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If the recent events in Japan were a movie, we'd say that the plot was too outlandishly catastrophic to be true--first an earthquake, then a tsunami, then a nuclear accident. Watching footage of entire neighborhoods being shoveled inland by roiling water, and knowing that those buildings and vehicles contained people, was horrifying.But while the citizens of Japan continue to struggle with their own personal hell, many

As Japanese military struggles to cool overheating fuel rods at the country’s damaged nuclear plant, some suggest a full meltdown might actually be happening somewhere else--in the corporate suites of Tokyo Electric Power Co. Tepco, as it’s known, is a for-profit utility that owns the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and other plants and provides almost 35% of Japan’s electricity ( pdf ). And in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that brought the country to nuclear crisis, the organization is turning into a lighting rod of political criticism.

Shepherds of the web, from execs at Firefox to directors at Internet Explorer , have heralded HTML5 as the future of the Internet. Simply put, HTML5 is the latest revision to HTML, the core coding language of the web and the backbone of the Internet.

In the past few years, online crowdsourcing has emerged as an ultra-popular method of finding solutions to difficult problems such as infant mortality rates and out-of-control oil spills . Could crowdsourcing help Japan quell its nuclear disaster and help the country get back on its feet? The Global Innovation Commons , a repository of innovations that can be used because of patent expiration, abandonment, invalidity, or lack of in-country protection, has compiled a list of patent disclosures and open source technology that could be used as part of Japan's

KIEV, Ukraine--In 1986 the worst nuclear accident in history took place when reactor No. 4 in the power plant at nearby Chernobyl exploded, spewing large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. Now, almost 25 years later, the lesson that scientists are learning is that radiation might not be the only cause of this disaster's long-term medical effects, and perhaps not even the main one.

Last week, Mozilla VP of products Jay Sullivan indicated that HTML5 would eventually replace Adobe Flash. Along with Mozilla Firefox, every browser maker out there seems to be jumping on the bandwagon of HTML5, a term that has become the most overused buzzword in the tech industry. But HTML5 is more than just the "trend de jour," says Ryan Gavin, senior director of Internet Explorer

As the situation at Japan's 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant goes from bad to worse--four of the plant's six boiling water reactors have been damaged by explosions or fire and radiation has begun leaking into the atmosphere--officials there continue to pump the reactors with seawater in an attempt to cool down fuel rods and avoid a complete meltdown that could release radioactive fallout across much of country.

Back when I was a kid, I sometimes daydreamed about traveling back in time to the exotic Age of Dinosaurs in order to liven up what I thought was a relatively plain and insignificant existence in suburban Connecticut. It's easy to overlook the exceptional qualities of a familiar setting in this way unless someone calls attention to them. That's what has happened recently with our present-day position on the geologic time scale, thanks to a trendy new title

The ongoing disaster in Japan is an unprecedented human tragedy.

The founder of the Web message board 4Chan took the stage at SXSW to explain how his new project, Canvas, could far exceed 4Chan's 12-million-user popularity with Facebook-friendly appeal. Like your daughter bringing home an ex-convict for dinner and saying that he's actually a "really good guy," Christopher "moot" Poole explained how the virtue of 4Chan--instantaneous collaborative creativity--could overshadow its darker, dirtier proclivities by gaining new life in a project called Canvas .

Someone might want to tell the SXSW -attending web designers still queuing up for iPad2s outside a pop-up Apple store a few blocks away from the Austin Convention Center: The iPad itself is not going to transform the way we read online. Or so said Khoi Vinh, former design director for NYTimes.com , during a one-on-one with me on the PepsiCo Plugged-In Stage at SXSW yesterday. Apps don't yet deliver when it comes to two critical reader needs: the desire to customize, and the desire to share content.

Fujitsu today announced the achievement of a 40 gigabits per second (40-Gbps) optical-fiber transmission employing an uncooled directly-modulated laser. This was realized through the combination of a structure specifically adapted to high-speed operation, and a newly-developed structure capable of lowering operating current and enabling high-temperature operation. Featuring power consumption at less than half that of commercialized 40-Gbps optical transmitters, Fujitsu's new directly-modulated laser obviates the need for a thermoelectric controller

The iPad 2 is here. It will certainly dominate tablet sales this year, but it is not the future of the tablet. The demand for Tablets is forecast to grow exponentially this year and the iPad 2 and its numerous competitors working in copycat mode are all hoping to cash in on this demand

Innovation is at the top of agendas for governments in the U.S. and U.K. Now the U.K

SeeYourImpact.org rewards acts of micro-charity with photographs and stories of the impact donors make.