Twenty milligrams; that's the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article. Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more. This may not ...

Google's netbook-friendly Chrome OS takes direct aim at Microsoft, whose eight-year-old Windows XP leads the netbook market. But the odds are stacked against Google. In competing with Windows, Google Chrome OS will have to deal with many of the same challenges Linux has: compatibility, usability, and unfamiliarity. The record isn't good: In the past year, Linux-based netbooks have rapidly lost market share to Microsoft, as people find that Linux doesn't work as expected, may not support the applications or peripherals ...

Nude photos and other potentially objectionable or illegal materials have been showing up in the iPhone application store in recent weeks, raising questions about Apple's ability to control iPhone content. In the most recent example, a nude photo of a young woman, reported to be 15 years old, showed up on an iPhone application called "BeautyMeter," according to Wired.com and Krapps.com, an app review site. The photo, which was submitted by one of the photo-sharing app's users, prompted Apple to ...

It's probably been a while since you bought new software. That's because so many tech firms — buoyed by ads placed in Web-based applications like the Google Docs word processor and the thousands of apps on Facebook — can now afford to give their programs away for free. But don't expect the same deal when you're shopping for add-ons to bling out your iPhone. On July 11, Apple will launch its hotly anticipated iPhone App Store — and it'll ...

When Apple starts selling what it bills as the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet on Friday, the company's latest entry will only heat up the already sizzling smartphone landscape. Fans, techies and ordinary consumers eager to purchase the new iPhone 3GS may be preparing to stand in line at Apple stores around the United States and seven other countries. But they have more choices than ever when it comes to phones that act like mini-computers. "We expect that [smartphones are] ...

Critics of Google's book-searching agreement with publishers and authors were cheered last week when antitrust regulators in the Justice Department set their sights on the search giant's publishing deal, demanding more information. "This is a monumental settlement that's at stake, and for the government to show this kind of attention is heartening," says Lee Van Orsdel, dean of university libraries at Grand Valley State University. "The increased scrutiny on the part of the DOJ tells ...

Google was going to help democratize data in China. Instead, about three years after entering the Middle Kingdom, the search company still finds itself in an uncomfortable working relationship with government censors. For about eight days between June 3 and June 11, Google.cn blocked all results that might come from searches for Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Not just politically sensitive results, not just historical accounts of the hundreds of deaths on June 4, 1989, but every single result -- including ...

Hunch, a site that launches for the public Monday, will consider your quandary by getting to know you, asking you a series of questions and then spitting out three decisions. Another site, Let Simon Decide, makes a similar attempt. Caterina Fake, co-founder of the photo-sharing community Flickr, says she created Hunch not because people need help with emotional decisions but because it's too tough to find smart information online. You often have to replicate someone ...

Iranian protesters have found a new outlet to mobilize and take action. The presidential election has proved how much opposition supporters can demand change without necessarily taking to the streets. Just give them a computer and an Internet connection and watch what they can do. At the height of the protests and disorder in Tehran on Saturday and Sunday, Twitter was used to give graphic accounts to a worldwide audience - even if they were a maximum of 140 characters. ...

If you like to search for "music lyrics" or "free" things, you are engaging in risky cyber behavior. And "free music downloads" puts 20 percent of Web surfers in harm's way of malicious software, known as "malware." A new research report by U.S.-based antivirus software company McAfee has identified the most dangerous Internet search words that places users on pages with a higher likelihood of malware. The study examined 2,600 popular keywords on five major search engines -- Google, Yahoo, ...