By The Light of the Phone...

This was a big day for the tech industry .. the biggest story, I'd argue, is the FCC's decision to open up some of the wireless spectrum for auction. Good news for Google, potentially good news for you and me, and our cell phones.

But that's not the coolest tech story of the day .. not by a longshot.

The coolest story comes from Brazil, where surgeons, while performing an emergency appendectomy, saw the lights suddenly go out in the hospital. In the middle of surgery.

What next? Some quick-thinking cell phone owners ran into the operating room, opened their cell phones, and let the light shine in.

The surgery worked. All is well.

You've heard of paradise by the dashboard light?

How about surgery by the cell phone light.

The "Me" Generation

There's a term going around for young people these days - seems every new crop of young people gets a label. This time, it's the "Me" Generation. As in, "all about me."

Is this deserved? Hard to say. I see a lot of young twenty-somethings on the tech beat, and they don't seem especially selfish or especially coddled. For the most part, just hard-working, and, like all young people, looking for fun.

So where does this take us? To a story we're putting together for tonight's 5 o'clock news on this "generation." We went to several high-tech companies to find young people, and, while reminding me a lot of the tech boom of the late nineties, these young people are actually working just as hard .. and having more fun. Theyr'e a little less stressed out, maybe because they've heard the stories about all the 80-hour weeks that left most people with little but pink slips and underwater stock options.

So for this "generation," the 'me' part may be up there on the list, but it doesn't seem high enough to warrant a label.

Want proof yourself? Surf on over to a start-up, and meet somebody new.

The Facebook Effect

A couple of quick notes this morning: Netflix, as we told you last night, is still off-line. This is gotta be killing the company which, unlike rival Blockbuster, does not have a brick & mortar option.

Also, look at Lockheed Martin (LMT) stock this morning .. on fire, like its bottom line, thanks to new contracts, and a company truly profiting from our nation's need for security. If you saw this opportunity awhile ago, well done.

And, finally, a study out this morning from a company called Quantcast (find it here: http://blog.quantcast.com/) talks about what they call the "Facebook Effect." How smaller companies have put widgets on Facebook's website, and seen traffic double, sometimes even triple. It's a great illustation of how the web has returned to its community roots .. with a little profit thrown in for good measure.

Tonight at 6, we'll talk with one of the companies benefitting from the "Facebook Effect."

iPhone Hacked

You may have already read about the hacking of the Apple iPhone, so you already know the specifics .. the researchers who broke in, the vulnerability that let them take the phone over, etc, etc.

But think about it this way .. Apple has a product hackers want to target!

For the longest time, having an Apple was basically a free pass against hackers. All those worms & viruses targeted at Windows, and not Macs. But now, thanks to the iPhone, Apple is hot, the internet can fit into the palm of your hand, and hackers are targeting the Apple OS.

Where will this go? Nowhere, yet .. don't worry about packing your iPhone away for fear of losing all your contacts.

But .. be prepared for a world where power comes in small packages .. and protection is needed, to keep your data safe.

Oh, Google!

If you've ever wondered how tough things can be at the top, witness Google today.
The internet giant grows its workforce, buys lots of land, even sees its bottom line profit improve by 28% from this time last year...

And then watches its stock price tumble

Don't feel too bad for the company, or even for its investors (even the recent ones .. Google stock has been on fire recently, even for Google). When a company grows as fast, and trades as high, as Google has been lately, it creates super-high expectations. Come in a little shy of those expectations, and the reaction can be ninja-swift.

Long-term, though, this is still a company growing as fast as the best of the best .. during the dot com boom. It's creating a ton of jobs, buying up previously unoccupied buildings to give those people a place to work, and creating an awful lot of wealth, especially in the Bay Area.

So .. was today a hiccup? Or proof that we got a little too googly-eyed over Google.
We'll know in the next few weeks.

Chips and Earnings

Today is a huge day for the Silicon Valley .. if you're looking for a job here (or already have a job you'd like to keep), stay tuned. Today we find out how our economy is doing.

First, at Semicon West, the huge chip equipment companies show off what they have. This is an industry that has struggled for a few years now, but is showing signs of life. One interesting note is that the largest of the equipment group, Applied Materials of Santa Clara, is making a huge push towards solar power. Will this goose the company's bottom line? We've got the CEO lined up for tonight's news.

Also, it's earnings season .. Yahoo, Intel, Google, Wells Fargo, Schwab, etc, etc .. all opening up their books to let us know how business is going. More hiring? Layoffs? Stock splits? We'll let you know over the next couple of weeks.

What's Your Number?

Our cell phones are supposed to help us get digits, right?
Well, a new study out says it may actually cause us to forget them, instead.
Turns out all the technology we use to store information, numbers, dates, etc., is making it so easy to find all that info., we're not actually storing it in our brains.

It makes sense, actually .. even if you take into account that the study, from a magazine catering to the puzzle crowd, focuses on those younger than thirty. Claims that age group is so dependent on their smart phones, they'll never remember numbers again.

As a member of the older-than-thirty crowd, I can say that we, too, are susceptible to this. I'm so used to pressing a button to reach someone, I've really gotten out of the habit of actually remembering numbers.

What do you think? Is this study valid? Are we forgetting how to remember?

ILM on NBC

Just wrapped up taping this weekend's TechNow at one of the coolest remote locations we could ever come up with .. Industrial Light & Magic.

This is the special effects house started by George Lucas that's largely responsible for just about every blockbuster movie from "Star Wars" to "Transformers." They were kind enough to let us tape the show there .. the "blockbuster movie" TechNow will air this saturday (the 14th) on NBC11 ast 6:30pm. A great way to ring in Bastille Day.

We've got all sorts of stories from inside ILM, showing how the engineers and artists help to create the amazing effects and sound we see & hear on the big screen. Here's a preview .. a story about how the sound for Pixar's "Ratatouille" was put together at Skywalker Sound: http://www.nbc11.com/video/13572602/index.html

Anyway, if you get a chance to tune in (or set your TiVo), we've got the goods on summer movies .. from the very place they come from.

A Firefox Flaw?

This one had lots of people in the newsroom worried .. a flaw in the Firefox browser?
Sure enough, a security company just this morning announced that it found a possible virus in
what has become the code word for virus-free surfing: Firefox.

From the same gene pool as Netscape, Firefox has been what many Apple Mac users surf on, and what many Windows OS users use as an alternative to the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser.

If Firefox isn't safe, what is? Any suggestions?

It's a story worth following, like the rumors of a smaller Apple iPhone. Please let me know what you hear, and we'll keep each other posted.

Sony Adjusts

The videogame industry has gone, in a fairly short time, from a geek's game, to the world's game. Games and console sales now rival the Hollywood movie industry, and the average gamer is nothing like what you remember as a kid.

But even the big guns stumble sometime, and today the consumer caught a break. Sony, struggling with sales of its latest console, the PS3, just announced a $100 price cut. If $599 was too dear for you, the PS3 now comes at a discount. If $599 is OK by you, Sony now has an 80 GB version of its PS3 to store your downloaded video games and movies.

Again, this is all good news to you the gamer. Keep an eye on Sony's rivals, to see what they do next...

Microsoft, struggling with XBox issues, has to respond somehow to keep its sales lead, and Nintendo, already hot with the Wii console, may surprise us yet again with something new at the E3 conference, just about to get underway in Southern California.

We'll talk to the CEO of Sony's gaming unit tonight at 6.

Take A Swing

Technology finds its way into pretty much everything we do these days.
Case in point: The batting cage.
I remember going to batting cages when I was young .. a simple machine tossed a baseball at me at varying speeds, sometime with a little something on the ball. It was fun, and good practice.

Now, add a little technology, and all of the sudden I'm facing Pedro Martinez. Really. If you get a chance to check out the All Star Game "Fanfest" over the next few days in San Francisco, check out the batting cages. If you don't mind feeling old.

They're now interactive, bringing you real-life footage of Martinez, Bonderman, Nomo, you name it, throwing their best stuff at you. It looks great, and makes the whole "fantasy baseball" thing all the more real.

Tonight at 5 & 6, we'll show you how it works.

Transforming

It's day one of the movie "Transformers," and if box office records aren't falling, then the market for special effects-laden Michael Bay popular toy adaptation movies is less than I thought it would be.

I've seen the movie, and it's pretty much what all summer effect blockbusters aim to be .. huge, loud, and yes, even a little cheesy. But you can't take your eyes off the special effects. And they were, for the most part, created in our own backyard.

Industrial Light and Magic, HQ'ed in San Francisco's Presidio, has given us the most famous movie effects of all time .. and they don't disappoint here. "Transformers" jumps off the screen, the effects are taken to a new level. My advice .. see it in a theatre with really good sound if you can.

And, if you get a chance, tune in tonight at 6 o'clock for a look at how the effects were made.

Let's Move On ...

OK, the early sales numbers are in, and they're impressive.
The iPhone is a success.
Lots of people waited in line, they went home happy .. but, it was also possible to stroll into just about any Apple store this weekend and, without waiting, get yourself an iPhone.

Now .. let's look ahead.
The Transformers are here.
This is what Bay Area technology has been up to for the last year or so.
You've really gotta see this stuff.
We'll have a behind the scenes look tomorrow night at 6.

For now, hats off to Apple .. AT&T, mostly to you, too .. but first, fix the set-up bugs.
You've got a ton of new business coming your way - it's a chance to make sure the new
customers become repeat customers.

Motorola and Palm .. you lost some ground last week .. come up with some cool stuff, and maybe
you can get your groove back.
The phone business has just changed.
For we consumers, it's for the better.