A new optocoupler from Fairchild lets you easily isolate digital communication lines two at a time.

The wide range of easy-to-use wireless OEM products simplifies communications, but not every design needs an RF link, regardless of what your marketing people tell you.

Here's a competition for students and teachers that challenges them to create something interesting and helpful with LEDs. Teams get kits of parts to work with. If you know students or teachers, encourage them to enter.

If you'd like to know more about the origins of the semiconductor industry, the early technologies, and the start of Silicon Valley, I highly recommend Christoph Lécuyer and David C. Brock's new book, "Makers of the Microchip: A Documentary History of Fairchild Semiconductor."

Not everyone needs a development or evaluation kit with all the bells and whistles. More companies could start engineers with a basic board that lets them get used to hardware and software and then add the I/O devices they actually need to take an evaluation closer to their actual design implementation. Facing a board with a dozen or so unfamiliar I/O devices might seem like an adventure to some engineers and a roadblock to others.