high-speed Internet connections

Alabama officials have selected a Cincinnati company for a $1.7 million two-year contract to make Internet broadband service available in all areas of the southern state.

Currently, dial-up Internet access is available using telephone lines in most parts of the state, but the service is slow and sometimes unreliable.

Gov. Bob Riley said Monday his broadband project will make high-speed Internet access with cables or wireless connections available even in rural areas. He said customers will still have to buy Internet access from providers like cable television or phone companies.

President-elect Barack Obama recently announced an ambitious plan to build up the nation's Internet infrastructure as part of his proposed economic stimulus package.

Upgrading the Internet is a particularly smart kind of stimulus, one that would spread knowledge, promote entrepreneurship and make this country more competitive globally.

The United States has long been the world leader in technology, but when it comes to the Internet, it is fast falling behind. America ranks 15th in the world in access to high-speed Internet connections.

When Debra and Lee Sherbeyn first moved to rural Virginia 14 years ago, they didn't own a computer, much less fret over access to the Web. It wasn't long before they had a machine and were logging onto the Internet using a dial-up modem. The arrangement suited them fine until family members started sending pictures by e-mail. It became downright untenable in 2004 when Lee entered the real estate business in their home in Bealeton, Va., about 58 miles southwest of Washington. "You can't wait all day for a picture of a house to download," Debra says.

Japan will start an aggressive push to market abroad its mobile technology, especially the nation's popular "wallet phone," a government official said Tuesday.

Although Japan boasts some of the most sophisticated cell phones in the world, delivering high-speed Internet connections, digital TV broadcasts and video downloads, the nation has failed to make its handsets, wireless technology and mobile services hits outside of Japan.

Today, every desk in every business looks naked without a PC or Mac, and the lowliest number-crunchers have computer power at their fingertips the likes of which their 1970's predecessors could never have imagined. [Anyone] will tell you it was a change that transformed business for the better. So why, 20 years later, are some companies moving office tasks off their own PCs and servers and back onto powerful computing clusters -- this time, not in the basement, but thousands of miles away in another firm's air-conditioned warehouse?