There’s a growing wave of Web 2.0 startups that are using mobile and social technology to give consumers more control over their health. From turning smartphones into diagnostic tools to helping users shop for health plans and providers, these young companies hope to bring Silicon Valley know-how to bear on age-old problems.
Troy Wolverton writes about wireless carriers moving away from unlimited Internet data plans: That’s a bad thing for you, because it will cost you more money, if not now, then in the future. It’s also a bad thing for society as a whole, because the unlimited data plans have helped spur Internet adoption and innovation.
Larry Magid writes about Facebook and Google’s video-chat services: If video chat is to really go mainstream, it has to let people communicate with others regardless of what service they’re using — similar to texting and email.
The Bay Area, home to Tesla, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and two dozen battery startups, is in the global race to build an electric-vehicle battery that has an extended range and is affordable.
To operate in China, Facebook would have to rewrite its philosophy of openness and submit to uncompromising censorship policies – and face a possible public relations backlash in the United States.
Chris O’Brien writes about Google+: For now, part of the appeal is its exclusivity, something that’s pure catnip to early-adopter types and a bit of genius marketing by Google.
With the long-delayed free-trade agreement with South Korea inching closer to congressional approval, the tech industry is hailing it as a blueprint for future treaties because it includes provisions important to Silicon Valley, from better intellectual property protection to greater access to markets.
Nearly a month after a U.S. Senate subcommittee requested the presence of a top Google executive, Chairman Eric Schmidt agreed Friday to testify about antitrust concerns related to the Mountain View company’s core search business
Mercury News interview: One of a relatively small number of women in venture capital, Ann Miura-Ko, 34, has developed a reputation as a penetrating thinker on trends in technology, innovation and the role of investment, particularly as it affects Silicon Valley.
Bay Area cities are rebounding from the housing crash in wildly different ways. Many affluent cities are nearing the stratospheric prices reached during the housing bubble, but others, primarily middle-income and working class, are far from recovering from the depths of the crash.
