San Diego

On November 4, Californians voted in favor of a new high speed rail system that will carry passengers the 800 miles from Sacramento to San Diego. Since, according to the High Speed Rail Authority, California is the 12th largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world and transportation accounts for 41 percent of those emissions, this news is very exciting.

Travelers lugging laptop computers worry about losing them -- with good reason. The hardware is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, and lost or stolen data could be priceless.

But safeguarding your machine is no cinch.

Just ask Luke M. Ford, founder and chief executive of My Computer Works Inc., a tech-support company in Scotts-dale, Ariz.

On a recent jaunt to San Diego, he stashed his $1,400 laptop under a desk in his hotel room. When he returned 30 minutes later, it was gone. His traveling companion had left the door open.

Microsoft Corp. does not have to pay $1.5 billion in damages to Alcatel-Lucent SA, a panel of federal appeals judges has ruled in what may be the last word on a long-running digital music patent lawsuit.

In February 2007, a jury in U.S. District Court in San Diego determined Microsoft infringed on two patents that cover the encoding and decoding of audio into the digital MP3 format, a popular way to convert music from CDs into files on computers and vice versa.

Real Networks, best known for its ties to the Rhapsody music service and RealPlayer multimedia software, announced Monday the release of a DVD copy and playback program at DEMOfall 08 in San Diego. RealDVD lets users copy DVDs to hard drives for later playback.

Ryan Lukin, spokesperson for Real Networks said, "It's very reasonable for someone to save a DVD to a portable drive and want the ability, flexibility to watch on his or her home computer, work computer, etc."

Real Need?

Someday you may be reading this on paper-thin, high-contrast, electronic paper technology. That's the promise of new technology shown Monday by Esquire magazine and Plastic Technology.

For its 75th anniversary issue, Esquire features a first-ever digital cover with moving electronic imagery. The inside of the cover has an electronic ad for the Ford Flex crossover, and the cover flashes "The 21st Century Begins Now."

E-Ink's Technology

Scott Goldman uses his mobile phone to call friends and business contacts all over the world, from Britain to Australia. But the Southern California-based consultant doesn't pay a dime in international tolls to his mobile-phone carrier, AT&T, the biggest in the U.S.

The legal salvos between Nokia Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. stopped months ago, part of what officials at the wireless industry heavyweights described as a truce in a long-running battle that spanned three continents.

Peace came Wednesday as the two sides prepared for a courtroom showdown. Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, and Qualcomm, the world's largest maker of chips that run cell phones, agreed to settle a high-stakes licensing dispute and drop all legal complaints against each other in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

San Diego-based Websense Inc. was deemed a front-runner in the data leak prevention market by top-tier industry research firm Forrester Research. In its second quarter 2008 report on DLP released this month, Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester ranked Websense and Reconnex Corp. of Mountain View highest across 74 criteria, including market presence and product offerings.

Websense, with corporate headquarters in Sorrento Valley, is an integrated Web, messaging and data protection company. It employs 1,200 workers.