations. Now, a new projector is set to debut that literally can fit in your pocket. Images of the production version of the new gadget, the MPro110 mini projector ...

'Robert Delaware faces Microsoft's wrath for coming forward.' - According to a follow up article on VentureBeat, Microsoft fired Robert Delaware a game test contractor who talked to Dean Takahashi about the Xbox 360 "Red Ring of Death" issue. In a recent article, Dean Takahashi of VentureBeat wrote about the chronological series of events that led to the hardware failures faced ...

SAN FRANCISCO - Hurting from price cuts and an expensive restructuring, Dell Inc. rattled investors Tuesday with another warning, this time that corporate spending on technology is weakening further. By most measures, the technology sector has been chugging along fine, which is why Dell's announcement caused uncertainty about whether the problem is specific to Dell or indicates broader problems in the ...

SEATTLE - TV viewers can return to their favorite programs without fear of seeing Bill Gates shaking his tushie now that Microsoft Corp. has retired a bizarre two-week-old ad campaign featuring the software giant's chairman with comedian Jerry Seinfeld. Bloggers and online media have suggested that the Redmond, Wash.-based company yanked the Seinfeld ads after they were poorly received. The ads ...

The news that Apple's iPhone had a kill switch built in that could destroy users apps that they had bought and paid for was at first met with incredulity. When users discovered that the rumors were indeed true, they reacted with shock and anger. Now Google has a similar situation brewing after it was revealed that its G1 phone which features ...

ENGADGET: It's been a long, tumultuous road for Napster, but the music service once loathed by James Alan Hetfield will soon be property of Best Buy. Announced this morning, the retail giant has agreed to buy Napster Inc. for a staggering $121 million, $6

'The first of several new Windows commercials premiered during the NFL season opener.' - After lackluster sales of its Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft has officially launched its $300 million Windows marketing campaign. Relying on the popularity of standup comic Jerry Seinfeld, Microsoft reportedly agreed to pay Seinfeld $10 million for his services in a series of commercials to help change ...

'The launch of the world's largest particle accelerator is going almost seamlessly thus far.' - CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has gone online, becoming the world's largest operational particle collider. The LHC was the result of $9B USD and years of collaboration from researchers worldwide. It promises to unlock great mysteries such as the Higgs boson and deeper insight into how ...

'Researcher discovers a new unique carbon molecule that he says could advance organic semiconductors, quantum computing' - Virginia Tech chemistry Professor Harry Dorn is a well known face in the world of carbon chemistry. His extensive work into fullerenes - cage-shaped carbon molecules that come in different forms - has yielded advances in MRI materials and the delivery of radioactive medicine. ...

NEW YORK - Video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. said Sunday it ended talks to buy smaller rival Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., best known for the "Grand Theft Auto" series of games. EA, the publisher of games such as "Madden NFL 09" and "Spore," said it decided not to make an offer to buy Take-Two. Redwood City, Calif.-based EA had signed ...

Google announced on Monday plans to unveil a version of its own Web browser, challenging Microsoft's dominance over the Internet. Today, a beta version of the browser, called "Google Chrome," will debut in more than 100 countries and offer features that make it easier and faster to browse the Web. Monday's move escalates the rivalry between the Mountain View company and ...

Solid-state lighting is one of the hottest topics in the tech industry, and with good reason. The Department of Energy is sponsoring a $20M USD "L Prize" for advances in LED lighting, a type of light which uses solid-state components (diodes). The research is a big deal as lighting currently consumes 22 percent of the electricity in the U.S. If the ...

'City officials are fed up.' - “Hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles residents were ripped off,” said Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, referring to a complaint against Time Warner Cable regarding the quality of its service that the company provided since its installment as Southern California’s No. 1 cable provider two years ago. “Time Warner must be held accountable for ...

'Bad guys look out... citizens can send photos and videos directly to the police using the NYPD's upgraded network!' - New York City has completed network upgrades to its emergency 911 and information 311 systems, so both networks can now accept photos and video.  The new network cost around $250,000 and took 18 months to develop. "By upgrading 911 and 311 ...

'IBM servers using the processors break benchmark records.' - Intel announced its six-core 45nm Intel Xeon Processor 7400 Series products this week. The new series will feature up to six-cores on a single chip with 16MB of shared cache. The processors are built for demanding enterprise applications needing significant processing power like virtualized applications, data workloads, business intelligence and more. According ...

'A new study is giving computer savvy users a look at the "other" users' behavior.' - You often wonder how users fall for seemingly obvious ploys - you know, the letter from Makib in Ethiopia seeking for donations for an orphanage, or perhaps the most recent fake ticket emails that claim to have your ticket in a ZIP file. To the ...

Is the new cell phone blocking technology a lifesaver or a gross invasion of privacy? Automobile accidents are one of the leading causes of injury and death in America. Last year 41,059 people died in traffic accidents. This has led to extreme measures, such as keys that limit the capabilities of vehicles for teenage drivers, as recently debuted by Ford. Meanwhile, ...

'Score one for the BPI.' - Police in Cleveland, England wrapped up their investigation Wednesday against the administrator and a handful of users for OiNK, a popular, invite-only music-focused BitTorrent tracker shut down in October 2007. Ellis, for his role in running OiNK, faces charges of “conspiracy to defraud,” reports TorrentFreak. Charges against Ellis were originally supposed to be announced in ...

'No comment on Zune Phone other than stay tuned.' - When Microsoft comes to a new area of business, it's common to see it go from a startup to a dominate player in the market. So far, Microsoft has yet to be able to do this in the MP3 player market. The Zune has been around for a while now and ...