Stories by Bob Brown

Princeton CompSci prof wins prestigious award

David Blei, a Princeton University computer science associate professor who will soon be taking his talents to Columbia University, has been named the winner of the 2013 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in Computing Sciences.

Shark Tank's tech winners & rejects

ABC's "Shark Tank" program, on which entrepreneurs make their pitches to a panel of high profile investors on national TV, isn't the final word on whether a product or service will succeed. But as last week's show featuring Egos Ventures' $1.99 Cycloramic iOS and Android app illustrates, a thumb's up on the program – not to mention a $500,00 investment -- can boost a product into the stratosphere, or in other words, to the top of the Apple App Store charts.

Laser-focused fiber optics researcher wins $481K Japan Prize

A pioneering researcher in the field of semiconductor lasers for enabling high capacity, long-distance fiber networks like those that provide the Internet's physical foundation has won the 2014 Japan Prize in the field of electronics, information and communication.

Cool robotics could be boon for the boring kind

After agreeing recently to meet with a UK-based company called Blue Prism, I started studying up by visiting the outfit's website, which touts something called robotic automation technology.

Story time: Researchers picture way better password memory scheme

Once upon a time some Carnegie Mellon University researchers came up with a scheme to use stories and pictures to help users live happily ever after by creating and remembering dozens of passwords – and avoiding use of the exact same passwords for multiple sites.

iPhoneys: Latest, greatest iPhone 6 concepts

The newfangled iPhone 6 models envisioned by creative designers around the world probably won't find their way into products for the holidays this year, but at least you have the new iPhone 5S and 5C to satisfy you for now.

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