Silicon Valley

When the Space Shuttle Endeavour launches Friday afternoon, assuming it is not delayed, the astronauts onboard and the technicians on the ground at mission control will have at their disposal new software that could streamline the process of problem reporting and analysis.

The software, called the Problem Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action (PRACA) system, was created by the Human-Computer Interaction Group at NASA's Ames Research Center, and is designed to give a wide cross-section of people in the Space Shuttle ecosystem access to a single database package for tracking problems with the Shuttle and its associated infrastructure.

According to … Read more

If Tuesday's news of new, more-powerful, Mac laptops wasn't enough to stoke the fires of the Apple faithful, I've got even more to offer.

Tuesday afternoon, the producers of the forthcoming film, MacHeads, released a new trailer. The film is scheduled for a fall release. No word yet on how it will be distributed.

The film, as noted here in January, will take a close look at what Wired writer Leander Kahney has termed the "cult of Mac."

The new trailer doesn't shed much more light on the contents of the film, but for … Read more

In a move guaranteed to stoke the fire of confrontation between the upcoming TechCrunch 50 and DemoFall conferences, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has decided to publicly air a bit of dirty laundry involving some plagiarism charges against his conference partner, Jason Calacanis.

On Saturday, Arrington posted Calacanis' suggestions for how start-up companies presenting at TechCrunch 50 can best present themselves and their products or services.

But on Sunday, after a blogger named Alexander Muse republished Calacanis' e-mail on his own site, Muse got an e-mail from a former Demo PR woman named Deb McAlister, alleging that much of what Calacanis … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Corey Fro is chasing a large metal orb across the pavement at the NASA Ames Research Center here. He is desperately trying to make sure that the orb doesn't crush a nearby robot.

The orb in question is being remotely directed by a kid wielding an Xbox-like wireless controller, but it's the kid's first time using the device, and he really doesn't have any idea what he's doing.

And that's why the orb has rolled away and is bearing down rapidly on the unsuspecting and defenseless robot a few yards away. … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF.--In April 2006, NASA announced that it was bringing in University of Arizona astronomy professor and former brigadier general Simon "Pete" Worden to be the director of its NASA Ames Research Center here.

Since then, Worden has brought a fresh perspective to the helm of one of NASA's most important research facilities, demonstrated through initiatives such as giving a keynote address to the International Space Development Conference from the virtual world Second Life. (Note: My wife works at Second Life publisher Linden Lab).

But along with administrators at several other NASA facilities, Worden has … Read more

Update: This story has been corrected to reflect that the date of the public opening of the exhibit is May 10.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--"Excuse me, Richard, we have a very large parcel."

With those words, spoken by John Shulver of London's Science Museum, a day of supreme geekery unfolded at the Computer History Museum here.

To be precise, the package in question was the delivery and installation of a difference engine, a brand new model of a 19th-century-era machine designed--but never actually built--by Charles Babbage. It was designed to be a mechanical calculator which can … Read more

These days, Twitter is a worldwide phenomenon, a household name, and has even spawned a verb, "to Tweet."

But before the second week of March of last year, when thousands of geeks began arriving in Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Interactive festival (SXSWi), few people had even heard of the nascent microblogging service. Within days, however, Twitter had taken the conference by storm. The story of how Twitter took over SXSWi, and how it spread to the outside world because of the many influential early-adopters in attendance, is well known.

"People see what happened with … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--I don't want to date myself, but when I was in high school, one of the things I remember was that, among the geeks like myself who hung out in the computer lab, a bit of a culture war was under way.

No, it wasn't Macs versus Windows. But Apple was a player in this battle.

In fact, it was the Commodore 64 versus the Apple IIe, and while the school had a collection of Apples in the lab that all of us had to use, those of us who had C64s felt like we … Read more