Jim Rapoza

In Neal Stephensons seminal 1992 cyberpunk novel “Snow Crash,” Hiro Protagonist, the, uh, protagonist of the story, is a struggling pizza delivery guy. He is also a well-known, powerful celebrity with killer samurai sword capabilities. How is he both of these things at the same time? Easy. In the real world, Hiro is a pizza […]

When news came out that Microsoft was claiming that open-source technologies violate 235 Microsoft patents, it sparked a predictable firestorm of responses. Most of these, both here at eWEEK and across the Web, have correctly identified this as a classic Microsoft campaign of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Points have also been made about the […]

Last night 60 Minutes aired a story on Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project, source of the famous $100 laptop. An interesting aspect of the story was the focus on some of the tactics that Intel is using to promote its similar product, the Classmate PC. Similarly to the OLPC’s $100 laptop, the Classmate […]

Over at our Ziff Davis sibling site Extreme Tech, Loyd Case has done an interesting review of a new terabyte hard drive. That’s right, it’s a regular hard drive that holds one terabyte (or 1,000 gigabytes if you prefer to look at it that way. And I thought I was cool for recently picking up […]

Typically, an external hard drive wouldnt qualify as an emerging technology, nor would adding the capability to move files and personal settings from that external drive to other computers transform the device into something new enough to merit that designation. However, the Seagate Technologys FreeAgent Go drive adds a new twist that intrigued us enough […]

Click the image to see the slide showScratch Do you want to teach kids how to program or do you want them to learn how to build graphically rich dynamic applications, simulations, games and animations? If you chose the first option, then Scratch, from the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab may not […]

Click the image to see the slide showThe Alienware MJ-12 8550i Workstation High-end PC maker Alienware is probably best known as a producer of screamingly fast gaming machines. However, the company also has a more businesslike side that takes much of this same gaming expertise and applies it to the creation of very powerful workstation […]

Click the image to see the slide showSeagate’s FreeAgents Typically an external hard drive wouldn’t qualify as an emerging technology. And even when one adds the ability to use an external USB drive to move files and some personal settings to other computers, it hardly transforms an external drive into something new. But the Seagate […]

If you have a friend, family member or colleague who is a brilliant scientist, researcher or developer, there is a good chance that youve seen the interesting dichotomy that is sometimes true for these brilliant minds. That is, it isnt uncommon for these geniuses to be super-smart in their specific field of knowledge but hopelessly […]

Whether it is called on demand, software as a service or application service provider, the ability for businesses to purchase and deploy complex enterprise applications through hosted services has greatly eased the burden of managing and running these often complex systems. And just as on-demand services have taken over the world of CRM (customer relationship […]

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a unique symposium held by the MIT Media Lab. The title of the symposium was h2.0, but it had nothing to do with water. That’s because the “h” stands for humans. Right off the bat I knew this would be different than many other MIT events that I […]

Every Wednesday here at eWEEK’s Emerging Technology we’ll provide links and insights into the latest news that’s breaking anywhere about new technologies and products. Here are the emerging technology stories for the week of May 7th. Sun Tries to Outshine Silverlight, Flash; Targets Mobile – You could make a good argument that Java was the […]