forecast

Facebook itself may be responsible for investors' tepid response to the social network's stock, which has been tanking since it went public Friday.

Initially, it looks like Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter on the massive offering, was to blame for allegedly telling major clients it had reduced its revenue forecast for the company, scaring off many big investors in the days leading up to the IPO. But no one knew why Morgan Stanley -- as well as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which also served as major underwriters for the deal -- would revise their estimates so close to … Read more

PARIS -- Apple is the biggest buyer of microprocessors today -- and it's getting bigger.

The semiconductor industry produces all kinds of chips for memory, running software, communicating over networks, and more. And Apple, by virtue of its booming iPhone and iPad business, is a voracious consumer, said Dale Ford, head of IHS iSuppli's electronics and semiconductor research business. Samsung is in second place, and also growing fast, he added, speaking at the analyst firm's Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Summit here.

In 2009, Apple was one of the herd, spending about $9 billion on semiconductors. This … Read more

The Weather Channel is a free weather-monitoring application that provides many more features than Apple's built-in Weather app. Released first in 2008, the app recently received a complete overhaul to the interface, adding features that make it even easier to check weather conditions wherever you are.

You can find paid weather applications that are more specialized, but The Weather Channel (sponsored by the cable channel of the same name) offers the features most people want in a weather app. You can view forecasts (hourly, 36-hour, and 10-day outlooks), quick access to Weather Channel local and regional video forecasts, severe … Read more

If you're serious about getting pregnant, you probably know that tracking your menstrual cycles and ovulation is a great way to increase your odds. There are plenty of ways to do this; you can do it the old-fashioned way, using a calendar, or there are any number of Web sites that can do much of the work for you. Or, if you're an Excel user, you can use a spreadsheet.

That's what BabyPlan is: an Excel workbook that helps you calculate your cycle length, predict ovulation, calculate due dates, and even predict the sex of your baby. … Read more

A spectacular show of auroras could be visible over the next couple of days as far south as Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and Washington State in the U.S. as well as parts of the U.K., New Zealand, and Iceland, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

These auroras are being caused by a solar flare that burst off the sun last night causing a massive solar storm of charged particles to hurtle toward Earth and crash into the planet's magnetic field. When the particles hit Earth's protective shell they light up the atmosphere wherever they … Read more

Weather forecast icons can be cryptic. There's only so much that can be communicated by a picture of a gray but-not-too-gray cloud with some raindrops and a sun poking out behind it.

All you really want to know is, "Am I going to freeze my nuts off out there?"

Enter the Cryoscope, an invention that allows you to feel the temperature of tomorrow's forecasted air.

Created by Robb Godshaw, an industrial design student at Rochester Institute of Technology, the Cryoscope uses an aluminum cube to house a heat sink, a thermoelectric-cooling Peltier element, and a cooling fan, all operated by an Arduino controller that receives forecast data from a Web-based app. … Read more

HP open sources WebOS as the fire sale on the TouchPad burns out in minutes; Apple announces that 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store; and Amazon promises a software update to the Kindle Fire to alleviate some of the user interface issues.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Bad news for anybody in the business of making the chips that power PCs and store movies on iPads.

IHS today said it's dramatically reduced its forecast for semiconductor sales worldwide for 2011, cutting the expected growth rate from 2.9 percent all the way down to 1.2 percent. The industry has swung from boom to bust many times in its decades of existence, but hard times still have the same unpleasant ripple effects: less money to fund research into next-generation products and to pay for next-generation manufacturing facilities.

And it's those investments that ultimately matter to … Read more

It looks like life will get harder for people who live in Faraday cages to escape electromagnetic emissions, because wireless data-transfer technologies are booming in growth, according to a study released today.

Shipments of Bluetooth-equipped devices should double between 2011 and 2015, and Wi-Fi is growing fast as well even if it's not built into as many electronics products today. But the real explosion comes from NFC, or near-field communications, analyst firm IMS Research said today.

"The number of NFC-enabled mobile handset shipments is projected to increase from 40 million in 2011 to over 700 million in 2016,&… Read more