San Jose, CA-based Haptics technology company Immersion Corp., an innovator in vibrotactile feedback medical training equipment, cars, gaming and mobile phones has a new solution, called TouchSense that will let you feel the touch screen buttons on ATM machines, Car Screens etc. Now you will know for sure when you touch the button

Immersion's new TouchSense Technology for Touch Screens combines vibro feedback with finger-position recognition and interpolation to deliver tactile feedback on standard touch screens. This feedback can register as bumps, low vibrations, ticks, clicks, slides, you name it. All of it is coupled with audible feedback to enhance the experience.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte has blocked a California law that would have made it illegal to sell or rent violent video games to minors, saying he doubted whether such sales could be banned even if the games were proved to cause violent behavior among children.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had signed the bill by Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, to ban the sale or rental of especially violent video games to children under 18 years old unless there is parental approval. The law was to take effect Jan. 1 reports Sfgate

In his ruling, Judge Whyte wrote that "games are protected by the First Amendment"--worthy of the same protection of free expression as books, films, television, or the press. He granted the preliminary injunction on the grounds that the terms of the law, which would include mandatory labeling of games deemed unsuitable for minors, would "likely" be ruled unconstitutional. The decision comes amid a political and cultural war over the content of video games, which last year accounted for $7.3 billion in U.S. sales and rivaled Hollywood box office receipts reports Reuters.

The motion for the injunction was requested by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) game-industry lobby and Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association (IEMA), a game-retailer trade association reports GameSpot

"We are extremely pleased by today's announcement," said ESA President Doug Lowenstein. "For the sixth time in five years, federal courts have now blocked or struck down these state and local laws seeking to regulate the sale of games to minors based on their content, and none have upheld such statutes."

read More at Reuters

ACME Game Store CO-owners Jason Jones, 34, and Jonathan Bryant, 44, as well as Pei "Patrick" Cai, 32 could face up to five years in prison for hawking hacked Microsoft Xbox systems.

According to reports, the men sold Xbox systems that Mr. Cai had modified with chips and hard drives that allowed users to copy rented or borrowed games onto the console for future play. Prices ranged $US225 ($300) to more than $US500 for the modifications, depending on the extent of the modifications and the number of games preloaded onto the hard drive reports Reuters

US prosecutors charged the three men with one felony count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and to violate the US' Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Mr Jones and Mr Bryant demonstrated the modified Xbox game consoles in their

Visto Corp, a maker of software for wireless e-mail, said on Thursday it filed a lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. for infringing Visto patents for technology that support e-mail on mobile devices. The suit, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, was made a day after Visto licensed patents belonging to NTP, the company that is engaged in a patent challenge to Research in Motion. The NTP case could shut most service to the BlackBerry communications device reports New York Times.

Visto said it is seeking a permanent injunction to stop Microsoft from "misappropriating" technology from Visto and its co-founder developed nearly 10 years ago. Microsoft's wireless e-mail product, Windows Mobile Direct Push Technology, will be introduced in the spring.

Microsoft and MCI announced Monday that they will work together to develop a network to allow people to place phone calls from personal computers to virtually any landline phone by using Windows Live software with its Voice over Internet Protocol capabilities combined with MCI`s global phone network reports M&C.

The deal will allow consumers to place calls for as little as 2.3 cents a minute -- undercutting rates MCI offers existing customers . For Microsoft, the partnership puts it in competition with a growing field of major Internet companies offering free or low-cost Web-based calling services -- from international Web-calling company Skype, a unit of eBay Inc., to Time Warner Inc.'s America Online and Yahoo Messenger reports Reuters. "The intent is to be very price competitive with who is out there," Patty Proferes, senior vice president of Mass Markets and Corporate Advertising for MCI, said in a phone interview.

The two companies said the new service, to be known as MCI Web Calling for Windows Live Call, will be available through Windows Live Messenger -- Microsoft's recent name change for its MSN Messenger, which counts 185 million active users worldwide.

The companies are presently testing the service as part of a Windows Live Messenger limited beta available only in the US. They plan to deliver the beta to France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom in the coming weeks. With the beta version, customers can place calls to some 220 countries.

Further details can be found at http://ideas.live.com/.

Software giant, Microsoft Corp., has launched a beta version of Windows Live(TM) Local, an
online local search and mapping service that combines unique bird's-eye
imagery with advanced driving directions, Yellow Pages and other local search
tools. Powered by the Virtual Earth mapping and location platform, Windows Live(TM) Local, gives users useful new ways to map and find directions to various locations and better visualize their surroundings from multiple aerial vantage points.

"We believe Windows Live Local sets a new standard for what people can do with maps, directions and local search," said Christopher Payne, MSN Search Corporate Vice President.

"The combination of immersive aerial imagery, customizable map annotations, innovative driving directions and the ability to share local search information with others gives users an incredibly powerful and easy way to find what they want and get where they want to go."

The most visible of these features is a new 45-degree bird's-eye view of major
U.S. cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and
Las Vegas. Covering about 25 percent of the U.S. by population, these bird's-
eye images are captured by Pictometry International Corp. via low-flying
airplanes and then integrated with road and satellite maps to simulate 360-
degree panoramas that can be viewed from four compass directions. On-screen
navigational tools and preview tiles enable navigation between directional
views or zooming in closer to a destination. Now people will be able to
experience what it's like to be there, whether they are evaluating a new house
to buy, choosing the exact location to meet someone, or just taking a virtual
vacation.

The new service, is located at http://local.live.com . Over the next couple of years, Microsoft plans to continuously
update bird's-eye, aerial, and road map data and imagery as well as local
listings and information.

Microsoft is set to begin testing its own version of Google Base, a free service introduced by Google six weeks ago. Codenamed "Fremont", the service will allow users to post listings.

Fremont will be tied into the company's new Live.com, where users will be able to view local listings from their personalized pages. Microsoft has begun testing the service from fremont.live.com, however access has been restricted to Redmond employees reports Red Herring

One year after the debut of Firefox 1.0, and more than 100 million downloads later, Mozilla has released Firefox 1.5, the latest version of its acclaimed open source Browser.

Firefox 1.5, which is available as a free download from www.Mozilla.com, will aim to build on the success of last year’s Firefox 1.0, which won a cult following among users who say the software is slicker and more secure than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), the market leader reports Times.

Improvements included in Firefox 1.5 include automatic updates, faster surfing speeds and drag-and-drop page tabs designed to make the product more user friendly.

The Mozilla Foundation is planning to use the SpreadFirefox website to showcase user-submitted videos of Firefox fans talking about the product as part of a marketing blitz due to raise the profile of the already popular browser. Recent figures from web analytics firm OneStat.com suggest Mozilla-based browsers have a total global usage share of 11.51 per cent in a market still dominated by Microsoft's ubiquitous IE browser software reports the register

Maxell Corporation of America, has said it will launch its first holographic storage products in September 2006. The first drive will have a capacity of 300GB and a throughput of 160Mbps.

Maxell says the technology designed by InPhase Technologies is capable of achieving 1.6TB per disk with a 120MBps bandwidth.

According to Maxell, Holographic data storage is superior to existing disc and hard drive technologies, and is also competitive against tape technologies in capacities and transfer rate. In addition, it offers a 50+ year media archive life and random data access. Finally, the media is expected to have the lowest cost per gigabyte of any commercial quality removable storage.

"Holographic media makes it possible for millions of pages of information and high definition images to be held on one small, relatively inexpensive disc," said Steven Pofcher, senior marketing manager at Maxell. "Imagine having a person's entire medical history, complete with MRI images, or storing a broadcast network's entire HD Library on a single disc. These are both possible with holographic technology, which has such large capacity that approximately a half million 300-page books can be stored on a single disc."

InPhase Technologies says that holography enables million bits of data to be written and read in parallel with a single flash of light - making transfer rates considerably higher than those of current optical storage devices.

Higher transfer rates, in turn translate into playback of broadcast-quality HDTV content; of which nearly 26 hours can be stored on a single 300GB disc writes TechTree

Sony BMG is recalling music CDs that use controversial anti-piracy software. The copyright protection software which automatically installs when a consumer inserted a music CD with the XCP digital rights management technology in their computers is designed to limit the number of copies that users can make of the CD and restrict ripping of the disk.

The software was widely criticised because it used virus-like techniques to stop illegal copies being made. Sony is also providing software to make it easy to remove the controversial program from Windows computers reports BBC

Faith, Inc, a Japanese content provider has announced plans to launch an exclusive MVNO AKA mobile virtual network operator in the US. Voce will launch by offering unlimited flat rate service users in New York and Los Angeles using Cingular's network. For a $1500 sign up fee and $500 per month, Voce will offer their subscribers unlimited voice and data, personalized live service, and new, exclusive handsets every 4 months.

PhoneScoop - Forbes - Engadget

Image Brown Vertu. - NOT ONE OF THE HANDSETS CHANGED EVERY 4 MONTH

Sun Microsystems today announced the introduction of the UltraSPARC(R) T1 - formerly known as "Niagara". The world's first high-performance, energy efficient processor will debut in a new line of Sun Fire servers before the end of 2005. Using patented CoolThreads chip multi-threading technology that leverages the threaded nature of Solaris 10, the world's most advanced operating system, the breakthrough chip is the world's first Eco-responsible processor: research shows that UltraSPARC T1 processor performance could eliminate the number of Web servers in the world by half, slashing power requirements and having the same effect in reducing carbon dioxide emissions as planting one million acres of trees.

Read More

Pocket-Lint UK has announced the launch of
the first annual Pocket-Lint.co.uk Awards - The Fluffies. The awards will reportedly heap plaudits upon the cream of this year's gadgets, rewarding real innovation and excellence in design. (so the iTunes phones will not be nominated)

The awards, to be held on the 1 December 2005 will be decided from a
shortlist of products, as decided by Pocket-Lint.co.uk readers. Any product fitting into one of the 12 categories below and launched in the UK after 1 December 2004 will be eligible. Readers will also be able to vote for the Vodafone sponsored, Pocket-lint Readers Award ­ nominating the best overall product of 2005.

See what gadgets have been nominated and vote for your
favorite Gadget of 2005 at Pocket Lint

Music publisher Sony BMG said on Friday it would stop making CDs that use controversial copyright protection software. The copyright protection software which automatically installs when a consumer inserted a music CD with the XCP digital rights management technology in their computers is designed to limit the number of copies that users can make of the CD and restrict ripping of the disk.

From Sony's point of view, its motives are reasonable; but security experts say this is a potential threat to security. Sony however denied that the technology is malicious, or compromises security in any way reports Techtree.com

The software sparked a class action lawsuit against Sony in California last week, claiming that Sony has not informed consumers that it installs software directly into the "roots" of their computer systems with rootkit software, which cloaks all associated files and is dangerous to remove reports Reuters

Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. are set to roll out new wireless services, taking advantage of advanced networks and cellphones to provide features similar to those available on computers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Yahoo soon will introduce a cellphone it will sell through a partnership with SBC Communications, according to SBC executives. The phone will take Yahoo a step closer to linking music, photos and email with consumers' existing online accounts, address books and preferences, the paper said.

Google is tailoring some Internet services for use on wireless devices. Starting Monday, consumers using some types of cellphones will be able to access satellite maps wirelessly as they can on the Google Maps service, the paper said.

Read More

File-sharing service Grokster will stop distributing software that allows users to copy songs without permission.

The settlement, announced by the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry, comes four months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Grokster and other Internet file-sharing networks were encouraging copyright infringement.

The settlement includes a permanent injunction prohibiting infringement, directly or indirectly, of any of the plaintiffs' copyrighted works. This includes the immediate cessation of the distribution of the Grokster client application, and the cessation of operation of the Grokster system and software, according to a music industry release reports Hollywood Reporter.

Japan's Toshiba Corp. said on Tuesday it had developed the world's first PC able to read HD DVD discs, a next-generation disc format it is promoting over a rival standard pushed by Sony Corp..

Toshiba and Sony, leading rival camps, have waged a three-year battle to have their different standards adopted for the next-generation of DVDs, which promise much greater capacity for high-definition movies reports Reuters.

Toshiba, along with NEC Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co., has been promoting HD DVD, while Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., the maker of Panasonic brand products, have been developing a technology known as Blu-ray.

September 26, Intel and Microsoft announced their support for HD-DVD. The need for a new standard is apparent. People are buying High-Definition television sets, and as should be immediately obvious to anyone who has seen the same video displayed side by side in standard-definition and high-definition format reports ZDNET.

Toshiba, said the PC would be introduced in Japan in early 2006. It is still considering the timing for an overseas launch.

The PC will be equipped with a slim, read-only HD DVD drive produced by Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology, a joint venture between Japan's second-largest electronics conglomerate and South Korea's Samsung Electronics.

E Ink Corporation, today announced that it will offer samples of electronic paper displays through the AM-100 EPD Prototype Kit, enabling prototyping across a wide range of display applications. The high-resolution display in this kit is bright, high-contrast, thin, lightweight, viewable from all angles and able to operate with dramatically less energy than liquid crystal displays (LCDs).

This is the first high-resolution developer kit that contains a graphical electronic paper display. E Ink's EPD technology offers the bright, bold look of ink-on-paper and is ideal for mobile devices because it can be read in any lighting condition, including direct sunlight, and at any viewing angle - just like paper. A resolution of 170 pixels per inch (PPI) and the capability of displaying four gray levels give this 6" diagonal display text quality with the clarity of newsprint. Once updated, the display image remains visible without energy, so the power draw of the display is reduced by up to 99% compared to traditional LCDs.

Sunday, China imposed new rules on Internet news sites in another step to regulate web sites in the country. "The State bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest," the official Xinhua news agency said in announcing the new rules, which took effect immediately reports Washington Post

The news agency did not detail the rules, but said only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress" will be allowed, Xinhua said.

China's population of Internet users has surpassed 100 million and is the world's second largest after the United States, which has 135 million.

China has a dedicated band of cyber police who patrol the Internet with the aim of regulating content. Postings that criticize the government or address sensitive topics are quickly removed.

Rockstar has announced that it will release Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in a single package on the Xbox this fall.

Rockstar Games, also announced Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Special Edition for the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system, which will include on DVD The Introduction and Rockstar's debut documentary film, Sunday Driver.

The feature-length movie Sunday Driver will be available in the fall exclusively on the Universal Media Disc (UMD) format used by Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) entertainment device. Rockstar also will ship an exclusive "Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories" game for PSP on October 24.

Produced by Rockstar Games, "Driver" is an all-access documentary film that chronicles the Compton/Watts chapter of California's low-rider car club, the Majestics. Directed by Carol Strong, the film focuses on a community working together to build the ultimate customized vehicles while struggling to legitimize their lifestyle under close scrutiny of the authorities reports Reuters

The publisher also licensed Walter Hill's 1979 classic film "The Warriors" and will release it on UMD on October 3, as well as turning the intellectual property into an M-rated game that ships October 17.

Three authors filed suit against Google yesterday contending that the company's program to create searchable digital copies of the contents of several university libraries constituted "massive copyright infringement," reports New York Times

Last December, Google struck a deal with libraries at three American universities - Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan, as well as Oxford University and the New York Public Library for Google to make copies of all of the works in those institutions that are no longer protected by copyright .

The Google Print site, works by typing the name of an author, a book title or a word or phrase into a Web search box at http://print.google.com/..

The plaintiffs, who are seeking class-action status, also include the Authors Guild, a trade group that says it represents more than 8,000 published authors.

The Author's Guild said its primary purpose as the nation's largest organisation of book authors was to advocate for and support the copyright and contractual interests of published writers.

"By reproducing for itself a copy of those works that are not in the public domain, Google is engaging in massive copyright infringement. It has infringed, and continues to infringe, the electronic rights of the copyright holders of those works," it said.

The lawsuit said Google knew or should have known that copyright laws required it to obtain authorisation from copyright owners of literary works to create and reproduce digital copies for its own commercial use.

Search Giant Google, confirmed on Tuesday it has begun a limited test of a free wireless Internet service, called Google WiFi. The software is available from certain Google Wi-Fi locations in San Francisco. It's not clear how expansive Google Wi-Fi will be as a network -- the company won't comment about its future plans. But whatever areas it eventually covers, Google Wi-Fi will likely be free and supported by ads reports Information Week

Google spokesman Nate Tyler said the current test is limited to two public sites near the company's Mountain View, California, headquarters -- a pizza parlor and a gym -- located in the heart of Silicon Valley.

"Google WiFi is a community outreach program to offer free wireless access in areas near our headquarters," Tyler said.

"At this stage in development, we're focused on collecting feedback from users. We'll determine next steps as the product evolves," he said.

Tyler said the project was started as part of a Google engineer's "20 percent time project."

The Google Web site has several references to Google WiFi but provides few details. One page (http://wifi.google.com/faq.html/) refers to a product called "Google Secure Access," which is designed to "establish a more secure connection while using Google WiFi."

A Massachusetts teenager was sentenced to 11 months' detention at a juvenile facility for a string of crimes that include the online posting of revealing photos and celebrity contact numbers from Paris Hilton's phone reports Washington Post.

In February Private telephone numbers of celebrities including Christina Aguilera, Devo Aoki, Fred Durst, Jermaine Dupri, Vicki Gotti, Stephen King, David Lachappelle, Avril Lavigne, Lindsay Lohan, and Vin Diesel spread like wildfire on the Internet after the hacking. The 17-year-old boy pleaded guilty to hacking into the cell-phone account of hotel heiress. As an adult, he will then undergo two years of supervised release in which he will be barred from possessing or using any computer, cell phone or other electronic equipment capable of accessing the Internet.

The teen also pleaded guilty to making bomb threats at two high schools and for breaking into a telephone company's computer system to set up free wireless-phone accounts for friends.

Search Giant Google, Inc. has unveiled a new tool to search web journals or blogs. Google will index all blogs that publish feeds that automatically tell readers when they are updated. It will also gather data about blogs that tell other indexing sites about the entries they have made. According to indexing site Technorati there are more than 17 million weblogs which cover any and every subject reports BBC. As well as searching via the dedicated blog search page, Blogger users will be able to look up other blogs via a special box on the web-journal writing site.

Writing on his company blog Dave Sifry, founder and boss of Technorati, welcomed Google to the blogosphere and said the move was a "validation" of the blog writing phenomenon.

The new tool, unveiled Wednesday can be found at blogsearch.google.com

"There really has been a need for a world-class search product to expose this dynamic content to a worldwide audience," said Blogger founder Jason.

The appearance of the new Google tool, which catalogs the latest blog postings by looking at the Web feeds they generate, also makes it more likely that two other tech powerhouses and fierce rivals, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., will develop a similar feature.

Software Giantm Microsoft has released a beta version of its next-generation Windows File System (WinFS). WinFS was originally scheduled to be included in Windows Vista, but the technology was pulled from the forthcoming release last year and will be made available through an update in 2007.

A file system determines how data is structured and stored on a hard drive. WinFS promises to make it easier for users to find and organise documents regardless of their physical location reports vnunet

Farid Essebar, 18, of Morocco, and Atilla Ekici, 21, of Turkey, were arrested on Thursday on charges of unleashing the Zotob computer worm that infected networks across the United States nearly two weeks ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Microsoft announced yesterday.

"The swift resolution of this matter is the direct result of effective coordination and serves as a good example of what we can achieve when we work together," Louis M. Reigel III, assistant director of the F.B.I. Cyber Division, said in a news release.

The worm hampered computer operations at more than 100 companies, including news organizations like CNN, The New York Times and ABC News reports the New York Times.

According to reports Mr. Essebar wrote the code that attacked computers that run Microsoft Corp. operating systems and Ekici paid him for it, Riegel said. It's unclear they ever met, "but they certainly knew each other via the Internet," he said.

Essebar also worked with groups involved in bank card forgery

Search Giant, Google Inc. has announced Google Talk, Google's own instant messenger service that allows you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free-anytime, anywhere in the world. The new test program will compete with more established services offered by America Online Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Skype Technologies SA. In total, there are already 80 million users of other IM services in the United States, and many services are beginning to link to one another writes Washington Post.

Search Giant, Google Inc. has announced Google Desktop 2 (beta) intended for personal computers and the worldwide web that uses self-updating navigation and personal information software to yield results reports EarthTimes. The move will no doubt intensify competition between Google and rivals Microsoft , Yahoo! and Time Warner AOL service reports Forbes.

Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's MSN are competing to lure users with new functions as the companies vie to expand their share of Internet searches and the growing market for Internet advertising reports Bloomberg

Search Giant Google Inc., has temporarily scaled back plans to make the full text of copyrighted books searchable via the Internet reports Reuters

Google, will allow copyright holders who contact the company to withhold books from the project, according to Adam Smith, program manager of the Google Print program.

"Any and all copyright holders ... can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library," Adam Smith, the product manager of Google Print, said in a statement on Google's corporate Web site.

Thursday, Web media giant Yahoo Inc. launched a free Web audio search service that helps users find, hear and buy everything from music downloads and podcasts to interviews and newscasts.Yahoo and rivals such as Google Inc. and privately held Blinkx already have launched video search services.

Yahoo Audio Search, at http://audio.search.yahoo.com, is still in testing and gives users access to more than 50 million audio files.

The company has integrated Yahoo Audio Search with its video search service and has invited people to submit videos and music through Media Really Simple Syndication, so it can be found by the new audio search engine reports Reuters.

It also integrated tools from its comparison shopping search engine, which helps users find CD prices and make purchases from a variety of retailers.

AMD has announced the launch of the AMD Athlon(TM) 64 X2 dual-core processor 3800+ targeted primarily towards the prosumer and digital media segments -- sophisticated power users who run multiple processor-intensive applications simultaneously. The newest member to the AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor family provides consumers with an entry point to dual-core computing on desktop PCs.

The AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor 3800+ is priced at $354 for 1K unit PIB.

With the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor 3800+, mainstream consumers now have the ability to multi-task, creating digital content while listening to MP3s and writing e-mails, allowing them to do more in less time. Desktop dual-core processors can also deliver increasingly superior performance as multi-threaded applications spread from the server to the client and consumer markets.

20th Century Fox has announced plans to deliver future films, TV shows and other titles in the Sony Blu-ray DVD format. Fox plans to release video programming through its Home Entertainment subsidiary as soon as the new Blu-ray players are released.

As part of the announcement, Fox touted the Blu-ray developers' commitment to thwart content piracy and address the concerns of Hollywood studios.

Computer hackers angered by Cisco's attempts to hide news of a flaw that could allow an attacker to take control of the Cisco Systems routers that direct traffic across much of the Internet are working hard to discover and map out the vulnerability reports Reuters.

The hackers apparently have no intention of hijacking e-commerce payments, reading private e-mail, or launching any of the other malicious attacks that could be possible by exploiting the flaw. They want to illustrate the need for Cisco customers to update their software to defend against such possibilities. Many Cisco customers have postponed the difficult process because it could require them to unplug entirely from the Internet.

Cisco's routers direct traffic across at least 60 percent of the Internet.

Security researcher Michael Lynn first described the flaw on Wednesday at the Black Hat conference over the objections of Cisco and his former employer, Internet Security Systems Inc.

AMD will upgrade its Athlon 64 X2 and 64-FX processor lines early next year. The FX-59, clocked to 3GHz, will ship in Q1 2006. So will a 2.6GHz dual-core Athlon X2, possibly with a 5000+ rating, according to AMD roadmaps seen by AnandTech. The two chips are derived from AMD's 'San Diego' and 'Toledo' cores, respectively reports the Register.

The roadmap points to Athlon 64s clocked at 2.2 and 2.4GHz, with either 512KB or 1MB of on-board L2 cache, yielding model numbers 3500+, 3800+ and 4000+. That suggests AMD will simply replace today's Athlon 64 processors with the new, DDR 2-supporting version.

Yahoo Inc. said on Monday it bought Pixoria, a company that provides small, downloadable programs that let computer users quickly get up-to-the-minute information, such as stock quotes and weather reports without using a Web browser.

So now according to Yahoo, you could bring life to your desktop with fun Konfabulator Widgets. These little guys hang out on your screen and give you quick, easy access to favorite content. You can even change their style to match yours.

Get Widgets

AMD began offering Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS)-compliant(a) processors earlier this month after the European Union established a directive that restricts the use of lead by electronics manufacturers. AMD RoHS)-compliant products include the AMD Opteron(TM), AMD Athlon(TM) 64, AMD Athlon 64 X2, AMD Athlon 64 FX, AMD Turion(TM) 64 Mobile Technology and AMD Sempron(TM) families of processors. AMD also has several RoHS-compliant chipsets already available, including the AMD-8111(TM), AMD-8131(TM), AMD-8132(TM) and AMD-8151(TM) chipsets.

"AMD has been committed to using environmentally friendly materials in our operations," said Dirk Meyer, President and Chief Operating Officer of AMD's Microprocessor Solutions Sector. "AMD is steadfastly developing effective technical solutions that reduce lead content and achieve RoHS compliance without sacrificing other product features."

AMD began identifying solutions for production of lead-free semiconductor packages in 2001. AMD has formed a lead-free research and development program, and is working with suppliers and other industry leaders to establish lead-free standards and testing requirements, as well as to identify lead substitutes.

In addition to its own manufacturing initiatives, AMD is actively supporting a number of key consortia among industry, universities and trade associations to expedite the development of lead-free technology.

pcnews interviews the creator of Optimus keyboard.

The US Department of Defense or DoD has selected HP Opteron-based servers for a cluster contract .

DoD staffers will set up a 1,024 processor system in Sept. at the Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC) Major Shared Resource Center (MSRC) based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The cluster consists of hundreds of ProLiant DL145 servers running on AMD's Opteron chip and the Voltaire InfiniBand interconnect for high-speed networking reports the Register.

The 10-teraflop HP box used for research projects such as advanced weapons tests and simulations will run Linux and be used for warm, fuzzy research projects such as advanced weapons tests and simulations.

While introducing an update to its Itanium line with the first two processors in the chip family to features a 667 MHz front side bus (FSB), Chip Giant, Intel touted the expected performance boosts for its next generation, the forthcoming dual-core Itanium processor, code-named Montecito.

The dual-core Montecito line will feature the same bus as the Itaniums announced today.

"The preliminary performance results we are seeing on Montecito-based systems will further expand Itanium's leadership in its targeted market segments," said Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel's server platforms group.

Intel said platforms using Montecito are expected to deliver up to twice the performance, up to three times the system bandwidth, and more than 2 1/2 times as much on-die cache as the current generation of Itanium processors. While boosting performance, Montecito is expected to also deliver more than 20 percent lower power than previous generations of Itanium processors due to new technologies for power management reports Internet News.

Montecito will also utilize Intel Hyper-Threading technology, enabling four times the threads as the current generation.

Consumers prefer Sony's Blu-ray Disc as their format of choice over Toshiba's HD- DVD a poll conducted by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates shows. Consumers were given a side-by-side comparison of the two formats on the following dimensions: technology company support, Hollywood studio support, gaming console support, disc capacity, potential movie title availability and anticipated launch dates.

The launch of Blu-ray Disc is expected to offer consumers a broad selection of movie and broadcast content from Walt Disney Pictures and Television , Miramax, Touchstone, MGM, ESPN and Sony Pictures. A selection of Blu-ray players, recorders and computer drives are expected from Sony , Hitachi, Sharp, Panasonic , LG Electronics, Pioneer, Philips, Mitsubishi, and Samsung as well as PC hardware from Dell and HP. Gaming hardware will be available from Sony with the release of PlayStation 3, and software will be available to the leading gaming software manufacturers.

Samsung and LG have announced plans to develop mobile phones that make use of a new technology from Kineto Wireless.

The new technology, called Unlicensed Mobile Access or UMA, is said to promote better call quality when one is making or taking a call indoors with his cell phone reports MobileMag. UMA will enable the new Samsung and LG cell phones to switch a call from a cellular network (whose signals are known to get weak indoors) to a WiFi network without cutting the connection.

ICANN or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has approved the ".mobi" suffix specially designed for use by mobile phones.

The first Web sites for mobile devices, which will be fit for a small screen and limited memory and bandwidth, will be ready in 2006.

The new domain name was requested by a group of mobile phone operators and handset makers, including Hutchison 3, GSM Association, Ericsson, Microsoft , Nokia , Samsung, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

KYOUradio is touted as the world's first Podcasting radio station. KYOUradio plays exclusive user submitted podcasts from all over the world. Over 5000 registered users, and over 1100 podcasts have been submitted to the station -- so far.

on the web-

Power Everywhere Forum 2005, Japan - IBM has officially the dual-core PowerPC 970MP processor.

The dual-core 970MP processors will initially be available in speeds from 1.4-2.5GHz and will feature 1MB of L2 cache per core.The processor promises to deliver significant performance boosts over today's single-core 970FX processors used in Power Macs reports Apple Insider

IBM also announced low-power versions of its PowerPC 970FX processor. Three versions were introduced: 1.2GHz and 1.4GHz at 13W, and 1.6GHz at 16W.

According to DigiTimes Advanced Micro Designs or AMD will cut prices on some of its processors in early August.

AMD plans to launch a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 processor on August 1st priced at $345. Current Athlon 64 X2 processors start at more than $500.

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. announced today that the company together with Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. has developed a new and improved prototype methanol fuel cell for 3G FOMA(R) handsets. The new prototype enables eight hours of continuous talk time, three times the capacity of the existing prototype, while weighing the same, 190g. The new device is expected to greatly extend usage time once it goes into commercial production. MORE

AMD has filed an antitrust complaint against Intel Corporation yesterday in U.S. federal district court for the district of Delaware under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Sections 4 and 16 of the Clayton Act, and the California Business and Professions Code. The 48-page complaint explains in detail how Intel has unlawfully maintained its monopoly in the x86 microprocessor market by engaging in worldwide coercion of customers from dealing with AMD. It identifies 38 companies that have been victims of coercion by Intel – including large scale computer-makers, small system-builders, wholesale distributors, and retailers, through seven types of illegality across three continents. Read More

On Monday, AMD or Advanced Micro Devices introduced the Athlon 64 FX-57, a new CPU for game enthusiasts solidifying AMD's gaming pipeline for the remainder of the year writes thestreet. Available immediately, the Athlon 64 FX-57 is a single-core processor to be applicable to today's 3D games. AMD plans to introduce a dual-core version of the Athlon 64 FX when multi-threaded software hits the market.

The chipmaker's new Athlon 64 FX-57is priced at $1,031. The chip built on 90-nanometer process technology runs at a clock speed of 2.8GHz and includes 1MB of level-two computer memory cache, which helps with rendering graphic-intensive video games like "Half-Life 2" and running labor-intensive applications such as computer-aided design.

Sony Electronics, said on Thursday that it has talked with XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. about music devices, though no satellite radio deals are in place reports Reuters.

"We have been in talks with them for more than a year," Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics' U.S. consumer sales, said at a press briefing. "Anything is possible."

A Tokyo-based sex-video maker declared on its website that on July 8 it will release the world's first adult UMDs, optical discs that play on Sony's PlayStation Portable, or PSP. The five titles carry price tags from 2,800 yen or 3,800 yen (25 or 35 dollars). The PSP features a 4.3 in widescreen display to watch movies and videos. The handheld device also has wireless capability which has greatly excited gamers because they can now have interactivity between the PSP and Sony's PlayStation-2.

Sony said it had no power to stop the release of the PSP porn videos.

"It is difficult for us to impose restrictions," said Sony Computer Entertainment spokesman Koichiro Katsurayama.

In other PSP news, Sony will have 20 video games and 10 films on sale in September for the European launch of the PlayStation Portable, executives said on Monday, with 100,000 pre-recorded movies already sold around the world.

"Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will have 10 films available from day one," said Patrick Vyncke, the PlayStation chief for the Benelux countries. Twenty titles are scheduled to be on sale by mid-September.

The 100,000 movies does not include copies of "Spiderman 2," which were bundled with many of the PSPs.

Search Giant, Google Inc is preparing an online-payment system that would compete with PayPal, according to an online retailer who has been approached by Google to take part in the effort reports New York Times .

Google's flagship search engine and its Froogle shopping service are significant sources of customers for Internet stores. But so far, Google's only way to profit from its presence in online shopping is by selling advertisements that appear next to its search results and on Froogle pages.

The chief executive of a major online merchant said that his company had been approached by Google to take part in the service. He spoke on the condition that he not be identified because his company had agreed to keep its discussions with Google confidential. Steve Langdon, a Google spokesman, declined to comment.

Intel has announced plans to unveil technology that provides always-on wireless network connectivity for mobile devices by automatically switching between radio networks.

Most devices today use a customized radio to connect to a specific network, such as a wireless local area network or a wide area network "What we want to accomplish is the ability to connect to any network, any time, anywhere. The user will not have to worry if he is on a Wi-Fi network or a cellphone network," said Krishnamurthy Soumyanath, director of the Communications Lab at Intel's Corporate Technology Group.

Search Giant, Google Inc has launched a new service to give users Google Web Search results on mobile devices.

Use Google Web Search on your phone or mobile device to search through 8 billion pages. While on the go, use the Web to find ingredients for a recipe, answer a trivia question to prove that you're right or find facts on your favorite sports team.

1. Access the mobile Web browser on your phone or mobile device.
2. Type www.google.com in the URL field (if you get an error message, type www.google.com/xhtml).
3. Type your search query.
4. Highlight the "Google Search" button and press "Enter."
5. Ten search results will appear per page.
* Select the desired link by scrolling through the results page
* Or scroll down to the bottom of the page, select the "Next" link to view the next ten results
6. Once you have selected a link Google will reformat the selected webpage to fit your phone screen.

Read More

Thursday, Yahoo expanded its search engine to include information on subscription-only web sites for publications such as Consumer Reports and The Wall Street Journal.

Yahoo's beta version of the service will lead web surfers to subscription sites thanks to a growing number of relationships with a variety of consumer, research, and business publishers. However, users will still need to pay to access these fee-based sites reports Red Herring.

Ordinarily, most web searches exclude material bound by subscriptions.

SIRIUS Satellite Radio has announced a deal with Sprint to offer select SIRIUS content, over the Sprint network. More

Optware Corp., is planning to release a Holographic Versatile Card (HVC) media product around the end of 2006. The card capacity is expected to be 30 GB. The company aims to price the product around 100 Yen. Optware also intends to set the price of a reader device lower than Yen200,000 and a reader/writer device lower than Yen1 million. Dimensions of the card are almost the same as those of a credit card, while the drive system is designed to be the size of a surface-mounted hard disc drive system. More

Seagate has announced the first 8GB 1-inch hard drive designed for use in handheld and CompactFlash applications. It will let users store the industry's largest libraries of music (200 hours - or 4,000 songs), video and digital photos for this class of product. Seagate's unique RunOn Technology improves performance while in a high-vibration environment, such as jogging. The ST1 Series supports low-power modes, and the drive's time-to-ready is a mere 1.2 seconds.

Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi said creating a single standard for new DVDs that can store more high-definition movies and pictures than current discs is unlikely.

Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, which lead a group that developed the Blu-ray disc, have been in talks to unify their format with the HD DVD disc promoted by Toshiba Corp and NEC Corp. The competing formats for the new DVDs promise high-definition pictures, better sound quality, more capacity and improved copyright protection than standard DVDs.

The chances of unifying the formats are "almost none," Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc, said yesterday at a meeting with reporters in Tokyo. "It's very difficult."

Software security firm SophosLabs has issued a warning about a Spam email that claims Michael Jackson has made a suicide attempt. When users clicked on the link in the email they were taken to a website which secretly installs malicious code onto their PCs.

The E-mail's misspelled headline, "Re: Suicidal aattempt" opens to an alert that Jackson tried to kill himself at Neverland and left a suicide note. It has a link for more information.

When user clicks link, a message saying the site is busy appears , but this is simply a diversionary tactic to download "malware" that gives the virus' creator a backdoor entry into the computer, Sophos said.

Friday, Mobile phone and network company Nokia and chip giant Intel announced plans to step up their efforts and collaboration to make WiMAX a new standard in mobile broadband Internet access.

WiMax is a wide-area wireless networking technology that promises to deliver wireless broadband access over a range significantly greater than that of IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN technology, commonly known as Wi-Fi.

Intel has been the driving force behind WiMAX, touting it as the long-distance broadband Internet sibling of Wi-Fi which it turned into a success with its Centrino chipsets for laptops.

According to data from market research firm NPD Group Inc, iTunes has surged to a tie for second place as the most popular online music source, with 1.7 million U.S. households downloading at least one song in March. This jump ties iTunes with the peer-to-peer service LimeWire and slightly behind another P2P service, WinMX, which has 2.1 million households.

Napster came in at No. 7 and the Real Player store -- now part of Real's Rhapsody service -- at No. 9 behind P2Ps including Kazaa and BearShare. Napster and Rhapsody's "all you can eat" subscription plans were not included in the rankings.

IBM Corp. has announced plans to reveal key details of its highly anticipated "Cell" microprocessors , in an effort to encourage developers to create applications that can work with Cell when it is released next year reports Reuters.

Cell, which is being jointly designed by IBM, Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp., has nine separate computing engines, known as "cores," to carry out multiple functions at once.

The highest-profile deployment promised for Cell is in Sony's coming PlayStation 3 game consoles, but IBM also expects the chip to be useful in such high-performance systems as supercomputers, medical imaging machines and military hardware.

Jim Kahle, IBM's lead designer for Cell, said the company essentially will "donate four years worth of intellectual property to the open-source community."

Tuesday, Yahoo Inc. introduced a paid mobile download that provides Sprint's mobile phone customers with e-mail services similar to those available on personal computers. This news represents the latest move to capitalize on the hot market for wireless e-mail, which is increasingly a must-have feature for corporate types and consumers reports Forbes Magazine.

Scientists from IBM and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) of Switzerland will spend the next two years using IBM's supercomputer Blue Gene to create a working 3-dimensional model of the neocortex -- the largest and most complex part of the human brain, IBM said. The neocortex accounts for about 85 percent of the human brain's mass and is believed to be responsible for language, learning, memory and complex thought. The project, nicknamed the Blue Brain Project could eventually build an accurate, computer-based model of the entire brain.

Redmond, Washington-based software giant, Microsot unveiled their push e-mail technology that includes capabilities that will compete directly with e-mail capabilities from vendors such as Research In Motion and Good Technology. Microsoft will make free upgrades available for Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Mobile 5.0 that will take business email and other Outlook data from corporate computers, and automatically send it to mobile phones running on Microsoft Windows software reports Washington Post.

Wednesday, Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. and Internet portal Yahoo Inc. announced plans to combine their efforts to combat e-mail spam and fraud reports Business Week. .

"E-mail fraud is a global problem that ultimately costs companies millions of dollars in direct losses, technology expenditures, lost productivity and even network downtime," said Jim Fenton, distinguished engineer at Cisco Systems

Software Giant Microsoft said it had cleaned the popular South Korea MSN Web site, www.msn.co.kr, and removed software code planted by hackers to steal passwords from visitors. Reports suggests the hackers could have harvested stolen passwords from visitors to the MSN site for up to three days. But since the hackers targeted subscribers of an online game called "Lineage" that is popular in Asia, the significance of the break-in was lessened. The hacker software appeared not to collect any network or banking passwords.

The Lineage game and its successor boast more than 4 million subscribers, mostly in Asia, who pay about $15 each month, said Mike Crouch, a spokesman for the US subsidiary of South Korea-based NCSoft Corp.

"It will further help to protect kids," said John Morris, staff counsel at the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology

Wednesday, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers determined that the proposal for the ".xxx" top level domain submitted by ICM Registry, Inc. has met the criteria established by ICANN. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN said it would begin negotiations with ICM Registry Inc., run by British businessman Stuart Lawley, to work out technical issues and prices for the new Web addresses.

"Getting dual-core chips out in 2005 is the right time to do it from our perspective and customer perspective, because the high-end consumer has a need for it," Jonathan Seckler, Athlon 64 product manager says. "As those needs shift down, during the next 18 months, dual-core will move down the line as that happens."

Tuesday, Advanced Micro Devices or AMD launched its dual-core processor for desktop computers. AMD's Athlon X2 dual-core chips aimed at the "prosumer" market ("sophisticated power users who need to multitask or even hypertask," ) are now available in systems from Hewlett-Packard ,Lenovo, Acer and Alienware. The chips formally introduced at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, arrive one week after rival Intel Corp. rolled out a competing product.

McDonald's has begun pilot testing a new ATM-style device called the Blaze Net, which allows customers to buy music, ringtones, print photos and surf the Web at the restaurant. Read More

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., has announced that it has begun mass producing the highest density NAND flash device yet to take advantage of advanced 70-nanometer process technology - 4-Gigabit (Gb) NAND flash memory . The faster technology offers larger storage densities for consumer and mobile applications at more affordable pricing.

Royal Philips Electronics has announced the Ensation wireless audio link that will simplify wireless audio networking in the home. The new wireless chip technology makes it easy for digital audio device manufacturers to add wireless networking capabilities to their products, enabling the streaming of digital audio from PCs, home entertainment systems and other devices to multiple loudspeakers or wireless headsets. This will allow the Connected Consumer to enjoy high quality audio through out the home – without the hassle of cables or complicated installation.

HP, Dell and Lenovo are among the PC makers launching business desktops using Intel Corp.'s new dual-core Pentium D processor and accompanying chip set. Intel's new technology was announced Thursday in San Francisco. The desktop processor is the second dual-core desktop chip from the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker, and it comes less than a week before rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. launches its Athlon 64 X2 dual-core PC chip. The new platforms are designed to provide consumers the ability to do more with their digital content simultaneously, and better allow businesses to enhance PC security, system management and collaboration capabilities reports Intel.

Tuesday in Multnomah County, Cecilia Barnes, 48, sued Yahoo Inc for $3 million , alleging the Internet site failed to fulfill a promise to remove nude pictures of her from the Web. Barnes claims an ex-boyfriend began posting unauthorized personal profiles of her containing the photos in December. The profiles included her e-mail address and work phone number reports Business Week.

David Massy, a senior Microsoft program manager, said in his blog that users who install Netscape 8.0 and use IE to visit an XML file or XML file with an XSLT transformation applied, will get a blank page instead of the content they were after.

Massy gave two options for correcting the problem. One was uninstalling Netscape 8.0 and the other deleting the XML node from a Registry file called HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet ExplorerPluginsExtension.

Members of the London Action Plan (LAP), the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and government agencies in 18 other countries, have launched Operation Spam Zombies - a campaign to help fight spam.

In a written appeal to the ISPs on Tuesday, the FTC has urged service providers to monitor the amount of e-mail sent from a computer and quarantine them if needed reports News Rating.

Philips Electronics has announced a highly integrated, low-power solution that will make it easy for manufacturers to build hard disk drive (HDD) based portable audio players with optimal battery life. The PNX0106 is the latest addition to Philips' Nexperia Personal family of ICs for portable audio and multimedia players, and brings the superb audio quality of Philips' IC solutions for flash MP3 players to the HDD market.

According to antivirus firm MessageLabs, thousands of Sober-infected machines under the control of the virus writer were instructed to download a new version of the program, called Sober-Q, that turned infected computers into spam machines over the weekend. The infected computers were told to send out hundreds of messages, mostly in German, linking to Web pages containing information on conservative German political issues. Many of the e-mails actually linked to real news stories, at Web sites like Der Spiegel Online.

Sunday, Microsoft Corp., released the finalized version of its desktop search tool. The MSN Search Toolbar, which was introduced on a trial basis five months ago, provides a way to search for e-mail, documents and other data stored on hard drives much more quickly and efficiently than the "Find" function found in Windows reports Reuters. Users can search more than 200 different file types, including Excel, PowerPoint, MP3, GIF and JPG files. Google Inc. recently launched the finalized version of their desktop search tool, Yahoo's is still in beta.

Thursday, Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, announced 'Windows OneCare' a new computer subscription service that would include Anti-virus and security updates for personal computers reports CNN. In addition to providing Anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall protection, Windows OneCare will include tools to keep PCs maintained. Employees at the Redmond, Wash.-based software company will test run 'Windows OneCare' to start, Microsoft plans to offer a trial, or beta, service for PCs running Windows later this year. Users would pay a yearly subscription fee. The price was not disclosed at the time of publishing.

After a three-year war to have their new technology standards adopted by the industry and gain pole position in the multi-billion-dollar markets for DVD players, PC drives and optical discs, Japan's Sony and Toshiba, heading rival groups, look to unify next-generation DVD formats.

Sony's Blu-ray technology is backed by a group including Dell Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Philips Electronics NV and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., maker of Panasonic products.

Under a nonexclusive deal, Philips will support the Windows Media digital content format as well as Microsoft's digital rights management (DRM) technology (allows users to download songs and play them on various devices while protecting copyright holders from piracy and theft) in its portable music and video players. Philips said it will build support for Windows Media and DRM into its multimedia semiconductors, which are used in various devices, including digital music players, TV set-top boxes and video-enable mobile phones.

"I think we'll see big growth in this market," said Frans van Houten, President and Chief Executive of Philips Semiconductors, "Our collaboration is timely."

Wallpaper* to go is a unique collaboration between Nokia, the world's leading mobile phone manufacturer, and Wallpaper*, the world's leading international design and lifestyle title, bringing you the best in spaces, places, trends, travel, furnishing and fashion.

The site has been developed to launch alongside the Nokia fashion collection of phones, the Nokia 7260, Nokia 7270 and Nokia 7280. Each features a color screen and GPRS high-speed connectivity, meaning Wallpaper* to go can be accessed instantly, bringing you the bite-sized best of Wallpaper* in words and pictures

LiveDigitally has a team covering the Connections Conference held in San Francisco. AOL announced that
they are opening up all content to the free internet and Network Magic
shows promise.

Pepper Pad:
http://www.livedigitally.com/?p=168

Netgear's Storage Central:
http://www.livedigitally.com/?p=166

Macrocomm's newest the Proconsole:
http://www.livedigitally.com/?p=167

Internet Giant Yahoo! Inc. has launched Yahoo! Music Unlimited a subscription service that gives users access to over 1 million songs for as little as $4.99/month with an annual subscription. You can listen, transfer to compatible devices and explore music with your friends. You can also buy burnable downloads for just $.79!

Microsoft's latest mobile platform, Windows Mobile 5.0, designed for mobile phones and PDAs, will be available on devices by late summer. Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates unveiled the operating system during a keynote presentation at the Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon 2005 in Las Vegas. Windows Mobile 5.0 builds on the success on Windows Mobile 2003 and is aimed at grabbing some market share from rival Symbian.

Tuesday, Cisco Systems Inc said that an arrest was made in Sweden for the theft of its Internetworking Operating System (IOS) code that was 'illegally copied and subsequently posted on the internet last May' . The New York Times reported earlier that the stolen codes had been used in a 'broad and long-lasting' attack on computer systems serving the US military, NASA and research organizations.

In an interview published in Thursday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German), Microsoft founder Bill Gates said he sees mobile phones overtaking MP3s as the top choice of portable music player, and views the popularity of Apple's iPod player as unsustainable.

Nokia announced on Tuesday that it would make the air interface specifications of the Nokia mobile TV solution publicly available for interested parties.

The air interface specifications, for mobile TV based on Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld, or DVB-H, will provide information on how mobile TV terminals interconnect with the network end of the service, the Finnish company said Tuesday.

Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft, has announced the release of Windows Mobile (TM) 5.0, code-named Magneto . This new version of the Windows Mobile software platform includes more platform flexibility to customize devices and solutions; productivity enhancements that include updated Microsoft Office software and persistent memory storage for more efficient data management; and a powerful multimedia experience with Windows Media Player 10 Mobile and support for hard drives.

HP has announced an upgrade program to Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 for customers with select HP iPAQ handhelds as well as plans to support the new version of the software platform in its future mobile offerings.

Security researchers have discovered two unpatched vulnerabilities in the popular web browser Firefox. According to Danish security vendor Secunia the vulnerabilities discovered by a pair of security researchers earlier in the month could give criminals to access users' private information -- including bank details, logins and passwords -- a hacker could trick the browser into thinking a download is coming from one of the by-default sites permitted to install software automatically: addons.mozilla.org or update.mozilla.org.

Saturday, access to the world's leading Internet search engine, google.com was unavailable for 15 mins. The search page reportedly was down from 6:45 p.m. to 7 p.m. EST. Access to Gmail, Google News and other properties were unavailable during that period. The problem was related to the Domain Name System (DNS), which maps web names to the numerical Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used by computers.

Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett said on Friday that the 802.16e WiMAX wireless broadband specification would be competitive with Internet links provided by cable and phone companies. WiMAX supports high bit rates in uploading and downloading from a base station up to a distance of 30 miles. WiMAX could bring super high-speed Internet access, VoIP and other services to rural areas, office parks and school campuses at a cheaper price than traditional methods. Intel is hoping to replicate the success it had in heating things up for the short-range wireless WiFi standard now a key ingredient in airports and coffee shops.

For thousands of years many philosophers had argued that life must have been created by a supernatural being / creator / God due to the incredible complexity of Nature (in particular, we humans and our minds). 19th Century British scientist Charles Darwin (and others) explained our existence by means of Evolution from Natural Selection - which is very obvious once understood. Six years after igniting a debate over the teaching of Darwin's Theory of Evolution (widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor), the Kansas State Board of Education with a conservative majority is going up against evolution once again.

Max Planck researchers determine optimal parameters for biomimetic transport systems based on molecular motors

Molecular motors are nanoscale engines which move along very thin rod-like filaments and, in this way, drive the heavy traffic of molecular cargo within biological cells. Both motors and filaments can be isolated from the cells and used to construct biomimetic transport systems. In order to increase the flux of the cargo transport, it would be necessary to increase the number of motors that contribute to this transport but, at the same time, avoid the build-up of traffic jams.

Global shipments of personal digital assistants (PDAs) jumped 25% in the quarter from the same period last year to 3.4 million units, according to a new report from research and analysis company Gartner Inc. The figures counter widespread predictions that the handheld computer sector is running to its death bed. Gartner's points to the increased interest in wireless connectivity and the higher price of wireless-equipped models for the huge jump. The average selling price for PDAs rose by 15% to a record $406 per device.

Kansas looks to push through new science standards this summer requiring that Darwin's theory be challenged in the classroom, six years after the state ignited a national debate over the teaching of evolution reports New York Times.

An Indian space rocket blasted off Thursday in the country's first bid to carry two satellites in a single launch. The 44-meter Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle lifted off from the Satish Dhawan space port near Madras on India's southeast carrying CARTOSAT-1, a remote sensing satellite whose precise imaging is aimed at putting every Indian household on the map and HAMSAT, for home radio operators. India will use CARTOSAT-1 to help urban and rural planning, land and water management, relief operations and environmental assessments.

Henry Cruz - DUMB AND DUMBER: Kansas officials want to encourage more criticism of evolution in public school classrooms with some Jesus witch-hunt that will keep our children dumber. I'm not one to piss on Religion but keep your fantasies away from reality. It would seem to me that turning back the clock on science would only hurt our children.

In conjunction with Alvarion, Speakeasy began taking orders Wednesday for a pre-WiMAX service in Seattle . Speakeasy will add additional businesses and cell sites to its network, eventually covering the entire Seattle metropolitan area, according to the company. The initial Alvarion BreezeAccess VL antenna is mounted on the city's Space Needle tower. Speakeasy is offering a 6-Mbit option priced at $800 per month on an annual contract or $1,200 on a month-to-month basis, and a 4-Mbit option for $500 annually or $700 on a per-month basis. The required router will cost between $500 and $1,200, depending on the contract.

Sober-N, a new variant of the computer worm Sober is spreading in both English and German, with the German version disguised as a successful confirmation of a ticket order to the 2006 World Cup. European soccer fans are falling fast for the e-mail promise of free tickets to the 2006 World Cup finals in Berlin. Computer users are asked to click on an attachment for more information.

Experts at London's Sophos computer security firm are urging Windows users to update their Anti-virus software, and not to open unexpected e-mails with attachments as a new variant of the Sober worm, called Sober.p aka Sober.n aka Sober.o spreads like wild fire. Sober.P affects computers running Windows 2000, 95, 98, Me, NT, Server 2003 and XP.

A list - compiled by the SANS Institute in cooperation with security vendors such as TippingPoint and Qualys - underscore the 20 most critical vulnerabilities among 600 new Internet security bugs discovered in Q1 2005.

SANS uses five criteria to select the top vulnerabilities: The problem must affect a large number of users. It must remain unpatched on a substantial number of systems. It must allow the takeover of a computer by an unauthorized remote user.

According to a survey released on Monday by the SANS Institute, online criminals have turned their attention to antivirus software and media players like Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iTunes in an effort to find new ways to take control of users' computers. Malicious hackers exploit security holes to lift credit-card numbers and other sensitive personal information from a user's computer, or to send out spam and pornography reports Reuters. Hackers continued to poke new holes in Microsoft Corp.'s popular Windows operating system, the nonprofit SANS Institute found. More than 600 new Internet security holes have surfaced in 2005 so far. Of those, 20 were deemed most dangerous because they remain unfixed on a large number of Internet-connected computers even though software makers quickly made patches

The seven astronauts who will fly on the first post-Columbia shuttle mission are at Kennedy Space Center. The crew arrived Sunday night for this week's practice countdown. The dress rehearsal not only familiarizes the crew with procedures for launch day, but also gives the launch team a practice run. The mission commander Eileen Collins said on Sunday, NASA is making the right decision to delay the shuttle Discovery's launch until July

Monday, Scientists launched the 441st and final "Skylark" rocket from Sweden, 47 years after the first Skylark mission blasted off from Woomera in Australia.

Since its first blast-off in 1957, Skylarks have been used to carry everything from crystals to frogs' eggs in to space to see how they react in a gravity-free atmosphere. Just over 30ft tall, it is what is known as a sounding rocket, an instrument-carrying sub-orbital vehicle designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its flight. Sounding rockets attain heights typically from 30 to 120 miles above the Earth's surface, the region above the maximum altitude for balloons, and below the minimum for satellites.

Peter Rojas of Engadget.com has scored an interview with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, following in the footsteps of maybe "rival" Gizmodo.com.

Veteran astronaut Eileen Collins, who will head the first shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia accident., said NASA made the "right decision" last week when it postponed the launch by at least seven weeks due to safety concerns.

"The longer you prepare for something, the better it's going to be. We want this mission to be very, very successful," said Eileen Collins,

NASA decided to delay Discovery's launch from May to July to allow time for additional work on the shuttle's external fuel tank. Managers are concerned ice could form on the outside of the tank, break off as the shuttle blasts off and smash into the orbiter.

Mozilla Foundation's web browser, Firefox has crossed the 50 million-download mark and is steadily gaining market share. The group attributes the popularity of its browser to the push from the nearly 100,000 people participating in its "Spread Firefox" campaign. Web-analytics firm OneStat.com has posted figures that reveal that Firefox has captured 8.69% of the global browser market share on its website. This figure is a 0.24% increase since February. Between November and February, Firefox usage grew at a rate of more than 1%, according to the site. reports Tech Tree

Despite rave reviews for an innovative set of more than 200 new features, including Spotlight, a desktop search application; Dashboard, a set of pop-up reference tools; and new RSS support in the OS X browser, Safari, the latest version of the Mac operating system software failed to ignite a big rally behind Apple's stock price Monday. Apple's stock price went up 36 cents on Monday, or about 1% to $36.42 per share at noon Eastern reports Forbes.

Forbes gives a comparison; on Feb. 23, the day Apple started shipping the iPod shuffle, a flash-memory-based MP3 player , Apple's share price jumped $1.47, or about 4%.

PC world took Microsoft's next windows operating system code-named Longhorn for a spin. The long-delayed Windows upgrade, Longhorn expected to be released in December 2006 is promised to be the biggest update to the operating system since Windows 95 launched in 1995. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates demonstrated key features of the next Windows operating system, code-named Longhorn, at a developers' conference in Seattle.

"The longer you prepare for something, the better it's going to be. We want this mission to be very, very successful," said Eileen Collins, the commander of the first shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia accident

Last week, NASA decided to delay Discovery's launch from May to July citing the buildup of ice on the external fuel tanks and other problems observed during a recent fueling test.

Live Digitally sent a member of their web team to the San Francisco Apple store to cover the Tiger launch.

"The San Francisco Apple retail store closed its doors promptly at 5pm allowing employees one hour to prepare the venue for a 6:00pm arrival of Tiger. I showed my face in downtown San Francisco at 5:00pm to find a line of approximately 100 Mac fans patiently awaiting their entrance go-ahead.

The first person in line had smiles all the way, with "only one more short hour to go" written on his face. After a small chat with him I found out that he only used Macintosh computers (G4 at home and G5 for work), and arrived at 4:00pm to get his hands on the black box where X marked the spot."

You can read more of his experience and see exclusive pictures here .

Thursday, the world's largest software maker , Microsoft Corp. reported a third-quarter profit that nearly doubled from a year ago, despite sales that fell short of Wall Street forecasts due to leaner licensing business and a sharp drop in the dollar's value reports the WP.

Wednesday, Internet media giant Yahoo Inc injected their News site with a stylish new look and features to help users go deeper into subjects and to personalize headlines. The most visited online news site in the United States is aiming for a "cleaner" and more organized delivery of headlines and news content, Yahoo said.

Apple Computer Inc. announced upgrades to its line of Power Mac workstations Wednesday. The dual-processor Power Mac line increases processor speed and the base amount of memory that the systems ship with, as well as larger hard drives and faster optical storage.
The Power Mac G5 offers 2.0GHz, 2.3GHz and 2.7GHz dual-processor models with a speed boost at the top of the line. The dual 2.7GHz model features a Apple designed liquid cooling system to counter the speed, resulting in a cool tower that runs Photoshop nearly two times faster than a Pentium 4-based system. Apple has also doubled the size of the standard hard drives that ship with dual-processor Power Macs. The new 2.7GHz and 2.3GHz systems both come configured with 250GB serial ATA hard drives as standard; the 2GHz system comes with a 160GB hard drive.

Even though Microsoft's next Windows operating system, Code-named Longhorn is 20 months away, Microsoft is enjoying a media frenzy over the system just a few days before Apple's latest OS update is available to the general public.

Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates demonstrated Longhorn's new graphics and other features, which include better ways to visualize data, such as seeing through windows stacked atop one another, more natural file organization and faster searching. The way people can switch from window to window and the way files are presented on a PC with Longhorn is reminiscent of Apple's operating system, according to analysts.

In celebration of The Hubble space telescope turning 15 (years), NASA has released two new pictures: one of a new area of the Eagle Nebula, a star forming region where hot dense gas is being shaped by ultraviolet light from a group of massive hot stars; the other of the Whirlpool Galaxy, with a smaller, companion galaxy on one of its arms. Fifteen years ago Monday, at 12:38 p.m. Pacific Time, astronaut Steven Hawley directed the space shuttle's robotic arm to release the Hubble Space Telescope 381 miles above the Earth, launching an era of unprecedented scientific discoveries. The Hubble space telescope has taken over 750,000 images of the universe.

Microsoft has announced the general availability of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. The new Windows editions provide a single platform that can run new 64-bit applications and existing 32-bit applications. Microsoft says that early adopters of Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions have seen stronger, faster results for database and data-intensive server applications. The x64 version of Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services, for example, can accommodate up to 170 percent more users per server than its 32-bit predecessor.

Hitachi, Ltd., Pioneer Corporation, SANYO Electric Co., Ltd., and Sharp Corporation have developed SAFIA content protection technologies for use with digital recording media utilized by a wide range of devices, from consumer electronics to personal computers. These four companies also form the group to develop, promote and license SAFIA. SAFIA was originally developed to target the iVDR removable HDD (Hard Disk Drive) Standard, and is expected to widely contribute to developing removable HDD appliances to dramatically enhance the digital entertainment experience.

Software Giant, Microsoft on Monday released versions of its Windows operating system running 64-bit microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices and Intel.

The new products, Windows XP Professional x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64 cost the same as their 32-bit counterparts, and are designed to run software written for computers with such processors as well as programs written for older chips reports AP.

Russian Salizhan Sharipov and American Leroy Chiao, who manned the international space station since last October, returned with Italian astronaut Roberto Vittori in a Russian Soyuz capsule.

The Russian Soyuz capsule carrying the three men from the international space station touched down on the Kazakh steppe early on Monday.

Web search giant Google Inc. said on Monday advertisers could now choose the Web sites that carry their ads and it was introducing animated graphical advertisements.

"It's about time," Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said of Google's new site-targeting tool. She added that the new animated ads would enable Google to better participate in the multibillion-dollar display-advertising market.

Hong Kong Broadband Network has launched a new broadband service offering up to 1Gbps speeds. The symmetric 1Gbps service costs approximately $215 month. Other plans include 100MBps for $34 and 10MBps for $16.

Large publishers could offer direct download services for their games, online gaming could be revolutionized and TV channels could be streamed at MPEG-2 DVD quality reports Pro-G

Hong Kong Broadband Network is also deploying new hardware that will enable the convergence of voice, data and TV services; it will be able to deliver up to 200 pay-TV channels at MPEG-2 DVD quality.

Formoza, a Russian PC maker will say good-bye to Intel's Pentium 4 processors in favor of 64-bit chips from rival AMD. Formoza said 80 percent of its PCs will now feature AMD's Athlon 64 chips, Inquirer reports. Computers with the hyper speed AMD processor will start working "properly" only by fall, when the new version of Microsoft Windows XP 64 Edition, which supports the new technology, is released.

Branding Intel's chips, "ancient" the company said it will now only supply them to corporate customers who insist on having them.

Intel's Russian office declined to comment on Formoza's decision.