Obama searches for CTO

By naming some technology executives to his transition team, president-elect Barack Obama is signalling that he's likely to follow through with his proposal to appoint a CTO to the White House, reports CNet.

The person in this new position, and possibly a new White House technology office staff, could be given the directive to create new levels of transparency and access to government agencies, or to guide policies that spur innovation and growth.

However, technology experts warn that a CTO would have to avoid potential pitfalls such as creating new spending for ineffectual projects, running into conflict with other agencies, or simply becoming nothing more than a symbolic office.

Steve Ballmer has publicly belittled Google's fledgling mobile phone platform, saying the world's largest search engine ad broker is low on Microsoft's list of mobile competitors, reports The Register.

At an investor briefing in Sydney, Microsoft's chief exec said Google would not have an easy time convincing handset manufacturers to adopt Android, its new Linux-based mobile platform.

"They've got some smart guys and hire a lot of people," Ballmer said of his rival. "They start out way behind in a certain sense, and we'll see how they do."

The world's first commercially available bionic hand has been recognised as one of the top inventions of 2008, says The BBC.

The i-limb hand, created by Touch Bionics, was named alongside the Super Hadron Collider in Time magazine's top 50 innovations.

It came in at 14th place, beating competition from the latest Mars Rover, designed to explore the red planet.

Former Intel design engineer Biswamohan Pani was charged with four counts of wire fraud this week in the US District Court, in Boston, reports CRN.

The new counts come on top of an earlier charge in August of trade secret theft, which allegedly occurred when he left Intel for AMD in June. The trade secret information was alleged to be worth $1 billion in research and development costs. Pani was reportedly a designer with the Itanium processor team.

Pani announced his resignation from Intel in May, telling his employer that he had taken a job at a hedge fund, but began working for AMD at the beginning of June.