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DCTechCzar writes 'The Obama administration plans to announce it has appointed Vivek Kundra, the District of Columbia's chief technology officer, to take the top information technology post in the federal government, according to a source. Kundra, who has deployed advanced applications to improve the performance of public services during his nearly two years as CTO for the District, will replace Karen Evans as administrator for e-government and information technology in the Office of Management and Budget. The position effectively serves as the federal government's chief information officer. The administration could announce Kundra's appointment as soon as Thursday.' of this story at Slashdot.

Cisco systems joins a long list of technology suppliers suffering from a historic slump in corporate spending.

Washington - NASA was examining a valve on the space shuttle Discovery on Tuesday a day after pushing the launch back to February 19 at the earliest. Discovery was originally aiming for a February 12 launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida. ...

Alcatel-Lucent reported Wednesday a massive euro3.89 billion loss in the fourth quarter after the world's largest provider of network technology for fixed and mobile telecommunications operators took its latest _ and largest _ charge to write down the value of its assets.A euro3.91 billion ($5.1 billion) fourth quarter write-down gave the French-American technology giant its eighth consecutive quarterly loss since Alcatel SA's purchase of Lucent Technologies Inc. for $11.4 billion in 2006.

Hugh Pickens writes 'Researchers at Durham University have modified a video game and turned it into a fire drill simulator using the Source engine (the 3D game engine used to drive Half-Life 2), and created a virtual model of one of the university's departments. Dr. Shamus Smith said that although 3D modeling software was available, modifying a video game was faster, more cost effective, and had better special effects. 'We were interested in using game technology over a customized application and the Source Engine, from Half-Life, is very versatile,' said Smith. 'We used the simulation to see how people behaved in an actual fire situation and to train people in 'good practice' in a fire.' The team says the virtual environment helped familiarize people with evacuation routines and could also help identify problems with a building's layout. One problem, however, was that while the simulation worked for most people, those who played a lot of video games did some unusual things when using

According to the Institute of Engineering and Technology, just 7% of the IT workforce in the UK are women. To anyone who works in the industry, this figure won't come as a surprise. IT departments are notoriously male-dominated; even the 3-to-1 male-to-female ratio of sitcom The IT Crowd (don't forget Richmond) is wildly overoptimistic.There's good evidence that girls who might go on to have careers in technology aren't being given the encouragement to pursue it. It's not news that science and technology are seen as being more 'for boys' than for girls; a recent study of toys aimed at children as young as three have shown that boys' toys tend to involve 'activities around construction and technology' but girls' toys don't.This kind of bias has knock-on effects. Although girls do well at science subjects at GCSE, they often fail to take the subjects further. A study last year by the Royal Society found that only one in eight girls who gain an A* in physics or double science GCSE goes on

Technology bellwether sees second-quarter earnings boost despite drop in revenue

The company hopes the DRAM chip, which consumes 30% less power than current 50-nm technology, will expand its lead in a market suffering one of its worst downturns ever.

The past two years have been exciting ones for mobility, with the dawn of netbooks, 4G communications, and the first smartphones without keypads. The next two should be just as attention-grabbing, if not more so, as a slew of new technologies make workers more productive on the road.

Hugh Pickens writes 'Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is going back to work as chief scientist at Fusion-io, a start-up company that tweaks computers to let them tap vast amounts of storage at very quick rates. In the early days of Apple, Wozniak stood out as one of Silicon Valley's most creative engineers demonstrating a knack for elegant computer designs that made efficient use of components and combined many features into a cohesive package and Wozniak will do similar work at Fusion-io, although this time with larger server computers and storage systems rather than PCs. 'I have a pretty quiet life, and I like to watch technology evolve,' says Wozniak. 'In this case, I like the people and the product, and said I would like some greater involvement.'' of this story at Slashdot.