Business Technology

This week, news out of the Middle East saw BlackBerry, the handheld communication device of choice in the corporate world, assailed on multiple fronts over a security problem.

After being an avid iPhone user for two years, I finally gave up. A couple of weeks ago I picked up my first Android phone: an HTC Droid Incredible, offered through Verizon Wireless.

The success of the iPhone and Google's Android platform spotlights the real "killer app" in the smartphone market: having apps.

It's the smartphone everyone owns -- and no one seems to like.

AT&T chief Randall Stephenson faces high-class problems, but they're still problems. As the exclusive U.S. wireless carrier for Apple's iPhones, AT&T has suffered embarrassing glitches -- website failures, accidental release of customer info -- caused by overwhelming demand for the devices. Many subscribers complain about the speed and quality of AT&T's network, another effect of too much demand; iPhone owners use a lot of bandwidth. The upside is that users of iPhones and other smartphones pay AT&T twice as much a month on average as users of other phones do, and about half of AT&T's customers use smartphones -- twice the industry average. Those facts help AT&T remain America's largest communications company.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday that Google believes that some 200,000 new Android devices are being sold each day, leading to significant revenue in the form of increased mobile search traffic.

Yesterday, Democrats in the Senate rejected taking up a new oil spill response bill because of a dispute over who foots the costs of future spill cleanups and more importantly, how much those parties -- largely oil and exploration companies -- will pay. The Senate is voting on the bill, vaguely titled "a bill to promote clean energy jobs and oil accountability, and for other purposes" in response to BP's spill in the Gulf at the Macondo well.

When Jen-Hsun Huang (pronounced Jenson Wong) was 10 years old, his Taiwanese parents sent him to a boarding school in rural Kentucky. It turned out to be a reform school, where Huang was the youngest kid, and he and his brother the only Chinese. "I got beat up now and then," he says. "But I learned how to survive."

BlackBerry, Droid, iPhone -- no matter which smartphone you have, it's the apps, not the features, that make your phone unique.

Smartphone users in countries all over the world could lose some privacy if threats and promises by foreign nations to shut down BlackBerry services goes through, analysts say.

Crew members on the International Space Station may need to conduct spacewalks this week to fix the station's cooling system, NASA said Sunday.

Forget about Philadelphia -- Brandon Igdalsky hopes it's always sunny in the Poconos.

Warning alarms awakened crew members on the International Space Station after problems were detected in one of its ammonia-fed cooling loops, NASA said Sunday.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Thursday that the software giant is urgently working with its partners to unveil a host of tablet computers running Windows 7, to compete with Apple's fast-selling iPad.

Verizon Wireless smartphone customers use 25 percent more data than AT&T iPhone customers, thanks in large part to new Verizon's new Android smartphones, a recent study indicates.

Amazon unveiled its long-awaited Kindle 3 on Thursday, slashing the price to $139 and setting the tech world abuzz about what the move means for the ongoing e-reader wars.

The debris that scientists were concerned about earlier Thursday is now not expected to come too near the International Space Station, NASA said.

Prices in consumer electronics tend to fluctuate wildly.

Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications has cut off overnight public Internet access in businesses and banned advertisements of online games pending new regulations amid a public outcry over the games' influence on youth, the state-run news agency reported.

Several years ago, I was invited to Amazon.com headquarters. After signing a legal promise of secrecy, I was taken into a special room. Someone came in carrying a package containing Amazon's secret weapon ... the Kindle.