The 10 and 10 rule: Bad news for U.S. and China alike

The preferred exercise at Davos so far is hand-wringing.

Rajan: The finance prof frets about the U.S. economy. Photo: University of Chicago.

Concern over the future of the economy and finger pointing over what went wrong have dominated the first day's discussions. There's even an emerging buzz expression to capture the fears of the financierati. It is "10 and 10," and refers to the unhealthy combination of 10% unemployment in the MORE

The fabulous Swoboda brothers

LED lighting's not-so-heated sibling rivalry.

Chuck (left) and Mark Swoboda know lighting.

If you cut your teeth on LED technology over the past 10 to 15 years here in the States, chances are good you might have worked with one, or both, of the Swoboda brothers.

Polite, rangy men raised outside Chicago, they are the only two boys in a family of six children. Mark Swoboda, the elder at 53, is president MORE

Apple announcement: What to expect at today's event

The tech world turns its attention to San Francisco to see what Steve Jobs has up his sleeve

Photo: Philip Elmer-DeWitt

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts was buzzing Tuesday afternoon with black-shirted Apple staffers hauling in electronics, heavy-set security  guys guarding the perimeter, TV satellite trucks jockeying for position and workers on a crane plastering the entrance way with the event's signature paint-spattered logo.

The economy may be sputtering, Bin MORE

Tablets will change everything. (Including mobile video.)

Meet the next new platform for ads, services and apps.

By Nickhil Jakatdar; CEO and co-founder, VuClip

Jakatdar: Tablets will be a new canvas for marketers, designers, engineers.

There has been no shortage of talk about tablets. New offerings from HP (HP) and Lenovo were hot topics at CES, and you may have heard about a little get together that Apple (AAPL) is hosting tomorrow. While consumers (and tech blogs) are MORE

What Facebook and Hulu aren't doing

Liza Minnelli once sang a song about a gal who traveled around the world to meet the guy next door. Two of the more interesting presentations I heard Tuesday at the DLD tech conference in Munich were about California companies I know well. (DLD, one of whose organizers is the Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi, is for many  a warmup to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where I'm headed next.)

Why Facebook  Won't MORE

The light bulb goes digital

Companies for years have toyed with light-emitting diodes, which use the same technology as computer chips. Now LEDs are having their day in the sun.

An assortment of new LED bulbs, including two models from Philips (top), Cree (bottom right), and Lemnis (bottom left), surround Philips's 60-watt replacement bulb, which hasn't hit the market yet.

The $100 billion global lighting industry is undergoing radical change: New office buildings and retail outlets MORE

Apple's earnings: The Street's big miss

The professional analysts were bested -- once again -- by the bloggers

Smackdown: Full spreadsheet below

There's a good reason most Wall Street analysts don't publicly review their predictions after the fact. It's called self-preservation. Who wants to advertise how badly they misunderstood the companies they follow?

Case in point: Apple (AAPL), and the quarterly report it issued Monday afternoon. Apple management gave ample warning that it wanted to change its accounting MORE

Apple reports record earnings, hits Wall Street with double whammy

Net income grew nearly 50% in Apple's most profitable quarter ever

It seems no matter how high Wall Street's expectations these days, Apple (AAPL) still manages to blow past them.

On Monday it hit the Street with a double whammy: not only did it announce record sales and earnings, but it changed the way it reports its iPhone sales revenue, replacing what used to be its GAAP (generally accepted accounting procedure) earnings MORE

Tablets: who needs 'em?

(AAPL) (MSFT) (AMZN) (HPQ)

Apple bounces after Friday's drop

Opens more than 5 points higher in advance of Monday's earnings report

As might have been predicted, Apple (AAPL) shares opened sharply higher Monday morning after a Friday rout that knocked more than $10 off the stock's price -- and over $9 billion off the company's market cap.

Many investors found the timing of the sell-off suspicious, pegged as it seemed to be on a bogus report that Deutsche Bank had downgraded MORE