Articles by Renay San Miguel

The more I see devices like the new Apple iPad, the more I come to appreciate Steven Spielberg's 2002 sci-fi spectacular "Minority Report." It was the first thing I thought of when I saw video of the company's newest "magical" creation and executives demonstrating its New York Times app The app seamlessly integrated video content with the usual Gre...

It could be the next service announced by your car's GPS feature when you drive from state to state: letting you know what highway exit to take -- and warning you about whether texting/phoning while driving in that state is legal Tuesday's move by the Department of Transportation to outlaw texting while driving for interstate commercial traffic mak...

Forget about the debate over whether "Avatar" or "The Hurt Locker" will win movie awards this year. The real argument among those who create and share their own Web videos -- DIY James Camerons, as it were -- centers on whether or not they should dump Adobe Flash and other plug-in players for HTML 5, the latest version of the Web's markup language ...

The movie industry loves a gala premiere, with red carpets, paparazzi and Klieg lights sweeping a glittering marquee. YouTube's announcement this week of its new movie rental strategy is about as far away from that scenario as you can get Instead of the commercial first-run features that are popular with Netflix members, YouTube said this week that...

One might guess that a computer scientist who is touted as a pioneer of virtual reality would be a fan of that whole social media thing. After all, Jaron Lanier works as a genius-in-residence of sorts at Microsoft, which is one of several big companies pushing cloud computing, the technological innovation that's brought a lot of Web 2.0 companies to life...

The Gray Lady may once again ask for some green if you want to view something that's black and white and read all over Reports surfaced over the weekend that The New York Times is about to announce another attempt at a paid-access business model for its Web site, with management apparently deciding that a metered approach stands the greatest chance...

The overheated weapons and steroid-pumped terrorists featured in "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" made a lot of noise in the gaming industry leading into the holidays. However, by the time receipts were totaled, it was a familiar little mustache-wearing plumber and his arcade-style melodies that sang the loudest during the winter sales season Ninte...

In 13 years of covering technology, I've evolved into the journalistic equivalent of Blanche DuBois; I've always depended on the kindness of analysts. Whether they were securities analysts working for the big Wall Street firms or technology analysts toiling for the major research companies targeting CIOs and IT-types, I've benefitted from their ti...

Rock down to "Electric Avenue" at the 2010 North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week, and you might think that sales of battery-powered cars were going to take the industry higher sooner rather than later. ...

The real world has finally caught up with the concept of a sex robot, something that's been immortalized in films ranging from "Westworld" to "A.I." and the fembots of "Austin Powers." And where else but the 2010 Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas would that vision be realized in the five-foot-seven, 120-pound, lingerie-clad form of Roxxxy? ...

Twitter, Pandora Internet radio and other popular smartphone apps are hitting the road, thanks to Ford Motor Company's Thursday announcement of forthcoming dashboard technologies that will soon be available in a wider, more affordable range of its cars ...

The cavernous halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center during any Consumer Electronics Show, and the endless rows of exhibitor's booths hawking edgy technology products, can remind you of the final shot of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" -- which is itself, of course, an homage to the last sequence from "Citizen Kane." We're talking boxes and crates stretching out into infinity, and somewhere within is the secret to a super-powerful weapon straight from God, or a childhood toy forever lost to an unhappy billionaire...

The company that made its billions selling ads for Web searches is now officially in the telecommunications business, as Google demonstrated Tuesday with the launch of its branded Nexus One smartphone. However, can the same success that saw "Google" become a verb be translated to the burgeoning mobile market? Is there anything in Google's unusual retail strategy that will have consumers saying "Nexus me" when asked what smartphone they want next?...

Sometime within the next two years, you'll feel like ducking for cover the next time the Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters" team blows something to smithereens. Yet you'll be in the comfort of your living room, wearing oversize glasses while watching a new 3-D television channel whose very existence was first announced Tuesday Discovery, Sony and Im...

Skype's new strategy for 2010: Your flat-screen TV in your living room can now be your phone. Or, if your tastes run more toward "The Twilight Zone," think of it as your TV watching you -- as you watch TV ...

2009 may have been a year of recession, but don't tell that to the blue-skinned aliens of "Avatar," the hormonal teen wizards in the new "Harry Potter" film or the needy talking dogs of "Up." Their adventures in special 3-D theater screenings helped push U.S. box office receipts past home DVD sales for the first time in seven years, according to a new study...

What are we calling the 10 years that just flew past? "The Naughts?" "The Naughties?" "The 'Aughts?" "The Digital Decade?" I nominate the "Coolness Decade," but it's going to require a little less irony and cynicism than what is normally exhibited in our culture to fully embrace that title. That will be tough, considering the physical, psychic and...

Back in early October -- nearly three months before Umar Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a jetliner bound for Detroit -- the Transportation Security Administration's blog cheerily announced it had received US$355 million of Recovery Act money for "a lot of really nifty improvements to aviation security." [*Correction - Jan. 4, 2010] ...

President Barack Obama named ISF President Howard Schmidt to serve as national cybersecurity coordinator on Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2009. This story was originally published on Nov. 18, 2009, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series The Information Security Forum may bill itself as the world's leading independent authority on IT...

A new University of Utah study released Monday provides more fuel for the conviction that sending and receiving text messages while driving affects concentration and reaction times. However, more potential digital distractions lie down the road -- as shown by another Monday announcement: Ford Motor said its second-generation Sync service will turn cars into rolling WiFi hotspots in 2010...