Reviews
Gmail users experience service issues throughout the weekend.
Today sees the launch of the Peewee PC, a convertible netbook designed specifically for kids.
Clinton (IA) - A small Iowa-based ISP has been awarded a huge $11.2 billion dollar judgment against a Florida spammer. CIS Internet Services in Clinton Iowa sued James McCalla of Florida for sending 280 million email messages into the CIS network. Since 1996, the CIS network was a conduit for McCalla"s emails which contained spoofed return information.
Bangkok (Thailand) - Glittering watches, silk ties and tailored suits are what you would expect to buy from a shopping center in Asia, but what about illegal software? While software pirates in the United States generally download their programs from peer-to-peer download sites, people in countries like China and Thailand can simply head to a nearby mall. Chances of criminal penalties for the buyers are slim.
Santa Clara (CA)
Having already commenced pilot runs on 65nm wafer production since last year, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is now readying immersion lithography for 22nm production, according to Burn Lin, director of lithography R&D at TSMC.
Cisco has announced the winners of it Lifestyles of the Tech Frustrated competition which encouraged customers to write creatively about their network problems and how they were solved
Someone"s made a Pirate Bay out of Google
Oniontown (NY) - Residents of Oniontown, New York got their revenge against two teenagers who posted unflattering videos of their quant ò€™hamletò€™ town. The teens hailed from Mahopac New York and posted a series of YouTube videos mocking the town by calling it a run-down dump and other not-so-nice terms. Residents werenò€™t amused and pelted the pair with rocks on a recent visit.
96,854,877 hostnames populated the Internet earlier this month, according to a survey released by Netcraft. The Internet grew by 4.2 million sites in August alone and gained 15.5 million since June of this year, the web analysis firm said.
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Corning on February 1 announced that its board of directors has approved funding for the establishment of an LCD glass facility to be located in China.
Memorex claims it is first to offer DVD+RW media for 8x writing speeds. Theoretically, the new discs enable users to rewrite a full 4.7 GByte DVD+RW in lee than eight minutes. The new media will be available in retail stores nationwide this month, the manufacturer said. A five-pack of discs will be sold for about $10. (THG)
Microsoft is working on a significant new feature for Windows Vista, known as Restart Manager, which is designed to update parts of the operating system or applications without having to reboot the entire machine.
HP and Dreamworks want to give business professionals a better video conferencing option than tiny webcam images for virtual meetings. The two companies are forming a partnership called Halo Collaboration Studios which will offer teleconferencing with studio quality sound and life-sized images. The conferencing is done from "Halo" rooms which are basically broadcast studios with cameras, plasma screens and a fast network connection.
The European Union has set a September 7 date for a discussion on the controversial book deal signed by Google and the Authors Guild of America.
TEC-IT releases the new version of the barcode label printing and reporting software TFORMer. This versatile output solution helps customers to unify output requirements and reduces operating and maintenance costs.
Genesis Technologies, Inc. now offers academically discounted computers pre-configured by Dell Computers.
Westlake Village (CA) - 3D monitors may be coming sooner than you think. At the recent Blizzcon convention, Neurok Optics showed off their prototype iz3D monitor can display simulated three-dimensional graphics from ordinary 2D games. With the use of polarized glasses, attendees gawked at World of Warcraft in 3D. We wanted to find out more after trying on the glasses and seeing the images ourselves.
New York (NY) - Starting next Tuesday, airlines in the United States will start offering Internet access - although the first customers will have very limited access. JetBlue will give free wireless access to send emails and instant messages. Web surfing is out of the question because the airline is still having problems with frequent disconnections while the plane flies over the United States.
Fowler Software Design Nominated to be a CSIA
Dell is sitting on a big stack of cash and looking to go shopping.
Geneva (IL) - Not quite two years ago, we reported about an engineer"s idea to reorganize the keypad matrix of flip-phones to accelerate the typing-speed of text messages. Now, the keypad has reached prototype status and we had a chance to play with a first version of the "Delta II." The functionality is impressive. What"s now missing is an actual phone that makes use of the invention.
These are the ways you can upgrade to Windows 7.
ASP.NET developers won"t have to wait until next year to use Microsoft"s AJAX server controls and client-side JavaScript library if things go according to plan. Microsoft"s target ship date for its AJAX technology is now around the end of 2006, according to Scott Guthrie, general manager, Microsoft Developer Division, who says in his blog that customers have been asking for a "fully supported" version of the technology.
If you are like us, you enjoy Sci-Fi like an addiction.
IBM is filing suit against a former employee who wants to work for Dell, claiming that the new position would violate an agreement restricting his employment with rivals.
San Francisco (CA) - Benchmarking and overclocking the upcoming Intel Nehalem processor is going to be tricky business, but Francois Piednoel says we will see "dramatic" speed increases. At the Intel Developer Forum today in San Francisco, Intelò€™s Francois Piednoel and Matt Dunford outlined the various issues in benchmarking people will face when testing the new chips. Perhaps the trickiest of them all will be the "Turbo Mode" which according to Piednoel will be "aware of its environment" and change clock speeds according to temperature and current.
Maxtor announced that it will equip its MaxLine III enterprise series as well as the DiamondMax 10 desktop harddrive family with a SATA II interface. The 7200 rpm harddrives will begin shipping this quarter and will be available with capacities up to 300 GByte, the company said.
If you are no longer content with using just two high-performance graphics cards in your computer, then performance PC maker Voodoo PC now offers an opportunity to sink your savings in. The new "Omen" PC can be equipped with virtually any high-performance PC component money can buy today.
The night sky could soon be lit up with gigantic three-dimensional adverts, thanks to a Japanese laser display that creates glowing images in thin air.
With an improved site and online tool, the Columbus Chamber encourages new and current business in the area.
Early birds are more like lucky birds.
Santa Clara (CA) - AMD has been pushing its Fusion idea for quite some time. The company claims the Fusion concept was one of the main reasons why they acquired ATI in the first place. The timetable for Fusion has been set, but Intel is working on a similar CPU/GPU combination and we are hearing that Intel may have its product earlier in the market than AMD, TG Daily has learned.
Microsoft has released a beta version of Microsoft Security Essentials, the companyò€™s latest attempt at producing an antivirus software package.
Reports from two Consumerist readers say smoking will void your AppleCare.
SanDisk, the world"s top flash memory card maker, recently announced its decision to venture into the MP3 player market, where it expects to have the same share it has for the small-size memory market (28 percent). DigiTimes recently had the opportunity to sit down with Nelson Chan, executive vice president and general manager, Consumer and Handset Business, SanDisk. Chan detailed the company"s view of the global NAND flash market and demand for small-size memory cards and MP3 players.
Osaka (Japan) - With Blu-ray Disc hardware notoriously more expensive than the competing HD DVD players, Sharp has developed a new technology to bring down the cost of BD recorders. The new model will drop in price from current units that topple the $1500 mark.
Madison (WI) - A Senator from Wisconsin wants to mandate an extra tax on video games because he claims they are linked to juvenile crime.
San Diego (CA) - Texas Instruments (TI) has developed a processor for digital still cameras (DSCs), which promises not only to accelerate the processing speed of digital shots, but also to provide enough horsepower for the creation of HD quality videos.
Las Vegas (LV) - LG Electronics has announced its much anticipated dual-format high-definition video player at a press conference preceding the official opening of the CES 2007. The Super Multi Blue Player will be available in the first quarter of this year for $1200, the company said.
Chicago (IL) - Market research firm Gartner predicts that PC manufacturers will be able to grow their business in the double digit-range in 2006, but should expect a substantial slowdown from the momentum the industry reached in 2005.
Orlando (FL) - A new foot scanner, which premiered yesterday at the Orlando International Airport and was supposed to allow travelers to keep their shoes on when going through security, hit a few glitches, as nearly half of the scanned passengers ended up needing to put their shoes through the regular scanner as well.
Cupertino (CA) - Your iPod not only connects into the stereo system of your car, but will soon also hook up to the in-flight entertainment systems in airplanes of Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and United.
A north Londoner will be getting the ultimate upgrade with his Virgin Atlantic frequent flier miles. Alan Watts, a former electrician, has amassed more than 2 million miles and has converted them into a space trip on the newly formed Virgin Galactic. He will be one of the first 1,000 people scheduled to fly to 75 miles above Earth.
Mozilla announced today that Firefox browser fans are underwriting four 30-second videos to air on U.S. primetime TV this month. The ads were produced by Firefox fans in response to this year"s "Firefox Flicks Video" campaign, which resulted in approximately 300 homemade clips about the browser.
Fujitsu announced that Enhance Technology will use the firm"s next-gen SATA harddrives in the QuadraPack 14, storage enclosure that can house up to four 2.5" Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Serial ATA (SATA) harddrives mounted into a single 5.25" drive bay. Potential customers of the product include users who are interested in "audio recording, video editing, high performance computing, on-demand streaming media servers, RAID implementations and server storage," Fujitsu said.
A study on storage trends by IDC shows that we are using billions of gigabytes of storage at an increasing rate. The study predicts that there will be a 57% annual growth rate in storage and that the amount of information created will reach 988 exabytes in 2010. For those of you have to look up what an Exabyte is (like I did), it is a one followed by 18 zeros.
Iksanika, high-end software development company, announced the launch of its Resorts and Hospitality practice in the US. Among Iksanika"s offerings is development of custom booking engines with support for payment systems backed by sophisticated CMS.
San Francisco (CA) - Graphics drivers developed for Vista, Microsoft"s next generation operating system, will be far more stable than their Windows XP-based counterparts, and not crash the operating system anymore, an executive of graphics chip developer ATI told Tom"s Hardware Guide .
Professional Services Package Helps CollabNet TeamForge Users to Create a Culture of Collaboration; Community Management Cookbook Available for Free Download
Lilburn (GA) - One of the first OLED keyboards from Russian design studio Art Lebedev has been sold on Ebay.
Ottawa (Canada) - If all the features that a word processor user would ever require have already been invented, as some well-known reviewers have claimed, then apparently the people at Corel didn"t get the memo. Over a decade has passed since the WordPerfect brand was tarnished by its former caretakers, who released its first Windows-based edition over a year late, and still somehow not ready for prime time. Now, Corel is hoping the applications market has forgotten all about that debacle, and may be willing to embrace a new edition of WordPerfect that sticks to very conservative functionality principles.
Las Vegas (NV) - Ebay announced several new features that are designed to create an improved communication among Ebay sellers and buyers. Member blogs and a Wiki application will bring more user-created content to the auction site, while Skype IM and VoIP functionality is making a first, cautious step into Ebay listings.
The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) has announced that it is working on a new specification that will provide power to external SATA (eSATA) devices without the need for a separate power connection. Called "Power Over eSATA initiative", the specification is expected to be completed sometime in the second half of this year.
Culver City (CA) - Nvidia shares rocketed up almost 10% in Wednesday"s trading as rumors flew about a possible takeover from Intel. More than 22 million Nvidia shares traded on Wednesday with prices rising about 9.8%. So far this morning, stock prices have dipped about 2% to $30.45 a share.
Intel will start shipping its latest dual-core Xeon processor, codenamed Paxville, later today. The processor has dual 2 MB L2 cache and dual threading on both cores.
Eleks, Inc. announced plans to grow its U.S. operations by opening two new offices which will be located in Atlanta, Georgia and Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Who"s on first?
"Back in 1999 I started TnT in my garage with just a few people, and by continually focusing on providing quality products and service we have grown to a multi-national company," said Founder and CEO Michael Bodetti
Round Rock (TX) - Dell said that it will begin offering red versions of computers and printers as part of the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, which collects donations for "The Global Fund" to battle HIV in Africa.
Google today announced that it will be sending out thousands more Google Wave invitations to users eager to preview the service.
Santa Clara (CA) - Sun has opened up the hardware design description of the T2 processor, which theoretically allows anyone to copy and rebuild the CPU. But, of course, Sun doubts this will happen and instead hopes that complete access to the CPU"s architecture will increase the interest of developers in its technology.
MIT researchers have started putting entire gas-turbine engines on tiny silicon chips. With the help of some military funding, researchers have fashioned millimeter-sized compressors, combustion chambers and turbines and placed them on layers of silicon wafers. The new engines promise to run more than 10 times longer than batteries of the same weigh and could help lighten the load for future soldiers.
East Fishkill (NY) - A chip alliance led by IBM expects semiconductors to bring a substantial boost in performance and a reduction in power consumption with the arrival of the 32 nm chip generation. The secret? High-K Metal Gate, a transistor technology that replaces polysilicon gate with a metal gate and the silicon-dioxide gate dielectric with a high-k dielectric.
Boston-based market research firm Strategy Analytics estimates that worldwide cellular phone subscriptions will hit 2.5 billion by the end of the year. The emergence of third-world countries and the growth of high-speed 3G networks are the two main factors that are fueling the upsurge, the firm said.
Albatron today announced the availability of its KM51 motherboard series, first unveiled in December 2005, for the AMD Socket-754 platform. The two motherboards support Nvidia"s latest-generation IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) chipsets
Nanotechnology has already added and will add more value to flat panel displays (FPDs) by lowering costs and producing improvements and breakthroughs in functionality, but companies should be careful applying novel nanomaterials, Eastman Kodak director of optical display films Robert Cournoyer said at the recent Taiwan Business Alliance Forum.
Fast action photography - the sort you see at boxing matches and football games - isn"t fast enough to a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist who is building the world"s fastest camera. Pamela Klabbers, an Associate Scientist with the university, is leading a team to build a camera system capable of recording protons colliding at nearly the speed of light.
Taiwan-based manufacturers of digital cameras and digital photo frames are conservative about ordering small-to-medium size TFT-LCD panels due to an uncertain business outlook caused by sluggish economic growth and the subprime mortgage crisis in the US, according to industry sources. What was once a seller"s market with a shortage of 2.5- to 8" TFT-LCD panels in the fourth quarter of 2007 has turned into a buyer"s market with sufficient supply currently, the sources pointed out.
Las Vegas (NV) - Motorola said that it has been chosen by Sprint-Nextel to build a Wimax infrastructure for Chicago, IL. Motorola said that it will deploy at least 1000 sites in the Chicagoland area, providing a broadband coverage that is planned to complement Sprint"s existing EV-DO network.
Las Vegas (NV) - Microsoft showed at CES a slightly upgraded fingerprint reader device that now comes with Windows Vista compatible software from Digital Persona. The device allows users to replace their passwords with their fingerprint.
Pre CES 2007 coverage - Las Vegas (LV) - Lexar announced that it will have a range of new flash storage devices on display at the Consumer Electronics Show, which will open its doors on January 8.
Laptop hunters is having an effect!
In 2007, networking products based on a preliminary version of the IEEE 802.11n standard (so called "pre-N" products) will replace 802.11g devices faster than it was earlier expected, and they will likely dominate the consumer WLAN market in North America by the end of this year, said Ken Kao, chairman of D-Link. Since the pre-N market has been in stagnation for a while, WLAN device vendors are expected to resort to aggressive pricing strategy to stir up demand, and this would help accelerating the migration from 802.11g to 802.11n, Kao stated.
ChequeSystem provides comprehensive chequebook management function. The software supports multiple chequebooks, which suits the need for business.
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Apple events always have even the most jaded computer user somewhat curious as to what the Cupertino company could be coming out with next, and todayò€™s MacBook event delivers on nearly all from the rumor mill.
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Kingston is a name that most consumers will associate with the mainstream-level of memory products the company offers through retail chains. Store shelves are often stocked with Kingston desktop and notebook RAM and USB flash drives. Next up for the company are solid-state drives (SSD), thanks to Intelò€™s contribution.
BenQ recently announced two of its 19" LCD monitors, DP93GX+ and DP93GS, have received Windows Vista Basic certification. BenQ expects its 22" widescreen (FP222WH) and 24" widescreen (FP241VW) monitors to also meet the requirements of Microsoft"s Vista Premium in mid-November, the company said.
Sapphire Technology has announced two new models for its Pure CrossFire series offering 16x performance on both PCI Express (PCIe) slots in a dual GPU system. The Pure CrossFire PC-A9RD580 motherboard is based on the latest ATI Technologies CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset and SB450 southbridge, and it combines support for the AMD Athlon64, FX and dual core processors, the company said.
Samsung Electronics called for the standardization of LCD glass sizes among display makers worldwide and has proposed new mother glass substrate size standard for next-generation liquid crystal displays (LCDs).
Price-reduction pressure will persist in the second half of February and buyers are still waiting for further price drops, according to WitsView Technology. Although panel makers have lowered their production utilization rates and are operating on a built-to-order basis, the large-size panel market remains in a downturn.
FindGraph offers three important functions - advanced graphing, curve fitting, and analysis. With the combination of the intuitive interface and wide range of features, FindGraph is a tool that is used effectively by both beginners and experts.
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Santa Clara (IL)
Imagination, a UK-based IP company that licenses its technologies to chip and electronics manufacturers such as Intel and Nintendo, unveiled a new graphics core technology, which promises to advance 2D and 3D graphics acceleration on mobile wireless devices.
Columbus (OH) - Many political analysts and news writers have said that sites like YouTube will fundamentally change the way the presidential election is handled for the 2008 vote and it looks like it has started already. A new Hillary Clinton mashup video is a sign of this trend, as it has already claimed massive viewership on YouTube.
New York (NY) - The number of phishing attacks has exceeded the number of virus threats for the first time in January, according to a report released today. Security services firm MessageLabs said that phishers found ways to circumvent anti-phishing tech and claims that 1.07% of emails now contain phishing attacks.
Microsoft is making the second release of Windows Server 2003 available. Among the highlights, it provides new bells and whistles in areas supporting branch office function, identity management, virtualization, and data storage.
Mystic Management Systems" ensur Document Control Software identified as Mersana Therapeutic"s newest member of their Quality Department.
Where Nvidia has been concentrating on the high definition end of things at this years Computex, ATI has been screaming at the top of its lungs about physics, and why their GPUs are the best pieces of silicon to do the job.
While the economy may not be doing too hot right now, the maker of the Blackberry is doing great.
ProcessGenie, Inc., www.processgenie.com announced today the launch of their patent pending ProcessGenie Process Marketplace. A forum for individuals and companies who have specific process knowledge to sell those "assets" to the worldwide BPM community.
Chicago (IL) - Shame on us. Last week, we reported about four new LCD TVs from Hitachi that integrate a new generation video processor that is capable of "advanced 1080p histogram processing" for about $2200 in a 32" package. Our conclusion that the highest grade of high definition - that we generally see advertised in glossy ads and TV commercials - is finally heading for the mainstream was drawn too fast. Turns out, the existence of a 1080p processor does not necessarily translate into a 1080p capable TV.
The Register reports that a worldwide survey of spam showed the majority of 419 scams are sent to residents living in the United Kingdom.
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Taipei
Companies these days have to go to great lengths to keep their employees excited about a brand and their job. This especially applies to quickly expanding economies such as China. Blogger Tian got his hands on what is apparently a strategy Intel uses in China for internal training purposes and to "boost employee morale during daily morning exercises."
New Unit Extends High-Definition Video, Audio, IR and RS-232 Signals Over Single Fiber up to 1,200 Feet for Home Theater, Digital Signage and Professional Applications
According to graphic card manufacturer Tul, some graphics cards using its brand name "PowerColor" were found available in a retail store. With the fact that Tul has discontinued the PowerColor RADEON 9600 PRO 128 MB in 400/600 MHz four months ago, Tul "suspects the occurrences of false usages and sales of PowerColor products by unknown parties," the company said.
Microsoft is preparing a fix for a program that strips the digital-rights-management protections attached to its Windows Media file format, representatives said Monday night.
Tampa (FL) - Sun today announced its new blade server 8000p at the supercomputing conference SC06. The extension of the existing 8000 model increases the density of the rack by 50% and squeezes 30 instead of 20 blades into one rack.
Hitachi"s disk drive business has sued a young Chinese disk drive maker, charging the Chinese rival with patent infringement.
Colorado Springs (CO)
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will take a headstart and a chance for the lead in the 64-bit mobile CPU market with its forthcoming Turion 64, as Intel will not launch its 64-bit mobile CPU until the second quarter of 2006, Taiwan notebook makers said.
San Francisco (CA) - Toshiba, Sony and NEC announced that the companies have completed the development of a mass-production platform for 45 nm LSI devices.
The availability of AMD"s next-generation CPUs - the Turion 64 X2 mobile and Socket-AM2 processors - will still follow the chip vendor"s May schedule, according to unnamed motherboard makers that have recently received this confirmation from AMD, in response to speculation, on the part of some PC makers, that the schedule had been put back to June, on insufficient utilization and capacity concerns. AMD will launch the Turion 64 X2 mobile platform on May 17 and AM2-compatible processors on May 23, as opposed to rumors of a June 6 launch for the desktop segment and an unspecified June date for the mobile CPU, according to sources at the motherboard makers.
Sunnyvale (CA) - AMD today announced 15 new processors based on its new socket AM2 and support for DDR2 memory. While 13 processors simply transition from the old socket 939, there are two completely new CPUs - the 2.6 GHz Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and the 2.8 GHz FX-62.
TiVo this week announced the launch of itò€™s new DVR player that offers more recording capacity than any other TiVo model.
Taipei (Taiwan) - Lately, Seagate has been the company to look at when it came to the largest capacity hard drives. In an unexpected move, Toshiba today trumped Seagate"s 160 GB notebook drive with a 200 GB version, packing an impressive storage density of 178 Gb/inch2 on its two 2.5" platters - 34% more than the 160 GB generation.
FarStone Technology, known for their refined backup and recovery software, has announced that DriveClone System Recovery Software will fully support Windows 7.
Taiwan memory module makers indicated that current oversupply of NAND flash in the market has provided them with more freedom to adopt various types of memory card platforms. In the past, NAND flash giant Samsung Electronics was able to aggressively lobby its customers not to adopt its NAND flash chips for use in SD cards, but to only use Samsung-made NAND flash in MultiMediaCard (MMC) cards.
SanDisk, the company that pioneered flash memory storage cards, unveiled a new range of memory chip cards on Tuesday, incorporating an anti-piracy software chip to lure the entertainment market to a new storage medium. The new TrustedFlash cards will function as normal mass storage cards - SD cards with capacity of up to several gigabytes of data - but the movies, music or games on the card would be protected with digital rights management (DRM) software.
With major handset vendor Motorola aggressively adopting MicroSD cards for its handsets, memory card makers see potential in the market segment. However, there are concerns about the production requirements for higher density cards, as one of the present NAND flash chip production strategies, of stacking single level cells to achieve higher densities, still faces production barriers.
Integrated supply chain software solutions improve flow of merchandise through distribution centers
The Cloud Computing World Forum - http://www.cloudwf.com - has today announced its preliminary speaker line up for the conference taking place on the 22nd October in London.
Last month, Taiwan-based chipset vendor ULi Electronics announced that its M1695 tunnel chip for the AMD platform has successfully passed PCIe certification tests and the company received a testimonial from Rambus (see a June 28
Infineon Technologies has released commercial silicon-based low noise amplifier (LNA) products that the company said offer a better performance-price ratio compared to Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) alternatives while also helping mobile phone suppliers to comply to 3GPP regulations. At the 3GSM World Congress 2007 in Barcelona, Infineon announced availability of its latest LNAs, the BGA700L16 and the BGA734L16, which are based on a combination of Infineon"s proprietary silicon germanium carbon (SiGe:C) process with an additional feature of low resistance on-chip ground contact.
Yahoo has bought Ludicorp Research and Development - the company behind popular photo sharing site Flickr.com.
Although the relatively strong DRAM pricing seen recently in the spot market has prompted some industry players to believe that a price rebound is likely, some industry watchers warned that this price improvement may just stem from speculation. Pricing for DDR2 posted a noticeable rebound in the week January 14-21.
Global market demand for wide-format printing will keep growing by 8-10% annually for the next three to five years, said general manager Takashi Miyasaka of the Inkjet Printer & Photo Marketing Department of Seiko Epson. Between Epson and Hewlett-Packard (HP), the top-two brands for wide-format printers, Epson has a larger market share for applications requiring high print quality such as digital direct color proofs, while HP has a larger share for applications which require high speed printing for volume production, according to Miyasaka.
Team Group might have missed our recent DDR3-1333 shootout, but that doesnò€™t mean the company isnò€™t moving forward: Itò€™s DDR3-2133 provides the highest data rate weò€™ve yet seen.
Apple has finally released patches for bugs in Leopardò€™s iCal application seven days after Core Security Technologies published the vulnerabilities.
Albatron Technology announced today the availability of two new Athlon 64 motherboards. The K8Ultra-U and the K8Ultra-U Pro are both designed for the upcoming Windows XP 64-bit operating system.
Albatron released a new graphics card for users who are looking for a graphics upgrade for their AGP system. As the name indicates AGP6800GS, the new card is based on Nvidia"s GeForce 6800GS chip, which is clocked at 350 MHz and runs on 12 pipelines. The card comes with 256 MByte of GDDR3 memory that, according to the manufacturer, can be overclocked to up to 1 GHz.
Chicago (IL) - Sainul Abideen from India claims to have found a new way of storing massive amounts on data. Abideen, who recently graduated from the Muslim Educational Society Engineering College, said that his "Rainbow Technology" enables data to be stored on paper or plastic surfaces. Storage media, which he calls Rainbow Versatile Disc or RVD, could exceed the storage densities of Blu-ray or HD DVD media and reach 90 to 450 GB, Arab News reports.
Professional Computer Technology (PCT), the Taiwan agent for Silicon Storage Technology (SST) NOR flash, reported that average selling prices (ASPs) for NOR flash were stable in the first quarter, but it expects growing demand will drive up prices in the second quarter and the second half of the year. PCT said the NOR flash market in 2006 will see demand grow fast for applications for MP3 players, networking products, and LCD TVs.
Milan
Demand for mainstream graphics card recently began picking up, driven by Intel"s integrated chipset shortage according to Paul Sun, general manager of Nvidia Taiwan Sales. The rising demand is expected to contribute an additional one million graphics card shipments to the industry every month in the second half of this year, Sun said.
Avidian Technologies, a leading provider of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, today announced it has been named to the 2009 Inc. 5000 list.
IBM has begun work on new technologies designed to boost the capacity of tape storage devices by 250 times. Using "nanopatterning" techniques derived from the company"s microprocessor division, researchers say they expect to one day build cartridges that can store as much as 100 TByte of data.
Tokyo
ATI today confirmed that it is shipping samples of "all next generation mobile parts" to ODMs and OEMs for qualification purposes. The company indicated that more than one mobile chip is heading into the market, but did not say which actual models the product line will include. While it was unclear when notebooks will be available with processors of the X1000 family, ATI said that vendors currently are "readying for production".
In addition to supply trailing demand for low-density parts, the NOR flash memory market is experiencing tight supply of high-density parts (above 8 Mbit) from the two leading makers, Intel and Spansion, and the situation is not expected to ease until the first quarter of 2006, according to industry players.
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Santa Clara (CA)
The markets for both DRAM and NAND flash tended to stabilize last week, providing a positive signal for buyers and NAND flash makers but an uncertain outlook for DRAM suppliers. The week also saw a crossover of DDR2 contract and spot prices, hinting at an easing, from March, of the shortage of DDR2, according to DRAMeXchange. NAND flash, which had suffered a dramatic price fall recently, finally showed signs of stability. The memory-trading firm regards the upcoming CeBIT (Mar 9-15) exhibition as providing a key indicator of long-term price trends for both DRAM and NAND flash.
Current Analysis, a US-based market research firm, reported that Panasonic was the leader of the US PDP (plasma display panel) TV market in June, in terms of retail shelf share. Sony remained the leader in the US rear-projection TV (RPTV) market while Sharp and Samsung maintained the top two spots for retail shelf space in the US LCD TV market.
Rome (Italy) - Italy has banned the use of cell phones in schools across the country, making it reportedly the first European nation to implement such a statewide ban.
Microsoft is warning consumers using Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows 2000 SP4 that code has been published that could be used to launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
The world"s smallest construction site is taking shape in a laboratory in Switzerland, thanks to the development of new welding techniques that work at scales of a billionth of a metre.
Micron Technology has launched a new DDR (double data rate) memory family targeting the mobile market.
El Segundo (CA) - DRAM companies have been battling a difficult market environment for some time now and iSuppliò€™s second quarter revenue estimates give an indication just how rough the situation is. Only two top 10 manufacturers were able to post revenue gains, while one firmò€™s revenue decline was small enough to be considered flat. The rest saw its sales decline by up to 40%.
A coalition of anti-spyware vendors and consumer groups published guidelines Thursday to help consumers assess products designed to combat unwanted programs that sneak onto computers.
In order to offset the impact of Intel"s planned launch of its Graphic Media Accelerator- (GMA-) integrated Broadwater chipsets by the second quarter of next year, ATI Technologies has accelerated production of its R580, an upgrade of its current 90nm flagship chip, while Nvidia is scheduled to roll out three new 90nm graphics processor units (GPUs) by the latter half of the first quarter of 2006, according to sources at Taiwan graphics card makers.
Kingston has announced the release of their "Ultimate" line of CompactFlash cards. These cards come in one, two and four Gigabyte sizes and have a 100X speed rating. Kingston says that this equates to about 18 MegaBytes per second read speed and 15 MegaBytes per second write speed.
S3 announced that Fujitsu will be manufacturing the firm"s new range of low-power graphics processors. The new "Chrome" family will be built in a 90 nm process and will bring a 75-percent performance improvement over "earlier S3 Graphics generations" as well as features such as high-definition video support.
A team of British and U.S. scientists has demonstrated the first working "invisibility cloak," although don"t expect it to appear in the Halloween costumes aisle just yet.
AMD"s graphics division, formerly known as ATI, has released its November graphics driver update. Version 6.11 brings a few performance enhancements, especially for Call of Duty 2.
Santa Clara (CA) - Intel will be offering a slightly upgraded version of its 945GC integrated graphics chipset for Core 2 Duo, Pentium D and Pentium 4 HT processors beginning in early April of this year.
Oracle plans to release a free version of its database in an attempt to compete more effectively at the low end of the market.
Sunnyvale (CA)
Iwill announced a server board supporting dual AMD Opteron and PCI Express architecture, based on the NVIDIA nForceTM Professional 2200 media and communications processor. The DK8ES provides dual PCI-Express x16 slots (one with x2 bandwidth), dual Broadcom PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet controllers, AMD"s 8131 PCI-X chip, and an integrated graphics controller. The product is available immediately. (THG)
The social networking site MyTimelineOnline.com recently got a major overhaul in its latest release. MyTimelineOnline, a site aimed at helping internet users share their life story in timeline format, was completely rewritten.