Tech

AOL to lay off a third of staff

AOL Inc., the struggling Internet company, plans to cut about a third of its workers if its planned spinoff from Time Warner Inc. goes through.
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Military innovators take on surveillance

Systems target makeshift bombs

America’s genius for innovation continues to be directed toward increasingly sophisticated weaponry.
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Best Buy bets big on digital songs, movies

Walking between rows of DVDs at the Best Buy store in West Hollywood, Brandy Moore admits that she doesn’t always buy the shiny discs any more since she started downloading movies and TV shows from Apple’s iTunes Store.
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TECH SPOTLIGHT: iHome dock is a hit while Home Base wireless sharing device misses the boat

I’ve been checking out some products meant to make life a bit easier around the home. That’s certainly not a bad thing, right?
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ON COMPUTERS: Corral rogue desktop icons with free ‘Fences’

If you’re anything like us, there are so many icons on your laptop or desktop that it’s hard to find the ones you want. Fences is a free program that corrals the icons you use most often into clusters, making them easy to scan with a glance.
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Intel handheld device aims to help blind, dyslexic read

Intel Corp., seeking new applications for its chips, has introduced a handheld device that reads printed text aloud, an effort to reach the 55 million Americans with vision loss and learning disabilities.
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Technology news in brief

Bing to add Web data, tools to results Microsoft Corp.’s Bing search service will pull more information and tools from other Web sites as the company tries to distinguish itself as part of its challenge to market leader Google Inc.
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Hawker shrouds job-cut number

Aircraft maker confirms layoffs

Hawker Beechcraft on Friday confirmed that it is laying off workers at its Little Rock facility, but the private manufacturer of business jets wouldn’t say how many workers are losing their jobs.
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FDA casts doubt on safety of alcoholic energy drinks

The Food and Drug Administration is challenging makers of alcohol-infused energy drinks to prove their beverages are safe, citing complaints that the products can cause risky behavior and injury.
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MARKET REPORT Earnings reports propel stocks

after a drop in energy demand and a stronger dollar.
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Deadline arrives in Google book-scan deal

The latest chapter is about to unfold in a four-year-old copyright lawsuit over Google’s ambitious book-scanning project.
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TECH SPOTLIGHT: Despite nice touch controls, Apple’s Magic Mouse falls well short of mighty

Apple Inc. long has been known as an innovator. After all, at a time when people actually — gasp — touched buttons to dial phones, the company brought out a device where you touch, pinch, swipe, spread and shake to make phone calls, run programs and surf the Internet.
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ON COMPUTERS: Droid phone rolls in with Google maps aboard

Global Positioning System technology has become common in new cell phones. And of course there are many other GPS devices, such as Tom-Tom, Magellan, Garmin, De-Lorme and Microsoft Streets and Trips.
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Firm taking social media to shoppers in store aisles

You’re navigating the supermarket aisles, list in hand, when messages start popping up on your cell phone.
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Droid sent out to battle iPhone

Verizon’s smart phone employs Google’s Android operating system

In one corner is Apple’s iPhone. Launched in 2007, it revolutionized the smartphone market with its sleek exterior and a collection of applications that seems to grow more extensive by the day.
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