InsideTech

Thousands of work visas used by the tech and biotech industries remain available for foreign workers, even though the U.S. government began accepting applications more than six months ago. Out of the 65,000 H-1B visa applications that are up for grabs, only 46,700 applications have been submitted for 2010, according to the government.  The 20,000 visa cap available for foreign students ...

SAN FRANCISCO - Since its debut in 2007, millions of people have gravitated toward Apple's iPhone, wooed by its sleek hardware, simple user interface and abundance of applications. Other smart phone makers have been trying since then to dispel the notion that the iPhone is the be-all and end-all of mobile gadgets. The latest push comes from Verizon Wireless and ...

REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp. says it is cutting 800 more jobs. That's in addition to the 5,000 layoffs it announced in January. Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman, said Wednesday the cuts are being made in offices around the globe. He would not say what specific product groups or job types are affected. Gellos also says Microsoft had already let nearly ...

Forget that Apple has been carefully courting businesses and business users; forget that the iTunes App Store has over 78 pages of business-specific applications.  Apple is insisting to one very disappointed Swedish customer, J. Martin Wehlou, that its iPhone Apps aren't business tools and are not meant for business use. The incident began when Mr. Wehlou contacted Apple seeking details on ...

Are you overcome with guilt about how much carbon, sulfides, nitrides, and other emissions goodies were pumped into the atmosphere in the making of your new Toyota Prius?  Do you feel dirty? Well, Toyota has just the thing for you.  It has genetically engineered two new species of flowers that soak up air pollution. If you're left scratching you're head about ...

A big ad partnership from Microsoft may in time help Yahoo rediscover its magic, but over the last year the company has seemed very lost.  With its search engine powered by Bing and its team now focusing on APIs and the advertising partnership, Yahoo has yet to prove itself a legitimate competitor to Google. Now an embarrassing debacle is earning the ...

NEW YORK - Footage leaked from "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" reveals that players of the upcoming video game can shoot innocent civilians in an airport in a realistic rendering of a terrorist attack. The game, which has an "M" rating for mature audiences, comes out next month in what its publisher hopes may be the most lucrative launch ...

According to the hype and early reviews, Windows 7 is the best revision of the PC operating system that Microsoft has released in years. It probably is. But that says more about how little Microsoft has done to maintain and upgrade Windows over the years than it does about the true value of Windows 7, which will hit store shelves Thursday. ...

The Obama administration has been more willing than previous administrations to implement open source technology, as the new WhiteHouse.gov content management software (CMS) system has been switched over to the open source Drupal. Open source is already used by the U.S. government throughout numerous websites and departments, according to tech guru Tim O-Reilly, but the White House using Drupal will only ...

NEW YORK - New York's attorney general hit Intel Corp. with an antitrust lawsuit Wednesday, claiming the company used "illegal threats and collusion" to dominate the market for computer microprocessors. Following a similar case in Europe, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo claimed that the world's biggest computer chip maker paid billions of dollars in kickbacks to computer manufacturers and retaliated against those ...

Apple has long opted for a system of closed computer hardware, disallowing third party OS X computers.  Nonetheless, small companies retailing cheaper OS X boxes have continually popped up, the latest of which is Psystar.  Legal pressure from Apple has typically succeeded in eventually killing such companies, but it typically isn't long before a new one pops up. Individual users also ...

While Apple seems to be content with "going negative" when it comes to commercials touting its computing products, Microsoft has taken a different route with Windows 7. Apple has focused more on bashing Windows 7 (and the faults of its predecessors) rather than focus on the main strengths of the OS X platform. Microsoft, on the other hand, has created positive ...

You see your Gwen Stefani avatar step up to the stage.  She begins to belt out, "It's the honky tonk women; Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues..." Wait - that's not by Gwen Stefani and No Doubt - that's "Honky Tonk Woman" by the Rolling Stones!  That's the intriguing or perhaps appalling feature (depending on your viewpoint) which players have ...

MILWAUKEE - PepsiCo Inc. is facing criticism for an iPhone application that promises to help men "score" with two dozen stereotypes of women by giving users pickup lines and a scoreboard to keep track of their conquests. An apology by the company - which is using the app "Amp up before you score" to market its Amp energy drink - ...

In a city known for its architecture, it must be the most boring $500 million building around - on the outside, that is. Microsoft Corp.'s new data center in suburban Chicago shows the blandest face possible: bare warehouse walls, behind some serious security fences. Inside, however, this dull structure could hold the future of computing. Within a decade, if Microsoft is ...

What does a U.S. Department of Homeland Security checkpoint and an a retirement home have in common?  A Wii might be playing a prominent role in both. What sounds like a joke may soon be a reality thanks to an unusual idea dreamed up by our national security's top minds on how to catch potential terrorists before they act.  Funded by ...

Nov. 1 - It's a global battle whose foot soldiers will be engineering teams working inside a few square miles of Sunnyvale and Mountain View, with billions of dollars in advertising at stake. Almost a decade after Google became a household name, Microsoft's launch of its Bing search engine, followed by Microsoft and Yahoo's deal to collaborate on search, could ...

Nov. 2 - There are more than 100,000 iPhone applications in existence. Some provide users with valuable media and information. Others plaster fake mullets on photos of friends. Here are a few you just might want to check out. COOL AND INNOVATIVE In 2002, James Hom was working on a lab assignment at Stanford University when he mentioned to teaching ...

It is fitting that Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system arrives ahead of Halloween. When Microsoft buries Windows Vista for good on Oct. 22 and replaces it with Windows 7, the ghostbusters in Redmond will have exorcised a demon. If you haven't experienced the frights of Vista firsthand, you've no doubt heard about them: how it takes forever to power ...

Oct. 26 - PORTLAND, Ore. - Maybe I'm on to something. For a good part of last week, my musings about Ubuntu Linux was among the top five most-read stories on our site. Since the other top stories concerned health-insurance reform or the H1N1 vaccine and similar weighty topics, the presence of a geek-oriented column came as a pleasant surprise. I ...