Editor's note: This story went live immediately after the Boeing 787 took off. For a more detailed story of the Dreamliner takeoff from our reporters on location, click here.
It's up, up and away.
After years of planning--and several delays--Boeing's 787 is finally doing what it is supposed to do--fly.
Boeing first rolled out the 787, also known as the Dreamliner, at an event in July 2007 and the jet was supposed to make its maiden voyage last year. A machinists' strike and other problems, however, had led to several delays.
CNET's Daniel Terdiman and Kent German are in Everett, Wash., covering the event.
It's sort of Hunter S. Thompson meets the Twitter generation.
Five employees of accessories maker Griffin Technology are driving cross-country from company headquarters in Tennessee to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which begins January 7.
Five workers from the iPod accessory maker will be making the 2,476 mile trek from Tennessee to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show in January in a restored 1972 Volkswagen van.
(Credit: Griffin Technology)Their mode of transportation for the 2,476-mile trip will be a 1972 Volkswagen Westfalia mini-bus that company workers have been restoring. The work has been led by chief mechanic Mark McGlon, whose day job is managing branding efforts for Griffin, which is known for its iPod and iPhone accessories. McGlon and four others from the company will head out in late December on their way to Sin City.
The Griffin-mobile is making scheduled stops on December 30 in New Orleans, December 31 in Austin, and January 2 in Phoenix, and is slated to be at the Grand Canyon on January ... Read more
T-Mobile customers are still seething after a major outage on Tuesday that left many people across the country unable to text and call their friends and business associates.
The outage, which started Tuesday afternoon and lasted through the evening before being resolved, affected a wide swath of users, though T-Mobile said that only 5 percent of customers were affected. T-Mobile has yet to say what caused the problems.
"Our sole focus during the service disruption on Tuesday was to quickly restore normal service to affected customers," T-Mobile said in a statement on Wednesday. "We are now working to determine the root cause and facts surrounding the interruption."
After CNET News reported on the outage and asked readers to share their experience, dozens of e-mails poured in.
From a husband unable to connect with his pregnant wife, to small-business owners unable to reach clients, to people getting grief for seemingly ignoring text messages from their significant others, people wrote in with their grievances.
Electrician Casey French, of Flower Mound, Texas, said that the outage is a ... Read more
Describing both the need for improvements in global health and the technologies that could create those gains, Bill Gates on Tuesday characterized himself as an "impatient optimist."
For those that know him, both terms describe him well.
Bill Gates talks about efforts to fight Malaria as part of a broad global health speech on Tuesday.
(Credit: CNET News)In the 15 months since he left full-time work at Microsoft, Gates has focused on his philanthropic efforts--which focus on areas where there is great suffering as well as the means to alleviate that suffering through attention and increased resources. But, too often, change is not coming quickly enough.
"When it comes to global health, Bill and I are optimists--but we're impatient optimists," Melinda Gates said in a statement ahead of a speech on Tuesday. "The world is getting better, but it's not getting better for everyone, and it's not getting better fast enough."
Melinda Gates pointed to a program in South Africa where antiviral treatments are helping those living with HIV, but she ... Read more
SEATTLE--In one corner of the exhibition hall, hands sift through bins searching for rare pieces missing from vast collections. In another area, a giant Lego person rides in circles atop a brick rendition of the Segway scooter. In between are myriad Lego creations large and small.
It was all part of BrickCon 2009--a four-day festival devoted to Lego, the Danish creation that celebrated its 50th birthday last year.
On display were pieces of Lego art, replicas of real cities and even visions of an apocalyptic future crafted from the signature blocks. For those seeking to build on expansive collections, vendors offered rare and discontinued Lego sets as well as bulk bins where enthusiasts could hunt for plastic treasure.
Also for sale were all manner of trinkets, including T-shirts with sayings like "Got bricks?" along with jewelry and working lamps crafted from Legos.
Among those displaying their projects was Micah Berkoff, a 15-year-old who has already amassed more than 200,000 pieces in his collection. "After it overtook ... Read more
(Credit:
Ina Fried/CNET)
PASADENA, Calif.--Ashton Kutcher said that the fact he beat CNN to a million Twitter followers is a significant deal.
Kutcher, known to his nearly 3 million followers as "aplusk," said that it shows that one individual can have the power to reach as many people in a new medium as a media conglomerate.
"Individuals are becoming consumers and (the) editors of the media," Kutcher said. "It has and will forever change media."
While he doubts his content has the broad relevance of, say, CNN, Kutcher said having such a large audience is both fun and useful for his job as an actor.
"It gives you an ability to stay in tune with your audience...but also as it has continued to grow, it gives me a great platform to syndicate content."
Kutcher noted that half the budget of a film is spent on marketing, basically trying to reach the potential audience of that movie.
"I can do it for free (by) pushing a button," Kutcher said. "There's a value ... Read more
PASADENA, Calif.--Marc Andreessen is known more for building companies rather than funding them, but he said he is looking forward to proving his chops in the latter category.
Andreessen, who launched his $300 million Andreessen Horowitz venture capital fund earlier this month, said Wednesday at Fortune's Brainstorm: Tech conference that he has a lot of "directly relevant" experience that will help attract start-ups.
Marc Andreessen talks about his move from entrepreneur to venture capitalist at Fortune's Brainstorm: Tech conference on Wednesday.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)There are not that many great companies started each year, he said. Andreessen noted that there are probably 15 companies created a year that go on to produce $100 million a year in revenue and account for much of the industry's return.
"Our job as a VC is to be able to get into those...by being the kind of VC that entrepreneurs want to (do business with)," Andreessen said.
He said that his fund will focus on his field of expertise--information technology.
"We won'... Read more
A full-scale model of Curiosity, the next-generation Mars rover, was on display at the Fortune Brainstorm: Tech conference here.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)PASADENA, Calif.--While some suggest that space exploration is a luxury we can't afford in tough times, it's not surprising that Charles Elachi doesn't see it that way.
"Our economy is fundamentally dependent on innovation," said Elachi, who heads NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "This is not the time to go back and sit under our shell."
Elachi, speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm: Tech conference, said some of the technology used in space has led to things like GPS and better ways of detecting cancer.
To offer a visual aid to his argument, Elachi brought a full-scale model of the next Mars rover, due to begin its voyage in two years.
The vehicle, known as Curiosity, has 10 times the experiment carrying ability of the last Mars rover and is due to spend at least a martian year (two earth years) gathering data.
Of course, the first-generation rover was ... Read more
It's been a year since Bill Gates left full-time work at Microsoft, but he's found plenty to keep him busy.
In between trying to eradicate polio, tame malaria, and fix the broken U.S. education system, Gates has managed to fulfill a dream of taking some classic physics lectures and making them available free over the Web. The lectures, done in 1964 by noted scientist (and Manhattan Project collaborator) Richard Feynman, take notions such as gravity and explains how they work and the broad implications they have in understanding the ways of the universe.
Gates first saw the series of lectures 20 years ago on vacation and dreamed of being able to make them broadly available. After spending years tracking down the rights--and spending some of his personal fortune--Gates has done just that. Tapping his colleagues in Redmond to create interactive software to accompany the videos, Gates is making the collection available free from the Microsoft Research Web site. ... Read more
Bill Gates may not be showing up at Microsoft headquarters every day, but he's certainly staying busy.
In an interview with CNET News, the Microsoft chairman talks about just a few of the things on his plate, including an effort to make a series of classic physics lectures available for free over the Internet.
Although it's unlikely to garner the audience of say, a sneezing panda, Gates said that putting great educational content online is an important part of getting people interested in science.
"When a lecture is presented as well as this, it draws more people in to understanding science." Gates said.
Gates also took on topics such as Google's Chrome OS and what things at Microsoft still have him excited.
One of those things, he said, is Project Natal, the technology shown at E3 this year that uses depth-sensing cameras to allow one's own hands to act as a video game controller. But Natal is not just for games, Gates said, noting that the technology is also being used ... Read more
