Information Technology

A stethoscope with three tiny koalas dangling from his neck and eyeglasses perched on his nose, Dennis Saver looks every bit the family doctor as he steps into the examining room of his small practice on Florida's Treasure Coast. When Saver begins to examine his patient, however, the 56-year-old physician does something that four out of five doctors in America do not: He pulls out a computer.

Share prices of most of the technology bellwethers closed down Wednesday as the U.S. stock market continued to digest the troubling financial news of recent days: Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. filing for bankruptcy protection, the feds bailing out insurance giant American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. picking up Merrill Lynch & Co. for a fraction of its value, and other banks rumored to be in buyout talks.

Kaiser Permanente's $4-billion effort to computerize the medical records of its 8.6 million members has encountered repeated technical problems, leading to potentially dangerous incidents such as patients listed in the wrong beds, according to Kaiser documents and current and former employees.

Springing forward in the computer age just got more complicated. At 2 a.m. Sunday, daylight saving time starts three weeks earlier than usual in a federal effort to save energy. But millions of computers, servers and networks are programmed to move the hands forward on the first Sunday in April. So information technologists are racing against the computer clocks to make the software fixes. Otherwise, heat and lights in some buildings could come on an hour later than they should.

Most large companies rely on in-house technology departments to monitor office phones and e-mail. Employees generally accept the practice as necessary to protect business from rogue colleagues and outside threats. But this week's revelation that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. fired an IT employee for snooping has some asking who watches the watchers.

COMBING through the guts of the website for the Los Angeles County Community Development Commission, an information technology worker for the agency came across an intruder. Someone with an Internet provider address in Germany had broken in and looked at private information normally accessible only to commission employees. The worker immediately shut the system down.

In this gadgety nation enamored of tech toys and i-everything, to plug in is to simplify our hectic daily lives as we digitally, and literally, connect with the world beyond our front doors. So the modern-day wisdom goes. If you're not riding this pixilated wave? Well, you stand in the obsolete minority. Right? Actually, wrong. Turns out modern-day wisdom isn't always so wise.

Northrop Grumman Corp. said Tuesday that it was raising its earnings forecast for the year as a surge in revenue from developing computer and communication systems for state and local governments helped boost second-quarter profit. Century City-based Northrop now expects year-end earnings at the upper end of its previous forecast of $4.80 to $5.05 a share on revenue of about $31.5 billion.

Los Angeles' traffic signal system is the envy of traffic planners around the world, recording millions of cars each year as they pass over sensors embedded in city streets. The data beep and shine on screens in a state-of-the-art traffic control center that looks like something out of a science fiction movie.

Cisco Systems Inc. and Indian software company Wipro Ltd. agreed to develop information technology in an alliance that could produce $1 billion a year in new business for the two firms. Under the agreement, San Jose-based Cisco and Wipro will develop and deliver software services that incorporate Cisco's networking technology and Wipro's expertise in outsourcing.