APM: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac
Each day, The Writer's Almanac features Garrison Keillor recounting the highlights of this day in history and reads a short poem or two. The Writer's Almanac is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media.
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What we can learn by tracking trash
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology plan to electronically track thousands of pieces of trash discarded by people in Seattle and New York, in part to give people a greater sense of their impact on the environment.
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Spammers still find plenty of easy targets
A new survey by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group finds that 12 percent of Internet users open messages they know to be spam because they're interested in the product or service being pitched.
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iPhone App Store hits 1.5 billion downloads
MP3 - iTunes "The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to...
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A conversation with Microsoft chief strategist Craig Mundie
Microsoft says it will make lightweight, web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote as part of Office 2010. The "cloud" applications are part of a company push into collaborative document making, according to Microsoft chief strategist and researcher Craig Mundie. In this interview …
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Not just a novel -- a transmedia experience
MP3 - iTunes Writers J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman venture beyond the novel into interactive digital storytelling with the new novel Personal Effects: Dark Art. The psychological thriller tells the story of Zach Taylor, an art therapist who must determine...
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Building an interplanetary Internet
NASA and the University of Colorado Boulder are working to build a version of the Internet for communications in space. Guest: Adrian Hooke, NASA
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Should Microsoft be afraid of Google's Chrome OS?
How should Microsoft respond to news that Google will make its own operating system? Guest: Michael Cherry, Directions on Microsoft
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A netbook for 99 cents (plus $1,440 in monthly fees)
Best Buy is selling a Compaq netbook computer for a dollar, when customers sign up for a two year subscription plan for mobile Internet service with Sprint. The tiny computer has a 160 GB hard drive, a gig of ram, and a 10.1 inch screen. Over the life of the wireless contract consumers will spen …
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High action video games could improve vision
Researchers at the University of Rochester say adults who play a lot of action video games may be improving their brain's ability to process visual information. They say people who used a video-game training program saw significant improvements in their ability to notice subtle differences in shade …
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The state of the free software movement
Free and open source software, which in general can be used, modified and customized without restriction, has made impressive inroads since the movement got its start in the early 1980's. But free software still has a ways to go when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of average computers u …
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The potential dangers of autonomous, ethical battle robots
MP3 - iTunes Today, part two of our conversation with Ronald Arkin, author of Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots...
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Should battle robots be programmed to make decisions based on a code of ethics?
MP3 - iTunes Unmanned aerial vehicles and other robots are taking on an ever-larger role in how the U.S. wages war. Fully autonomous battle robots seem inevitable. One researcher is committed to the notion that battle robots should be imbued...
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Reporter kidnapping raises questions about the open nature of Wikipedia
For seven months the New York Times managed to bury news of the kidnapping of one of its reporters by the Taliban. It also worked with Wikipedia to quash any mention of the kidnapping, and in doing so raised some questions about the very nature of the online encyclopedia.
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Password masking unnecessary, counterproductive?
Web usability campaigner Jakob Nielsen says its time to let users see their passwords as they type them.
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Twitter on the world stage: too big to fail, to small to succeed?
With Twitter serving as a key conduit of information coming from Iran, is the small company up to the task of being a player in geopolitics? It's a question posed by CNET staff writer Caroline McCarthy in a recent post.
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When smart phone users get rude
Future Tense commentator Dwight Silverman checks in on the thorny issue of using iPhones, BlackBerries and other smart phones during business meetings (and to Tweet that you're eating lunch with a friend you're ignoring in order to send that Tweet).
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What comes after Windows 7?
Windows 7 goes on sale to the public this coming October and, based on reviews of various test versions, it's sleeker and better performing than its predecessor, Vista. But even as the company puts the final touches on Windows 7 some top engineers and executives are working on a replacement operati …
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A portrait of the blogosphere in the Arabic speaking world
Researchers at the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society at Harvard University analyzed about 35,000 active Arabic language Weblogs in 18 different countries. One of the more interesting findings, according to Harvard's Bruce Etling, is bloggers tend to write mostly about their own towns and c …
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The best (microdots) and worst (bat bombs) of spy tech
Today, the conclusion of our three part interview with H. Keith Melton.
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Can U.S. keep up in spy technology?
MP3 - iTunes Today: Part 2 of our interview with H. Keith Melton, author of Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda...
APM: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Al..
