changes

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Facebook knows you don't want to see as many FarmVille news items and is doing something about it. That is, unless you play FarmVille all day. If that's the case, now there's a way to get even more of it in your news feed.

At a barbecue for game developers and staff here today, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined ways the company is changing the frequency of game notifications that show up in a user's news feed. The bottom line is that if you play a lot of games, you'll … Read more

A new organization led by major CEOs is hoping to make the U.S. more competitive around the world by putting the focus on education.

Announced by President Obama yesterday as part of his "Educate to Innovate" campaign, Change the Equation is a nonprofit group whose goal is to improve education in the key areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Founded by former Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns among other chief executives, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation, the group's membership includes 100 key industry … Read more

Among the tweaks found in the iOS 4.2 software for the iPad, which became available to developers on Wednesday, is a return of the volume silencer switch.

Not the hardware, mind you, which remains the same. It's just that the screen orientation lock, which currently keeps the iPad from reorienting itself based on how you're holding it when switched on, is now a volume mute switch, CNET has learned. This is the same functionality found on every iteration of the iPhone, though not on the iPod Touch or the iPad, which would simply raise of lower the … Read more

You know you have a hit single when Jeff gets off his antiboogie butt and dances to it; such is the case with Cee-lo Green's latest single from an upcoming album titled "The LadyKiller."

The song title described by the Washington Post as a "two-word, Anglo-Saxon, hortatory phrase whose first word is typically rendered by dashes or a string of nonsense characters from the upper levels of a keyboard," rhymes with "Cluck You" and has already racked up over 2 million YouTube hits since its release earlier this week.

The up-tempo beat is … Read more

Gone are the days of having to rely on carefully chosen statistics doled out by a government agency or news reporter in the event of a crisis.

Readily available satellite data and visualization tools online have made it possible for anyone to observe massive changes happening on a global scale. Of course, that data is only available insofar as government agencies with satellites have made their data available.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the USDA Forest Service provide information for interested people looking to see the latest on U.S. wildfires.

Now the European Space Agency is … Read more

Many say we shouldn't put our heads in the sand when it comes to climate change. But what about putting them in giant balloons that protect us from pollution?

Such an odd contraption, called "La Parole," is currently on display at the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg in Germany as part of "Climate Capsules: Means of Surviving Disaster." Two people at a time can stick their heads into the inflatable structure to share a common visual and audio space away from contaminants, storms, and aggressive solar radiation.

The exhibit, meant to explore the impact … Read more

A Chinese government fund has told a U.N. panel it supports project developers that earn carbon offsets under a lucrative Kyoto Protocol program, and rejects the idea that they are overcompensated.

Chinese project developers rejected key grounds for a review of Kyoto's clean development mechanism (CDM), and the China CDM Fund supported them, confidential papers showed a week before a U.N. panel decides whether to launch a formal review of the program.

The projects are the most lucrative under the CDM, which allows rich countries to buy offsets from carbon-cutting projects in the developing world as a … Read more

Senate Democrats said on Thursday they would wait until the fall to take up climate-change legislation, setting the stage for a pitched battle in the weeks before congressional elections.

The delay would give Democrats a small window to advance the complex legislation amid intense political pressure in the weeks before the November elections.

"We will fight that out in September," said a Democratic senator who did not wish to be quoted by name. "It will be tough to win."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he plans to bring up a narrower energy bill next week … Read more

WASHINGTON--The United States and dozens of other countries have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars toward clean-energy initiatives to help battle climate change, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Tuesday.

Meeting in Washington, D.C., for a two-day conference, delegations from 24 countries representing 80 percent of global energy consumption promised initiatives that would mean building fewer power plants and using more clean energy.

"We know the clean-energy challenge won't wait, and we won't wait either," Chu said at the first Clean Energy Ministerial.

With the U.S. Senate virtually gridlocked on passing an energy and climate change package this year, the Obama administration is under pressure to provide leadership in global climate talks that are making little progress.

The countries pledged to improve energy efficiency in appliances and buildings, accelerate deployment of smart-grid technology and electric vehicles, and help developing countries embrace low-carbon technologies.

These initiatives "will save enough energy in the next 20 years to equal the output of 500 medium-sized power plants," Chu said.

Eight companies--including Wal-Mart Stores, Target, Marriott International, and Nissan Motor, along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--backed a plan to create efficiency standards for buildings and industrial facilities. … Read more