Technology Audio/Video - NPR

Power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators adopted a first-in-the nation mandate to lower electricity demand. On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission on Wednesday required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient beginning in 2011.

The National Security Agency has been working with Microsoft Corp. to help improve security measures for its new Windows 7 operating system, a senior NSA official said on Tuesday.

As DVD sales decline, Hollywood studios are looking for ways to get movies straight to consumers' living rooms. This has some industry insiders worried that Hollywood is jeopardizing its most valuable asset: the theatrical release date. The movie industry is looking to change the way it distributes content.

A group of executives from more than a dozen auto, transportation and energy companies launched a new coalition Monday to urge the federal government to make a major investment in electric transportation. Their goal is to bring 100 million electric cars to the road by 2030.

A new iPhone application, called Cry Translator, claims that it can help parents interpret the many subtleties in their babies' cries — from hungry to tired to needs a diaper change. Melissa Block puts the app to the test with the help of All Things Considered producer — and new mom — Melissa Gray.

The president uses a town hall-style meeting with university students in Shanghai to focus on human rights, one of the trickiest issues separating China's communist government and the United States. Later, President Obama met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing.

Many people already use the Internet to search for health information, but more Americans are using social-networking sites to talk to each other about their health. And many patients find it empowering to be able to share and learn from others who are going through the same thing.

When was the last time you actually set pen to paper and mailed off a personal letter to someone? It's probably been awhile — and the man responsible is Ray Tomlinson. In 1971, Tomlinson changed the way the world communicated when he invented e-mail.

According to numerous sources on the Internet, three years from now a planet called Nibiru will collide with Earth, resulting in the extinction of the human race. This and other apocalyptic myths have NASA stepping up to soothe our fears.

More than 63 million people play the Facebook game called "Farmville" every month, and some even shell out real money to get ahead in the virtual reality. Host Scott Simon speaks to Dean Takahashi, who writes about gaming for the technology news blog VentureBeat, about why the game is so popular.

Researchers have figured out how to track the facial expressions of one person and map those movements onto a digital image of another person's face in real time. The result is something like a digital video puppet, which psychologists say may reveal something about human nature.

Consumers are clicking on Internet ads for prescription drugs less often in the wake of an FDA crackdown that led companies to scrub the ads of information.

A highly anticipated public meeting on social media is part of an FDA project to come up with rules for how drugmakers and other companies that market regulated products should behave online.

Amazon's Kindle is taking some knocks from the National Federation for the Blind. The electronic reader can read books aloud, but the federation says that function is difficult to turn on when you can't see. Now, two universities say they won't buy more Kindles for their students unless Amazon comes up with a fix.

Google announced today the roll out of yet another "free" service: WiFi access at 45 airports. But is it really free?

When Marine engineer Jonathan Kuniholm returned to his industrial-design shop after a tour of duty in Iraq, one of his first projects was personal: He wanted to improve on the design of the prosthetics he'd been using since he lost part of his right arm in an ambush. Kuniholm and his colleagues founded the Open Prosthetics Project, an open-source collaboration that shares its innovations freely.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is at war against Google. He's fed up with Google's search engine serving up the journalistic content of his new outlets without any compensation. So he is talking increasingly about blocking Google searches once his newspapers go behind a pay wall.

Advances in military medicine mean that more soldiers are surviving on the battlefield, but many are coming home with missing limbs. When they come home, those soldiers turn to Colonel Paul Pasquina, medical director of the amputee program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for the latest in prosthetics.

The next time your batteries need a recharge, try taking a walk. A tiny Cleveland startup is trying to capture the renewable energy of your footsteps — no outlet required. Its device is called the Personal Energy Generator, or PEG, and it's about the size of a flashlight.

For this week's installment of All Tech Considered, host Melissa Block talks with Omar Gallaga, technology culture reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, about Verizon's Motorola Droid smart phone; what Dell is calling "the world's thinnest laptop"; and a new video game Disney is using to help reinvent its most beloved character.

A boarding school in Massachusetts has removed its stacks and book collection to make way for Kindles and a subscription to millions of digital books. Administrators say the changes reflect current student habits; critics say they're rash and don't account for different learning styles.

The social networking Web site Tagged.com has adopted reforms after being accused of essentially stealing the e-mail addresses of some 60 million Internet users, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said. Cuomo had said the e-mail addresses in members' contact lists were used to send out more solicitation e-mails.

For two years, some of the biggest names in consumer technology have been trying to outdo Apple and its wildly popular iPhone. Reviewer Joshua Topolsky says the latest contender — the Droid — does a number of things better than the iPhone. But given a choice between the two, he says, the iPhone still has the edge.

At the 2009 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, undergraduates from all over the world unveiled the living machines they'd created with snippets of DNA, from bacteria that change color when they detect pollutants to ones that secrete non-toxic superglue.

The state of New York is looking for ways to reduce the time the unemployed spend looking for jobs, and it's turning to a mathematical formula for help. Using an algorithm developed by a Boston technology company, the program directs resumes to the employers most likely to make a hire.

The Motorola Droid is an exercise in functionality. But does it really give the iPhone a run for its money?

October 29th marked the 40th anniversary of the Internet. We'll talk with Scott Fahlman, the computer researcher who invented the virtual smiley face, about how emoticons and abbreviations have changed electronic communication.

Computer chip giant Intel is the target of an antitrust suit filed by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Intel commands about 80 percent of the microprocessor market. An Intel spokesman denies the charges and says the company's sales practices were legitimate.

One reviewer uses it for e-mail; another for sushi. It's being called a timesaver — even "the greatest thing ever invented." It's the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk. Drivers certainly don't need another distraction — but people surfing around on Amazon certainly do.

As newspapers go under, the network newscasts lose viewers and the mainstream media in general see more and more of their audience shift online, are we as a society better or worse off? A panel of experts debates.

Google Voice, the phone management service offered by Google, is blocking customers' calls to about 100 phone numbers that were generating excessive long distance fees in the Midwest. Lawmakers and AT&T have cried foul, and the dispute is renewing focus on a controversial practice that lets some phone companies charge inflated fees.

The standard for domain names is shifting so that a URL can exist entirely in another language that's not based on the letters A to Z. That means Internet users won't have to switch their keyboard into a different language to navigate the Web.

With the job market still in the doldrums, people are trying to figure out ways to use Twitter to find jobs. Twitter can be used to post a job, ask around about one, learn more about a potential boss or keep your network of former co-workers and friends updated on your job hunt.

Media critic Ken Auletta tracks the development of Google from a search engine to the provider of all things Internet in his new book Googled: The End of the World As We Know It.

Forty years ago this past week, a message was sent across ARPANET, the computer network developed by the Defense Department's Advanced Projects Agency. Many people consider that the day the Internet was born. For our series "The Net at 40," Guy Raz profiles the people who worked to make that transmission happen, as well as the two university lab students who sent the first message. Their goal? Type the simple word "login."

Want to know where those stimulus dollars were spent? Consider turning your smart phone into a government watchdog — then all you'll have to do is take it for a walk.

In the 40 years since the birth of the Internet on Oct. 29, 1969, the Web has transformed how we live our lives. It has also spawned a new class of celebrity: the blogger. Three bloggers — one in London, one in Shanghai, China, and one in Mumbai, India — share their stories. Philip Reeves Louisa Lim, Vickie Barker

For gadget lovers, Halloween is more geeky than spooky. Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of Make Magazine, talks about the geekiest do-it-yourself Halloween costumes and decorations, from spray foam guts and singing pumpkins to a fortune-teller costume built on a Segway.

On Oct. 29, 1969, around 10:30 P.M., a message from one computer was sent over a modified phone line to another computer hundreds of miles away. Some say the Internet was born that day. UCLA computer scientist Leonard Kleinrock, who was there, gives his account.