Instead of sitting down to watch White Christmas or another streaming movie or TV show, Netflix online video users huddled around their television on Christmas Eve were greeted with an unfortunate message: the online content was unavailable.

On a drizzly afternoon in downtown Sacramento, Drewski’s Hot Rod Kitchen is hard to miss. 

City dwellers driving past the expansive cotton fields and scattered farmhouses along Highway 43 to Corcoran might get the feeling they’ve left California. A haze of dust, bugs and little particles of cow dung blanket the road between Fresno and Bakersfield. Even on a nice day, wiping debris from a car windshield begins to feel futile.

An influx of green manufacturing companies and a burgeoning renewable-energy sector is creating the critical mass Solano County needs to usher in a new era of competitive economic growth.

By most accounts, today’s workforce is more productive than ever, suggesting that technologies meant to help us do more in less time are working.

If your IT room is starting to look like a scene out of “Sanford and Son,” you’re not alone. In 2010, American consumers and businesses unloaded 40 million computers onto recyclers, landfills and the refurbished market, the Golisano Institute for Sustainability in Rochester, N.Y., reports. Some estimates show, however, that millions more are idling in homes and offices because owners simply don’t know what to do with them.

Beutler Air Conditioning and Plumbing may be a poster-business for the rise and fall — and re-birth — of Sacramento’s economy. Rick Wylie, president of Beutler, says the 65-year-old Sacramento company was probably saved by its diversification, partially into green energy models.

For more than a decade Meg Arnold has been actively supporting technology commercialization and entrepreneurship throughout the Capital Region.

Tablet computers are becoming the tool of choice in multiple industries, adding convenience to simple tasks such as note taking, to more complex operations such as tracking sales. Tablets haven’t replaced laptops yet, but sales trends favor the handheld devices.