Articles by Renay San Miguel

"OMG, somebody call the Waaaambulance!" went a comment on last week's column about South by Southwest. I had prepared myself for reader snark following my "it's all about me" piece regarding SXSW's denial of my complimentary press credential request for the Interactive portion of the annual media conference in Austin, Texas. I was pleasantly surpr...

Gaming companies like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft ask a lot of their customers. Every few years, they are encouraged by the companies to spend a few hundred bucks to upgrade to a fancy new console. But as far as I can recall, only Sony has ever asked its fans to not play those consoles It happened Monday, thanks to a bug that kept those with older...

You don't have to search very hard on Apple.com to find the 2010 Supplier Responsibility Report, the company's internal audit of how workers are treated on the assembly lines at the overseas third-party companies making its Macs, iPhones and iPods. "Read about Apple's continuing commitment to social responsibility" says the link on the lower right...

Austin, Texas, is the home of the annual South by Southwest Festival (SXSW), which in 23 years has grown from a music-only celebration featuring a few Sixth Street bars, a handful of bands and lots of Shiner Bock beer, into a two-week, multi-media extravaganza featuring hundreds of Next New Thing musicians, filmmakers and technology movers/shakers -- and lots of Shiner Bock beer...

After years of keeping everyone in the dark about its solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology, Bloom Energy officially brought its first product out into the sunlight Wednesday with a media event launching its Bloom Energy Server, a cleantech refrigerator-sized power plant for homes and businesses Flanked by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, f...

On top of all the other demographic categories that segment the United States, the FCC on Tuesday introduced some new ones that its chairman says serve as reasons for adopting a new national broadband strategy, which the agency will present to the public March 17 "Near converts," "digital hopefuls," "digitally uncomfortable" and "digitally distant"...

Bloom Energy, a clean energy startup based in Sunnyvale, Calif., officially launches its core product this week. However, the company really had its coming-out party on Sunday's "60 Minutes," with executives giving CBS' Lesley Stahl a first look at a US$700,000 wireless power-plant-in-a-box called, appropriately enough, a "Bloom Box." Those executives claim Bloom Boxes will bring cheaper, cleaner and greener energy to American homes and businesses...

If competition for Google is still "just a click away" -- as its executives kept saying last summer to anybody who would listen -- then the U.S. Justice Department and the European Commission made that click easier with their decisions this week to bless the Microsoft-Yahoo search technology merger Here's the new search query for this latest develo...

I had planned on using Hayden Hamilton, founder of the Portland, Oregon-based ProgressiveRx.com, as my source for updates on how things were going in Washington with healthcare reform -- especially regarding any technology-driven solutions to spiraling healthcare costs. After all, Progressive is an online pharmacy resource that helps consumers buy discounted drugs from overseas outlets, one of many that have sprouted on the Internet and seen their traffic soar along with the cost of buying medications. Hamilton was keeping close watch on the goings-on in D.C., since he has a business stake in the outcome...

Just as Skype devotees use the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service to talk to friends and family anywhere in the world, Verizon Wireless used Skype Tuesday to send a loud message of its own to Apple, AT&T and the rest of the competition: We can play the VoIP game too Beginning in March, Verizon said, the wireless carrier will offer a full s...

A newly formed international consortium has claimed it can be the glue that unites a fragmented mobile applications market. However, if the Wholesale Applications Community can't deliver on its promise of an open platform that will let developers write apps for all devices -- save perhaps Apple's iPhone -- then that "glue" could simply result in a stickier situation in the mobile space...

After enjoying a holiday bounce, the U.S. video game industry came crashing back down to Earth in January with post-Christmas double-digit drops in hardware and software sales, according to the latest figures from industry researchers NPD Group. However, new gaming categories for casual, social media and smartphones may offer a glimmer of hope for...

Innovation was certainly on display at this week's Google Buzz press conference, but there was only one moment that truly registered an 9.5 on my personal CQ (Coolness Quotient) meter. That was during the mobile segment of the demonstration. Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra spoke into his Android phone, and the magic of Google Voice, combined with GPS-tagging and location-based services, allowed him to post his "buzz." ...

While the technosphere was busy Tuesday pitting Google's new Buzz service against Facebook and Twitter in some kind of social media steel-cage deathmatch, the search giant's executives were hinting at what they see as the real winning uses for Buzz -- within the enterprise and out and about in the mobile arena "We think it will change the ways busi...

Google has certainly generated more than its share of buzz regarding its plans to get deeper into social media. On Tuesday, the search giant revealed those plans: Google Buzz, which takes a big step into Facebook and Twitter territory while keeping one foot firmly planted on its Gmail foundation While the initial version of Buzz released during a p...

Two Monday technology stories, both involving China: Call them the yin and yang of that country's attempts to repair its image following Google's recent hacking allegations and the search giant's subsequent threats to end its business dealings in the country. Chinese police are trumpeting their shutdown of a major hacker training Web site and thre...

Apple's new iPad may look like a thin, fragile piece of hardware, but it's apparently strong enough for publishing houses to use as a powerful wedge against Amazon in their negotiations over e-book pricing Hachette Group became the latest publisher to announce it was going to move to the "agency" relationship with retailers, which would result in a...

Apple's new iPad is apparently going to let me download The DaVinci Code -- either in book or movie form. I like that. If you're going to release a new device and charge me a lot of money for it -- not to mention the costs of using a network of some kind to facilitate all that downloading and streaming -- then please don't get between me and my instant media gratification...

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin wants to know if Google's current dustup with China has the potential to create more cracks in that country's Great Firewall. So late Tuesday, the Illinois Democrat sent letters to 30 top technology companies -- including Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Verizon and Amazon -- asking them to attend a new round of congressional hearings next month focusing on their current business relationships with China and other "Internet-restricting countries."

A brief stroll through the Google Solutions Marketplace shows you that the search giant is already working and playing well with others when it comes to the business of specialized business software. Need something to give your Google Calendar a little sharing and productivity boost? What about enhancements to Google Spreadsheets? An electronic signature add-on for Google Apps?...