Business & Technology

By RYAN KIM
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Sam Altman was leaving a computer science class at Stanford last year when he wondered where his friends were.

It's an age-old question, but it got thinking of a different way of arriving at the answer.

By ALLISON BRUCE
Friday, November 17, 2006
In an unassuming building in Simi Valley, Calif., David Stearn can look out his office window at a street lined with mature trees and hills in the distance.

By STEVEN OBERBECK
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The rocket motor roared to life, lighting up the night sky with a blinding flame and sending a cloud of exhaust and dust thousands of feet into the air.

The rare night test of the Alliant Techsystems rocket motor, nearly identical in design to those used to help lift the space shuttle into orbit, went off with barely a hitch, although for a time the test was threatened by unfavorable wind conditions.When the motor was finally lit, it burned for 124 seconds and generated 15.4 million horsepower before a crowd of thousands.

Inside ATK's control center in an underground bunker less than a quarter of a mile away from the roaring engine, several dozen engineers and command personnel hunkered down and watched on video monitors as the motor exhausted its available supply of fuel.

"During the test you can feel the ground shake and hear the glass panels in this building rumble," ATK's Director of Test Services Kevin Rees said during a dry run of the rocket test days earlier.

By BARRIE McKENNA
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
To an adult, it all seems like child's play.

Visitors to clubpenguin.com adopt a penguin character, then enter an animated world that is a mix of gaming, chat and fantasy.

By CHRIS BRAWLEY MORGAN
Friday, November 17, 2006
Letter writers and party givers nationwide send out stacks of Whitney English stationery and invitations.

Whitney English herself, however, is much too busy to do the same.

By LIZ BENTSON
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Clint Eastwood, Pamela Anderson, Ann-Margaret and Drew Carey put in an appearance two years ago. Last year Morgan Fairchild, Gene Simmons of rock group Kiss and Don Cornelius of "Soul Train" fame showed up.

By MICHAEL TAYLOR
Friday, November 17, 2006
The future of driving, if Honda has anything to say about it, came to a California race track recently in the form of a dark red sedan that is slated to be the first fuel cell car on the planet to come off a production line.

By BRIAN HYSLOP
Thursday, November 16, 2006
There are Christmas cards to send your mother, your son, even your postal carrier. You know all those will be appreciated.

But sending a card to a business associate could blow up in your face.

"The card-sending season is full of potential etiquette pitfalls," said Marc Wagenheim, product-development director for Hallmark Business Expressions, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards devoted to business-oriented greeting cards.

By JANET FORGRIEVE
Thursday, November 16, 2006
For shoppers at Lowry Town Center in Denver, Squeeze Fresh Smoothies is just the citrus-colored shake shop on the corner.

But there's more to it.

By LEE BOWMAN
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The carbon soot of forest fires contributes to global warming, right?

Not necessarily when the fires occur in the northern forests of Alaska, Canada and Siberia, according to a new study published online Friday by the journal Science.

Although the forest fires "release greenhouse gases that contribute to climate warming, inseparable changes in the forest canopy cause more sunlight to be reflected back into space during spring and summer for many decades after a fire," said James Randerson, an associate professor of earth science at the University of California-Irvine and lead author of the study.

"This cooling effect cancels the impact of the greenhouse gases, so the net effect of fire is close to neutral when averaged globally, and in northern regions may lead to slightly colder temperatures."

Randerson and his colleagues focused their research on the Donnelly Flats fire, which burned about 16,500 acres in central Alaska in June 1999.