Toyota assembled a group of experts to refute studies by an Illinois professor who revved Toyota engines simply by short-circuiting the wiring. Toyotas experts say the experiments were done under conditions that would never happen on the road.
The automaker maintained its assertion that simpler mechanical flaws, not electronics, were to blame.
“There isnt a ghost issue out there,” Kristen Tabar, an electronics general manager with Toyotas technical center, told a news conference at the companys North American headquarters in Torrance, Calif.
Meeting with reporters, Toyota addressed the work of David W. Gilbert, an automotive technology professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, whose work [...]

The recalls and other technical problems besetting Toyota in the last few weeks highlight the risks of relying on electronics instead of the mechanical rods and cables that controlled vehicles for most of the 20th century.
Such advancements bring many benefits, but the worry is that the car is a computer on wheels that could freeze up and potentially crash. No less a computer celebrity than Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Wozniak has said his Toyota Prius sometimes accelerates on its own.
For many years, a cars gas and brake pedals were connected directly to the throttle and the brake assembly. Now computers [...]

Companies at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas were set to unveil more than 20,000 products this week. Those included touch-screen tablets by Hewlett-Packard Co., Sony 3-D TVs, and e-readers from Samsung and others.
Electronics makers are trying to emulate the success of the iPhone and the Kindle, which helped pioneer new product groups and boosted profit at Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Consumer- electronics sales slumped 7.8 percent in the U.S. last year as manufacturers cut prices and shoppers sought out bargains, according to the [...]

A cascade of e-readers will hit the market this year, taking the devices far beyond gray-scale screens with features like touch navigation and video chatting - and probably lowering prices, too.
Its happening as other gadgets, such as mobile phones and tablet computers, give people even more choices for diving into their favorite books. Perhaps the only downside is worrying you might buy an e-reader from a company that wont stick around.
This week, nearly two dozen companies that make the devices or deliver reading material to them are showing products at the International Consumer Electronics Show, the first time it has [...]

Manufacturers will use the show in Las Vegas to trot out the devices they hope will keep consumers opening their wallets, despite high unemployment. TVs with 3-D displays, svelte laptops and e-book readers will be the hottest categories.
Gadget makers are in a much better mood than they were a year ago, when they were shocked by a 27 percent decline in holiday sales of electronics and appliances. In the month leading up to the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, exhibitors were canceling because they were concerned about the economy, said Jason Oxman, senior vice president at the Consumer Electronics Association, the [...]

Thats not to say Im on some 12-step program to resist shopping. My credit card bills would suggest otherwise. Rather, when I opened a new bank account in March, I challenged myself to see to how much I could use my banks online bill-payment service to stretch the 10 starter checks I got for free.
Ordering a box of checks can cost $20 to $30, and in these tough times, every penny counts. I also save 44 cents in postage for most checks that go unwritten.
To my surprise, I havent needed to use any of the 10 free checks all year.
I [...]

Heres why: Since April 1, new auditing rules have made it easier for newspapers to count a reader as a paying customer.
These looser standards are especially helpful to a newspaper if it sells an “electronic edition.” That can include a subscriber-only Web site, such as what The Wall Street Journal has, or it can be a digital replica of a newspapers printed product. Several dozen publications, including USA Today, sell access to these daily “e-editions” that show how the news was laid out in print.
Under the new auditing standards, if a newspaper sells a “bundled” subscription to both the print [...]

“This spectrum is uniquely suited for mobile broadband applications,” CTIA - The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association said in a letter today to the Federal Communications Commission. The groups said the FCC should “immediately” begin studying whether to reallocate “broadcast spectrum.”
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in an Oct. 7 speech cited a “looming spectrum crisis” caused in part by increased use of mobile Internet devices. Devices such as Apple Inc.s iPhone, offered through AT&T Inc., are increasingly straining wireless networks as users turn to mobile [...]

The companies spent about $1.29 million each on management of electronic data this year, compared with $437,000 last year, according to the survey by consulting company Kroll Ontrack Inc. The data, released today, were based on interviews in June, July and August with in-house lawyers and technology specialists at 231 U.S. and 230 U.K. companies.
Forty-nine percent of respondents said theyre paying more attention to the management of electronic data, including voice- mail and e-mail, because of the current economic climate. During the discovery phase of litigation, [...]

Many publishing firms unveiled electronic editions of their books for the first time this year at the 61st Frankfurt Book Fair. But many publishers, while they are certain that e-books will play a bigger role in their future, say it has yet to be seen just how big the trend will become.
De Bezige Bij, or The Busy Bee, a Dutch publishing company based in Amsterdam, published its first e-books in August, said Pieter Swinkels, a senior editor at the company.
“Everybody is interested in it (but) at the moment it still feels like youre looking into a dark room,” he told [...]