Articles by Katherine Noyes

Google cofounder Sergey Brin on Wednesday became the first person to put down a deposit of US$5 million toward a future orbital spaceflight through a new program from Space Adventures Brin's reservation uses one of six spots initially created in Space Adventures' new Orbital Mission Explorers Circle, which allows individuals to reserve seats on fut...

Apple's new iPhone 3G may have made the biggest splash in the smartphone pond on Monday, but it wasn't the only splash. Earlier in the day, Samsung Electronics debuted its Omnia, a device seen as an iPhone contender Samsung's Omnia features the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system, a wide 3.2-inch WQVGA (wide quarter video graphics arra...

For those of us old enough to remember life before the Internet, the term "virtual space travel" probably conjures memories of childhood visits to the local planetarium. Fast forward to today, and things are just a little different. In today's Internet-enabled world, ordinary citizens can explore the universe from the comfort of their own homes th...

A team of scientists recently conducted a study of human travel patterns by secretly tracking the whereabouts of cell phone users Aiming to investigate the geographical patterns in which humans travel over time, the researchers studied the trajectory of 100,000 anonymized cell phone users -- randomly selected from more than 6 million users -- and t...

A coalition of 14 privacy and consumer organizations have charged that Google is violating California law by failing to post a prominent link on its home page to its privacy policy "Google's reluctance to post a link to its privacy policy on its homepage is alarming," wrote the groups in a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt dated Tuesday. "We urge y...

Venezuela is now the latest country to appeal the adoption of an international standard based on Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) file format Following news last week that the South African Bureau of Standards had sent a letter protesting the decision late last month, Brazil and India joined with their own appeals shortly thereafter....

Part 1 of this two-part series looks at the current state of the vote-tallying system and calls for its reform in the wake of vote-counting irregularities in the last two presidential elections. Part 2 explores whether open source software in electronic voting machines is the solution Even as the presidential elections draw ever nearer, debate rage...

Amazon.com will launch a new streaming video service in the next "several weeks," CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's three-day D6: All Things Digital conference in California, Bezos also said his company is "very serious" about music and movies, and is currently readying a streaming version of video on-demand....

Sony Electronics and the six largest U.S. cable companies have signed an agreement that paves the way toward allowing consumers to view interactive digital and high-definition video services on "two-way" devices without a set-top box, the companies announced Tuesday The agreement lays the groundwork for a competitive retail market for two-way digit...

As the 2008 elections approach, political mudslinging on the campaign trail has become an all-too-familiar sight. No less muddy, however -- and no less central to the democratic process -- is the battle that's currently being waged over the ballot box How Americans cast their votes has become a subject of hot debate ever since the Florida debacle i...

Michael Hollick isn't really a Balkan criminal -- he just plays one in a video game that happens to be one of the fastest-selling ever, generating at least US$600 million in sales over the last three weeks Yet while Rockstar Games' "Grand Theft Auto IV" has enjoyed its wild success, Hollick -- an actor who plays Niko Bellic in the game -- hasn't be...

Nanotechnology may be considered one of the most promising new technologies emerging today, but it's also the source of considerable concern about potential risks to the environment and human health. A new study published Tuesday in Nature Nanotechnology adds further evidence that there's good reason for that concern In the study, titled "Carbon na...

Atlantic hurricanes will be fewer in number but more intense as a result of global warming, a new study predicts In the study, which was conducted by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., researchers performed hurricane simulations using a new model that they sa...

Fighting the animated powers of evil may be a reward unto itself for some gamers, but it can't hold a candle to finding a cure for cancer. A new game from scientists at the University of Washington, however, aims to tap gamers' brain power to make medical discoveries, with the potential even to win the Nobel Prize The game, Foldit, focuses on prote...

The Open Handset Alliance may have the power of Google behind it, but a surge of new members has just swelled the ranks of the competing LiMo Foundation to 40, the group announced Wednesday. Verizon Wireless is the marquee name on the list of new members, becoming the first U.S. wireless carrier to join the foundation Mozilla, Infineon Technologies...

Taking on the likes of Adobe and Microsoft, Sun Microsystems on Tuesday unveiled its new JavaFX family of products for building rich Internet applications Based on Sun's longstanding Java platform, JavaFX includes a runtime and a tools suite that Web scripters, designers and developers can use to quickly build and deliver rich interactive applicati...

Second Life is no place for kids, a Republican congressman declared Monday U.S. Representative Mark Kirk (R.-Ill.) has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requesting a consumer alert warning about the dangers of Second Life, which he charges could expose kids to child predators and registered sex offenders....

T-Mobile customers in New York City are the first to be able to enjoy its long-awaited third-generation (3G) wireless service, the company announced Monday T-Mobile officially launched its 3G network in New York on Monday, with plans to continue the 3G rollout across major metropolitan markets over the course of the year. By the end of 2008, T-Mob...

Researchers at HP Labs have proven the existence of the "memristor," a component of electrical circuits that could lead to computer systems with memories that never forget, the company announced Wednesday The memristor -- short for "memory resistor" -- was previously only theorized to be the fourth fundamental circuit element in electrical engineer...

Sun Microsystems on Tuesday brought new how-to guides and services to the community of more than 3,000 developers using its OpenSolaris-based open storage platform Two how-to recipes aim to help developers build solid storage systems quickly and efficiently, while the new service capabilities are designed to speed open storage application developme...