housing

You don't see the phrase "world-class" associated with American-made consumer goods. TVs, iPods, computers, and cameras are mostly designed and built in other countries. The U.S. may be the world's leading consumer state; we just don't make the very best products here anymore.

High-end audio may be one of the few remaining industries where America still designs and builds the very best products. I'm proposing an all-American hi-fi system that could be installed in the White House. It would be the sort of hi-fi the president could, after a hard day's work … Read more

The White House residences will run with the aid of solar power, the Obama administration said today.

Solar panels are scheduled to be installed on the roof of the White House by the spring of next year to provide hot water and electricity to the executive mansion. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the two solar installations during a speech at the Green Gov Symposium, which is being hosted by the White House Council on Environmental Quality at George Washington University.

"This project reflects President Obama's strong commitment to U.S. leadership in solar energy and the jobs it … Read more

A new organization led by major CEOs is hoping to make the U.S. more competitive around the world by putting the focus on education.

Announced by President Obama yesterday as part of his "Educate to Innovate" campaign, Change the Equation is a nonprofit group whose goal is to improve education in the key areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Founded by former Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns among other chief executives, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation, the group's membership includes 100 key industry … Read more

I more or less ditched incandescent bulbs for more-efficient compact fluorescents in my house years ago. But at this point, I'm awfully close to ditching CFLs for the latest in lighting technology: LEDs.

LED lighting has got a lot going for it. The lights can be far more efficient than other types of lights, and the bulbs are supposed to last for tens of thousands of hours--enough to last 20 or 30 years depending on usage. Unlike CFLs, there's no mercury, the light is instant, and turning lights on and off shouldn't degrade their useful life, according … Read more

After entering into a landmark deal with Amazon.com last month, a well-known literary agent has backed off its agreement with the online retailer.

The Wylie Agency had inked a deal with Amazon that made digital versions of some of its clients' titles, including Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," available exclusively to Amazon's Kindle e-reader platform for two years.

The agreement was considered a landmark because it skirted the publishers of the books' paper editions and effectively offered more revenue to the authors or their estates.… Read more

Busy hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts require reservation systems that are both easy to use and powerful. Comfy Hotel Reservation, though not terrible, didn't really impress us on either front. It works fine, but we suspect that there are better programs out there for this purpose.

The program's interface is attractive, reminding us of more recent versions of Microsoft Office applications. We got the sense that the program was originally meant for another purpose--just a generic scheduler, perhaps--and that it was tweaked slightly so that it could be passed off as a reservation system. Rooms--which are referred … Read more

During the last 24 hours or so, official Washington has erupted with volcanic denunciations of Wikileaks, the document-sharing group that released about 75,000 military reports regarding the war in Afghanistan on Sunday.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called it "alarming" to find so many "top secret documents" publicly available on the Web. (See transcript.)

National security adviser James Jones "strongly" condemned the release in a statement that was reprinted on the U.S. Embassy Web sites for Afghanistan and Turkey.

Over at the Pentagon, spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said it could take weeks … Read more

Thursdays are always special on The 404 Podcast because Natali Del Conte drops by to help us discuss stories, but today we say TTFN to our Loaded friend as she takes time off to take care of our little co-host-to-be. Since today is the last time she'll be on the show for awhile, we make a solemn oath to leave pickles, Inception, and iPhones out of the day's news rundown.

Remember Chatroulette, the Web site that uses your webcam to put you in a video chat sesion with a person on the Internet? It might be so three … Read more

The technology sector has a lot at stake in the ongoing debate on immigration reform.

While much of the debate in the media surrounding immigration has been about legalizing illegal immigrants, for technology companies, the biggest issue is making sure that they have access to enough skilled legal immigrants, especially as the U.S. economy rebounds from a recession. More so than most industries, technology companies rely on foreign-born workers, many educated in U.S. university systems, to fill key roles that enable them to innovate and grow.

As immigration reform legislation winds its way through Congress, large tech companies, … Read more