Technology Audio/Video - NPR

Federal rules now require medical record keepers to notify the government of breaches that could affect 500 or more people. Stolen and lost computers are often to blame.

Now that iPhone users know for sure that Apple has culled more than 5,000 apps because they've been deemed too sexy, it's time to ask whether the company is really taking a principled stand.

Google is making nearly $500 million per year with ads that appear on Web pages with names that are very similar to the names of major corporations, researchers at Harvard estimate.

Apple wants to lower the cost of a single TV episode on iTunes from the current $1.99 to 99 cents. Consumers are beginning to ask why they're paying so much for cable, when they could just buy the few shows they actually watch a la carte via iTunes.

Video games are big business in part because some of them allow players to engage in warfare with other players virtually. Jeff Bakalar, who writes about video games for the online magazine CNET, says there are many instances of homophobia, racism and misogyny.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board assigns about 1,700 ratings a year to warn parents about sex, violence and language, among other things, in video games.

A series of online attacks on Google and other large U.S. companies had been traced back to two Chinese educational institutions, but it's unclear if the hackers are tied to the Chinese government. New York Times reporter John Markoff discusses the origin of the attacks.

The Philadelphia school district is accused of spying on students at home via school-issued computers, causing widespread student outrage and the filing of a potential class-action lawsuit alleging wiretap and privacy violations. Its superintendant told parents it only activated the webcams when any of the 2,300 student laptops were reported lost or stolen.

A new study used cell phone billing data for 50,00 people in a European country to show that people's travel patterns are extremely predictable. That's true for both homebodies and jet setters. Regardless of age, language group, etc, people's movements were predictable 93 percent of the time. The study shows the emerging power of using cell phone data for social science research.

Two different U.S. broadband goals were laid out this month. The FCC chief called for connecting 100 million households at 100 megabits per second. But Google stole his thunder last week, promising to bring eye-popping speeds of 1 gigabit per second to thousands of Americans.