All Blog Posts from Tech Talk

To begin, a disclosure: I do not, nor have I ever, owned any Apple stock. I do, however, own a few Apple products like an iPhone, a Shuffle, and Apple TV. But then it's hard to find someone who doesn't own an iSomething these days. I write all this to preface my comments about Steve Jobs' mysterious health problems. Just what is the truth about his situation?

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A healthy contingent from CBS and (our corporate colleague) CNET attended today's T-Mobile press conference where the G1 was unveiled for the first time. Corporate executives from handset maker HTC, Google, and T-Mobile were onhand, as well as a "surprise" visit from Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. So what's the deal? Read on!

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Our energy sources, they are a changin'. With apologies to Bob Dylan, it's absolutely true. Alternative ideas abound from solar to biomass to nuclear to wind and more. But which is best for the environment AND the most practical? Earlier this week, the CBS Evening News featured a story about solar options, Katie Couric did an interview with tycoon T. Boone Pickens about his porposed wind "farm," and tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric I'll have a story about some of the hidden complications and promises with wind power. We traveled to the town of Sweetwater, TX, and even climbed up inside a massive wind turbine to see firsthand what's happening in that state -- now the country's biggest user/generator of wind energy. I hope you'll tune in.

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What a week! Between iPhone 3G in San Francisco and the Webby Awards here in New York there was a lot going on. (By the way, Stephen Colbert's five-word acceptance speech managed to be both funny and reflect the current narcissism often associated with the Web and social networking: "Me, me, me, me, me.")

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I can't believe it's been nearly a year since people lined up around the country for the original iPhone. Of course, in the end it made no difference whether you spent a week without a shower sleeping on a lawnchair on 5th Avenue or dropped by an Apple store three hours after the official launch -- everyone who wanted one managed to buy one. And now comes the expectation that CEO Steve Jobs will use his appearance at the Apple Worldwide Developers' Conference on Monday in San Francisco to unveil the next generation.

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I can't believe it's been nearly a year since people lined up around the country for the original iPhone. Of course, in the end it made no difference whether you spent a week without a shower sleeping on a lawnchair on 5th Avenue or dropped by an Apple store three hours after the official launch -- everyone who wanted one managed to buy one. Steady if not overwhelming interest has remained, with Apple reportedly selling more than 4 million iPhones worldwide. And now comes the expectation that CEO Steve Jobs will use his appearance at the Apple Worldwide Developers' Conference on Monday in San Francisco to unveil the next generation. Call it iPhone 2.0. What's in store? Lots of speculation about 3G (much faster data), a GPS chip for navigation, and even a possible video camera. What else? Well, we won't know for sure until Jobs opens his mouth, but that hasn't stopped us from putting together a story about what he MIGHT say for Monday's CBS Early Show. I'll also be attending the conference in San Francisco and will report live on Tuesday morning with all the details.

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At first glance, the platypus looks more like a bad taxidermy project than a vibrant example of evolution gone right. In fact, when it was discovered in 1799, some people actually thought its Donald Duck-like bill had been surgically attached by a prankster. Well, the often lampooned platypus got its comeuppence this week when researchers at the University of Washington St. Louis announced they'd mapped the genome of the cartoonish creature. Their findings about the mammalian/reptile-esque platypus were rather surprising, and you can listen to one of the lead scientists, Wes Warren, in this interview for my weekly CBS radio feed, SciEye. (I love how Warren describes the platypus.)

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Tapping into the wi-fi feature on an iPhone can be handy, and definitely faster than the current AT&T EDGE network allows. But now users are wondering what the deal is after AT&T first told subscribers that all AT&T wi-fi hotspots could be accessed for free, then apparently removing any trace of the offer from its Web sites. Has anyone else experience this? In other Apple news, a report looking at the "greenness" of various tech companies gave Steve Jobs' company low marks for greenhouse gas emissions. The ClimateCounts survey put Apple at the back of the pack, well behind firms like IBM, Canon and Toshiba, which finished at the top. For more, check out the story here. This particular survey aside, does the "green practices" of a tech company have any bearing on your purchases? Worth thinking about.

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OK, no, I'm not hungover in the post-imbibing sense but I did spend the night at a bar in Manhattan chatting with politically minded young people. And it was equal parts exhausting and enlightening. Turns out we missed a rowdy group of New York Giants fans who left just before we arrived around 5p (Super Bowl victory parade was held yesterday). Probably a good thing since they left holes punched in the ceiling and "redecorated" bathrooms in their wake! NOT that they're representative of ALL Giants fans, of course, but one wonders what would they have done if the team had lost? Anyway, I digress.

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TGIF. U2? U23D?? Definitely. It's Friday and one of my New Year's resolutions was to update this Tech Talk blog more frequently. So, I've resolved to make the entries less wordy, more casual-y, and perhaps even timely. The subject matter will still be based in the high-tech domain but occasionally may branch out to include more pop culture stuff.

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