China’s factories have long churned out high tech products. A big question facing Silicon Valley–underscored in a survey released Monday by Intel and Newsweek–is how big a role the country will play in dreaming up those gadgets.
by Andy Jordan, Editor and Producer, Tech Diary, The Wall Street Journal
Current TV began with a promise to be the great democratizer of media. Some four years into the experiment, it has a new chief executive who is shifting it away from short videos to more traditional cable programming.
In that transition, Current has cut shows and staff, with the most recent layoffs happening last week.
by William M. Bulkeley, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
A giant web of video-surveillance cameras has spread across Chicago, aiding police in the pursuit of criminals but raising fears that the City of Big Shoulders is becoming the City of Big Brother.
While many police forces are boosting video monitoring, video-surveillance experts believe Chicago has gone further than any other U.S. city in merging computer and video technology to police the streets.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
SunPower this afternoon said a review of its Philippine manufacturing operations found the company may have made “unsubstantiated accounting entries” in the first three quarters of 2009, some of them relating to 2008. The company said its Audit Committee is investigating the matter.
by Matthew Rivera, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
President Barack Obama has been spending considerable time on East-West trade agreements while in Asia, but for one chip maker, the negotiations between China and Taiwan are even more important.
Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)
by Cassandra Vinograd, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
On the first day that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers opened registration for non-Latin script domains, Egypt says it has seized the opportunity to register the first all-Arabic domain name.
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
As the temperature drops, some cold-weather commuters are trying out an iPhone app that lets them climb in to an unlocked, pre-heated car.
Directed Electronics, the company that sells the Viper car-alarm system, has developed an accompanying app called SmartStart that lets customers use their phone to lock or unlock the car, or turn the alarm on and off.
by Nick Wingfield, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Does this sound familiar?
At the office, you’ve got a sluggish computer running aging software, and the email system routinely badgers you to delete messages after you blow through the storage limits set by your IT department.
by Dionne Searcey, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Benjamin Moody got hooked on calculators the moment his father bought him one to help with his math homework when he was 15. He squirreled away with it and devoured the 19-chapter owners’ manual.
On Monday, researchers will release a twice-yearly list of the 500 biggest computers in the world. The latest rankings should provide some new clues about high tech’s relentless speed race, and how it’s being funded.
China’s bloggers are a focus of organizers of the President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit, echoing similar efforts by the administration to use social-media tools to communicate with Americans.
by Lauren Goode, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Efforts to reform the U.S. health-care and bank lending systems are likely to lead to an increase in information-technology spending, said one potential beneficiary, Sudhakar Ram, chairman of IT firm Mastek.
Overhauling the country’s IT systems could cost as much as $250 billion to $300 billion over five to seven years, he said in an interview.
by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
A new fashion-rental service has been getting buzz this week, but it follows other designer sites that have adopted the Netflix model to their ventures.
Rent the Runway, which started Monday, marks another entry into the growing market of online luxury rental services.
A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.
This week: A Skype visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Israel Derdik and his high-flying media suite, Aviary, a Web-based media-editing platform that enables users to alter, save and present their multimedia creations, all in the cloud.
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