Elise Hu

Each week, we round up the tech and culture stories from NPR and beyond. Let's do this, folks.

ICYMI

Online and on air, we've started our new effort to report several stories on a single theme during the week. Our first themed week explored kids and technology, with my ...

When the federal health exchange marketplace opened Oct. 1, we visited jazz musician Suzanne Cloud in Philadelphia. She tried to start an account early in the morning, but technology thwarted her plans.

She wasn't alone, as it became clear quickly that the unprecedented system for Americans in 36 states ...

To the long list of problems plaguing HealthCare.gov, add data security. The enrollment site for the new health insurance exchanges had a security flaw that didn't get patched up when the exchange marketplace went live.

An internal government memo obtained by The Washington Post and Associated Press is dated Sept. ...

There is little to enjoy about plane travel in America anymore, but if you have flown Delta Airlines anytime in the last year, you've probably already encountered its delightfully subversive airline safety video. It's your standard "seat-doubles-as-a-flotation-device" information, but with all sorts of fun visual gags mixed in. When ...

Each week, we highlight a design or product innovation that you might not have heard about yet. Many of them come through your submissions (here's the form), but this week's idea came to us from our NPR Two-Way blogger, Eyder Peralta, who thought this was pretty cool. We ...

Smartphones and tablets. You can't miss them, and your kids can't resist them. Even the smallest children — 40 percent of kids 8 years old and under — have used their parents' mobile devices, according to a survey out this week by the nonprofit Common Sense Media. This ...

This week, we're exploring the tech frontier through the eyes of our children. So we're starting with the littlest ones — babies. Can certain kinds of screen time help babies learn?

To find some answers, I employed the help of my 1-year-old daughter, Eva. She's still a wobbly walker ...

We are really excited to start a new team-centered, theme-driven reporting effort. ("We" refers to your NPR tech reporting team — Steve Henn and Laura Sydell out in the Bay Area, and me, here at NPR's headquarters in Washington.)

As much as we can, we will craft our tech and ...

"Too big to succeed."

That's how one of my sources described the complex, complicated HealthCare.gov tech system that was built with 55 contractors in several discrete parts, all without a clear system integrator. The issues and recrimination in Congress over the rollout dominated our week, on air and online. On ...

One of the major issues that's emerged since the failed rollout of HealthCare.gov is that there was no lead contractor on the project. (CGI Federal was the biggest contractor — awarded the most expensive contract — but says it did not have oversight over the other parts of the ...

When he read about the technical failures plaguing HealthCare.gov, Mike Bracken said it felt like a real-life version of the movie Groundhog Day. During the past decade, the government in the United Kingdom faced a string of public, embarrassing and costly IT failures. Finally, a monster technical fiasco — ...

In our "Weekly Innovation" series, we pick an interesting idea, design or product that you may not have heard of yet.

Why do lamps have to stand apart from the surfaces you're trying to light? That was a question noodling around the mind of German design student Simon ...

A "tech surge" is underway to help clean up the code of the error-plagued HealthCare.gov site. The Obama administration says this surge is made up of engineers from inside and outside government, but beyond saying that Presidential Innovation Fellows are involved, officials haven't specified who's making up those ...

The feeling that your phone is vibrating when it isn't has been around long enough to warrant scientific research. One psychologist recommends taking regular breaks from our phones to keep anxiety down.

While most of us were distracted waiting for a gold iPhone — gold! — the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers quietly made a deal to acquire an electronics company for $7.2 billion. The company they bought? Molex.

Molex makes component parts, which doesn't sound sexy. But it, like other ...

In our "Weekly Innovation" blog series, we explore an interesting idea, design or product that you may not have heard of yet. Do you have an innovation to share? Use this quick form.

Something called Sprayable Energy is coming soon to an online store. It is a ...

For women struggling to make inroads in the male-dominated tech industry, a few stunning situations this week have provided some extreme examples of what they're up against.

Sexist attitudes in startup culture got a major showcase on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, one of the industry's leading conferences. In a ...

Leaks to tech industry sites give us a sense of what to expect from Apple's coming product announcement: Not one, but two new iPhone models. One will be more affordable, to reach international markets. The other, which we believe will be called the iPhone 5S, will come in ...

The beauty of the Internet — and the reason for its ubiquitous place in our lives — is that just about anyone can use it to offer services, products or information. But the link between what's out there on the Internet, how fast it gets to us and how much ...

Monday's Labor Day holiday shortened our week, but there was no shortage of news in the tech space. Herewith, our weekly roundup to help catch you up.

ICYMI

Over the airwaves, the week started with news of Microsoft's purchase of Nokia, and Steve Henn discussed the implications on Morning ...