fortune

Palm-reading is coming to the desktop. Fujitsu's "PalmSecure" mouse may not foretell how long you'll live, but it does promise to provide some security in keeping intruders out of your PC.

The technology, which we first saw more than a year ago before it evolved into a mouse, is finally making its way to the North American market in June. As Engadget notes, it differs from biometric systems of the fingerprint variety by scanning veins, a system that the company claims is faster and more effective.

As for the lack of fortune-telling features, don't worry. … Read more

If the CEO is sick, do the shareholders have a right to know?

That's the question raised, but not exactly answered, by a Fortune profile of Apple CEO Steve Jobs released Tuesday, the day of Apple's annual shareholder meeting. The story reveals that after learning he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer in October 2003, Jobs kept his diagnosis secret for nine months--outside a small group of confidantes--while he attempted to seek alternative methods of treatment for a tumor.

Fortune says Jobs and Apple's inner circle debated whether they had to reveal news of his diagnosis … Read more

Five of Fortune magazine's top four most powerful businesspeople in the world are very familiar to the tech world--and one of the names you might have expected to crack the top five isn't there.

Yeah, I said five of the top four, but this is Fortune's list, so blame the magazine for the accounting. But we'll get to that later.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs came in at the top of the list, which was posted to the magazine's Web site Tuesday. The magazine noted that Apple's chairman and CEO "twice altered the direction … Read more

Who says magazines are dead? Not Fortune Small Business Magazine, Hearst Magazines, or Red Herring. And certainly not Olive Software, the Santa Clara, Calif., company responsible for creating the interactive digital twins of their print issues.

Like the best discoveries, I stepped into Olive Software's work by accident, while flipping through the digital leaves of Fortune Small Business Magazine. As a champion of downloadable and Web apps for consumers, I wouldn't normally seek out this kind of story, but the experience was too gratifying not to share. After all, would I hold back from you?

Click once and the magazine blooms in its self-contained online reader. Click again, this time on the right arrow, and the cover unfurls to reveal a faithful representation of the magazine's glossy, full-page interior, down to the shadowed hollow where the pages meet the binding. Flip through to read articles horizontally across multiple pages, each one adhering to the original layout, rather than dive-bombing into a vertical scroll that makes do with the Web's predilection for linear storytelling.… Read more

If animatronic heads like the "WowWee Alive Elvis" freaked you out, we don't recommend reading on with this post. As if the turban-wearing mannequin in Big weren't bad enough, "Zultan"--an "animated speaking fortune teller"--brings carnival creepiness to an entirely new level.

The baritone-voiced Zultan's head, which bears a remarkable resemblance to Linda Blair's possessed noggin in The Exorcist when it wasn't doing 360-degree pirouettes, remains hidden behind a curtain until it detects sound or senses someone approaching. Then the fortune teller emerges from the shadows as its &… Read more

Tomb Raider redefined the adventure genre when it was released in 1996, and with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Naughty Dog hopes to do the same.

For more on Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, please check out our own Dan Ackerman's first impressions, as he was lucky enough to get some play time in with Lara Croft's long lost brother at E3.