Get your thumbs ready and your TweetDeck launched: GOP gubernatorial hopefuls might soon be taking 140-character questions from the “tweeple” of California in a Twitter-powered debate hosted by Brandman University.
Brandman professor Mike Moodian tweeted the three leading candidates for the Republican nomination – @StevePoizner, @TalktoTom and @Whitman2010 – Monday to ask them to participate in a fall debate on how to fix California’s fiscal crisis.
Queries submitted through Twitter and e-mail will make up about half the questions in the 75-minute debate, which is set to be held at the Chapman University affiliate’s Irvine campus (The actual debate will be face-to-face, so the candidates won’t be limited to 140-character responses).
Moodian said he brought Twitter into the mix to give a greater pool of voters the opportunity to participate in the debate (a similar debate for Democratic candidates is also in the works). By allowing questions to be tracked, he also hopes that the debate’s Twitter feed can serve as a cyber snapshot of what’s on the minds of many Californians.
“We believe that this will help engage the younger generation of voters in California,” he said. “It is also ensuring the voices of citizens are included in the debates.”
Team Poizner was the first to “tweet” back, accepting the invite from the candidate’s trusty TwitterBerry at 12:02 p.m. – just two minutes after the initial invite hit the Twittersphere.
Meg Whitman later tweeted that she’ll look at the dates: “Thanks for the debate invite – I’ll consider the dates and respond soon.”
Tom Campbell’s camp responded that he is “looking forward to offering & debating specific solutions to California’s financial crisis with my fellow candidates at Brandman University.”
Moodian said he believes this is the first time a candidate for major office has accepted a debate invitation via a social networking site. He added that he gave all the campaigns a heads-up that the invites would be sent today, just in case they don’t have their account alerts on, and that the candidates also had the option of responding via e-mail, phone or snail mail (but those would have been so 2006).
The debate is in part inspired by the YouTube debates of the 2008 presidential elections, which drew attention for some creatively staged questions. While the exact mechanism for choosing questions hasn’t been determined, don’t expect the entertainment factor to influence selection this time around.
“If we do find some tweets that come in that are creative yet address a serious topic, we will include those. … (But) to us, this is a very serious debate and a critical time. There’s a good possibility we will be looking for common trends in questions,” Moodian said.

Students in Joe Wood’s science class at Somerset Middle School in Modesto didn’t have to hide their cell phones in their backpacks. They used them to take quizzes, shoot photos for class projects and create podcasts.
Wood has since been hired as an instructional technologist for the San Juan Unified School District. He is among a growing group of educators who consider cell phones an important tool in the classroom.
“Let’s help them learn the way they want to,” said Joe Jenkins, chief technology officer at Natomas Unified School District. “They want to use cell phones. They want to text. … They respond to it.”
Jenkins recently received instructional software for cell phones. If it passes muster, he will pilot it in a class for a year before district officials decide whether to make it part of the curriculum.
Despite Wood’s enthusiasm for cell phones in the classrooms, San Juan doesn’t have a program. “We’ve been focused on other initiatives,” Wood said. “Down the road we may be teaching teachers how to leverage technology.”
But many teachers across the nation are already using cell phones for learning. A Spanish teacher in Wisconsin gives oral quizzes via cell phone. Another in Michigan has students take photos with their phones on field trips for an interactive scavenger hunt, while another in Pennsylvania asks his students to use theirs to chronicle their use of calculus in everyday life, said Liz Kolb, an educator and the author of “Toys to Tools: Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education.”
She calls cell phones the “Swiss Army knife of education,” because they can be used inside or outside the classroom. She said their use in class allows students to make the connection between learning and everyday life.
Proponents of cell phones in the classroom say they are battling years of negativity. Historically, educators have thought phones should be banned or confiscated. Most schools have policies forbidding their use on school property.
“I’m finding when I talk to teachers about this, they say ‘Don’t put me in the book. I’m kind of doing it underground. My principal doesn’t know.’ ” Kolb said.
But many districts are amending policies to allow cell phones on campus, if only for instructional use.
“We need to get away from this mentality of taking it (phones) away because it’s a nuisance,” Jenkins said.
Cell phones today really are mini-computers, Wood said. They have the same amount of power that a computer had 10 years ago.
Education periodicals, Web sites and blogs are filled with discussion about the use of cell phones in the classroom. The National Education Computer Conference, held in Washington, D.C., in June, included 13 sections of a workshop on the topic, Wood said. The previous year’s conference held only one such class, he said.
“The big buzz of the conference, was ‘How do you leverage cell phones for learning?’ ” Wood said. “Ultimately, in education, we want to know ‘How do I get my students to learn?’ ”
Chai-Jung Chung, assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education at California State University, Sacramento, said that using cell phones in the classroom can change a student’s view of learning. She and other educators believe the use of phones will encourage students to continue learning outside of school.
“There are learning opportunities everywhere with cell phones,” she said. “They can take a picture while doing something outside of school and put it into a project.”
Cell phones can help students and teachers become more interactive, Wood said. Polling students via cell phone brought 100 percent class participation, compared with about 25 percent when his students were asked questions verbally, he said. The anonymity of sending an answer to a Web site via cell phone helps shy students who worry about the social ramifications of their responses, Kolb said.
The use of cell phones in the classroom can help break down the digital divide, Kolb said. She said studies show that as many low-income and minority students have cell phones as upper-income and white students.
Wood said he was surprised to discover how many of his middle school students in Modesto had phones with data capability. But Internet access is not necessary for learning, Wood said. Teachers can use the camera, text messaging and phone features alone for a multitude of classroom uses.
“You have to look at the limitations of the assortment of tools (in the class),” Wood said.
He acknowledges, however, that the plethora of different phones and operating systems can be problematic.
Jenkins said that if cell phones are incorporated into Natomas curriculum, the district would probably have to purchase class sets to ensure equity.
Michael Flood, a manager for the Sprint communications network, said federal and California state technology programs offer subsidies that could pay most of the cost of operating a cell phone program at schools. Equipment is not included in the subsidy.
He said many districts have been trying to put laptops in the hands of every student, but they’ve found the program expensive and complicated to support.
“More recently what has started to take off are mobile devices and netbooks, which are lower-cost and smaller,” Flood said.
School districts should be thinking about using cell phone technology in their classes, Wood said. “You have all this equipment in your students’ possession,” he said. “How can it be leveraged for learning?”

More than 500 teens and their parents packed into one of the largest lecture halls at UC Davis on Wednesday to hear Dr. David Perry, a U.S. Department of Defense cryptologist, decipher the world of encryption and break down the story of the notorious Enigma machine.
Perry’s lecture was the centerpiece of Math Fest 2009, an effort by the UC Davis mathematics department to get youths interested in the world of numbers. This year was the third annual Math Fest.
“We’re hoping to convey that mathematics is at once beautiful, powerful, fun and useful,” said math professor Monica Vazirani. “Getting a degree in math unlocks so many doors and prepares you for a wide variety of careers.”
The UC Davis effort to excite younger kids about math and science also encompasses the COSMOS (California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science) program. COSMOS is a four-week residential program for older students that allows them to focus on a topic such as chemistry, robotics, earth science or math.
Perry said cryptology and the study of ciphers dates back as far as Julius Caesar. Caesar used encryption to ensure secure communications with his troops on the front lines in Gaul.
Cryptology is a mainstay in modern militaries, but it’s now so common it touches most people today in the form of online commerce.
“It’s in software bundled up in your Internet browser,” Perry said.
When something is ordered from a Web site, computers encrypt credit card information so that even if it’s intercepted by a hacker, it’s extremely difficult to read the critical numbers.
Perry teaches a summer cryptology course for teens at the Center for Talented Youth program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He tries to engage students in math in a variety of ways.
“You absolutely have to mix up what you do – a little bit of lectures, working in groups, and activities,” Perry said.
One of the activities he coaches is building part of the Enigma machine out of card stock – which is then used to simulate encoding and decoding mechanisms that were used in the machine.
The Engima machine was a device used by the German military in World War II to communicate encrypted messages. The Germans thought the ciphers it produced would be unbreakable by the allies. They were wrong.
Perry’s course teaches students to understand not only the history of the Enigma machine, but also decisions that went into its design – the mathematical foundations – and more importantly, why the Germans thought it was so secure.

Barnes & Noble Inc., the world’s largest bookseller, announced Tuesday that it would offer free Wi-Fi at all its Barnes & Noble locations in a deal with AT&T.
The stores previously provided the service for a fee.
The bookstore also offers free applications, including one for iPhones or iPod Touches that calls up book information from a cover photo taken on either device.
Barnes & Noble Inc. has 777 stores in 50 states. There are four locations in the Sacramento region: on Arden Way, in Natomas, at Birdcage Walk in Citrus Heights and at Creekside Town Center in Roseville.
– M.S. Enkoji

Clinical coordinator Brad Buettner, left, trains paramedic student Bobby Blanco on a birthing simulator at UC Davis Medical Center last week. UCD also has a lifelike dummy that can blink, breathe and on cue mimic a full-blown heart attack – one of many innovations being tried to cut costs and save time.In a warehouse tucked among rows of nondescript office buildings, medical wizardry is taking place.
A wand remotely controls beams of light, a robotic cart dashes through the hallways, and camera-equipped metal arms hang from ceilings, poised for surgical duty.
At Kaiser Permanente’s laboratory for innovations in San Leandro, emerging tools in medicine – as well as some low-tech problem-solving – are being put to the test.
The talking robotic cart, known as TUG, might not have the bedside manner of an affable doctor, but soon could be wheeling through the corridors of Kaiser hospitals in the Sacramento region.
So could hand-held electronic tablets that might serve as conduits for better medicine, bringing new tools to a patient’s bedside, said Sean Chai, senior technology manager at the Kaiser lab.
In the long run, saving time saves money, Chai said. “Everything we do here is geared toward saving money.”
There’s a national focus on taming health care costs and improving the quality of care. For institutions such as Kaiser and Sacramento’s UC Davis Medical Center, scouting innovations is critical for improving hospital efficiency and patient safety.
“We have to be better at delivering care more effectively and more efficiently. Technology will play a critical role,” said Dr. Javeed Siddiqui, associate medical director at the Center for Health and Technology at the UC Davis Medical Center.
As a teaching institution, UC Davis Medical Center is also at the forefront of technological advances, sometimes testing medical tools in real-life hospital settings.
At the Center for Virtual Care at the UC Davis Medical Center, lifelike dummies blink, breathe and on cue mimic a full-blown heart attack. They act as simulators to train the next generation of doctors. There are also robotic surgical arms that perform less-invasive surgeries, saving time for doctors in the operating room and patients in recovery wards.
“We’re focused on helping to develop the next generation of technologies,” said Betsy Bencken, a clinical instructor at the virtual care center.
The health system’s Innovation Center, housed within the Center for Health and Technology, serves as a think tank for expanding telemedicine to far-flung reaches, not just in the rural areas of California but around the globe.
At the Garfield Health Care Innovation Center in San Leandro, Kaiser assembles teams of doctors, nurses – sometimes volunteer Kaiser members – to test the latest in medical research.
Nothing is too minor, such as testing the healing properties of paint colors. To enhance patient convenience, one room is equipped with a wand that directs beams of overhead light.
And there’s TUG, the robotic courier that ferries supplies and equipment from one spot to the next. The robot already has been darting through the hallways of some Kaiser facilities in Southern California on a trial basis.
This summer, hand-held LCD monitors – which could extend the portability of electronic health records – will be tested at the Kaiser Sacramento Medical Center to help evaluate products that could become standard issue across the health system’s facilities.
The San Leandro center, which sprawls over 37,000 square feet, opened in June 2006 and is the only one of its kind in the Kaiser health system. It is equipped with patient rooms, mock-ups of workstations, operating rooms – and a living room equipped with gadgets that turn the home into a control center for personal health.
“By 2015, the home will become the hub of care,” Chai predicted.
Home-based equipment will connect a patient at home to the doctor, who can monitor vital signs and other health care metrics.
But it’s not always about high-tech gadgetry. Useful changes often come after simple brainstorming, said Sherry Fry, operations specialist for the Kaiser facility.
A case in point: How to keep nurses charged with administering medication from being interrupted during their rounds.
There were no bells and whistles. At first it was just a neon-green vest, to be worn while on duty. But the vest wasn’t exactly a fashion statement. In the end, the team settled on a simple white sash to be worn during rounds, meant to deliver the message: “Don’t bother me.”

When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, you were either in front of your TV set when it aired, or you missed it.
Today – or, let’s say, if we ever return to the moon – you could save the moment using a cell phone to set your home digital video recorder from work.
Almost exactly halfway between those two technical wonders, something called VCR+ (or VCR Plus) was invented to help tape television broadcasts.
In the late 1980s, VCR+ was the brilliant new way for those of us who were technically inadequate to program videotape recorders to capture shows to watch later.
All one had to do was read a numeric code in the newspaper and enter the code using the VCR remote. And, voilà, the show would be taped.
Digital video recorders have made capturing programs much easier, and the June switch to all-digital television signals has made VCR+ all but obsolete.
Even with digital converters connected to his antenna, Bob Mazur of Folsom found he couldn’t record using the codes in the newspaper, so he contacted The Bee.
If Mazur had cable or satellite, his codes might still work, said Michael Wan, service manager at Sacramento’s Paradyame Sound & Vision.
Even Macrovision – which works with manufacturers and provides codes used in newspapers – says there will be problems for those working with old technology.
The codes built into controls may not correspond with DVRs, and “code alignment” may still be a problem with older VCRs trying to interface with modern converters.
Still, there are VCR+ die-hards.
“The people that use it are unbelievably loyal,” said Simon Adams, Macrovision’s senior vice president of marketing.
If people can find their VCR manuals, there may be ways to reprogram the recorders to use the codes, but Adams said the solution is “not very elegant.”
In other words, trying to use a labor-saving code may require extra mental labor.
Macrovision, in an e-mail statement responding to questions from The Bee, said this: “With the switch from analog to digital and the huge proliferation of cable and satellite DVRs available, the best method to avoid this issue is for the consumer to upgrade their devices/ systems.”
Because few consumers still use the codes, some newspapers have already quit publishing them. The Bee discontinued the codes in 2007, then resumed printing them after readers complained.
Following the digital switch, however, the codes are an endangered species.
They’re still useful in Europe, though, Adams said, because cable and satellite transmission is not as widespread there.
For the die-hard loyalists, codes may still be found with diligent Internet searches.
Technical information can also be found at Macrovision’s site, www.vcrplus.com.

Yuko Tsukagoshi, left, holder of a Ph.D., tastes a chocolate as she chats with Charles Chocolates owner Chuck Siegel on July 16 at a reception in San Francisco
organized by Jobnob to introduce Stanford graduates to startup firms seeking volunteers to work at least five hours a week in exchange for equity shares.SAN FRANCISCO – Soon after earning his MBA from Stanford, Andrey Abramov launched his first technology startup – a cell phone e-mail service he says “died horribly” in the 2000 dot-com crash.
He recovered to earn “hundreds of thousands of dollars” a year in ventures including call centers, social networks, anti-piracy software for video games and a Web marketing portal for brain exercises.
Yet today, Abramov, 39, finds himself among newly busted entrepreneurs and displaced technology workers. And he’s offering to work for free for a chance at another comeback.
In the Silicon Valley region, unemployment tops 11 percent and investment capital has all but dried up. Here, unemployed tech professionals are showing up in droves at Bay Area mixers – and signing on en masse on career networking sites – to volunteer labor and expertise in exchange for equity shares in Silicon Valley startups that have no money to pay them.
At the Metreon retail center in San Francisco recently, Abramov joined dozens of unemployed or underemployed Stanford graduates for a reception with under-funded dreamers, from Internet marketers to video game designers to wireless gadget makers.
He stood there wearing a stick-on badge listing his expertise – “biz development and strategy, engineering, marketing, project management” – as 30 companies made their pitches for people willing to invest five hours or more a week in free “equity” work.
“If you are a company, please buy a job seeker a drink,” said Julie Greenberg, co-founder of a Web networking company, Jobnob, which sponsored the gathering. “They’re willing to work for free. It’s the least you can do.”
From San Jose to Alameda, and Santa Cruz to San Francisco, it is the new survival story of Silicon Valley.
With a half-million Internet, computer, biotech and financial services workers, the pool of jobless talent here is so deep that Jobnob scheduled separate college-themed “happy hours” for tech professionals from Stanford, Harvard and Berkeley alone.
Seeking to pair job seekers with startups, Jobnob began receptions with an open event last month at a San Francisco wine bar. It expected a turnout of 30 people. About 300 out-of-work professionals showed up offering their services.
“This is a time that’s really unique, where so many people with five, 10 and 15 years’ experience and advanced degrees are out of work,” Greenberg said. “Sitting at home looking at the Internet listings is not going to do it for them.”
Simultaneously, the “angels” of Silicon Valley – wealthy individual investors critical to tech startups – have suffered huge stock portfolio losses and largely taken flight.
So volunteer professionals are helping fuel the dreams of cash-strapped entrepreneurs such as Steven Echtman, chief executive of startup HearPlanet.
At the Metreon, Echtman worked the room and his iPhone. He showed off his application that lets travelers use mobile devices to get instant narrative guides for worldwide points of interest from Inca ruins in Urubamba, Peru, to the Pashupatinath temple in Katmandu, Nepal.
He isn’t yet “cash positive” in his dream to build the de facto “auto guide to the world.” But Echtman has signed on four equity volunteers, including Allison Sophia Jones, an Internet sales representative and former Davis resident who found him through the “meetup” link of a networking group, SF New Tech.
Jones, a 2003 international business graduate from the University of San Francisco, has been seeking another opportunity since a movie downloading venture she worked for went out of business 10 months ago.
“We just basically ran out of money. I hate when that happens,” she said. “They let me go along with my whole sales team.”
With hundreds of applicants for job postings, Jones said restless professionals with free time “are getting back to their core values and choosing to put forth their energies for something they believe in.”
Bruce Runyan, 55, a Stanford grad with a B.A. in physics and a master’s in operations research, worked 20 years as a vice president at software and telecommunications companies in California. But after a recent layoff, employers have largely brushed him off as overqualified.
So Runyan came to the Metreon looking to volunteer “for a team-level job to help build a company.”
Carl Guardino, president of of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said the current economic downturn is viewed as less devastating than the 2000 tech stocks meltdown. That wiped out hundreds of paper millionaires and ended the glitz and swagger of the Internet technology gold rush.
Now, Guardino said, an “ownership culture … an egalitarian culture of Silicon Valley lives on,” as unemployed professionals offer services in hope “of being part of owning a company.”
Abramov thought he had a winner in his last venture – WiFi Commute, a service designed to provide wireless access to rail commuters on Caltrain routes. But his business collapsed when he was unable to negotiate terms for buying and reselling bandwidth.
“My startup is dead. It’s like losing a baby after taking it to the limit,” he said.
His finances are so bad, Abramov said, that soon “you’ll see me in the soup kitchen.” And yet, at the Metreon event, a setting remarkably upbeat, he spoke about volunteering to help somebody else’s startup succeed.
“Maybe I’ll find an interesting project to buy me time or the right startup where I can fit in,” he said.
There were plenty of options to ponder.
A young entrepreneur was seeking a business developer for an Internet carpooling network he billed as “the new transportation paradigm for the 21st century.” A firm called Blue Tweet wanted sales associates to market online retailers on Twitter.
Randi Kofman, whose Palo Alto Adiri Inc. sells premium baby products, sought an Internet social media marketer “to reach mommy bloggers and tell them we are listening.”
“We’re a very smart company with a lot of stock options,” she said. “Because we don’t have a lot of cash.”
Jobnob co-founder Alan Shusterman, an Internet advertising product manager in tech’s go-go days, said the event in a Metreon business suite offered quite a contrast.
He recalled lavish parties of the mid-’90s, when Oracle Inc. once rented out San Francisco’s Nob Hill, including the Fairmont, Mark Hopkins and Stanford Court hotels, for thousands of celebrants.
“It was unbelievable. There was so much buzz. Everyone was worth $10 million on paper. And then everything crashed,” he said.
This time, Shusterman said, “there is no somberness, and the fact that these are such difficult economic times is actually spawning innovation.”
Navneet Aron hopes so. The 30-year-old former Intuit engineer manager formed a firm – mobiQpons – that allows people to instantly call up coupons on mobile devices and have retailers scan the devices or punch in the coupon numbers.
“I have access to talent that ordinarily you couldn’t get at an early stage for a company,” said Aron, as he called up coupons for Planet Hollywood, Home Depot and Bath and Body Works on his iPhone. He is seeking equity volunteer interface engineers and social media markers.
His business venture “was the best idea I’ve heard today,” said Heidi Klauser, a ‘92 Stanford grad, retailer and former tech professional looking to find a new opportunity through equity work.
“No one in this room is living the dream of the pre-2000 days, when everybody had multimillion-dollar funding,” she said. “They’re not living the dream. But they’re still dreaming it.”

Stanford grad Tracy Ho, left, of Palo Alto gets the pitch from Amy Zhou of JustPinchMe, a startup seeking tech talent willing to work for free. With Silicon Valley “angels” mostly out of the picture, cash-strapped startups have been courting tech-savvy pros with dreams of their own.

Dorothy Hawkinson of Sacramento won’t give up her classic rotary phone that she bought from a Pacific Bell store more than 25 years ago. She’s also part of another rare group these days: people without a cell phone. Hawkinson said she dislikes the sound quality of cell phones and hard-to-read numbers.Millions of cost-cutting Americans are asking: Ditch the landline phone and go completely wireless, or keep paying two bills for dependability and peace of mind? Many have already clipped the cord.
Wireless-only households have surpassed those solely dependent on landlines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks the information.
Still, some won’t give up on their landline with its comforting dial tone whether out of laziness, concerns about safety, sound quality, the cost of cell phones, or simply – tradition.
“It’s a fixture in the house, kind of like the refrigerator,” said technology analyst Larry Magid. “It’s just there, it’s reliable, it’s wired and glued in place because of the cord, and there’s no meter on it.”
There were 270 million cell phones in use in December 2008, the most recent figure available from the trade group CTIA-The Wireless Association. That figure’s up from 110 million in 2000, and it means 87 percent of Americans have a phone they take everywhere, the group found.
More than 20 percent of households were wireless-only in December, and another 15 percent said they took most calls on cell phones instead of landlines, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Just 17 percent of households had a landline without a cell phone.
“I have both a landline and a cell phone and every time I pay that landline bill I wonder why,” said Stephen Blumberg, senior scientist at the National Center for Health Statistics.
Blumberg fell into tracking phone use in 2003, when the CDC realized that people giving up landlines could cause potential bias in the center’s health surveys, which are taken over the phone. The studies have found that home ownership, not age, is the biggest predictor of a wireless home – renters are four times less likely to have a landline, Blumberg said.
There were also health differences between those with and without landlines. Wireless-only adults are more likely to smoke, binge drink, be without health insurance and not wear a seat belt, according to Blumberg.
The CDC doesn’t know why this is, but collects the information to mitigate distortion in surveys.
“It may be as simple as persons who are wireless-only are more likely to be out with friends, socializing outside the home,” Blumberg said.
Dorothy Hawkinson, 57, of Sacramento, doesn’t have a cell phone and likes it that way. The retired nonprofit fundraiser and fiddle player finds the sound quality of cell phones to be problematic and hates that she needs her reading glasses to see the numbers.
Hawkinson has three phones in her house, a cordless, an office phone and a classic ivory rotary phone with a gold cradle she bought for about $200 from a Pacific Bell store more than 25 years ago.
And when the phone rings, she picks it up, even though she doesn’t have caller ID.
“That’s the way it’s been my whole life so I don’t think about it,” she said.
Laura Cerda, 41, of Sacramento, canceled her landline but reordered it two months later. Cerda’s mom comes over one night a week to watch her daughter but never bothers to turn on her cell phone. So the only way Cerda could reach her was to call the house phone.
Cerda’s daughter doesn’t bother answering her cell phone, either.
“Much to my dismay, we have to text, and I can’t really yell effectively through a text,” said the commercial real estate manager.
Wireless and telecom industry analyst Jeff Kagan doesn’t see the landline phone dying completely, just a transformation of the industry. Everything is becoming connected, he said, so that one day a person will be able to talk on a cell phone that will transfer seamlessly to a home phone when the user walks through the door, and even connect to the Internet and TV. There are already Internet-based phone calls with Skype and Vonage.
“We’re moving in that direction in the next 10 to 20 years,” Kagan said.
Businesses are letting go of landlines at a much slower pace than private phone customers, ensuring the job security of Jose Olagues, a telecom analyst for California State University, Sacramento.
Landlines are generally cheaper than cell phones, Olagues said. And businesses need the dependability of phones that don’t cut out or run out of battery life.
Still, the 35-year-old Olagues ditched his landline at home when AT&T started offering DSL broadband without a phone number last year.
“I don’t think we had a phone plugged in for a year anyway,” Olagues said. “All we got was telemarketers.”
There is something lost when people turn wireless, said Kevin Wehr, associate professor of sociology at Sac State. Area codes no longer matter, people lose the safety of an electricity-free phone, and there is longing for the simpler times of the past – the ring tone on Wehr’s iPhone is the old-style telephone ring.
“It punches some nostalgia buttons,” he said. “It sounds interesting and old school.”
Magid, the technology analyst, also feels nostalgia for his landline, and swears he’ll never get rid of it. He harkens back to the days before cell phones, when he never knew who was going to answer the house phone.
“It’s the communal phone; when you called home, my dad might answer, my mom might answer, my sister might answer,” he said. “I was calling the family, not the individual.”
Magid also likes the comfort of knowing he’ll always be able to call 911, and that the last dropped call he had on his landline was in 1989, during the Loma Prieta earthquake.
Dan Weiser, Web editor for the U.S. House of Representatives and former KCRA news director, canceled his landline this week. The unintended consequence is that the 51-year-old can no longer call his cell phone to figure out where he misplaced it.

Omar Morales, a recent graduate of Foothill High, installs computer wires under the desks at Martin Luther King, Jr. Technology Academy on Tuesday.Computer wires sat tangled on the tile floor while hardware waited for repair. Each classroom at Martin Luther King Jr. Technology Academy needed attention from Twin Rivers Unified School District information technology workers.
Instead of turning to costly vendors or overloading district support staff, Twin Rivers brought in high school interns to help prepare the technology-focused junior high, which is fitted with computers at all 32 student desks in all 35 classrooms.
And the results have district staff and the teens smiling about the partnership.
The teens are gaining valuable work experience in a $8 per hour internship paid through the Sacramento Employment and Training Agency. And the district is receiving a considerable discount for the services.
“This is fun. I love doing this,” said Andrey Becherskiy, 16, who will be a junior at Grant High School in the fall.
Kevin Hall, a computer systems specialist for the district, said getting the computers in good operating shape before the new school year would have taken weeks longer if not for the help of the four interns who have worked with him through the summer.
Two more interns were added after their custodial internships ended. Another intern has spent her summer working on the district’s Web site.
This is the first summer Twin Rivers has placed teens in information technology internships.
The idea stems from a pilot program at Foothill High School. Last spring, Foothill started MOUSE Squad of California, a student-run IT help desk that offers the district computer support while training students.
This fall, Foothill plans to build on the MOUSE Squad, which comes with its own curriculum. After further training, Foothill hopes to offer community members computer repair services and also will accept e-waste for recycling.
The district plans to expand the MOUSE Squad to other high schools in the future.
“These kids are working side-by-side with our IT department,” said Sarah DiRuscio, director of instruction and information technology. “They are setting up computer labs and getting hands-on technology experience that can be used in the real world.”
Becherskiy said he probably would have spent his summer bored at home if not for the internship. Now, he says he’s saving for a car.
“I get money and I learn more stuff,” Becherskiy said. “It’s great. I’m really glad I got a summer job.”
Becherskiy said fixing computers at the junior high has had its surprises. He showed a souvenir – a razor blade – he recently recovered from inside a computer.
Most of the computer problems are normal wear from repeated use by junior high kids, although it’s not uncommon to find items shoved into a USB port or discover other mischievous acts.
“Some kids take their frustrations out on the computers,” said Jeremy Briggs, manager of computer support at the district. “They end up (needing repairs) after a month. We continually have to put more manpower into it. With the work these (interns) have done, it’s going to make it to where we don’t have to come in. Everything will be more durable and the school won’t have to spend as much money on equipment.”

Andrey Becherskiy, a junior at Grant High School, does maintenance on a computer station router. Morales and Becherskiy are paid IT interns for the Twin Rivers Unified School District, which said getting the computers ready for the new school year would have taken weeks longer without them.

IT interns Omar Morales and Gennadiy Moskalenco work on computer wiring Tuesday morning at Martin Luther King, Jr. Tech Academy. The internship program was inspired by a pilot program at Foothill High School called the MOUSE Squad. The Twin Rivers Unified School District plans to have the Foothill program assist the community with its computer repair needs and accept e-waste for recycling.

ANNE CHADWICK WILLIAMS awilliams@sacbee.com
OptiSolar’s 700,000-square-foot industrial space, above, in McClellan Park is looking for a tenant. The solar panel manufacturer’s prospects seemed brighter last November, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, top, spoke at the North Highlands site.Sixteen months after OptiSolar Inc. roared into Sacramento, the cavernous building it was converting into a factory at McClellan Park is seeking a new tenant.
As recently as last fall, the nearly 700,000-square-foot space was on track to be the largest solar panel manufacturing plant in North America. OptiSolar had torn out walls to connect several former Air Force storage bays, each larger than a football field, and was spending millions on heavy-duty plumbing and air conditioning systems. In November, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger stood in front of the factory as he ordered the state’s big utilities to get more of their power from renewable sources.
But the bad economy and a manufacturing glut in the solar power sector combined to choke off the financing OptiSolar needed to fuel its rapid growth. Mass layoffs started in January, and in early March the company merged with much larger First Solar Inc., based in Tempe, Ariz., in a deal worth more than $400 million in stock.
OptiSolar, now a subsidiary of First Solar, listed the McClellan site with global commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle earlier this month. Derek Johnson, a vice president with the brokerage, said OptiSolar is looking for one or more tenants to sublet or take over the lease on the entire site.
“They are not planning on using it,” he said.
The OptiSolar vacancy adds to the region’s growing expanse of empty industrial space.
Garrick Brown, research director in Sacramento for commercial real estate broker Colliers International, expects vacancies to rise from 11.5 percent today to roughly 14 percent by next year, meaning an additional 6 million square feet of industrial space will come onto the market.
“It’s going to be very, very challenging” to find a new tenant for the OptiSolar site, Brown said. He and others said the space is likely the largest on the local industrial real estate market.
OptiSolar initially held a 10-year lease worth $22.5 million. McClellan Business Park sued OptiSolar in late March for unpaid rent and other expenses, but the parties settled quickly. Larry Kelley, president of McClellan Business Park, declined to provide details of the agreement Monday, but said OptiSolar has recently been making payments.
OptiSolar’s troubles are part of a broader shakeout in a global photovoltaic sector likely to post a greater than 30 percent drop in shipments this year. It will be the industry’s first year of contraction on record, according to Paula Mints, a solar market expert with Navigant Consulting in Palo Alto.
Photovoltaic manufacturing capacity worldwide will reach 11 gigawatts this year, but the industry is likely to ship less than 4 gigawatts worth of panels, Mints said.
Hayward-based OptiSolar once envisioned the McClellan factory employing as many as 1,000 workers building low-cost panels for solar farms that would cover thousands of acres in rural areas.
A $20 million package of tax incentives from Sacramento County helped lure the company here in March 2008, and for several months OptiSolar was the centerpiece of the region’s green jobs push.
The company’s local operations never got big enough to trigger the tax breaks. Employment at the McClellan plant peaked around 200.
OptiSolar did not respond to requests for comment.
Tracey Schaal, director of strategic marketing at the Sacramento Area Commerce and Trade Organization, said green-technology companies, particularly European and East Asian firms, remain among the region’s best prospects for new manufacturing jobs.
“People are seeing this as a good time to get into the region at a good price point,” she said.
Schaal said one renewable-energy company is likely to announce a local investment shortly, but declined to give details.