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IBM has announced a new chip that could help a supercomputer achieve 10 petaflops, which is calculating power tantamount to the speeds Nature uses to form bubbles in sea foam and keep planets in orbit.

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Vevo, a presumed successor to MTV, debuts today to much less fanfare than its progenitor, what with video having killed the radio star over 25 years ago. Do you think the world needs a for-profit web site that plays music videos?

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Earlier this week Google announced the launch of Google DNS. I'd like to share my two predictions for DNS in 2010.

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Apple's new 21-inch iMac was October's best-selling desktop computer, according to retail analyst firm NPD. While sexy, the sales success was partially due to a slowdown in sales of competing PCs prior to the launch of Windows 7.

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I am still dumbfounded by Comcast's decision to buy NBC, and I'm not sure it's because I know too much about the past...or have to little faith in the future. Or both.

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What does it mean when the nation's largest Internet Service Provider, like Comcast, buys one of the biggest content creators in the world, like NBC? For one thing, it means the already contentious issue of Net Neutrality is about to get even more heated. Hopefully, it will galvanize the FCC to create and implement Net Neutrality rules that protect the interests of other companies doing business on the Internet.

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Business advisory service IDC issued a series of predictions for 2010 on Thursday and managed to say nothing at all that's surprising.

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What Twitter client do you use? TweetDeck is a favorite of many people who use Twitter for professional purposes. I've been an enthusiastic user of Tweetie for the Mac since it came out more than seven months ago, because I love its powerful, simple, and easy-to-use interface. However, TweetDeck now supports Twitter features that Tweetie doesn't, so I figured I'd give TweetDeck another try. And I'm liking it.

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With the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention this week reporting widespread H1N1 flu outbreaks in 32 states, many companies are dealing with or anticipating the need for staff to work remotely in the months ahead. This can present a challenge for IT organizations that haven't in the past dealt with large numbers of remote workers.

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I am ashamed to admit it but I am a deal hunter. I'd like to share my top resources so you can save actual money on Cyber Monday.

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As families and friends gathered across our great country yesterday, we were celebrating the merits of low tech. I think it should teach us something about how we conceive, build, and deliver any tech.

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AOL is offering up a tantalizing taste of its post-Time Warner business strategy: a new brand identity, which it plans to formally introduce when it lists on the NYSE on December 10.

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Earlier this month talk-show host Ellen began following me (and other tech people) on Twitter. Did her move display something more than just a simple follow?

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CERN's Large Hadron Collider ("LHC") restarted this morning without a hitch, after a year of kludgy delays and nutty rumors that time travelers had sabotaged it. It's time to ratchet up the quack science.

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Atari and Cryptic Studios are going to launch a MMORPG based on the Star Trek universe in early February, and reading about it has made me rather teary-eyed for the old days of Empire.

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It seems the hot Twitter news these days is that the service might be slowing in U.S. traffic growth. More importantly, is Twitter continuing to creep closer to FriendFeed's feature set?

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HP announced its takeover of 3Com Corp this week, and the media covered it as 1) a battle in the war with Cisco Systems, and 2) further evidence that tech giants are consolidating to provide "one stop shops" for corporate clients. Are you buying it?

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In perhaps unwitting participation in the publicity campaign for Columbia Pictures' upcoming doomsday flick "2012," NASA has posted a promise on its web site that "nothing bad will happen to the Earth." Gulp.

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A new player has entered the Intranet and collaboration space. OfficeMedium aims to help small businesses with their team business and communication needs.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt is out making the media rounds in support of the Android launch, and during a Fox Business interview he touched on the issue of data privacy and control. It got me thinking that the subject was the real reason he's out and about.

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Ever since Avis made it respectable for a brand to be #2, there have been many really good examples of trailing entrants into product markets that achieve success, especially in the technology world. Is Motorola's new Droid the latest example?

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In a moderated discussion at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Booz Allen Hamilton VP Art Fritzson and senior associate Walton Smith shared their experiences integrating social and collaborative software into their consulting business.

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Now there's a way to read bedtime stories to your kids without actually being there. Jason Kottke calls the system "slick." I call it sickening.

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Highlights from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference from San Francisco will be available live, via streaming video, beginning at 8:30 am PST on Tuesday. We kick off with keynote speaker Tammy Erickson, president of the nGenera Innovation Network. Watch by clicking here.

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Internet Explorer is slowly losing market share to its biggest rivals, Apple and Google, for reasons as disparate as they are significant.

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The news that WhiteHouse.gov relaunched this week running open source Drupal software raised eyebrows and hackles among knee-jerk anti-Obama types and a small cadre of ignorant bloggers.

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The Internet turned 40 yesterday, and it got me thinking about its relationship to the time and place in which it was invented. The happenstance of its first message belies why it wasn't just an innovation or improvement, but a truly disruptive technology.

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We've seen how social media like Twitter and Facebook can be used as part of a winning election strategy, but the same tools don't seem to influence elected officials or public policy.

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I've read that most of the plug-in electric vehicles under development have been designed to mimic the "feel" of driving a combustion engine car. I'm not sure that's even possible, and I don't know why they'd try.

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Maybe folks are simply trying to talk themselves out of the recession (which would be a good thing in itself), but it seems like the conversation around cloud computing is shifting from cost-cutting to unleashing innovation.

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I knew things had really changed when I came across a homeless man sitting on the ground at Columbus Circle last weekend, panhandling for $15 million to fund an "electronic Democracy project." One thousand dollars would go towards an iBook and $5 for lunch. He wouldn't tell me about his project in detail unless I put up some "serious money," but his request drove home how much has changed in our society since even the recession of 2002-2003, never mind 1991.

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The pilots of Northwest Airlines Flight 188, which overflew the runway at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport last week, told investigators from the National Transportation Safey Board that they used their laptop computers -- a violation of company policy -- while discussing airline crew scheduling procedures.

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Every week I read about another company that has closed its doors. Many news outlets are quick to report on the closures but rarely there is an analysis on why they failed.

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Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco likes to boast that he can't be covered. Now he says he's the one who'll be doing the covering. Of news.

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This week's O'Reilly Web 2.0 Summit yielded the usual detritus about technology reinventing the laws that govern time and space, but Facebook's revelation that people spend 8 billion minutes a day on its service really cut through the clutter for me.

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Much has been made of the premature obituaries for Second Life, but while the virtual world manufactured by Linden Labs has prevailed long beyond its presumed expiration date, the business model seems too arcane and forbidding to inspire many imitators.

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CNN.com unveiled a new site design to reporters Thursday that it will launch on Monday that includes more prominent use of video and a radical change in how it incorporates so-called citizen journalism.

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Like most CEOs of public companies, Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe, isn't the most compelling interview subject because he's too guarded about what he says.

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The network neutrality forces are trying to make the case that regulations will be good for business -- even for the likes of AT&T and Verizon, which are quite frankly the targets of the Federal Communications Commission's rulemaking proposals.

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Barnes & Noble has unveiled "Nook," its own proprietary electronic reader, and the headlines breathlessly wonder if it's a Kindle killer or whether Apple is about to announce its own. I'm still wondering if anybody wants an e-reader to begin with.

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Identity management, from both national security and personal security standpoints, could well be the next big policy debate we have in the United States.

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Verizon's recent TV ad comparing its national wireless coverage to that of AT&T's is a double-barreled attack on both AT&T and, by mocking the iPhone's "there's an app for that" slogan, AT&T's partner in smartphone domination, Apple.

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When Friendfeed launched, it was supposed to be the ultimate sharing service that was going to beat Twitter. So why is traffic to the service down post-Facebook acquisition?

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Yesterday, Facebook said 90% of the ad demand market not served by Google was ripe for its profits, and Sony debuted a PlayStation 3 with twice the storage previously available. There's a common theme to both news stories:

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My recent post about BadCompany.com, which blacklists customers who claim refunds from their credit card issuer rather than directly from the retailer, raised a number of interesting questions: have any retailers actually signed up for this, how does BadCustomer even get a hold of those names, and isn't it a violation of customer privacy for retailers to reveal customer names to third parties?

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Earlier this year, Heartland Payment Systems announced a major security breach that sent a few shockwaves through the financial world, not just because of its impact on Heartland, but also because of what the incident revealed about the sophistication of the Russian hackers who perpetrated this fraud. Heartland's CSO Kris Herrin talked to me about it at our recent Bank Summit in Pasadena, CA.

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Privately-held Twitter has been closely linked to three incidents that we know of in which the Internet service worked closely with official United States agencies. The first was in Iraq, then Iran, and the most recent in Pittsburgh.

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How's this for a new customer service angle? If retailers get tired of your returns history, you might be out of luck next time you shop for something online.

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Twitter may have to find itself a new business model, if recent numbers are any indication.

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Users of Sidekick mobile phones have had their first bad weather experience: Microsoft's Danger subsidiary has lost all of the customer data stored on its servers.

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