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20,568 articles from Sci-Tech Today

Leap Offers Free Nationwide Roaming To Cricket

Leap Wireless International Inc. said Tuesday that it's eliminating roaming fees for its Cricket contract-free wireless service, continuing a series of price cuts and service enhancements in the growing and competitive prepaid market. Leap hopes the move will shed some of Cricket's image as a regional service with limited coverage compared with the big national carriers. But to hold down the...

Nintendo and Sony Moving To 3-D To Preserve Markets

It's not just TV makers who are looking to 3-D for a shot of adrenaline. Video-game console makers are also hurriedly going dimensional to boost or maintain market shares for their systems. But Nintendo raised some eyebrows Tuesday with an announcement of a 3-D version of the top-selling DS, the handheld game player that evolved from the company's market-building Game Boy. Tentatively labeled...

Verizon Will Encourage Skype Use on Its Data Network

Beginning Thursday, Verizon Wireless will provide its customers with free downloads of Skype mobile for selected 3G smartphones running the Android and BlackBerry operating systems. Data-plan subscribers will be able to place an unlimited amount of free calls to other Skype users worldwide and dial overseas numbers at Skype's low international rates. The Skype download is aimed at the...

LG Pumps Out Seven New Smartphones at CTIA

LG Electronics rolled out a number of smartphones at the CTIA Wireless 2010 show this week. The new models feature some advances in mobile-phone technology. The LG Arena offers a 3-D user interface that lets users watch mobile TV. An HD display offers a full-color television experience with Dolby Mobile sound, and a touchscreen lets users e-mail, text and instant message. The device also has a...

Yahoo Launches Two Mobile Search Applications

Mobile applications are getting attention from the thousands of attendees at the CTIA Wireless 2010 show. Yahoo garnered some of that attention late Tuesday with two new mobile applications, Yahoo Sketch a Search and Yahoo Search. "The Yahoo applications are very impressive," said Michael Gartenberg, a partner at Altimeter Group, from the CTIA show in Las Vegas. "They are doing a tremendous...

Samsung Offers Convenience with Galaxy S Smartphone

Samsung is vying for attention at the CTIA Wireless 2010 show in Vegas this week with the unveiling of the Galaxy S smartphone. Samsung is positioning its latest mobile device as making consumers' lives more convenient. JK Shin, president of Samsung Electronics' Mobile Communications Business, announced the global launch of the Android-powered Galaxy S during his keynote speech at CTIA on...

Sprint Will Offer 4G Phone with Two Cameras This Summer

If you're just settling into the idea of 3G speeds on your mobile device, don't get too comfy. Sprint Nextel hopes to bolster its market position with the release this summer of "the world's first 3G/4G" handset, the HTC EVO 4G. The carrier is emphasizing the value of 4G speed, 10 times that of 3G. It said the EVO, using Google's open-source Android platform, will "download music, pictures,...

Developers Ready for 'Land Grab' on Apple's iPad

With Apple's iPad just a bit more than a week away, developers are getting excited about the possibilities of deploying their apps on a giant 9.7-inch version of the iPhone. "If there ever was a space to do some land-grabbing in, this is it," said Scott Lahman, CEO of Gogii, which publishes a popular app called TextPlus, which lets iPhone users text-message without paying AT&T for the privilege....

Health Law Makes Calorie Counts Inescapable

A requirement tucked into the nation's massive health care bill will make calorie counts impossible for thousands of restaurants to hide and difficult for consumers to ignore. More than 200,000 fast food and other chain restaurants will have to include calorie counts on menus, menu boards and even drive-thrus. The new law, which applies to any restaurant with 20 or more locations, directs the...

Study: Last Supper Paintings Supersize the Food

Has even the Last Supper been supersized? The food in famous paintings of the meal has grown by biblical proportions over the last millennium, researchers report in a medical journal Tuesday. Using a computer, they compared the size of the food to the size of the heads in 52 paintings of Jesus Christ and his disciples at their final meal before his death. If art imitates life, we're in...

Carrier Jet Takes Virgin Rocket Aloft for First Time

Virgin Galactic's fledgling space tourism rocket was taken aloft over the California desert on an inaugural test flight Monday attached to the wing of its mothership, the company said. The captive-carry test marked the start of a test program for SpaceShipTwo that will progress to free flights as a glider and then under rocket power, Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic said in a statement....

EPA To Issue Stricter Drinking Water Standards

The Environmental Protection Agency is tightening drinking water standards to impose stricter limits on four contaminants that can cause cancer. In a speech Monday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency is developing stricter regulations for four chemical compounds: tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, acrylamide and epichlorohydrin. All four compounds can cause cancer....


TUESDAY 23. MARCH 2010


SanDisk Offers 32GB Card for Overflowing Phone Data

With smartphone applications soaring exponentially, the next generation of devices will need far more storage space to hold them all, as well as megabits of music, photos and other data. And memory chipmakers seem ready to meet that demand. SanDisk this week released its biggest capacity storage card, the 32GB MicroSD, which contains a stack of eight 4GB chips. Only a millimeter thick, or...

iPhones May Be Sold Direct, But Still Locked To AT&T

You may have thought that Apple's iPhone goes with a long-term AT&T contract like peanut butter with jelly, but a new report indicates some things may be changing. Several Apple enthusiast sites Monday displayed an image of an internal company memo allowing U.S. customers to pay full price for an iPhone at an Apple Store without having to show an AT&T contract. However, contrary to some earlier...

Opera Submits Browser for iPhone To Apple's App Store

Opera Software submitted a mobile web browser for the iPhone to Apple's App Store on Tuesday. Called Opera Mini for iPhone, the application was first demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona last month. According to StatCounter, Opera Software commanded the mobile browser market with a 27.5 percent global share at the end of February. Given that Apple's own iPhone browser...

The Web Fuels Trade of Threatened Species

The Internet has emerged as one of the greatest threats to rare species, fueling the illegal wildlife trade and making it easier to buy everything from live baby lions to wine made from tiger bones, conservationists and law enforcement officers said Sunday. The Web's impact was made clear at the meeting of the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES....

Digital Downloads Are the Future of Gaming

The DVD in your hard drive, the sleek packaging on the shelf, the poster included for your wall. These are the trappings of PC gaming's present. The future may look a bit different, though: surf to a gaming platform on the Internet, download your title, and commence playing. There are already a number of providers of this type -- and unless the experts are woefully mistaken, at least some of...

Hey, Big Spender! Verizon Will Allow $25 in M-Commerce

In a move to build mobile commerce, Verizon Wireless on Monday announced a deal with Danal's BilltoMobile payment service. Beginning later this spring, Verizon customers can do more than shop on the mobile web -- they can make purchases. The BilltoMobile service will let customers pay for digital goods downloaded and consumed on personal computers. Here's the catch: It only works with Danal's...

Google Sidesteps Chinese Censorship with Redirect

Google on Monday put its China showdown to an abrupt end. Refusing to censor results on Google.cn, the Internet giant has started directing search traffic to Google.com.hk. Google is offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese via its Hong Kong servers. The decision is driving speculation on many fronts even as human-rights groups applaud the move and the Chinese government has warned...

Nintendo DS Player Will Have 3-D -- Without Glasses

If you thought the upcoming 3-D revolution meant you had to sit in front of a TV with special glasses, Nintendo is hoping to change that perception. The game company has announced it will show a 3-D version of its popular DS handheld game console this summer -- with no glasses required. The new model, currently called the 3-DS, is expected to be revealed at the big E3 show scheduled for Los...

Are Laptops Becoming the New Stereos?

Can your laptop replace your stereo equipment? As with so many other questions, the answer lies in the details. According to Thomas Rau from German magazine PC Welt, 15 to 17 inch laptops with integrated speakers offer "decent sound" for your average user. "Integrated speakers aren't worth our time," says Peter Knaak from the German consumer testing organization Stiftung Warentest. The...

Lawmakers Strike Limits on Texting and E-Mails

Open government in the heart of Silicon Valley is starting to mean turn off, tune out, power down. When the San Jose City Council meets just miles from the Apple and Google campuses, its members shut down all portable electronic devices, as though they were in a theater. If they're on and they get a text or e-mail from a lobbyist or anyone discussing city business, they must say so right then...

What To Look for in a Solid-State Drive

You can buy a computer with the fastest processor, the most muscular graphics card, and the speediest RAM. But your computer's performance will still be throttled if you continue to use a conventional hard drive. That's why solid state disks (SSDs) are this year's most coveted upgrade. Venture into the world of SSDs, though, and you'll see a myriad of competitors -- and have a lot of questions....

Museum Offers Fresh View of Air, Water, Land and Life

Watch maggots munch on liver. Stand in the path of a flash flood. Roam around a kelp forest. Nearly 10 years in the making, the $165 million Ecosystems Experience opens Thursday with its one-of-a-kind view of the world at the California Science Center. And it's free. Plants, animals and do-it-yourself science take up nearly every inch of the two-story, 45,000-square-foot exhibit in...

Space X Vows To Fly To the ISS for Less

As lawmakers weigh the pros and cons of turning over US manned spaceflight to contractors, one commercial hopeful [vowed] that her firm could fly U.S. astronauts to the orbiting space station for less than a trip on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Gwynne Shotwell, president of Space X, said she could guarantee her company would be able to provide at least three flights to the International Space...