Today is my last day at the Mercury News.  My farewell column appeared in this morning’s paper. As I mentioned earlier, I am leaving the Merc to join the New York Times as a deputy technology editor. I’ve truly enjoyed the conversations we’ve had here for the past year or so, and...

Ah, Comcast. No company (not even Sprint) is a better poster child for poor customer service. Ask readers for their experiences with the Philadelphia-based cable giant, and they’ll unload tales of technicians incapable of solving problems, clueless call-center representatives who tell you a...

Rambus won a huge victory Wednesday when a San Jose jury found that the company did nothing wrong when it patented key memory technologies that an industry group was incorporating into the standards for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips. Since those chips and their successors are in...

Oops, they did it again: someone who was supposed to guard sensitive personal records messed up and let them get stolen. This time, the victims were 51,000 current and former employees of Agilent Technologies, whose Social Security numbers and home addresses were on a laptop stolen from an Agilent...

I got a lot of responses, both on the blog and via e-mail, to my Wednesday post asking Comcast customers to share their service (or disservice) experiences. Thanks so much for your responses. (I may contact some of you to see if you want to be interviewed for my column.)  Comcast’s...

Facebook is finally starting to feel like something grown-ups can use. In my Sunday column, posted online today, I argue that the company’s new privacy controls finally give users enough control over their information to manage a diverse group of business and personal contacts. The new system...

(Followup post on how to fast-track your Comcast complaint.) I’m going to be interviewing Rick Germano, Comcast’s new head of customer service, on Friday morning as part of a larger piece I’m doing on the company. I’d love to hear your tales of Comcast service — good...

After almost nine years at the Mercury News, I’m leaving to join the New York Times as a deputy technology editor. I will be helping the Times expand its coverage of technology, particularly on the Web. I’ve had a great run at the Merc, first as an editor, and then as an editorial...

I want to like Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. In  January, I even wrote a piece saying I trusted him more than I trusted President Bush and the Democratic Congress to keep us out of a real recession. But since then, it seems like he’s gone from slow-to-react to panicky overdrive. In a...

Who woulda thunk: light sweet crude oil can be made entirely from algae. Right now, the biocrude is just a proof of concept from the folks at Solazyme in South San Francisco, but Harrison Dillon and Jonathan Wolfson (left and right, respectively, in the photo) are serious about turning algae into...