software program

Ryan Blitstein in Miller-McCune:

Ryan Blitstein in Miller-McCune:

The bickering between Apple and Adobe over why Apple's iPhone and its new iPad don't run Adobe's Flash software is giving me a headache.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says Flash is buggy and accuses Adobe of being lazy. Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief technology officer, denies that and accuses Apple of trying to control what iPhone and iPad users can do with their devices.

Jobs says Flash is on its way out. No way, says Lynch. Enough already. You guys are beginning to remind me of my kids. Can't you find some way to get along?

When China's authoritarian leaders are on top of their game, they can make awesome feats look breathlessly easy, lacing the coasts with bullet trains, throwing up vast airports seemingly overnight, plopping scores of power plants on the landscape like some giant farmer setting out rice shoots.

When they are off their game, it becomes apparent that managing a billion-plus people is not easy at all, even with near-absolute power.

Two decades ago, a 23-year-old Cornell University graduate student brought the Internet to its knees with a simple software program that skipped from computer to computer at blinding speed, thoroughly clogging the then-tiny network in the space of a few hours.

The program was intended to be a bit of cybernetic fungus that would unobtrusively wander the Net. However, a programming error turned it into a harbinger heralding the arrival of a darker cyberspace, more of a mirror for all of the chaos and conflict of the physical world than a utopian refuge from it.

Google Inc. on Monday launched a new version of Google Earth that allows users to explore the oceans, view images of Mars and watch regions of the Earth change over time.

The new features mark a significant upgrade to Google Earth, a popular software program that provides access to the world's geographical information through digital maps, satellite imagery and the company's search tools.

Shouldn't your computer know a reasonable amount about your likes and dislikes? Wouldn't it be great if it could anticipate your needs and take action without you pressing a key?

Booking travel and restaurant reservations, rearranging meeting schedules or even taking a first cut at reading e-mail messages are among the mundane tasks that have remained beyond the reach of our PCs for decades.

But a new generation of Internet technologies, coupled with the investment of more than a third of a billion dollars, may be making meaningful progress.

Remember the EcoButton? Well, there’s an upgraded version of a similar save-energy-via-PC-sleep-mode concept that isn’t made of plasticrap. A new free software program has been developed by Verdiem that will help cut PC energy use by allowing users to schedule when their computer goes into sleep mode.