changes

Graphics-Toolbox is a graphic design program. We don't have much to say about it, and what there is, isn't good.

Opening Graphics-Toolbox causes the interface to automatically fill the entire screen, forcing you to minimize the program to switch between applications and generating plenty of annoyance as well. One look at the basic interface with its crude and tiny buttons prompted the question, "Where are the drop-down menus?" It appears that there are none; all tools and functions are accessed from the program's palettes, which we couldn't find a way to move. Movable palettes … Read more

One of the most amazing things about the IT industry over the past two years is how aggressively the vendors have expanded their spheres of operations. Everyone's in motion as the industry rapidly consolidates. Who aims to sell what, to whom, is in enormous flux. Traditional boundaries on what companies will or won't do have gone completely by the wayside.

For example, Cisco doesn't just sell networking; it also sells servers and collaboration tools. Oracle will be a server and storage company, in addition to applications and middleware. EMC has been transforming into a management and security … Read more

It must have been quite the unwanted holiday gift: CNET has learned that there's a new lawsuit on the table against Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twins who alleged that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their code and business plan--and who will be prominent supporting characters in the forthcoming film "The Social Network."

Now, a former partner of the twins claims in the suit that he was shut out of ConnectU's own business and is owed a part of the settlement it recovered from the Facebook suit.

The court complaint obtained by CNET, filed December … Read more

At the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, announced a cloud-based method for analyzing deforestation around the world in a much more up-to-date manner than previously possible.

Using Google's terabytes of satellite imagery, it lets scientists look back over time at any location in the world and see how the forest has changed. Going beyond visual comparisons, it uses the power of cloud computing to do actual measurement of deforestation. Much more rapid analysis of the images than is possible on a single desktop computer pinpoints locations of most recent activity. This lets authorities locate … Read more

The Obama administration's greenhouse gas ruling Monday was meant to send a warning to industry, the U.S. Congress, and the world: with or without a law, Washington will tackle global warming in a serious way.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a final ruling that greenhouse gases endanger human health, allowing it to put limits on emissions even if U.S. lawmakers fail to pass a law to achieve the same objective.

These are the ramifications of the long-expected decision:

• Timing: as the EPA made its announcement, negotiators from nearly 200 countries met in Copenhagen to work toward a … Read more

Coca-Cola said Thursday that it will eliminate a major greenhouse gas in its new vending machines and coolers, raising the bar for climate-friendly refrigeration in the food and beverage industry.

Coke's Chief Executive Muhtar Kent said that the company, which sells everything from soda and juice drinks to water, will replace hydrofluorocarbon, also known as HFC, in its new vending machines and coolers by 2015.

While Coke's 10 million vending machines, coolers and other refrigeration equipment around the world keep its drinks chilled, they also are the biggest contributor to the company's carbon footprint.

Together the refrigeration … Read more

Google Earth and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Wednesday that Google is developing a tool to map out disturbing scenarios of how California can be affected by climate change.

The project comes out of a collaboration with the California Natural Resources Agency, Schwarzenegger, and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), an organization funded by the California Energy Commission and Google.org.

"There is a serious bottleneck in delivering relevant information, much of which is map-based, to decisionmakers in a manner that allows them to turn climate change research results into effective climate change adaptation decisions and policies," according to … Read more

Adobe's Portable Document Format helped transform the business world and bring it onto the Internet and into the paperless age. Today many people use PDF files for everything ranging from important personal papers to service manuals for lawn mowers. If you use PDFs a lot, you'll like PDF Summary Maker from Traction Software. It's a PDF file management tool that lets you change the summary information in one or many PDF files all at once. You can change the creator, creation date, producer, author, title, and keyword fields within your documents. It includes full database import and … Read more

A few days after leaked e-mail messages appeared on the Internet, the U.S. Congress may probe whether prominent scientists who are advocates of global warming theories may have misrepresented the truth about climate change.

Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," according to a transcript of a radio interview posted on his Web site. Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into … Read more