Pecan Street Inc., Austin’s non-profit smart grid and clean energy research organization, today announced the roster of companies that will help it develop and deploy a smart grid in hundreds of Austin homes. Landis+Gyr will leverage its smart grid network platform and install several hundred $550 Focus AX smart meters in homes. Best Buy Co. [...]

Social networking is expanding the audience for some of Austin’s biggest events this fall. During UT’s first football game of the season, thousands of fans who did not have access to the new Longhorn Network were able to watch an unsanctioned live stream of the game thanks to a series of tweets and blog posts, [...]

Central Texas firefighters are battling the worst wildfire in the state’s history, and they’re relying on their portable radios to help them do their jobs and stay alive. The Motorola Solutions radios not only enable firefighters to communicate with one another, they also allow them to maintain contact with a location commander who can use [...]

“Eat breakfast because we’re having a late lunch!” These were the words that greeted 200 eager investors and entrepreneurs as they picked up their name tags at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center on the University of Texas campus this morning. They were there for the 3rd annual  Capital Factory Demo Day and some [...]

Appconomy’s Steve Guengerich is not from Austin, but he says he got here as quickly as he could. He came in the 1990’s, moving his company from Houston when it was ready to go public. Now his latest venture puts him at the center of the mobile apps economy – which he has christened the appconomy. Appconomy builds [...]

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. – The largest fire in New Mexico history still has some life left in it. The Las Conchas fire may be around 70% contained but continues to burn in the northern and western parts of the state. The fire is dwindling, largely due to proper communications between agencies, much of which is [...]

Editor’s Note: In this piece by Carlos Urreta, guest columnist and techie from Austin, Texas, Urreta reveals loopholes to securing the cheapest cell phone deal a user is likely to construct (with some loopholes) without losing most major services. I bought my first cellular device roughly 10 years ago. Ever since, I’ve always had the [...]

RootMetrics, an independent service that measures and ranks optimal cell coverage in major cities across the United States, published a report this week ranking the best mobile performance in Dallas. The verdict is in, and Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) takes top honors in Big D with an overall score of 73.8 out of a possible [...]

HOUSTON, Texas-The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is prepping equipment to jam wireless cell phones signals at facilities following the escape of an inmate from a maximum-security prison in Beaumont last month. David Puckett, the inmate who escaped, smuggled a cell phone to plan his run from authorities and succeeded before being apprehended in [...]

AUSTIN-The Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG), a research arm of the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, was named a National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC) this week and received a $400,000 grant to fund several research opportunities throughout the next five years. Funding is renewable [...]