The Department of Energy and IBM are serious about developing lithium air batteries capable of powering a car for 500 miles on a single charge - a five-fold increase over current plug-in batteries that have a range of about 40 to 100 miles, the DOE said.

The agency said 24 million hours of supercomputing time out of a total of 1.6 billion available hours at Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories will be used by IBM and a team of researchers from those labs and Vanderbilt University to design new materials required for a lithium air battery.

The unveiling of Apple Inc.'s iPad renews a classic gadget debate: Do consumers want purpose-built devices that do one thing and one thing well, or all-in-one wonders that try to accomplish many different tasks?

Amazon.com Inc. proved that there is a market for a single-purpose digital-books reader with its Kindle, which features a black and white E Ink Corp. screen that's supposed to be easy on the eyes and battery—but doesn't do much more than show words on a page.

Samsung Electronics announced Wednesday it had started mass production of screens for 3D LED TVs and 3D LCD TVs, a bold move forward in a technology some analysts say is too expensive for most people and could take time to become mainstream.

Samsung is the world's largest maker of flat display screens, and putting new technologies into mass production is the first step in lowering prices. The more a company makes, the less they cost per-unit.

"Recently, 3D displays have captured the industry spotlight.

On the first day of CES, I dropped by the Qualcomm booth looking for ARM-based smartbooks to try out. As I poked and prodded the Lenovo Skylight, I pulled out my Nexus One and dropped it on top of the unit for a size reference so that we could snap picture of it. As I stood there looking at the phone laying on top of the smartbook and contemplating the fact that both of these (Android-based) devices had 1GHz, ARM-based Snapdragon processors in them, I glanced across the booth and spotted an ARM-based game console sitting right next to the ARM-based iRex Iliad e-reader.

According to IDC researchers, AMD has done a rather good job in 2009 and managed to steal back part of its lost market share from Intel. AMD's share has been shrinking for several quarters, due to a lack of competitive products, but it seems new processors offered at tempting prices managed to rekindle interest.

IDC reports x86 processor demand grew by record levels in Q4 2009, as shipments jumped by 31.1 percent sequentially. During the same quarter, AMD managed to recover some of its lost share. Intel's market share was 80.5 percent, while AMD managed to grab 19.4 percent.

It seems that the former God of Microsoft, Bill Gates' can't stop talking – about everything. Lately his twitters about Italy, and the world in general have been popping up everywhere, now it seems be is backing his twits with talk show appearances about everything under the sun.

This morning he was speaking on ABC's Good Morning America telling us that the U.S. economy could take years to recover from recession and predicted taxes will have to rise to bring the federal budget into balance.

Less than a month after retroactively declaring that its A+, Network+, and Security+ certifications would expire three years after the testing date, industry group CompTIA has reversed its position. All current holders of A+, Network+, and Security+ certs will remain certified for life, as they were promised when they took the exams.

In addition, anyone who takes those exams during 2010 will remain certified for life. Starting in 2011, however, new certs will expire after three years.

Other U.S. corporations doing business in China may admire Google's tough stand against the country's government over Internet censorship and cyber attacks, but that doesn't doesn't mean they're prepared to exit the country along with Google. Far from it. Take Motorola, which launched a turnaround effort last year built around Google Android-powered phones like the Droid and Cliq.

But following the search giant's standoff in China, Motorola struck a search deal Google's arch-rival Baidu faster than you can text a donation to Haiti.

Replacing the very popular Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3, the company's top-of-the-line compact 12x megazoom, is the DMC-ZS7. The 12x f3.3-4.9 25-300mm-equivalent lens stays the same as the prior model, but gets a bunch of new extras including built-in GPS.

The GPS will add latitude and longitude to the EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) data and display real-time location information during shooting and playback.

For nearly 20 years Sony in Japan has been plagued by the myth of the "Sony Timer" – but is there really a kill-switch that destroys your device just after its warranty runs out? Many Japanese genuinely believe that there is.

It was the recall of more than 4.1 million Dell laptops containing faulty Sony batteries in 2006 that jump-started a rumour that has been around for decades. From 1980 to 2006 geeks and tech-obsessed Japanese had joked about the existence of the timer, creating sarcastic manga and venting anger through online forums.