David Needle

SAN FRANCISCO — With its developer resources focused on getting the iPhone ready and finishing the next version of the Mac operating system, no one expected many surprises here at the opening of Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). But then, Steve Jobs is not one to waste his stage presence rehashing old news. The Apple […]

Most of the reports about the historic meeting between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs last week, including ours, noted how surprisingly nice the two tech titans were to each other. For sure, there was a lot of good-spirited chatter between the long-time rivals as they traveled down memory lane to simpler, friendlier times during the […]

Competition for running Windows software on the Macintosh is heating up. Apple will issue an update on the next release of its operating system, codenamed Leopard, on Monday at its developer’s conference in San Francisco. Leopard will include Apple’s “Bootcamp” software for running Windows applications. Yesterday, Parallels released Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac, a new […]

The company that invented the first mobile cell phone may have another neat innovation in the works. Motorola (Quote)  has been issued a patent for combining a solar panel with an LCD screen for mobile devices. The patent was issued last month. With increasingly sophisticated and power-hungry mobile devices on the rise, a solar-powered option […]

Maybe IBM’s new slogan should be “Got Speed?” The computer giant yesterday launched Power6, the latest and clearly the fastest in its Power line of microprocessors. At 4.7 GHz, the dual-core Power6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation Power5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it, according […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Good things come in small packages, but sometimes there are just too many. That’s the challenge facing designers of mobile devices and even notebook computers trying to keep up with the multitude of wireless standards and technologies to support it. “We have an exploding number of radio standards to deal with,” said […]

Notebook computer buyers are about to get a raft of new choices. Intel will formally introduce its latest mobile platform, the Centrino Pro, today at an event in San Francisco. The Centrino Pro was known by its codename ‘Santa Rosa’ while in development. Dell (Quote) said it’s going to wait till the fall to offer systems […]

MONTEREY, Calif.– Social networks and other Web-based forms of personal expression are connecting people on the Internet like never before. No surprise there. Whether it’s with MySpace profiles or expanding your personal network of contacts via sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, people are reaching out like never before. But at what point is it overkill, […]

While software as a service (define) (SaaS) offers great flexibility for accessing applications and files, there’s always the issue of what to do when the network goes down or is inaccessible. ShareMethods’ solution is ShareDrive OnDemand, an expansion of the company’s document-management system that lets users work on files offline and have them automatically synced or […]

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Google feted a group of reporters at its Googleplex campus here to show off its latest efforts in personalization. The new services extend the features of Google’s personalized home page service. The Google personalized home page will now be known as iGoogle and use the same Web address. Google officials said […]