InsideTech

Nov. 21 - Don't be surprised while shopping this season to find that some stores no longer accept checks. Diesel, True Religion, Ed Hardy and Lululemon Athletica are among a growing list of stores that don't accept personal checks. Gap Inc. has tested the idea. Austin-based Whole Foods Market is trying it out at a few stores in California and ...

Nov. 22 - Feeling frugal this holiday season? It's OK, so are most American consumers, according to numerous surveys. As the shopping season gets into full swing this week, here are some ways to save - and some ways to be safe. First, the savings. Whether it's online or at the mall, there are lots of ways to trim your holiday ...

The crowds, the fluorescent lights, the sales clerks who ignore you and the lines, lines, lines. Some people love Christmas shopping. I assume they also like sleeping on a bed of nails. Here are 10 reasons you should consider shopping online. 1. Unique gifts: You can find the coolest and most unusual stuff online. From remote-controlled Ferraris at hipstergifts.com to Gummi ...

Have you noticed? The holiday bargain hunting has already begun for electronics gizmos. Major retailers like Wal-Mart, Sears and Best Buy are already into the "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving) sales frame of mind, in recent weeks offering crazy come-ons like name-brand Windows 7 portable computers for as low as $249, 10 megapixel digital still cameras under $100 and GPS trail ...

Nov. 23 - More than 20 years ago Congress created a federal database to track incompetent and unprofessional health-care practitioners. The database, compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, includes some 460,000 records of malpractice lawsuits whose judgments total $69.7 billion. It includes information on 23,788 patient deaths, 8,100 major permanent injuries and 3,896 cases that resulted in ...

Nov. 23 - The holiday season is as much a time for tech as for toys. Electronic gadgets are at the top of many wish lists and account for an ever-growing share of holiday shopping budgets. Fortunately for shoppers, tech gifts don't have to break their budgets. One big trend this year is sharp discounts on products in many of ...

LONDON - A leading climate change scientist whose private e-mails are included in thousands of documents that were stolen by hackers and posted online said Sunday the leaks may have been aimed at undermining next month's global climate summit in Denmark. Kevin Trenberth, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Colorado, said he believes the hackers who stole a ...

BROMONT, Quebec - A Canadian woman on sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits after her insurance agent found photos of her apparently having fun on Facebook. Nathalie Blanchard said Monday she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits until payments dried up this fall. When Blanchard called her insurance provider, Manulife, to find out ...

Gamers are really into tweaking their gear for fun and to achieve the best performance during gameplay. PC gamers overclock their hardware to get more performance for less money and console gamers have modded their Xbox 360 consoles for many reasons (some for innocent reasons, some for nefarious reasons). Microsoft appears to feel that the only reason to mod an Xbox ...

When it comes to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), it was a Herculean enough task simply to build the $10B USD device -- a 17-mile-long circular tunnel between the Franco-Swiss border lined with some of the world's most sophisticated electronics.  However, that proved only to be the first of many challenges in building and bringing online the world's largest particle accelerator. ...

Nanotechnology may one day usher in a new era for electronics and other products with smaller portable devices that run longer than the electronics we use today. Much research is being conducted on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for a myriad of uses including electronics and batteries. Battery research is being conducted in several different areas. Researchers at MIT are using viruses to ...

A report compiled by security company McAfee notes there are a growing number of governments across the world that are preparing for potential cyber conflicts with other nations. The United States continues to receive cyber attacks against computer networks from numerous sources overseas, though other nations also are becoming worried about the cyber capabilities of other nations.  China, for example, said ...

By most accounts, the iPhone is the most likely of all smartphones to be used on the internet to access files on the go. There are also a growing number of iPhone users who are jailbreaking the devices to use unauthorized Apple software or to use the devices on other carrier networks. Over the last few weeks, a worm targeted specifically ...

Nov. 18- A New York Times story that seems to have gone largely unnoticed could be the seed of some good news for newspapers with strong websites. The Times article presented as bad news a report from the Boston Consulting Group that 48 percent of regular Internet users would be willing to pay to read the news online. The bad ...

ATLANTA - Air travelers nationwide scrambled to revise their travel plans Thursday after an FAA computer glitch caused widespread cancellations and delays for the second time in 15 months. The Federal Aviation Administration said the problem, which lasted about five hours, was fixed around 10 a.m., but it was unclear how long flights would continue to be affected. Doug Church, ...

HAVANA - President Barack Obama has answered questions submitted by a celebrated Cuban blogger, saying he isn't interested in "talking for the sake of talking" with Raul Castro and indicating he won't visit the island until the communist government changes its ways. In an unusual written response to Yoani Sanchez, who has gained international acclaim for daring to criticize her ...

SAN FRANCISCO - Some of the computer industry's biggest players - such as IBM Corp., Intel Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. - have wowed Wall Street this fall with stronger-than-expected profits. Dell Inc. didn't join them Thursday. The company reported a 54 percent drop in net income and a 15 percent decline in revenue in its latest quarter, both steeper than ...

MILWAUKEE - A lawsuit in Wisconsin is bringing a fresh challenge to the practice of paying for keywords on Google and other search engines to boost one company's link over a rival's. The practice has occasionally prompted a rival to file legal challenges alleging trademark infringement. Now a Wisconsin law firm is trying a new angle - accusing its competitor ...

NEW YORK - The flurry of initial public offerings this week is confirmation that this fall's rebound in the market wasn't a fluke and sets the stage for more companies to raise money through IPOs in 2010. But the response to two of the newly public companies shows that investors continue to be careful about where they place their bets. ...

While GM's partner Coskata may be stealing the most glory in the cellulosic ethanol industry, claiming that it will soon be offering ethanol at a production cost of $1/gallon, other companies are quietly making impressive gains of their own with different approaches.  POET ethanol is among those whose future is looking particularly bright.  The company recently built a pilot-scale plant in ...