engineer

Apple is showing its true mobile colors. The company is on the lookout for an engineer who can help get its mobile-phone software onto additional devices.

On Feb. 15, Apple posted an ad on its Web site for an engineering manager "to lead a team focused on bring-up of iPhone OS [operating system] on new platforms." Days later, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook called the company "a mobile device company," echoing remarks by Chief Executive Steve Jobs, who in January said "Apple is the largest mobile device company in the world."

Just when Facebook users get used to a new interface, engineers at the social network press the redesign button. Once again, Facebook has made changes it says will make navigating easier.

For the last several months, Facebook has been testing changes to the navigation tools, and on Friday it began rolling out the changes to some of its 350 million users, according to Facebook engineer Jing Chen.

"We've simplified the home page to make it easier for people to find what they're looking for on Facebook," said Meredith Chin, a Facebook spokesperson.

The New Interface

The technology platform that makes possible your reading this sentence is having a birthday Thursday. On October 29, 1969, the Internet was born.

On that date, engineers at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) sent a message to their counterparts at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in San Francisco, a distance of about 400 miles. In a modern-era equivalent of the legendary first telephone message -- "Watson, come here" -- an engineer named Charley Kline at UCLA tried to log in remotely.

"L," "O," ...

Microsoft unleashed Windows 7 to great fanfare on Thursday, with many reviewers giving the software giant's new operating system excellent marks. But for some users, upgrading has proven problematic.

Reports coming in after the first full weekend of consumer sales describe some users seeing Windows 7 downloads hang at the same percentage without resuming, while others are getting stuck in an endless reboot cycle when attempting to upgrade from Vista.

Japan's big-name electronic manufacturers are readying flat-screen TVs that can show high-definition movies and video games in 3-D for launch next year.

At the country's biggest consumer electronics show, which opened Tuesday just outside of Tokyo, all the major makers had large 3-D prototypes on display. Visitors to company booths at the CEATEC show donned special electronic glasses and watched as soccer balls flew toward them in sports clips and virtual heroes dodged deep into the background of video games.

Nearly two months after being sued for removing electronic books from Kindle owners' devices without their knowledge, Amazon has agreed to a settlement. The Internet retailer will pony up $150,000 to settle the class-action suit.

The first complaint filed against Amazon came from 17-year-old Justin Gawronski. The high-school student from Michigan sued after Amazon erased copies of author George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 along with notes on the book from his Kindle in July.

From Science:

Exxon Mobil has announced that they're jumping into the biofuel business.  The oil giant is investing $600 million in researching algae-based biofuels that would capture CO2 and perform as well as oil-based fuels.
The company is teaming up with Synthetic Genomics Inc. to genetically engineer algae strains for testing.  If the partners are successful in developing a greenhouse gas-capturing fuel, Exxon will then invest billions on the production of the fuel.