xerox

What's next from the people who invented the PC?

Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center is a legendary and often misunderstood place. Once Xerox's outpost in Silicon Valley, it's now a separate company within Xerox, and it focuses on applied R&D. PARC is where you'll find the beginnings of the personal computer, LAN, voice command, and laser printing. Today its work branches far beyond computing, with a strong emphasis on ethnography, the study of what people do and how they do it.

I'd met Xerox CTO Sophie Vandebroek before, but was curious to see how things were going on this 10th anniversary of … Read more

Tech execs top Fortune's list of powerful women

Fortune's list of the 50 most powerful women in business is out, and it come as no big surprise that some of the top players work in the tech industry.

Ginni Rometty, IBM's recently appointed CEO, nabbed the No. 1 spot, up from No. 7 last year. Rometty, a longtime IBMer, ran Big Blue's sales operations before taking over as chief executive in January. Fortune noted she's now in charge of delivering on some of IBM's biggest changes, such as buying PwC and developing a five-year growth plan.

Meg Whitman, CEO of IBM rival Hewlett-Packard, … Read more

Apple's legal tactics won't keep competitors at bay

For the last week, attorneys for Apple and Samsung have been arguing over rounded corners, icons, bezels, ornamental designs and horizontal lozenge-shaped slots.

After hearing testimony -- first from Apple's witnesses and then from Samsung -- a jury at the U.S District Court in the heart of Silicon Valley will decide whether Samsung's broad array of mobile products infringed on patents and designs associated with the iPad and iPhone. 

Samsung is contending that its devices are not illegally derivative of Apple's products, and that Apple looked to Sony in developing designs for the iPhone. … Read more

A Kodak moment to forget

Digital Equipment founder Ken Olsen was one of the smartest people ever to grace the tech landscape. Yet seemingly every recollection of his legacy makes sure to cite his dumbest quote.

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home," Olsen told a meeting of the World Future Society in Boston in 1977.

Though Olsen would later claim that the quote was misinterpreted, it's since acquired the status of punch line, an eternal shorthand summation for corporate cluelessness.

What a shame. Long after it became clear to everyone that the PC was … Read more

Eat your own before someone else does, CEOs tell CES panel

LAS VEGAS--The Consumer Electronics Show is really about the here and now, a showcase for the sleekest, fastest, shiniest gizmos that will show up in stores in the coming months.

But a panel of corporate leaders discussed the importance of creating corporate cultures that encourage companies to displace their own gadgets--to develop the next generation of devices that can replace the ones so lavishly displayed on the show floor here. Because if a company doesn't displace its own gadgets, rivals will.

"If you don't make those investments, clearly somebody else will cannibalize your business," said John … Read more

Xerox offers the 2nd Wi-Fi cordless scanner

Though it's not the first as its press release claims, the Xerox Mobile Scanner is a nifty little battery-powered model that uses a 4GB Eye-Fi SD card to connect to Wi-Fi networks for uploading scanned images to mobile devices.

LAS VEGAS--In a bit of a bizarre move, Xerox announced its Xerox Mobile Scanner as the first battery-operated, Wi-Fi-connected scanner. Except Xerox owns Visioneer, which announced the first battery-operated, Wi-Fi connected scanner back in October. They both operate via a bundled Eye-Fi card for the wireless connection, though the hardware looks different. The Visioneer Mobility Air is also cheaper, $199 … Read more

Xerox PARC founder Jacob Goldman dies at 90

The famed Xerox PARC has lost its founder.

Jacob Goldman, a physicist who started Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, died on Tuesday in Westport, Conn., at the age of 90.

Goldman was lauded in a New York Times obituary as a "dynamic leader and ardent supporter of innovative technologies."

Launched in 1970, Xerox PARC is known in computer history as the hub that developed many of the technologies we take for granted today. Its scientists and researchers teamed up to design the Alto, the first modern personal computer; laser printing; the graphical user interface; the first WYSIWYG (… Read more

Look out! Here comes Apple's killer location-services patent

Apple has raised bludgeoning competitors with patents on key technologies to a fine art. (Just ask Samsung.) And now it may have a new blunt object to wield.

A reissue of a patent originally dating back to 1998 -- and that Apple got from Xerox -- has delivered into CEO Tim Cook's hands some serious, and scary, potential control over location-based services. If you thought that Google, Samsung, HTC, and others were already depressed over the legal success Apple has had in fighting Android, it's now officially worse.

Even more, it could bring some important activities of other … Read more

When Steve Jobs visited PARC (video)

At a Churchill Club event in San Jose, Calif., former PARC engineer Larry Tesler talks about Steve Jobs' trips to Xerox's PARC, including the one where Jobs eyed the company's graphical user interface prototype, which ended up making it into the Mac OS. Tesler decided to leave Xerox soon after and started working at Apple.

See also: The story behind Apple's NeXT OS in 1996 (video)

This story originally appeared at ZDNet's Between the Lines under the headline "PARC scientist recalls Jobs' famous Xerox visits (video)."