Feed aggregator
Lisa Jackson's High-Wire Act on Carbon Controls
The EPA chief is using her authority under the Clean Air Act to control carbon emissions
Categories: Technology Tools
Apple TV's Meager Offerings Are Due to Business, Not Tech
This week’s big Apple announcement featured one big disappointment: Apple TV’s relative lack of, well, TV. Out of all of the hundreds of channels available on cable and satellite, only ABC and Fox agreed to offer their programs for rent on Apple TV. The fact that Steve Jobs is the largest single shareholder in, and on the board of, Disney — owner of ABC — perfectly illustrates this digital divide.
Categories: Technology Tools
Clustered Networks Spread Behavior Change Faster
Unlike infectious disease and information, behavior change spreads faster through online networks that have many close connections instead of many distant ties. Redundancy is key, as people are more likely to engage in a behavior if they see many others doing it.
"There has been a lot of theory about the difference between information and behavior spreading," said economic sociologist Damon Centola of MIT and author of the study published Sept. 3 in Science. "We've assumed that they are the same, but you can imagine that behavior is not really like that, that you need to be convinced."
Categories: Technology Tools
Verizon Boosts Dividend by Smallest Amount Since 2006
Verizon Communications Inc., the second-largest U.S. phone company, increased its quarterly dividend by the smallest amount in four years today amid slowing sales growth.
Categories: Technology Tools
Crafting a Career in Eco-Chic Jewelry
Tragedy led Goldman Sachs analyst Monique Péan to make jewelry as a form of therapy. Now Michelle Obama wears her pieces
Categories: Small Business News
Exotic New Mars Images From Orbiting Telephoto Studio
A new batch of sharp Martian close-ups from NASA's HiRISE camera were released, and we've gathered some of the best in the gallery.
Categories: Technology Tools
Exoplanet Shows Gas Giants Start as Dusty Behemoths
The atmosphere of a young exoplanet didn't fit any of our existing models for what gas giants should look like. But when astronomers added huge dust clouds, it was a perfect fit, perhaps revealing a larger truth about gas giants.
Categories: Technology Tools
Haverty on Apple Retail Advantage
Lawrence Haverty, portfolio manager at Gamco Investors Inc., talks with Bloomberg's Betty Liu about Apple Inc.'s new television set-top box.
Categories: Technology Tools
Earth's Magnetic Field Flipped Superfast
Magnetic minerals in 15-million-year-old rocks appear to preserve a moment when the magnetic north pole was rapidly on its way to becoming the south pole, and vice versa.
Categories: Technology Tools
Mobile Devices Need Custom Maps
Development Seed is engineering tools to create custom maps that work in a wider variety of situations such as natural disasters and in the developing world.
Categories: Technology Tools
Mass Extinctions Change the Rules of Evolution
A reinterpretation of the fossil record suggests a new answer to one of evolution's existential questions: whether global mass extinctions are just short-term diversions in life's preordained course, or send life careening down wholly new paths.
Categories: Technology Tools
First Look: Official Twitter App for iPad Feels Smooth as Butter
The official Twitter app for iPad is finally here, and star developer Loren Brichter has polished yet another gem. Twitter for iPad sports a really elegant interface that's significantly faster and more intuitive than competing Twitter clients we've tested (such as Twitterific and Tweetdeck).
Categories: Technology Tools
Fujitsu ScanSnap Counts Quality Over Quantity
Fujitsu's scanner is your new (albeit bulky) buddy if you want high-quality images. The sturdy document feeder gets pages in straight, so you get them out right.
Categories: Technology Tools
Chrome 6 Arrives, Just in Time for Cake
Google is celebrating the second birthday of its Chrome web browser with the release of Chrome 6. Among the new features are an updated user interface, auto-fill for web forms, extension syncing, increased speed and numerous bug fixes.
Categories: Technology Tools
How Apple Just Disrupted the Cable Guys
People in Silicon Valley have focused on the set-top box as the lever to attack the cable industry. Cable boxes blow, but that's a losing battle. So why is Apple TV different? Because Steve Jobs has not just created a new set top box. He's actually created a whole new media ecosystem built around the mobile phone.
Categories: Technology Tools
String Theory Finally Does Something Useful
String theory has finally made a prediction that can be tested with experiments — but in a completely unexpected realm of physics: quantum entanglement.
Categories: Technology Tools
Ancient Nubians Made Antibiotic Beer
Chemical analysis of the bones of an ancient Sudanese Nubians who lived nearly 2,000 years ago shows they were ingesting the antibiotic tetracycline on a regular basis — likely from a special brew of beer. The find is the strongest yet to support that antibiotics were previously discovered by humans before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928.
Categories: Technology Tools
Samsung Introduces Its 7-Inch Tablet to Rival iPad
Samsung has announced the launch of a tablet that could become the first major Android-powered challenger to the Apple iPad.
Categories: Technology Tools
Heavy European Snowfall Caused by 'Weather Collision'
The uncharacteristically snowy weather that hit Northern Europe and North America in the winter of 2009 to 2010 was caused by a rare combination of two separate weather oscillations in the Atlantic and Pacific, claim meteorologists.
Categories: Technology Tools


