The Washington Post reports that “

[m]ore than 200 companies qualified to bid in the upcoming auction of public airwaves that could raise as much as $15 billion for the U.S. Treasury. But it’s not clear whether any of those companies will fulfill one of the key goals of the auction — to attract a bidder that would build a wireless network that could also be used by public-safety agencies.  Among those that had initially applied to bid but did not qualify was Frontline Wireless, a Greensboro, N.C., start-up that had hoped to build a national emergency communications network that would be shared with commercial users.  […]  Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin said he was disappointed that Frontline will not participate in the auction but that he was optimistic that other companies will bid on those airwaves, which will be shared with public-safety agencies.”

The New York Times writes that “[t]he United States remains the world leader in scientific and technological innovation, but its dominance is threatened by economic development elsewhere, particularly in Asia, the National Science Board said Tuesday in its biennial report on science and engineering.  The United States’ position is especially delicate, the agency said, given its reliance on foreign-born workers to fill technical jobs.  The board is the oversight agency for the National Science Foundation, the leading source of money for basic research in the physical sciences.  The report, on the Web at nsf.gov/statistics/indicators, recommends increased financing for basic research and greater ‘intellectual interchange’ between researchers in academia and industry.”

ZDNet.com reveals that “Sun Microsystems is taking the plunge into the database market with the purchase of open source database developer MySQL for $1 billion ($800 million in cash in exchange for all MySQL stock and assumption of approximately $200 million in options).  With the move, announced Wednesday, Sun takes a big leap into the $15 billion database market and pits it against the likes of Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. MySQL also gives Sun entry to some customers that may be interested in buying more equipment and software. MySQL counts Facebook, Google, Nokia and Baidu as customers.”

The International Herald Tribune has an article on Macworld today in which it praises Apple CEO Steve Jobs for “returning to his original Macintosh roots with an elegant — but limited — ultralight computer called the MacBook Air.”

PCMag.com’s Macworld article, on the other hand, is critical of Apple, stating that “Steve Jobs’ latest ‘one more thing’ isn’t all that inspiring, and certainly isn’t industry-leading either.”