After the recent release announcement of cheap SSDs made by Intel, Fujitsu also announced its entry in the field of solid state drives. At present, there are two major established companies in the SSD market i.e. SanDisk and Samsung. Fujitsu Computer Systems introduced this offer for the first time as an option in its ultra-portable computers. With this offer, the machines are expected to become more durable for work in the field.

The Tuesdays’ Microsoft "critical" out-of cycle security update release has fixed the animated cursor vulnerability that potentially let attackers to take control of a system. Often termed as the ANI vulnerability, the flaw is linked to animated cursor files that normally have the .ani suffix. The Flaw that was

The Mountain View, California based Google Inc is planning to bring out PowerPoint killer, the presentation software similar to Microsoft’s popular PowerPoint. Google's new presentation software is aimed to compete against Microsoft's ubiquitous PowerPoint software that's part of its popular Office suite.

The PowerPoint killer software was described by the Google Chairman and Chief Executive Eric Schmidt at a conference for Internet entrepreneurs. He also shelled at Microsoft and AT&T Inc, whose executives recently quetched that Google may soon have an illegal monopoly in online advertising.

The homecoming of the space shuttle was put off by a day due to bad weather on Thursday. Atlantis, carrying Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams and six others, was was to return to earth after a 13-day mission, evaded two landing attempts because of thick clouds and thunderstorms at and around the Kennedy Space Centre.

Mumbai: Worldwide head in Internet networking, Cisco Systems Inc plans to double up its Indian headcount by 2010.

As at the end of Q2 FY 07, Cisco India had around 2,800 workers including R&D sales and business support staff.

Ranajoy Punja Cisco India and SAARC Vice President (Business Development) stated, “We are a global company and Cisco is serious about India. The company has set up the Cisco Global Development Center in Bangalore, a software development center, which is the largest out of the US.”

New Delhi: US defense major Lockheed Martin on Wednesday officially honored the victors of India innovation growth programme, established by the company in February together with IC2, a University of Texas institute for technology commercialization and industry body FICCI.

Out of 14 companies that were chosen for the honor, seven were presented gold medals whereas the rest were honored with silver medals.

New Delhi: Enterprise software company Oracle said it will make a research and development (R&D) system for its 19 centers across Asia Pacific and Japan to manufacture, check and showcase technological innovations.

The novel single system will connect 19 development and solution centres that include six Oracle Asia R&D Centres (OARDC) in India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and two in China in addition to 13 solution centres in the Asia-Pacific region.

London: Google is hopeful to instigate a mobile phone by early next year that will let users to browse the internet on the move.

The company anticipates that its ‘GPhone’ will be as popular as the Apple iPhone that was initiated in the United States in June.

Google services including its search engine, e-mail and interactive maps will be loaded on to the phone. It is believed Google will originate its proceeds from the profitable mobile advertising market.

Bangalore: ISRO chief said that next year India’s space group will instigate a special platform to put into space small satellites fulfilling the requirements of rising countries and the domestic technical community.

ISRO chairman, G Madhavan Nair said that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is building up a 100-kg “satellite bus” as demand has picked up for establishing nano-satellites.

Nagpur: Noted space scientist and Chairman of Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Madhavan Nair stated that India will be capable of sending its astronaut into space by 2015 and begin a lunar operation after 2020.

Developers are launching many new and exciting things everyday. Some applications are for Social Networking and some are for organising things better in live. Web Calendar is one such open source application which helps you to keep things in control and to remember important events easily.

A New Verions of Bit Torrent Client Azureus has been launched. The Peer to Peer File sharing client has 11 new features. The users will have more control over the speed of downloads and uploads. The new version provides a better interface. Azureus is a powerful and cross-platform bittorrent client.

Initially there was Google Search, then Google Maps and Google Earth, and now Google is out to help armchair astronomers explore the universe just with a click of a mouse button. It’s Google Sky, a free Google Earth’s downloadable feature. Using Google Sky, astronomic tourists can analyze and find the way through innumerable stars and 200 million galaxies.

Sydney-based Carl Sjogreen, product manager for Google Australia said, “It’s a virtual telescope to let people explore all this imagery. You can control what kind of imagery you're seeing at one time, pick and choose planets and galaxies, as well as some tours which guide users through (space).”

Sony has launched Video-on-Demand (VOD) services for PSP in United Kingdom. PSP can offer a much better view for videos with its large screen compared to other handheld devices. The latest PSP also has Wi-Fi support and many other features. At Leipzig Games convention, Sony made an announcement of its JV with Sky Broadcasting.

However, Sony is still far from launching the service in United States. Phil Harrison of Sony Worldwide stated that PSP VOD would not be possible in the U.S. markets due to the lack of content delivered over-the-air via subscription. PSP has a user base of 2 million in the UK and Ireland.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s has announced that the chief sales and marketing officer Mr. Henri Richard has decided to leave the company this September. Richard joined AMD in 2002 and has earlier worked at IBM and Bell.

New Delhi: Nokia Oyj has doubled up the output of handsets at its Sriperumbudur plant in Chennai to about five million monthly this fiscal as against last year, while India put back the United States as the second biggest marketplace for the Finnish phone manufacturer.

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the company’s president and CEO stated that Nokia will carry on raising production capacity at the plant without physically intensifying it.

Yahoo Search engine has reported major changes in its crawler program which keeps visiting websites to gather fresh data. As per the official statement issued by Yahoo Search Engineer Priyank Garg, the company has implemented major changes in their crawlers. In addition, yahoo will reduce the number of machines which were crawling websites.

New Delhi: Software maker SAP AG told that it has doubled its number of Indian customers to 2,000 in the last year and reaffirmed it projected to spend $1 billion in the country by next three years.

SAP, the world’s largest business software manufacturer, told India and China would play a vital role in its journey to sign on 100,000 clients by 2010.

New Delhi: India is all set to launch a new communications satellite on September 2. According to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the launch of India’s latest Communication Satellite - INSAT-4CR has been delayed by a day to September 2 because of the existing weather conditions in Sriharikota.

ISRO said, "INSAT-4CR, which was earlier scheduled to be launched at 1630 hrs on September 1, will now be launched on September 2 at 1621 hrs."

SRIHARIKOTA: On the Sunday evening, when the Indian batsmen were on rampage against England, the GSLV-F04 carrying the 2130 kg communication satellite Insat-4CR successfully lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, taking a precession path, injected the satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit.

After the success of the launch, the ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said, "I am happy to announce the complete success of the mission."

In order to regain some ground that it has vanished in the last three years to Google Inc., the Internet giant ‘Yahoo’ has decided to get hold of online advertising network BlueLithium for $300 million in a cash deal.

The acquirement was projected to help encourage Yahoo’s effort to build up a third-party advertising network, assisting the Internet Company to better oppose challengers including Google and Microsoft.

Yahoo anticipates completing the BlueLithium transaction before the end of this fiscal (2007).

Washington, Sept 6 : A research suggests that mobiles should be kept at least one meter away from hospital beds because they can cause electromagnetic interference (EMI) that may interrupt, obstruct, or otherwise degrade or limit the effective performance of critical care equipment.

Scientists verified that electromagnetic interference (EMI) incidents from second and third generation mobile phones happened at a mere three-centimetre distance.

Bangalore: Zicom Electronics Security Systems intends to open 180 exclusive retail outlets in India by the next 30 months. The company is also eying sales in the Middle East countries, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Santonu Choudhury, Zicom CEO, said Zicom presently has 20 outlets in India and 50 shops-in- shops in big stores and malls.

New Delhi: A recent study has divulged a stunning fact that one in every 28 e-mails received by Indians is infected i.e. carrying virus that makes their computers highly vulnerable to virus attcks.

San Francisco – In a bid to regain ground lost to its major rival Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has brought out its next-generation microchip, codenamed Barcelona today.

The top customers of AMD, such as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., and Sun Microsystems Inc. are already shipping computer systems using the AMD Barcelona chip. The chipmaker has already booked revenue from the new semiconductor.

Bangalore: As pricing force screws up in the microprocessor section, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is marching ahead against its rivals, mainly chief opponent Intel Corp.

A day later its worldwide launch, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), yesterday uncovered its quad-core microprocessor Opteron for different servers utilized by data centres and business enterprises in the subcontinent.

London, September 13: Aston Martin cars have been named top hi-tech chic of the year by CoolBrands.
While iPod music players were second on the list of top 20 cool items, Internet website YouTube was on third position.

Bang & Olufsen hi-fi got a mention on the fourth place on the list, while the top five was wrapped up by the Google search website.

London, September 14: Pop star Prince has reportedly decided to wage a legal action on websites that are making unauthorised use of his music.

His move comes in the wake of posting of clips from his recent concert at The O2 Arena in London on the website YouTube.

The clips have appeared on the website despite the fact that fans were banned from taking photographs or video footage during the show.

Mumbai, Sept.14 (ANI): Continuing its leadership and innovation in delivering integrated solutions that allow business to take full advantage of mobility applications, Cisco today introduced the industry's only integrated 802.11n solution designed to combine superior wireless performance and reliability with simplicity of deployment.

Washington, Sept 16: A new survey has found that about two thirds of the people suffer from the phenomenon of "ringxiety” – hearing the mobile phone ring or feeling it vibrate when it is not actually ringing.

The study, conducted by David Laramie of the Wright Institute in Los Angeles, found that the more frequent a person used phone, the more often, he or she reported hearing a phantom ring.

London, Sept 16: The border security of the UK has been strengthened, as a record number of fingerprints - over 100,000 a month - are now being collected from foreign nationals overseas applying to come to the country.

Bangalore, Sept. 17 (ANI): The Karnataka Government's decision to ban the use of mobile phones in schools and colleges for children under the age of 16, has evoked a positive response.

Christy Vijir, a student from St. Joseph Boys School, said that the using of mobile phones distracts and corrupts students mind, and the ban was a good decision.

K. Nagaraj, the Principal of the Poorna Prajna School, said: “Mobile phones should be banned in schools as it would help students to concentrate better.”

China had over 600 million mobile phone users by June this year, which means every one in five mobile phone users in the world is a Chinese.

According to Xie Feibo, vice director of the Radio Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Information Industry, the number included 80 million personal handy phone (PHS) users.

London, Sept 17: Internet crime is becoming a major commercial activity, a report by the security firm, Symantec, has revealed.

Millions of email addresses are being sold over the Internet and details of bank accounts and credit cards are being offered on underworld auction sites, the firm said.

Trade in commercial software used by criminals to launch attacks on websites is also showing a rising trend, and criminals are using trusted sites like MySpace and Facebook to launch attacks on users' computers, it added.

Washington, Sept 17:  MTV Films will be bringing YouTube phenomenon ‘Million Dollar Strong’ to the silver screen.

Starring in the MTV comedy will be Mike O'Connell and Ken Jeong, who star as the duo Million Dollar Strong in the satirical music video "What's It Gonna Be?".

The screenplay is being penned by Peter Kline, with Todd Phillips aboard to produce.

Also on the producers’ bandwagon is Management 360, with Todd Phillips Co.'s Scott Budnick on as executive producer, reports Variety.

Washington, Sept 18: Astronomers have launched into space the key components of a new approach to discover life on Mars.

The test is part of a 12-day low Earth orbit experiment to assess their survivability in the space radiation experiment – a prelude to future journeys to Mars, and is based in technology similar to that used in pregnancy test kits.

The so-called immunoassays are embodied in the “Life Marker Chip” (LMC) experiment, which has the potential to detect trace levels of biomarkers in the Martian environment.

Washington, September 18: A team of engineers from Brown University has discovered a novel, bone-growing material that may revolutionise orthopaedic implants.

The study led by Associate Professor Thomas Webster shows that for orthopaedic implants to be successful, bone must meld to the metal that artificial hips, knees and shoulders are made of. He says that the new material may help increase this success rate.

Washington, Sept 18: Astronomers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have shown that the Magellanic Clouds are recent arrivals to our galactic neighbourhood.

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) are two of the Milky Way's closest neighbouring galaxies. A stunning sight in the southern hemisphere, they were named after Ferdinand Magellan, who explored those waters in the 16th century.

For hundreds of years, these galaxies were considered satellites of the Milky Way, gravitationally bound to our home galaxy.

Washington, Sept 19: NASA has made available new higher resolution lunar imagery and maps which includes the agency’s multimedia content on the Google Moon Web site.

Updates include new content from the Apollo missions, including dozens of embedded panoramic images, links to audio clips and videos, and descriptions of the astronauts’ activities during the missions.

Hyderabad: Sunita Williams, Indian-born NASA astronaut and Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian spaceman will take part in the 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC-2007), which is going to be started on September 24 at Hyderabad International Convention Centre.

ISRO Director B R Suresh said that Mr. Sharma and Ms. Sunita would join on September 28, the concluding day of the meeting.

Hyderabad, Sep 24: The 58th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) will begin at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre today.

The session of the IAC, with theme "Touching Humanity: Space for Improving quality of life", is being hosted by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Astronautical Society of India (ASI).

MTNL is offering a great package for entry level personal computer in partnership with Chennai based Novatium for just Rs. 4,500. The PC offered by telecom PSU MTNL will be bundled with an internet connection as well.

The social networking space may see more action in coming days as Software Giant Microsoft Corp is planning to invest in Social networking website Facebook. The company plans to buy up to 5% stake in fast growing online social network with an investment of nearly US $400 million.

Google has also shown interest in buying stake in Facebook, but there has been no official statement regarding the issue. Google also operates a social networking website orkut. Microsoft will get better access to a very huge user base of Facebook after this investment.

Bangalore: India is anticipated to launch an advanced satellite with military and other applications by the end of existing fiscal involved a home-grown rocket, which will also place an Israeli satellite into space.

An ISRO official said, “Cartosat-2A is ready for launch.”

Washington, Sept 25: The IMAX camera will return to space in 2008 aboard the space shuttle for production of a new film during a Hubble service mission.

Set for release in early 2010, IMAX will chronicle the life story of the Hubble Space Telescope.

“We are thrilled that people from around the world will experience this vital servicing mission from a front row seat. Audiences will be mesmerized as they are transported to the distant galaxies of the universe,” said Shana Dale, NASA deputy administrator, Headquarters, Washington.

To make a series of luxury mobile phones and LCD TVs, Giorgio Armani, the world famous designer has signed up a partnership deal with Samsung Electronics.

The pact that requires Giorgio to produce the designs, and Samsung to supply technical experience, was sealed off at the currently happening Women’s Fashion Week in Milan yesterday.

Seattle: Microsoft Corp. is all set to bring out three different versions of its  suite in January next year (2008). Microsoft said that Office 2008 for Mac Home and student version that comprises three licenses for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, an e-mail/calendar/contacts program, will be available at just $150.

New York: Palm Inc has launched its smallest smartphone, making its initial entry into the low end phone market in a bid to perk up growth plans, and provide a cheesier option to Apple Inc’s iPhone.

For its new “Centro,” a smaller and lighter edition of its Treo smartphone, Palm has determined the price of just $100 to attract more and more customers. Sprint Nextel Corp will sell ‘Centro’ for the rest of the year in the United States.

Microsoft Office users may be able to store up to 1000 documents online as Software major Microsoft announced its web application suite, Office Live. Mr. Jeff Raikes, Microsoft Business Division President announced that the users of Microsoft Office suite will be able to use Office Live Workspace to store and share documents online.

Samsung YP-P2 is one of the three newest players, with which Samsung intends to "blow up" the market and steal into the number of leaders. The feature of this model in this series is the touch screen in 16:9 format and absolutely special control system ?ultitouch, which will also be applied in the new iPod Touch player.

Design

The GPS-module of BlackBerry Curve 8310 Smartphone is constructed on software Vodafone Navigator which allows users of novelty to determine their own location with high accuracy. Vodafone Navigator represents special navigating system, enabling to load maps of a district from a company server. Memory of the device easily can be extended up to 4 GB by connecting microSD memory cards.

HP has introduced its ultra-portable photo printer, HP Photosmart A626, in the Indian market.

The HP Photosmart A626 targets home users, and have a 4.8-inch touch-sensitive screen that the HP claims to be the world’s biggest inbuilt touchscreen on a handy compact photo printer.

Even a year after its initiation, the Nintendo Wii still remains a sizzling item, which hardly ever stays in retail stock.

Reginald Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo's North American division, pointed out that demand will again exceed supply charts this holiday season.

Gaining a lead in the fight to control the market for the next generation of flat-screen televisions, Sony is ready to launch the world’s first television using organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology eventually for the Christmas market.

The company will start selling its 11-inch TV (just 3mm thick) on December 1 in Japan for Y200,000 ($1,700).

Washington: EBay, online auction giant has declared that it is replacing the creator and chief executive of its Skype online telephone arm and would take a charge of 1.43 billion dollars two years after buying the company.

Sony, Japanese technology leader has revealed the newest version of the Reader, model PRS-505. The company added that this newest device would hit United States market sometime this month at Sony Style stores and on the Sony Style Web site as well as at Borders Inc. book stores.

For just US$300, people will get a paperback book-sized Reader that can store about 160 books.

To attract people towards its new Reader, Sony is providing credit for 100 classic books, comprising the works of Shakespeare and Jane Austen, on Connect, an eBooks store set up by Sony.

The base for this technology is the new processor SpursEngine which processes the gestures which have been taken by camera.

On the eve of CEATEC 2007 which is taking place these days in Tokyo, Toshiba has shown number of new products, among which a pre-production sample of innovative DVD player model, whose basic feature is the possibility to operate it by moving one's hand and without touching buttons.

The world market of electronics has begun a new stage of race for leadership in technologies. First, it is a question of starting to estimate models mainly on the thickness of their cases, and not just on the size of the diagonal of their screens. Judging from this point of view, the new concept of Hitachi for a model with 32 inches (81 cm) diagonal and 19 mm thickness of its case should become a hit at the exhibition " CEATEC Japan 2007 ", which was opened on October, 2nd.

 
News agencies in eager rivalry duplicate the message about the novelty, stressing rather on the small diagonal of the screen: “only 32 inches!”

Dell has officially presented its new gamer notebook XPS M1730 where the exact characteristics of the device are specified. As Dell.com informs, the new model is equipped with Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 processor. However, alongside with this processor, the notebook can be made up of CPU Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 or T7500. Two video cards NVIDIA GeForce also enter into equipment 8700M GT (512 Mb), working in SLI mode, and the accelerator of physical calculations Ageia PhysX.

Lenovo has entered low cost laptop market by launch of the G Series notebooks this Thursday. The price for Lenovo notebooks start at Rs. 31,750 and the models are available at all authorized stores of Lenovo all over India. Lenovo G Series targets desktop consumers looking for mobility solutions at a small budget. An average notebook from Lenovo was costing around Rs 50,000 earlier.

New Delhi: Zenith Computers has launched three reasonably-priced ultra-portable laptops that target entry-level customers and pupils.

The three latest additions include the 'Zenith Admiral' with a 14.1-inches WXGA wide TFT display, the 'Zenith Director' with a 15.4-inches wide-screen display and the 'Zenith Presidio' with a 12.1-inches XGA wide-screen display.

The company stated that regardless of the reasonable costs, there has been no compromise on the software package.

The developer of Halo 3 and other Halo Series games, Bungie Studios will be launched as an independent company as per latest reports. The Game developer will continue developing games and with work on high end graphics projects and software giant Microsoft will keep its stake in Bungie Studios.

In a statement, Shane Kim Corporate VP, Microsoft Game Studios said, "We are supporting Bungie's desire to return to its independent roots."

As per reports Bungie Studios, which has been developing the best seller series Halo for Microsoft for the last seven years will work as independent company.

 The recent launch of Smartphone ASUS P750 will offer many new features and works on Windows 6 professional. In our earlier report, we offered a quick review but this time, we are getting into the technical details of the model. Digital Imaging and Sharing will be much easier with ASUS P 750 Smartphone. The new gadget will be equipped with powerful processor and 3, 2 MP camera.

Energy Sistem has unveiled two stylish models of Portable Media Players in price range of $170 – 220. More and more Music and Video gadgets are coming every day. After success of Apple iPod, Microsoft Zune, many new companies are trying to enter the media players market.

 The gadgets support almost all the basic audio and video formats and differ from each other only in the built-in memory capacity.

“The player of the future " works 1000 hours with one litre
of methyl spirit. The CEATEC 2007 exhibition which is taking place these days in Tokyo will be rich in surprises. Japanese company Toshiba has already surprised the public with its new developments. While we have already reported a few of them, today we will talk about a multimedia player working on fuel. The most innovative model of this manufacturer, probably, will become the prototype of a multimedia player Gigabeat which is fed not with traditional batteries, but with fuel elements made on the basis of methyl spirit (methanol).

New York - On Friday, the maker of the world famous video game console, PlayStation, Sony announced that it will start selling a new model of its video game console, PlayStation 3, with less built-in storage capacity, priced at 399 euros (276 pounds), in Europe on October 10.

The new configuration of PlayStation 3, which will also be available in the Middle East, Africa and Australia, will come with a 40-gigabyte hard drive. It will have the ability to access the Internet wirelessly.

Sony also announced that it would slash the price of its 60-gigabyte PS3 by 100 euros to 499 euros.

Release of Halo 3 has helped Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming consoles to register almost double the average sales, as per the official statement of Microsoft. Halo 3 has become fastest selling video game as gamers were waiting for this version for a very long time.

Bill Gates said in a statement that Halo 3 has become an important milestone for Xbox 360. On the day of launch of Halo 3, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was himself checking the ID of first buyer at a store in United States. Long queues were found outside many stores across United States. Halo 3 and Xbox 360 are doing good business in Australia as well. Sony and Nintendo will have to think of some new strategy to beat Microsoft now.

Government should take notice of the slow growth in broadband connections that is the issue more concerning than the steep decline in internet connections. The authorities should roll out 3G services fast and the measures suggested by TRAI to improve broadband penetration should be considered by DoT.

The reason of the drop in internet connections in the last quarter appears to be the BSNL and MTNL deactivating inactive dial-up connections — an outdated and expensive technology for accessing the internet. If the plight continues, it would certainly be pulling down subscriber number.

New Delhi: Sony India is eyeing big for its recently introduced Bravia LCD televisions series to drive sales in the coming festive season.

The company has also decided to spend around Rs 30 crore in advertising and other promotional activities for the range.

Masaru Tamagawa, Managing Director, Sony India, said, “We are focusing a lot on LCD televisions right now, to drive our sales for the upcoming festive season. In fact, even going by the industry statistics, Plasma and colour television sales have been dipping, whereas the LCD market is soaring.”

It’s been the buzz of the blogosphere for last few months - the much-awaited launching of a Google mobile phone - with industry watchers haunting over incessant hearsays and supposedly leaked effigies of the legendary phone.

Google has declined to reassert any further plans for the GPhone

But at the moment it looks that the so-called 'iPhone killer' could be one of the most hyped non-devices in record.

Hewlett-Packard India is ready to enter the retail photo printing market with a launch of online photo printing service. The company will target digital photography sector with HP Retail Photo Solutions (RPS).

The company plans to offer services to mobile phone and digital camera users via HP Snapfish website. The sales of digital cameras and mobile phones has picked up in past couple of years. HP has recently launched cost effective printing and scanning equipment with great features.

Search Engine Major Google has launched search services for mobile users in India. Mobile phone users will be able to search Google by just sending SMS. The tool has been released as beta service. The service will be helping all mobile users as one may not even need an internet enable mobile to search Google now.

Beijing: Sony is all set to slash its PlayStation 3 game console price in Japanese market, and launch a new midrange model by the coming month (November).

Sony has decided to cut the suggested cost of the PS3 with a 20GB hard drive from around $425 (49,980 yen) to 385 dollars on October 17.

The company will also start selling its 60GB model for just about 470 dollars. Sony has not so far indicated a price for the 60GB model that presently sells for around $510.

The price diminutions accompany similar price cuttings by Sony’s game unit in European and other markets last week.

As China gets ready for Beijing 2008 Olympics, telecom major Huawei Technologies Co Ltd announced that the company will install a new generation GSM Base Station on Mount Everest for better coverage of the event.

China Mobile has selected Huawei to provide mobile network coverage for Torch Relay Team for Beijing 2008 Olympics.

Lenovo won the contract to design the Olympics Torch for 2008 event. The journey of the Olympics torch will be covered by the 6500-meter high GSM base station.

The Olympic torch tradition started in Germany before World War II.

The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) will offer $100 laptop in joint venture with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) foundation. OLPC’s India plans will promote e-learning among poor and lower income groups across the country and Reliance Communications will provide Internet services, network and logistics. Reliance expects state governments and NGOs to come forward to make $ 100 laptop a reality in India.

Google Search has been the most popular search service on Internet as per the latest search statistics reports from Internet Research firm Comscore Inc. Out of total 61 billion searches in the month of August Google Search was used for 35 billion. 95 percent of online users take help of search engines to find information on internet. Comscore data is based on the online search queries logged all over the world.

Asus India has launched its P525 quad-band PDA phone that is specifically designed to present a complete mobile business solution.

The P525 consists of an integral numeric keypad, and includes push email and Wi-Fi back up, along with other characteristics.

The new PDA phone leverage s push email functions to deliver real-time synchronization with email, phone books, and calendar items.

All of universal joints shafting with iTunes may make sense at this time: the label may be planning an individual subscription music service with other giants. But will the labels’ personal service be applied simply to preserve a strong hold on the market more willingly than offering more choice to the customers?

Universal has its personal list, and is truly going for Warner Music Group about putting that label’s tune in the line. It has already contracted Sony BMG.

The recent shift is intended for captivating added control over the distribution of digital music that Apple has a near strong hold on.

Jointly, the three labels would manage almost 3 out of every 4 music paths sold in the United States.

Washington, Oct 15 : A Princeton University led research team has created an easy to produce material from the stuff of computer chips that has the rare ability to bend light in the opposite direction from all naturally occurring materials.

Scientists say this startling property may contribute to significant advances in many areas, including high-speed communications, medical diagnostics and detection of terrorist threats.

Microsoft Research has made announcement of a research and collaboration deal with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Friday.

As per the contract, Microsoft Research will supply funds and research expertise by 2010 in order to help in key projects in the fields of life sciences research and advanced high-performance computing platform that are based on the on Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.

IISc is the primary group elected in India as part of Microsoft Research's scheme to collaborate with well-known institutions throughout the world in highly developed computing for science and engineering.

HTC has introduced its newest PDA phone in the Indian market.

The newly launched ‘P3300’ comes loaded with Global Positioning System (GPS) functionality along with other characteristics.

The users would be capable of taking pics outdoors and attach satellite coordinates into the photographs.

The new HTC device weighs just 128 gms, and is approx 16.8 mm thick. It comes with a 2.8-inch QVGA display screen, a phonepad input option, and runs on Windows Mobile 6. It also has 128MB built-in ROM and 64MB RAM.

For GPS functionality, HTC has loaded the device with the MapKing R12 together with SiRF III chipset with 20 parallel channel receiver.

Mumbai: Philips Electronics has introduced its diamond rncrusted Ambilight LCD High Definition TV, having new Light Emitting Diode (LED), in the Indian market.

Valued at around Rs 1.29 lakh each, the latest TV range also has proprietary Perfect Pixel HD engine technologies, along with full HD screen display of 1920 x 1080 p resolution. Due to the inventive LED light source, the fresh line-up is also more energy-efficient as compared to its earlier range.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has unveiled its ‘TV in mobile handset’ service in some parts of the country.

GSM users of BSNL will now be capable of watching as many as 12 TV channels on their mobile sets (phones). The different channels include Aaj Tak, Times Now, NDTV, CNBC, ETV, TV9, Zoom and Bindaas.

Arounf 32 TV channels are likely to be brought under the ‘TV in mobile handset’ network by the end of the existing year (2007).

Woopsi offers a GUI library for Nintendo. The Open Source Library offers help in quickly creating user interfaces for homebrew software. The Woopsi is based on the AmigaOS windowing system.

The first package which includes full source code and files of Woopsi library is now available on SourceForge.

There are two packages - the Demo package contains pre-built binaries for the NDS that can be used in either a DS emulator or with a flash cart and a real DS. It is a tech demo of Woopsi's functionality.

The second package contains the full source code of the demo and the source code for Woopsi.

Google’s video sharing website YouTube has announced video blocking using digital watermarking technology. The move is aimed at stopping the copyright infringement of movies and TV programmes posted on YouTube by users. YouTube is powered by user-generated video content and it is not easy to check the each video for copyright issues. YouTube was blamed by media companies for breaching their copyrights by allowing such clips on its website.

YouTube video identification tool is in beta testing. Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion last year. The website is among top five most visited websites in the world. The new technology based on watermarking technology has been under development for several months.

Sydney, Oct 18 : Australian researchers have conducted successful trials of a technology called CETO that makes commercial wave-powered water desalination and electricity generation closer to reality.

Dr Michael Ottaviano of Carnegie Corporation said the so far the trials have yielded promising results.

He said the tests, carried out in Fremantle, Western Australia, has verified predictions of how much electricity and water the technology could produce under various wave conditions.

San Francisco: Apple has disclosed plans to open iPhones to programs built by outsiders in a shift that could calm ailments that its lock on the devices’ mechanism is fanatic.
In a posting on the Northern California company’s website, Apple’s well-known chief executive Steve Jobs said, “Let me just say it. We want native third party applications on the iPhone.”

According to Steve, Apple destines to have an iPhone software kit in the developers hands by February 2008.

London, October 19 : A new survey has revealed that people across Britain own a staggering 418-million gadgets, 16 per household.

Cellular phones emerged as the most purchased item, with Brits owning 70 million sets.

Mobile phones were followed by televisions on the list of technologies that have become part of people’s lives. Sixty million idiot boxes are owned by Brits, 2.5 for every home.

While there are 40 million DVD players, the old-fashioned VCR remains popular with a count of 22.3 million sets.

According to the Sun, there were 25.2 million trendy iPods and other MP3 players, and 28.5 million CD players.

The newspaper also reported that there were 22 million games consoles, and 24.5 million computers.

iPhones were occupying France for the holiday season, after French carrier Orange moved into a deal with Apple for distribution rights.

Only in France, the Apple and Orange will join to offer the iPhone unlocked.

It is decided after Apple met a barrier when a French law challenges its international policy of banning unlocking.

Locked version of phone will cost €399, yet Apple has not announced the price of unlocked version. The cost may be more, though as French law mandates, Apple must agree to sell phones unlocked at no premium after six months.

London, October 21 : Students at a secondary school in South Yorkshire are being tracked by microchips sewn in their uniforms as part of a trial.

The radio frequency identification system monitors pupils’ movements, and automatically logs their attendance on the teacher’s computer. It can also alert teachers if a student is likely to misbehave.

The trial involves 10 students in whose uniforms this chip was embedded about eight months ago.

Being used at Hungerhill School in Doncaster presently, the chip connects with teachers’ computers to show a photograph of the students, data about their academic performance, and whether they are in the correct classroom. It can also restrict access to areas of the school.

Edinburgh, Oct.22 : University of Edinburgh engineers have reportedly paved the way for the creation of palm-fitting supercomputers.

According to the BBC, the engineers first studied the behaviour of wires which were 1,000 times thinner than human hair and then created a tool to develop tiny microchips.

Assisted by German and Italian experts, the Scottish experts hope the discovery will eventually lead to medical advances, as well as hand-held PCs and mobile phones that are as powerful as laptops.

Washington, Oct 22 : South Korean mobile giant Pantech has launched a new cell phone that allows a user to listen to calls with the aid of the jawbone.

When the Pantech A1407PT cell phone is placed against the jaw, the mechanical vibration from the phone is conducted to the inner ear, which responds normally.

The result: the user hears the other person on the phone perfectly.

Engineers at Pantech say a phone that uses bone conduction provides additional advantage to the user.

As the sound is conducted directly to the inner ear, it becomes easier to hear conversation in a noisy room, they say.

Allied Computers International Ltd (ACi) has announced a low cost laptop priced at Rs 15,000 only for Indian market. Last year, ACi launched laptop for just Rs 19,999. The company may start selling the laptops by June next year. Budget laptops will see a decent growth in sales as more Indian consumers are planning an upgrade from desktop to a laptop.

The low cost laptop from ACi will have Aluminium body which will lower the cost. ACi plans to increase its production from 10k units currently to 100k per year.

Hyderabad: The Public sector telecomm major, BSNL’s Wi-Max rollout, which is planned later in 2008, will include a big part of rural play, and will probably integrate a key educational component.

The prospering bidder is likely to be permitted to connect about 40,000 odd primary plus secondary schools with wireless broadband throughout the country.

According to BSNL sources, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) has already been signed between DoT and the HRD department.

HTC Corporation is on the verge of launching its latest Global Positioning System (GPS) enabled touch-controlled PDA phone, named as the ‘HTC Touch Cruise’ by the coming month (November).

The new ‘HTC Touch Cruise’ originally went under the codename ‘HTC Polaris.’ The new phone would be powered by Qualcomm MSM 7200 400MHz processor.

Like the majority of HTC phones, it would work on the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Operating System (OS).

Microsoft India has launched its Unified Communications for easy and cheaper communication for corporate world. Microsoft informed that Unified communications will cut the VoIP system by half. Unified Communications software will help employees to remain connected and share information with peers using e-mail, instant message or video conferencing.

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 helps communication using popular applications. It will enable users to communication via instant messaging and video conferencing as well.

The Software giant, Microsoft is all set to make its Xbox customer base heavier by bringing two family friendly alternatives.

The Xbox 360 Pro Package will be available at just $579.95. It consists of a high definition Pro console with two games comprising the pet nurturing Viva Pinata.

The Xbox 360 Arcade Console, available at just $379.95, will accompany five arcade games including Pac Man Championship Version and UNO.

The Xbox 360’s Pro variant edition will hit the market on November 1 whereas the Arcade Console package will be introduced on November 15.

Helsinki: The world’s biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia has started shipping its N81 and N81 8GB multimedia phones internationally.

The company has also planned to launch its N-Gage games service afterward in the existing year.

Both the phones have dedicated music and game keys and extra memory for more storing and playing.

The users can enjoy millions of music tracks via the Nokia Music Store on N81 and the N81 8GB.

New Delhi: After many postponements and hardships, Software major, Microsoft India is on the brink of introducing its online gaming console ‘Xbox Live’ publicly on November 5, as a Diwali gift for its users.

Robbie Bach, Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division President (Global), said, “The Xbox LIVE service will be available to users to log on and sample for free with the Silver subscription level and a paid Gold membership to offer the best in gaming and entertainment to consumers who want a heightened entertainment experience.”

Mumbai: Microsoft and Sony, the two gaming giants, are now desperate to hit the unexplored Indian gaming market.

The Software giant, Microsoft declared the date for launching its Xbox Live in the Indian market, whereas Sony has brought out an Indian edition of its trendy PlayStation 2 title 'Singstar'

The companies made these declarations on the same day, which is a proof that both are on the same track of tapping Indian market.

The Indian console market gets too hot with the two challengers, Sony Computer Entertainment and Microsoft India deciding to boost up its console-based business in the country.

Recently, both the companies have introduced fresh console products in the Indian market assuring a full new gaming outlook to the gamers.

Four years back, Sony Computer Entertainment, the company responsible for the distribution, promotion and sales of PlayStation has opened up its office in India. Now it is preparing its strategy to offer range and a healthier experience to gamers.     

After its launch on the fifth of November, Microsoft’s ‘Xbox Live’ will entice gamers with rentals of 360 games, and lots of instructive content, with Video Market content shortly to tag on.

Microsoft has signed up a deal with Percept Picture Company for more pleasure for its users.

The subscribers now can get into Xbox LIVE not just for games but also to discover their daily quantity of delight with unique Indian content comprising trailers of Hanuman Returns as well.

California: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released a report on 26 October which highlights the actions taken by the agency in resolution of disputes about domain owners and organizations.

ICANN has proved to be an easy place for domain dispute resolution compared to court litigations. ICANN provided assistance in375 complaints filed by individuals and organizations. ICANN has also launched a new Ombuds blog. 125 complaints were from United States followed by 27 from United Kingdom.

New Delhi, Oct 27 (ANI): NIIT, Asia's largest trainer and leading global talent development corporation, and Adobe Systems Incorporated have entered into a global alliance to create talent pool for design, web, mobile and interactive media.

Through this strategic partnership, NIIT will offer training programs on Adobe's software tools and technologies used in business, entertainment and personal communication, across its network of 32 countries.

Global leader, Adobe will provide access to its software tools and technologies in the emerging creative space, and enable the large software developer community and creative professionals to skill themselves for the media, rich interactive Web 2.0, and animation and gaming industries.

According to a study conducted at the St Columba's Primary in
Dundee, children who played educational PC games at the start of each
school day showed considerable improvement in Maths by an average of 10
percent.

Some 30 school children aged between 9- and 10- years were made to
play a game called 'More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima' on the
Nintendo DS console every morning for 15-20 minutes before starting
lessons.

Children who play games before going off to school get better grades
than those who don’t play such games, according to a new study.

Bangalore: Novell India has rolled out the newest edition of PC operating system ‘OpenSUSE 10.3’.

openSUSE 10.3 consists of a flexible Linux-Windows dual-boot
arrangement, better user interface, dual-boot, compatibility of
OpenOffice.org office suite with MS Office and better multimedia back
up.

Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child Foundation (OLPC) has started selling its famous $100 (XO) laptop computers for no less than $200 per piece.

The laptop computers are being made available in amounts of 10,000 and more through the OLPC Internet site at laptopfoundation.org/participate/givemany.shtml).

Until now, the one constant in the journey of the $100 laptop has been the steady increase in prices: from the original $100 to the temporary $150 to the fresh $188.

Further, the XO laptops are slated to go into production in China next month, which is behind original schedule. Same with the quantities to be produced, which are way behind earlier projections.

Xenitis Infotech Pvt Ltd has launched lowest-ever priced laptop Xuva T14WN costing only Rs 19,900. Xenitis group announced that the Xuva T14WN will be available at dealer outlets across India. Xuva T14WN is powered by Intel Celeron processor and is aimed at students and entry level professionals who are looking for mobility solutions.

Geodesic Information Systems has announced that mobile instant messaging software Mundu IM now supports Sony Ericsson mobile phones, Apple iPod Touch, Windows Mobile based Pocket PC devices.

Mr. Arvinder Gujral, Director Product Marketing of Geodesic said, “We are excited to expand the market to this niche group of users and unite them with Mundu IM’s single, user-friendly interface.”

Yahoo and Yahoo India both have fascinated users with their new launchings.

Yahoo India has disclosed that its Indian users will soon be capable of accessing Yahoo! Mail in Hindi language. The latest features consisting exclusive ability to interpret and write email in Hindi in addition to an all-new Hindi interface.

In beginning, the users of Yahoo! Mail Hindi will have to make use of Hindi typescript to get access to the new service, but the company told that it would be incorporating Hindi software into the service rapidly.

Washington, Nov 1 : Scientists at the University of California have devised the smallest radio ever, which is 100 billion times smaller than the first commercial radio.

The radio is a single carbon nanotube, one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, and requires only a battery and earphones to start functioning.

The scientists successfully received their first FM broadcast last year - Derek & The Dominos' "Layla" and the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" transmitted from across the room.

Washington, Nov 1 : New research has found a way to use the elasticity of carbon nanotubes to build a stronger bullet proof material.

The research has been carried at the Institute of Physics' Nanotechnology. It details how engineers from the Centre for Advanced Materials Technology at the University of Sydney have found a way to use not only stop bullets penetrating material, but actually rebound their force.

According to Professor Liangchi Zhang from UOS, "The dynamic properties of the materials we have found means that a bullet can be repelled with minimum or no damage to the wearer of a bullet proof vest."

Apple is really happy on new achievement made by its freshly launched ‘Mac OS X Leopard.’

Apple’s Leopard has achieved sales of 2 million units in just four days of its release on October 26, 2007.

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs said, “Early indications are that Leopard will be a huge hit with customers.”

The Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard 2 million sales mark comprised copies sold at Apple Authorized Resellers, Apple’s sales outlets, the online Apple Store, under maintenance agreements, plus (copies) that were bundled with new Mac PCs.

Leopard comes with 300 new features.
.

Internet based Payment system PayPal has announced withdrawal facility for Indian users. PayPal is widely used by many freelancers and small companies to get money from their clients. The direct bank account withdrawal facility comes free of cost if one wants to withdraw more than Rs 7000. While for withdrawal of less than Rs 7000 a fee of Rs 50 will be charged.

PayPal charges a transaction fee of 2.7 – 3.3% for receiving money for business users while the service is free for personal users.

PayPal is currently supporting the following Indian Banks.

Mumbai: Microsoft has launched its Silverlight 1.0 in the Indian market, as a part of its plan to offer powerful media experiences across the web, PC and mobile devices.

According to the company release, Silverlight 1.0 can provide web applications, to the businesses, that are more copious and synergistic. This guarantees a flawless and first-rate customer experience and low delivery costs.

As part of its worldwide growth plans, America On Line (AOL) has launched websites (www.aol.in) in order to Hindi and Tamil language to target Indian users.

AOL is a worldwide Web services company that activates some of the trendiest Web destinations, offers a complete set of free software and services that runs one of the country's largest Internet access businesses, and provides a complete set of advertising solutions

AOL has also introduced its Truveo video search engine (www.in.truveo.com) that will let users to seek out their favorite videos across India-specific content including cricket, films, music and news, among others.

DG2L Technologies is all set to bring out its entry-level Set Top Box (STB) ‘N100’ in the Indian market.

The new STB provides a variety of excellent features at a great price. It can be customized for use with cable, satellite, IPTV and terrestrial networks.

Mr. Ankur Sheth, CEO, DG2L Technologies, said, “With the ever-increase number of pay-TV subscribers we are really pleased to offer our STBs at such a competitive price and provide customer specific customization right in their backyard.”

The DG2L N100 Set Top Box is ideal for entry-level applications including free-to-air and pay television as it backs up all DVB/MPEG-2 compliant transmissions. It also delivers outstanding performance because of its 32-bit MIPS CPU.

Abacus Peripherals has declared that it will launch the new Intel-based Biostar 945GC-M7 TE motherboard (MB) in the Indian market next week.

The next updated edition of the Intel 945GZ chipset, based on the Intel 945GC/ICH7 chipset, the new 945GC-M7 TE motherboard is capable of supporting CPUs with 1,333 MHz FSB. The new motherboard will come with GMA 950 graphic chip support, and will offer to 224MB of shared memory.

Specifications of the new Biostar 945GC-M7 TE motherboard include –

Sydney, November 5 : A researcher at the University of Melbourne has devised a way to make broadband connections up to 100 times faster.

Dr John Papandriopoulos, whose efforts have earned him the university's Chancellor's Prize for Excellence, has revealed that he has developed an algorithm that can help reduce the electromagnetic interference that slows down ADSL connections.

Currently, ADSL services are effectively limited to speeds between 1 to 20Mbps. According to Dr. Papandriopoulos, the line speed will be about 100 Mbps if his technology is successfully commercialised.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer has announced publicly that the world’s biggest software company will concentrate on online and web properties and offer non-PC experience to its worldwide users.     
     
At a conference in Mumbai, Mr. Ballmer said, “Success in this business comes from design and user interface. While we have been a software and applications developer company, in the past few years we have invested in online and web properties. We will invest in non-PC experience, like providing software for mobile handsets and TV sets.”

Yahoo has disclosed its own proficient social network called ‘Kickstart,’ which is aimed at college students, old pupils, and prospective employers.

In a declaration on Yahoo Kickstart, Scott Gatz, senior director of Yahoo’s Advanced Products division stated, “It’s a professional network with a purpose–to help college students and recent graduates build a professional network.”

The Internet search giant, Yahoo designed ‘Kickstart’ in order to assist collegians to link with future employers who can help them with internships, jobs and career advise.

Nokia’s N-gage mobile gaming service, primitively due in November has been pushed back slightly because of postponements with software screening. Now it will hit the market in “December 2007”.

Nokia’s new digital service will let users to try all N-Gage games free of charge from any Nokia-compatible device prior to paying and downloading the complete titles.

At a big media event in August, Nokia revealed its much awaited gaming service and said that it would be available throughout the world in November.

MapmyIndia has introduced ‘MapmyIndia Navigator,’ which is an in-car GPS-based direction-finding tool that offers voice and visual map directions to users, covering up over 55,000 towns and villages crosswise the country.

The Indian navigable map data supplier said it was making discussions with luxury car makers for built-in offerings.

Rakesh Verma, managing director, CE Info Systems, a promoter of MapmyIndia, said, “With GPS technology and accurate MapmyIndia maps telling you exactly where to take your next turn, unnamed roads or unclear road signs are no longer an issue. The MapmyIndia Navigator will guide you effortlessly to your destination.”

A few of the world’s biggest mobile phone companies have collaborated with Google in order to formulate an open platform for mobile devices permitting creators to work together without any difficulty to power various new cell phone products.

The new Open handset alliance named ‘Android,’ includes Google together with T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and China Mobile.

Android’s major task is to make technologies, which will lessen the developing and distributing mobile devices and services cost.

New Delhi: Bharti Airtel and Research in Motion (RIM) have made announcement of their new launching of the ‘BlackBerry Pearl 8120’ smart phone in the Indian market.

The new phone would cost around Rs 24,990 at all Airtel Relationship Centers and sales outlets.

Bharti said that their new phone is specifically designed for corporate users.

The Blackberry ‘Pearl 8120’ is a small and trendy smart phone, which comes with great voice and data traits together with a 2 mega pixel camera with 5x digital zoom.

MapmyIndia, a leading navigable map data supplier, has launched a Global Positioning System (GPS) based in-car navigation device, named as “MapmyIndia Navigator.”

MapmyIndia Navigator makes use of orbiters to decide a user’s location anywhere within the country. It directs users, turn by turn, along with visual map directions supported by voice prompts.

While driving, the device can either be mounted on the windscreen or dashboard, or carried in hand while sitting in the backseat of the car.

Rakesh Verma, managing director of CE Info Systems (promoters of MapmyIndia) said, “With GPS technology, and accurate MapmyIndia maps telling you exactly where to take your next turn, unnamed roads or unclear road signs are no longer an issue.”

Lenovo has entered the business workstation market with the launch of its new ThinkStation brand, which includes ThinkStation S10 and D10 workstations. Lenovo was the third largest PC maker in the world in the third quarter, behind Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

The dual processor ThinkStation D10 workstation will offer the Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5400 series, while the single processor ThinkStation S10 workstation will offer the latest Intel® Core 2 processors including the Intel® Core™2 Extreme processor QX9650 along with the latest graphics solutions from NVIDIA

Yahoo Inc. has launched a new professional social network that is officially called Yahoo Kickstart.

The aim of Kickstart is to fill a void between these two groups, targeting people who wish to move beyond Facebook, but haven’t yet built the business networks typical of LinkedIn users.

The service will allow students to connect with fellow classmates, alumni and companies who may be able to help them building their careers.

Sony is ready to launch its lighter and newly designed PlayStation 2 edition, in the Japanese market on November 22.

The company’s newly designed PlayStation 2, which comes in three variations white, black, and silver, is valued at 16,000 yen (US$145)

The company said, “While inheriting the functions of the current PlayStation 2, the internal design architecture of the new system has been completely overhauled, resulting (in a console that is) lighter in weight.”

The company did not declare plans to release the new ‘PlayStation 2’ model outside of Japan.

Nokia and Bharatmatrimony have joined hands to let Nokia handset owners to access the matrimonial service while on the move.

The users of Nokia handsets can make use of matchmaking service through Catalogs; a mobile 'shopping mall' that provides different content, applications, and services anytime, anywhere.

Lee Epting, vice president of Forum Nokia, said, "With BharatMatrimony, Nokia is able to offer this service to more people all over the country via a downloadable application that can be found in Catalogs, providing them with all the necessary information they need about prospective partners."

The company said that the newly launched service is opportune and comprehensible.

Washington, November 9 : Nanotechnology scientists at the University of Idaho have started a new research to develop more effective defences against the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, and other deadly pathogens.

The researchers are trying to create methods of much faster and more accurate identification of strains resistant to the antibiotic methicillin, formally known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The university already has breakthrough detection technologies in its labs. Nanoelectronic biosensors at the its Center for Advanced Microelectronics and Biomolecular Research (CAMBR) recently have cut detection time for staph from the industry standard of up to three days down to three hours.

Sydney, November 10 : South Korean researchers have developed a new robot inspired by the Australian Koala, the animal which is lazy by nature.

Kobie, the robot made at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, can react to touches and voices. It can also recognise human faces.

The creation of Kobie has given its makers hopes that the robot will pave the way for smarter, friendlier and more affordable robotic companions for humans.

"When you slap Kobie once, he acts as if he is surprised. But when you keep hitting him, be begins to show that he is scared. He can calculate whether you like him or not,'' new.com.au quoted senior researcher Sohn Joo-Chan as telling the Korea Times.

Washington, November 10 : Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have engineered an electronic nose that can help detect hazards like carbon monoxide, harmful industrial solvents, and explosives.

Lead researcher Harry Tuller has revealed that the tiny nose uses a novel inkjet printing method to print thin sensor films onto a microchip, a process that could eventually allow for mass production of highly sensitive gas detectors.

"Mass production would be an enormous breakthrough for this kind of gas sensing technology," said Tuller, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), who presented the research at the Composites at Lake Louise Conference in Alberta, Canada.

Microsoft has added up a parental control feature known as ‘Family Timer’ to the Xbox 360 video game console letting parents to put a limit to the amount of time their children can use the console.

The new feature added by the company can keep an eye on the total amount of time spent on gaming plus entertainment on a daily or weekly basis.

Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft, said, “It is Microsoft's responsibility to provide parents with tools to manage their children's video gaming and online experiences, and we have made that a priority from the very start.”

Mr. Bach also explicated that the Xbox 360 Family Timer is as same as its counterpart in Windows Vista.

Apple Inc. launched its famous gadget iPhone for German customers this Friday. Hundreds of iPhone fans gathered outside T-Mobile stores at many places in Germany. A famous store in Cologne, Germany was full with Apple fans. Deutsche Telekom AG owned T-Mobile managed to sell more than 10 thousand iPhones within first few hours of launch. Apple fans have been waiting since a very long time for European launch of iPhone.

Walt Disney, US media and entertainment company is ready to launch mobile services in the Japanese market by next year (2008).

To join cell phone operations, the Japan-based division of Walt Disney Co. has signed up a fundamental contract with Japanese Internet and telecom firm Softbank Corp.

As per the contract, Disney will take telecommunication networks from a Softbank unit, Softbank Mobile Corp. on rent, and start offering service to the country.

The companies’ officials do not comment on the report.

Disney has also collaborated with Softbank to build up mobile phones and deliver their output to other companies.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project has received first major support from some other corporate house after Electronic Arts announced that the company will donate its 1989 classic SimCity for the project. OLPC project aims to offer cheap laptops to children in developing countries. The project started offering robust laptops to children with a price tag of just $100.

Game developer, Electronic Arts (EA) has offered SimCity to OLPC project and the game will be pre-installed on OLPC laptops. SimCity can be played online free of cost on website of Electronic Arts.

Norwalk/Bangkok, Nov 12: Priceline.com announced that it has acquired Bangkok and Singapore-based Agoda Company, an online travel company specializing in hotel discount bookings throughout Asia, in a transaction that includes an initial cash payment and a multi-year, performance-based earn-out.

Priceline.com said it intends to retain Agoda's current management team, who will continue to manage Agoda's operations independently as part of priceline.com's international business.

In the Asia Pacific region, Agoda offers hotel properties in Australia, China, Japan, India, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, New Zealand and several other countries.

London, November 12: The computer games company Nintendo has created a new game for facial exercise called Face Training.

"Through a camera and a series of daily exercises the computer helps improve facial muscle tone, improving your appearance, " the Daily Mail quoted the company as claiming.

Face Training is currently available in Japan, and is expected to be launched in UK markets before Christmas.

During the game, a slim female cartoon appears on the screen, and guides the player to follow each facial movement she makes—such as rolling her head from side to side in one direction and the other.

The cartoon character also instructs the user how to do exercises for eyes and mouth.

Washington, November 13: Computer scientists at the University of Haifa have found that emails, passwords, and credit card numbers typed on a computer using Microsoft’s “Windows 2000” operating system are susceptible to hacking.

"This is not a theoretical discovery. Anyone who exploits this security loophole can definitely access this information on other computers, " said Dr. Benny Pinkas from the Department of Computer Science at the university.

The researchers have discovered the security loophole in the random number generator of Windows, a program that acts as a critical building block for file and email encryption.

Gadget lovers got upset when payment systems at one retail shop failed in UK, and their keenness to buy Apple’s much awaited ’iPhone’ were left frustrated on launch night.

The Chip and PIN credit card services at a number of Carphone Warehouse stores stopped on Friday evening, leaving staff and customers incapable of finishing their dealings.

Finally customers were granted to pay cash for their iPhones, something that is usually not permitted by Apple Company.

Carphone Warehouse stated that the payment system problem occurred soon after the iPhone moved on sale at 6.02 pm.

San Francisco: Intel Corp has brought out its latest line of more energy efficient microchips, made with new manufacturing materials that are less harmful to the environment.

The 16 microchips, made for both servers as well as high-end PCs, were based on a new manufacturing route that shrinks circuit dimensions to 45 nanometers from 65 nanometers.

The company said that its new microprocessors are lead free, and added that it makes them halogen-free by the coming year.

The Hon. Supreme Court has held a judgment that the government cannot levy additional 7 % customs duty on laptops.

While dismissing a petition filed by the Commissioner of Customs, a bench headed by Justice S B Sinha said that the government cannot ask IT companies to pay 7 % additional customs duty on notebook PCs, unlike desktops, as the two items were totally different though capable of performing similar functions.

The court upheld the Customs, Excise and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal's earlier judgement, stating that the interpretation by the tribunal was in consonance with the Computers (Additional Duty) Rules, 2004.

New Delhi, Nov 13: The Delhi High Court has in an interim order, restrained YouTube, an audio-video sharing website owned by Google Inc, from infringing in the exclusive copyright works of the well known T-Series label.

The High Court was moved against YouTube and its parent company Google Inc. on account of rank infringement of the T Series copyright.

YouTube allows the uploading of videos (including music videos from films and music albums) on YouTube.com that are accessible to anyone surfing the web for free, and thus earn substantial revenues from advertisements on the website.

Motorola, US based mobile phone manufacturer, is all set to introduce its new mobile phone named ‘Moto Yuva W180’ in the Indian market.

The company’s new mobile product would be its entry-level mobile phone that target Indian youths.

The new phone comes with dual Hindi-English mode keypads for faultless messaging. It also has an implanted dictionary with around 30,000 Hindi words that prompt the user with Hinglish terms once they type the first few alphabets.

Moto Yuva W180 comes loaded with a Hindu calendar that includes data about festivals, nakshatras, sunrise and sunset times, yoga, karan and tithi.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Litmited (BSNL), Andhra Pradesh circle, has made announcement of its ‘TV on Mobile’ service for its users in association with 12 channels as the content providers.

This is one of BSNL’s significant steps in the direction of mobile entertainment.

The BSNL’s subscription plans comprise a one channel per day plan for Rs 10, one channel for one month plan for Rs 50 and 12 channels for Rs 150 per month.

China Unicom Ltd, the second biggest telecom company in China has said that the company has no immediate plans to sell Apple iPhone in China. Mr. Li Zhengmao, Executive Director, China Unicom said that the company may consider if the opportunity is good. The market for iPhone is growing world over. 

Mr. Li pointed out that Apple iPhone will have to support Chinese language to enter the Chinese market. Apple iPhone plays music, offers internet browsing and many other features. China could be a great market for Apple iPhone.

Berlin: Intel has collaborated with Infineon in order to build up SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) chips for mobile phones.

German semi-conductor giant, Infineon said that it would be providing microchips used in each SIM card.

The mass production would be started by 2009. The companies do not provide financial details on the project.

“By late 2008, the new USB interface of SIM cards will enable additional demanding and data-intensive mobile applications, services and over-the-air downloads,” the companies said.

London, November 14: Researchers at Lancaster University in the UK have developed prototype software that enables the establishment of a secure wireless link between two cellular phones just by holding them together and shaking vigorously.

Rene Mayrhofer, who conceived the idea of connecting two gadgets in this manner with his colleague Hans Gellersen, says that the software uses built-in accelerometers in the phones to measure the movement of each device as it is shaken.

The researchers say that the accelerometer readings would match perfectly only if the devices were held tightly together, a reason why the system is safe.

Washington, Nov 14: The New York City-based company, Bug Labs, has created a line of customizable, Lego-like electronic gizmos that enables people to tailor their gadgetry to their needs.

Software developer Peter Semmelhack, also the founder and CEO of the company, found himself wanting a gadget that would allow him to know where his loved ones were at any given time -- maybe a device with a GPS unit and a modem that would plot a person's location on a map online.

"It's not a complicated device. But it didn't exist, " Discovery quoted Semmelhack, as saying.

Motorola, US-based cell phone manufacturer has revealed its two new mobile devices in India.

The newly launched handsets including ‘Moto Q 8’ and ‘Moto Q 9h,’ are based on Microsoft Windows Mobile platform.

For corporate and personal email, the users would get the option to select from eight messaging in-boxes. Both the phones have direct messaging ability.

London, Nov 16: Scientists have found a novel way to discover how groups of cockroaches make collective decisions – by creating a robotic cockroach that can mix with a social group of cockroaches and influence their behaviour.

Scientist say that similar robots will help them to unravel the decision-making processes in other sociable species that carry out 'collective behaviours' such as deciding where to rest or selecting food sources.

 Microsoft Corporation on yesterday has launched its Prepaid Edition of “Microsoft Office Professional 2007” in India. This is the first time in India that an office productivity suite will be available as a pre-paid version.

The prepaid edition would be available at a 6-month subscription of Rs 1,499. At the end of six month, customers will be able to renew their subscription through a 3-month Prepaid Renewal Card that costs of Rs 1,299.

New Delhi, Nov 16 : The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has achieved a significant milestone through the successful test of indigenously developed Cryogenic Stage, to be employed as the upper stage of country’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

The test was conducted for its full flight duration of 720 seconds on November 15 at Liquid Propulsion test facility at Mahendragiri, in Tamil Nadu.

With this test, the indigenous Cryogenic Upper Stage has been fully qualified on the ground. The flight stage is getting ready for use in the next mission of GSLV (GSLV-D3) in It may be recalled that a ground test for 480 seconds of the complete stage was conducted on August 4.

Bangalore: ISRO researchers have achieved success in reaching a new galaxy with the triumphant examination of the indigenous cryogenic phase, which powers the huge Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

Indian scientists have joined hands with an exclusive group of researchers from United States, Russia and Europe, who have the capability to plan and construct cryogen engines that are vital for running up communication satellites plus manned missions to space.

Sony Ericsson India has made announcement of the launching of its latest slim slider mobile phone 'W910i' in the Indian market. It weighs just 86 gms, and has dimensions of 99.5 x 50 x 12.5 mm.

The two new features added to the phone include ‘Shake Control’ and ‘SenseMe’. The new Shake Control system permits users to adjust music tracks by waving the phone in the air. Additionally, the phone also has with an auto-rotating display for the media section.

On the other hand, the SenseMe aspect lets users to arrange their music path according to their mood rather than record album or artists.

London, November 17: Two scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi have developed a portable device that can scan fingerprints in microseconds.

Satish Kumar Dubey and Dalip Singh Mehta, who developed the device, have revealed that the system works using a technique called optical coherence tomography.

The scientist duo insist that their invention promises to be better than existing fingerprint detection methods because it does not warrant any chemical processing.

BA Systems has declared the launch of its ‘First Made in India Router’ EN 3500 in the country.

The newly launched router is called ‘Made in India’ router because it is designed in Bangalore and manufactured in Chennai.

P J Singh, founder and CEO, BA Systems said, “EN 3500 is the culmination of efforts by BA Systems to enable the tremendous growth in the enterprise sector in India. The EN3500 provides enterprises an alternative to high-cost non-local products, by combining state-of-the-art technology, future-proofed architecture, yet cost effective. Combined with local support, BA Systems is well primed to provide both Capex and Opex savings to the enterprise.”

Washington, Nov 17: A University in Netherlands has developed new control techniques that would be able to reduce the risk of aircraft crashes.

The new techniques were developed as a result of a research project undertaken by the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) into Fault Tolerant Control.

The new set of techniques, which would be demonstrated to the general public on November 21, would involve keeping damaged aircraft in the air for longer and enabling continuing flight control. The key to this is to improve control techniques which enable the aircraft to continue to be controlled.

Washington, Nov. 17: A new research is aiming to shed light on the benefits of using synthetic and cleaner jet fuel in commercial aircraft engines.

Research work started after four Qatar-based organizations signed an agreement with Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Shell International to study the feasibility of powering jetliners with gas-to-liquid (GTL) synthetic jet fuels, created by converting natural gas to kerosene.

According to the research, the properties of GTL kerosene are largely similar to those of conventional jet fuel, making it a 'drop in' replacement for oil-derived kerosene in aero engines and airports without requiring any modifications to equipment.

Washington, November 18 : Nanotechnology researchers at the University of California have made "nanotube ink" from the chemicals used in an ordinary battery, thereby making it possible to print batteries onto surfaces like paper.

Lead researcher George Gruner has revealed that he used the same zinc-carbon chemistry in his batteries as are used in ordinary non-rechargeable batteries.

He believes that the technique to print flexible batteries onto different surfaces may prove helpful in powering disposable devices like long-range RFID tags or small displays.

The batteries, less than a millimetre thick, are made from two layers containing carbon nanotubes and a third layer of zinc foil.

The Department of Telecommunications has called up a meeting of the chiefs of all leading telecom companies providing GSM technology services on November 21 to answer arguable issues that have bobbed up following fresh changes in telecom plan.     
     
To this effect, a letter signed by DoT Secretary D S Mathur has been mailed to Reliance Communications Chairman Anil Ambani, Vodafone Inc CEO Arun Sarin, Maxis Communications Chairman Anand Krishnan, Bharti group's Sunil Mittal, Idea Cellular's Kumar Mangalam Birla and Spice Telecom's B K Modi.     
     
Grave disputes have come up between GSM players and the administration on various matters, some of which are planned for hearing before the telecom board.          

London, Nov 20 (ANI): The right kinds of brain exercises can dramatically enhance memory and other cognitive abilities of older adults, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Southern California Andrus Gerontology Centre say that proper brain exercises can boost an elderly person’s memory by ten years as well as their mental agility.

The researchers showed that over-65s who exercised their brain with a “brain revitalisation” computer program were found to considerably improve their memory and reported feeling more independent and confident.

Three quarters of those who used the program said they had noticed positive changes in their lives, according to lead author Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski.

Seagate has launched its latest 1 Terabyte (TB) capacity hard drives ‘Barracuda ES.2’ and ‘Barracuda 7200.11’ in India.

The hard disk industry giant stated that the new hard drives offer up a blend of capability, performance and dependability for a broad variety of enterprise plus desktop PC applications.

The newly launched hard drives feature 7,200-rpm spin speeds, average seek times of 8.5ms, caches up to 32MB and many others.

The company said that these hard drives bundle 1TB of records on 4 discs to offer operating temperatures and low power consumption that helps in extending drive’s life time.

London, November 21: US researchers might have moved one step closer to creating the next generation of electronic devices with increasingly smaller components, with the discovery that the electronic behaviour at the surface of a class of minerals called manganites is considerably different from that found in its bulk.

Spice India has introduced its new Music Edition mobile phone, called the Spice S-7 in the Indian market.

The main features of the freshly launched mobile phone include 1.3 Mega Pixel Camera with Flash, 262k color 2.0 inch screen, support for data transfer, Voice and Wireless Music (A2DP) and many others.

The phone backs up external memory through T-Flash cards up to 1GB. The S-7 is a Java enabled phone, and it can also be used as a modem. Through its handset manager option, it can easily be connected to a PC without a separate software installation. It also supports Video & Photo Caller ID.

Buffalo Incorporation has launched the Buffalo Wi-Fi Gamers (WCA-G) in the domestic market. It is a device, which makes users independent from a PC for Internet connectivity and takes them to a stress-free platform for online and wireless gaming experiences.

The new device backs up Nintendo Wii, DS, DS Lite, Sony PSP, and Playstation3 consoles. It let users to access online games by just pushing a single button.

Its integrated AirStation One-Touch Secure System offers connection to the Internet, and stores security settings and facilitates devices to connect without wires.

London, November 23 : A British company claims that it has developed a device that can bring an end to the traditional landline telephones, and make mobile technology more efficient.

Technologists at Bath-based PicoChip have named this technology ‘femtocell’, which is as small as a paperback book.

According to them, the 100-pound device detects calls in the home and re-directs them down a broadband line.

The company claims that the device can handle four calls at once.

Since the femtocell does not require the calls to travel via satellite, the problem of poor mobile reception will not occur, says the company.

The microchips powering the technology are expected to be launched in the UK by next Christmas.

Hitachi has announced Ultra Thin range of LCD televisions for Indian market. The Hitachi Ultra Thin Series will be available in 32, 37 and 42 inch models in first quarter of next year. Hitachi claims that its Ultra Thin series is the slimmest LCD with a thickness of only 35 mm. Hitachi also plans to introduce a 19 mm thickness LCD by year 2009.

Hotmail co-founder, Mr. Sabeer Bhatia has joined the rush to shift office applications from the desktop to the web.

This time, Mr. Bhatia has brought out an application known as ‘Live Documents’ that is a set of online applications resembling GoogleDocs.

But the freshly launched application is much better than the Google pack, Mr. Bhatia said.

Like Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office Live Workspace, Sabeer Bhatia's Live Documents provides a web-based word processor, spreadsheet and presentation applications that can be accessed from any platform.

The mobile game, "Hanuman Returns" will hit gaming stores about two weeks before the release of the movie that is slated to release on December 28, 2007.

In order to launch the mobile game, "Hanuman Returns", Jump Games has joined hands with the film’s makers, Percept Picture Company (PPC).

The software giant, Microsoft has been roped-in for the Xbox 360- and Xbox Live- editions of the game.

A fast, action adventure game, ‘Hanuman Returns’ shows Hanuman, using his mace, fighting odds, and commonly making a point that good succeeds over evil in the end.

Nokia has launched two Xpressmusic series mobile phones in the Indian market.

The newly launched phone includes, the Nokia 5610 XpressMusic and the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic enjoys latest features

The 5610 consists of a music slider that makes music accessible by just flicking a thumb. Its other features include Aluminum side panels, a 2.2 inch display with 16 million colors and a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels.

Recently HP launched its famous Snapfish service in India. The Snapfish website offers good quality prints at low cost. Now, Indian consumers have more choice as ZoomIn is offering similar service. ZoomIn is also offering storage solution for photos. Users can share photos with friends.

London, Nov 26: Anthropologists have identified over 100 previously unknown ancient sites in Egypt using satellite images from their laboratory in Birmingham, UK.

Operating from a computer lab on Birmingham's Southside, UAB anthropology professor Sarah Parcak and her colleagues have mapped sites like a lost temple buried beneath agricultural fields, a major town in the East Nile Delta dating to the time of the pyramids, a large monastery from 400 A.D. in Middle Egypt and a massive, largely buried city beneath a field on the East Delta dating to 600 B.C.

New Delhi: Microsoft Corporation India’s recently unveiled Get Genuine Solution (GGS) will help enabling small & medium enterprises SMEs to legalize their counterfeit or unlicensed Windows XP Professional PCs.

The Hyderabad based Ichip India has unveiled a technology that will provide Internet-based entertainment, education and communication services through a single integrated device.

The new device named, @Box is viewed as an affordable replacement for home entertainment PC. The company is planning to commence the commercial production of the new low-cost device by March next year. It is also planning to deploy the device in a million households in one year. The device is expected to be priced at around $ 100 per device.

London, November 27: Are you afraid that using a credit card for shopping may make you a victim of an ID fraud? Well, now a new technology based on personalised fingerprints is here to address your worries.

With the revolutionary new system, which is being introduced in Europe, it will be possible to buy a product by paying through fingerprints.

The so called ‘digiPROOF fingerprint payment’ system is already very popular in Germany.

Vertu has rolled out ‘Ascent Ti’ in the Indian markets.

The newly launched phone is a quad-band 3G handset with a 3 mega pixels camera with flash.

The Ascent series is characterized by the precision of a beautiful car.  Ascent Ti, made in England, takes this to the next level with greater design detail, better materials, improved peformance, etc.

The exterior and interior of the Ascent Ti reminds you of the same as sleek car.

The 'Ti' stands for Titanium, a non-corrosive metal with the highest strength-to-weight ratio.

India’s first commercial Metro Ethernet Fibre Network Infrastructure Company, IOL Broadband Ltd has declared that it has signed a voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service providers’ agreement with state owned telephone company, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL).

The recent deal will allow the company to inter connect with millions of MTNL subscribers with local/STD/international calls at very low rates.

“The company is planning a capacity of 100 million minutes, going up to 1 billion minutes, in two years and expects huge increase in VoIP and broadband connections in the near future,” the company’s spokesperson said.

Vertu, Nokia’s premium mobile phone brand, has launched its next generation of Ascent handsets called Vertu Ascent Ti collection, in the Indian market. Finely built and designed in England, Vertu Ascent Ti mobile phone features a quad band, 3G handset, 3 mega pixel flash VGA camera and comes in three colors, namely black or red leather with a black ceramic pillow or brown with a silver ceramic pillow.

Subsidiary of LG Electronics, South Korea, the LGEIL – LG Electronics India Private Limited has declared the launch of its two new handset lines – the KG 288, and the KG 285, in India.

Targeted at the entry-level customers and GSM users in the country, the KG 288, and the KG 285 mobile phones are the latest entry-level mobile handsets from LG.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has unveiled “Samsung MAX,” its first open market phone in the CDMA segment.

Aimed to glut the growing CDMA market, the sleek slider Samsung MAX will be available to both Tata Indicom and Reliance Mobile subscribers.

London, November 28: Glasgow University researchers have developed a software that will allow cellphone users to know when their handset’s battery is low, or how many new messages it has received, just by giving it a quick shake.

The system, named ‘Shoogle’ after a Scots-English word that means to shake, uses a phone's speaker and vibrator to make a device feel and sound like it contains liquid, when it is running out of power.

John Williamson, who developed the software with colleagues Rod Murray-Smith and Sean Hughes, says that the same technique can also be used to check whether new messages have been received.

The launch of new series of Elite Desktops, called the HP Pavilion Elite m9000 in high-definition entertainment, in India has been announced by Hewlett-Packard India. The HP Pavilion Elite m9000 line of sleek desktops consists of three different models in 17-inch monitor size.

The new line of desktops from HP has been particularly designed for the people who intend to have a multimedia-powerhouse home PC. It perfectly suits to the tastes of enthusiastic hobbyists, movie lover and gamers, looking to tremendous performance capacity and high-definition quality.

Washington, November 29: University of California, Irvine (UCI) researchers are developing software to deal with cybercrime, one of the biggest causes of damage to a business.

The software will allow companies to flag up employees who are potential saboteurs, industrial spies or data thieves. It might also flag up whistle-blowers.

The move follows recent findings that at least one-third of cybercrimes affecting businesses are committed by insiders.

Bangalore: Dell has unveiled a 15.4 inch notebook computer, targeting the tech-savvy urban users, in the Indian market.

The newly launched notebook ‘XPS M1530’, with starting price of Rs 53,000, weighs less than six pounds.

Girish Mehta, Director for Marketing, Dell India, said, “The XPS M1530 will bring the XPS experience to the most popular 15.4-inch widescreen market segment.”

Along with a one-inch profile, the sleek 15.4-inch notebook has the
following features like built-in webcam, fingerprint reader,
touch-sensitive multi-media buttons, and brushed aluminum accents.

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) has unveiled multi-lingual short message service (SMS) that permit GSM subscribers to send messages in 11 different Indian languages.

While sending SMSes, the newly launched value-added service known as ‘Sarv Bhasha Sandesh’ will let the subscribers to make use of the language of their choice. Now the MTNL GSM subscribers can send messages in English, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Rajasthani, Tamil and Telugu too.

The new service, which is developed by MTNL along with Geneva Software Technology Ltd, is only accessible to postpaid and prepaid customers of Dolphin and Trump.

Sony has made announcement of the launching of its latest ‘VAIO LM’ notebook computer in the Indian market.

The latest VAIO LM comes with a 19-inch screen bordered by a transparent bezel that can be easily mounted on a wall. It also consists of a wireless keyboard, mouse, and remote control.

The company said that this product is specifically designed for customers who are seeking an entertainment hub that includes TV tuner, integrated 1.3 mega pixel camera with face-tracking software, 2.1-channel speaker system and sub-woofers.

London, Nov.30: It is not only Britain that is facing a major cyber attack threat from over 120 countries, but also nations like India, the United States and Germany.

According to a report in The Australian, the "cyber cold war" is threatening to become one of the biggest security threats in the next decade.

Quoting from an annual report prepared by McAfee, The Australian further goes on to say that cyber crime is now a global issue, as it has “evolved significantly and is no longer just a threat to industry and individuals but increasingly to national security."

London, November 30: Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US are designing a robot teddy that can interact with its owner, and alert medical staff to changes in a sick child’s condition.

Huggable will be fitted with sensors, and tested in the Highlands.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), which is supporting the projects, said that prototypes would be involved in a trial in the region in about three months time.

The task of further development of the robot teddy will be given to a local company, which will be selected soon.

Hewlett Packard has unveiled its HP Pavilion Elite m9000 series PCs in India.

The HP Pavilion Elite m9000 PC works on Intel Core2 Quad processor, Windows Vista Premium and nVidia GeForce 8 series graphics card.

The newly launched PC has a Dual Format Blue Laser Combo Drive, one single drive, which can be used for both Blu Ray and HD-DVD formats. It also consists of a signature HP Zen Imprint detailing, a wireless keyboard and LightScribe DVD drive.

Washington, December 1: Researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have developed a powerful tool to aid scientists in studying the genetics of inflammatory diseases, using information about the genes that are known to be linked to inflammation.

Dr. Matthew Loza of the Center for Human Genomics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, has revealed that a web-based software called Ingenuity Pathway Analysis can enable the systematic mapping of pathways (chains of genes) and sub-pathways that contribute to various aspects of inflammation.

New Delhi: IBM India, Global software major has established a ‘Human Ability and Accessibility Centre’ for people with disabilities in India.

The centre, situated at the India Research Lab in New Delhi, will make technology and information easily accessible to people having visual, cognitive and motor disabilities.

The centre will cater to the different needs of government bodies, business houses, academic institutions, research workers and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Taiwanese electronics giant ASUS unveiled two new PDA phones for Indian market at an event organized at Taj Palace in Mumbai. The company is offering Windows Mobile 6 based P526 and M530w for Indian customers for a price of Rs 20,990 and Rs 16,990 respectively.

New Delhi: IBM India has opened up a Human Ability and Accessibility Centre to make technology and information easily accessible to those having visual, cognitive and motor disabilities.

The center, situated at India Research Lab in New Delhi, will cater to the various needs of Indian accessibility stakeholders such as government bodies, business houses, educational institutions, research workers and NGOs.

While lecturing at après meeting, Shanker Annaswamy, IBM Managing Director (India and South Asia) told that the new centre would offer up approachable technologies to show up the importance of the unused talent pool of people with disabilities.

Logitech has uncovered its latest G9 Laser Mouse to beef up its award-winning line of G-series. The PC gaming device, the G9 Laser Mouse has been modified for the best personal fit, feel, and performance.

Logitech G9 features interchangeable grips,such as Wide-Load grip and Precision grip, on-the-fly dpi that keeps switching ranging from 200 dpi to 3200 dpi. The Laser Mouse also features full-speed USB laser tracking, an onboard-memory profiling system, weight tuning, a custom-color LED and the hyper-fast MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel.

Certainly, you can join Hate Communities or Hate Clubs, if you’re really sick of Ekta Kapoor's soap operas, Himesh Reshamiya's nasal voice, SRK’s exaggerated mannerism in social circles, and Big B's smug face. There are the people online, who offer you the places on the World Wide Web for their favorite hate icons and invite users to criticize them freely.

These web spaces are known as Hate communities or hate clubs that are growing extremely popular on social networking Web sites like Google-owned Orkut. These are nice places that offer you to vent your emotions.

Epson India has unveiled Epson Stylus CX8300 and CX7300 AIO (all-in-one) offering very high speed for printing, scanning and copying. The printer is aimed at home and office users and will offer good features at low price of just Rs 8299. CX8300 offers a high speed of 32 pages per minute and is based on Micro-Piezo technology from Epson. CX8300 is equally good for black and colored prints. The AIO also offers a good speed for copy and scan (at 1200 dots per inch) functions.

A Hamburg court has ruled on Tuesday that T-Mobile Germany, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, need not sell an unlocked version of Apple's iPhone. The court decided that T-Mobile could lock its iPhone customers into an exclusive, two-year contract in Germany, and could block buyers of Apple Inc.'s iPhone from using the handset on competitors' networks.

Washington, Dec 7: Engineers have developed an unmanned seaplane with a 7-foot wingspan, inspired by flying fish.

The person who conceived the design of the seaplane was Guy Meadows, director of the U-M Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratories.

Developed at the University of Michigan, this autonomous craft is believed to be the first seaplane that can initiate and perform its own takeoffs and landings on water.

"The vehicle did very well, " said Hans Van Sumeren, associate director of the U-M Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratories, referring to the trials undertaken by the new seaplane. "To take off and land in the water was a big effort. We did it 22 times, " he added.

LG Electronics has unveiled its ‘R200’ laptop computer in the Indian market.

Lenovo has launched a new notebook PC in the Indian market.

The freshly launched Y510 notebook computer weighs just 2.77 kg. It has a styled light-weave texture for a classy, graceful look.

The Lenovo Y510 NB’s 15-inch monitor accompanies a border-less screen, whereas the keyboard bears a resemblance to their ThinkPad design.

Its other features include a 160GB SATA hard disk, 1 GB DDR2 RAM, 802.11 Wi-Fi, a 1.3 mega pixels integrated camera and Vista Home Basic/Premium version.

CE Info Systems, the New Delhi based ‘in-car GPS-based navigation devices Company’, has launched its location finding device, MapmyIndia Navigator, which is an in-car global positioning system (GPS) navigation device to make driving and locating sites easier in India.

Bangalore: IBM has revealed the world’s fastest microprocessor, ‘the dual-core POWER6’ in the Indian market.

Shashi B Mal, Director Systems and Technology Group, IBM India / South Asia said that the System p570 server and bladeCenter JS22, which is powered by this new chip, will also be available in the Indian market.

The Power6 is much speedier (4.7 GHZ) than its previous version Power5. It uses almost the same amount of electricity to run and cool. It also features industry leading virtualization potentialities. It is also the newest addition to IBM's 'Project Big Green'.

The launch of the first ever "Xbox Entertainment Lounge" by Microsoft within the 'Mobile Store' at Walkeshwar in Mumbai, is a perfect setting for family and friends to hang out and spend time together.

“Xbox Entertainment Lounge” is the next step to make gaming as an entertainment option accessible to a broader set of audiences.

It also provides many new and full versions of games that can be bought by Customers after trying their hands at it.

Mobile Magic has launched 'Media Magic'. The company has become world’s first company to offer an aggregation and retail platform for legal content for mobile users which includes games, apps, movies and music in an offline format.

Google Inc, the Internet giant, had disabled a few Gmail accounts in order to deal with spammers.

Users informed the Gmail Help Discussion Forum about their accounts being locked.

On behalf of public grievance, a Google staffer who monitors and posts messages on Gmail Help forum, acknowledged the existence of the problem.

Identifying the problem, Google said, “Our efforts to prevent breaches of our Terms of Use (policy) caused a number of users to be incorrectly identified.” This most meant as spammers or other abusive users.

Transcend, worldwide leader in flash drives, has rolled out new SD/MMC Card Reader S5 in the Indian market.

The new card reader is aimed to be the easy and convenient portable card reader, and allows users quick access to the data saved on memory cards.

The device offer the data transfer rate of up to 480Mb/s and can directly plugs into any USB 2.0(or 1.1) port.

The S5 is well matched with various types’ memory cards such as miniSD, microSD and MMCmicro via an adapter.

Bollywood Actress and Spice brand ambassador, Priyanka Chopra has launched the 'Spice Local Lingo’, a new multilingual SMS service in Bangalore.

Spice Local Lingo is a messaging service that allows one to send and receive SMS in any of the Indian languages. This service can be downloaded on all java-enabled phones. It supports regional languages such as Kannada, Hindi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Bengali and Urdu. The service is powered by Geneva Software Technologies.

Epson has rolled out two inkjet photo multifunction printers (MFP) - Stylus Photo RX610 and RX 690, in the Indian market for photography enthusiasts.

The newly launched printer models consist of a Micro Piezo print head along with Advanced Variable Sized Droplet Technology (VSDT), which manipulates the printing speed and quality.

Both Stylus Photo RX610 and Stylus Photo RX690 printers are intended for photocopying, printing plus scanning.

The Microsoft India has launched a new celebratory offer on Xbox 360 gaming console under the tag line “Har Family ki Fauj karegi Mauj.”

Under the offer, the Xbox 360 Core console comes with two free games – Forza Motorsport 2 and Viva Piñata and is priced at Rs 14,990  while the Xbox 360 Pro comes with four free games – PGR3, Forza Motorsport 2, Viva Piñata and the smash hit Yuvraj Singh International Cricket 2007 and it is priced at Rs 23,990.

Transcend has made announcement of the availability of its new high capacity 250GB StoreJet 2.5 SATA portable hard drive in the Indian market.

The StoreJet 2.5 SATA is available in a colorful assortment of eye-catching, polished aluminum cases including Titanium (120GB), Blue (160GB) and Silver (250GB).

It comes with high-speed USB 2.0 interface, and transfers data at a speed of 480 Mbits per second. Its "OneTouch" Auto-Backup button makes external storage simpler and more generative

The year 2007 by all means witnessed the booming video game industry. According to data from NPD Group, the total video game sales (hardware and software) through October were $10.5 billion, compared with $7 billion for the same period last year.

The three key players in the booming industry are the new-generation game consoles, such as Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii. Launched on December 8, 2006 in the UK, Nintendo stunned the world with the launch of its Wii console. The Wii console went head-to-head with Microsoft’s Xbox 360, well actually, it outsold the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

ZyXEL has rolled out ‘P-335U’, a new Dual Band Wireless router in India.

Along with the capability to deliver stateful inspection filtering for network protection, it also handles the limited bandwidth for multimedia applications.
 
Mahendra Lalwani, managing director, ZyXEL Technology India Pvt. Ltd. said, “With ZyXEL’s exclusive Media Bandwidth Management v2 (MBM v2), the P-335U also provides the most comprehensive way to smartly manage the limited bandwidth for multimedia applications.”

Mumbai: Indiagames Ltd has signed up a partnership deal with Level Up to launch two popular game titles ‘Ragnarok’ and ‘Gunz’ on its online PC gaming service called ‘Games on Demand’ (GoD), which offers up a catalogue of more than 300 games across multiple genres.

Ragnarok is a game based on Norse mythology, and has over 25 million online players throughout the world. On the other hand, Gunz is a multi-player third-person shooting game that permits players to perform exaggerated, gravity defying action with swords in the style of action movies and anime.
 

Mumbai: With the intention to shore up its DVR offerings and intellectual property, DirecTV has bought the majority of the assets of a digital video recorder (DVR) company, ReplayTV from its existing corporate owner, Japan’s D&M Holdings, Inc.

The financial details of the acquisition deal were not disclosed yet.

This is the third time since 2002, that the company has changed hands.

Established in 1997, ReplayTV was acquired in 2001 by SONICblue before having its assets sold to D&M in 2003, after having to file for bankruptcy.

On its official launch, the Mountain View-based Ribbit Corporation announced that the company has unveiled a technology platform that will let developers put Web telephony in everything from business software to popular social network sites such as Facebook. The company calls itself “Silicon Valley’s first phone company.

The company also unveiled some of the first applications from its partner and 600-plus developer community, including integration with salesforce.com.

Logitech has launched its ‘ClearChat Pro-USB headset’ in the Indian market.

The newly launched Pro-USB headset comes with an audio equalizer switch, a Comfort headset, proprietary laser-tuned audio drivers and a noise-canceling microphone.

It let users to watch movies, listen to music, play games on PC and make PC-Internet calling applications such as Skype without any difficulty.

It can easily be connected to the PC via a USB port, producing high-quality digital audio regardless of the superiority of the sound card.

Washington, Dec 19: Engineers have paved the way for a new generation of faster, more powerful cell phones, computers and other electronics by developing a practical technique to replace silicon with carbon on large surfaces.

The developers of this novel technique that harnesses the power of carbon for more powerful electronics are Princeton nanotechnologist Stephen Chou, professor of electrical engineering and graduate student Xiaogan Liang.

London, Dec 20: Making toast will soon take you half the time thanks to food giant Heinz.

The company has developed a turbo-powered gadget that beats a Ferrari in speed.

The device churns out perfect slices of toast in 50 seconds flat. This means that it is 92 seconds faster than any normal model on the market.

As for how it manages to do so, well the secret likes in its titanium fans that spin at 10,000 rpm that blast the bread with hot air.

Compared to this, a Ferrari Enzo’s top revs are at 7,800rpm.

Cyberstar Infocom has introduced Lexmark’s X500n and X502n color laser printers in the Indian market.

Both the printers are meant for color copying, scanning and printing, and consists of a 128MB RAM, and print documents at the speed of up to 8ppm in color and 31ppm in monochrome.

Raj Rathi, founder and CEO of Cyberstar Infocom stated, “With the launch of X500n and X502n Color Laser multi-function printers, Lexmark continues to set the standard in delivering fast, affordable and high quality printers for workgroup or departmental applications."

Google’s plan to acquire online advertising giant DoubleClick, which had sparked concerns about privacy risks and still facing a challenge in the European Union, was cleared by the US regulators on Thursday. On the other hand, the European consumer groups yesterday warned the European Commission that Google's plan to take over the online advertising company DoubleClick would erode consumers' privacy and would push up prices for online goods and services.

Each & every person desires to have a cell phone as they are one of the best modes of communication, nowadays. But, their price makes it hard for the common man to buy it, or to think a hundred times before purchasing it.

But farmers need not to worry as the union labor minister, Oscar Fernandes, has made announcement to launch low-priced phones having digital technologies for farmers.

Mr. Fernandes also mentioned that the state plus privately owned communication companies have to step forward to introduce cell phones, which would cost just Rs.500.

Zapak Digital Entertainment has made an announcement about the launch of its first Zapak Gameplex at I-Max Wadala in Mumbai.
Zapak has already introduced gameplexes in various other cities including Chandigarh, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Pune, Jaipur, Indore and New Delhi.

The company said that the Mumbai centre would provide a platform to gamers for playing the most recent games, and they would also be capable of purchasing fresh gaming machines as well as other hardware.

Zapak also said that it will offer the same ambiance at ‘Zapak Live’ event.

Taiwan based Genius has introduced N-series speaker system, SW-N2.1 1100 in India. The device sports a polished black look with a chrome decoration line and a fabric front cover for the satellite speakers. The stylish flat system can be placed on desk even if the consumer is using a panel PC, laptop or any other audio device.

Orkut, a well known social networking website, has once again hit the news due to “Orkut Virus”. Sources said that the virus or worm which attacked Google’s Orkut was relatively harmless. It seems that its creators wanted to demonstrate that Orkut web site’s users are in danger, even if they do not click on malicious links.

In a warning released by Antivirus maker Trend Micro, Robert McArdle said, “The worm was replicating itself across Orkut, using a Flash object that invokes malicious JavaScipt code. ”

IBM has launched “IBM OmniFind Personal Email Search (IOPES)”, a new smart email search software. According to IBM, the software is powered by advanced algorithms that can interpret incomplete queries and find information such as phone numbers, people, meetings, presentations, documents, images and more. However, the software also allows searchers to define their own concepts.

Transcend has introduced its new multi-card reader ‘M5’ in the Indian market.

The newly introduced ‘M5’ will entice users through its attractive and modern styling, compact size and adapter-free multi-format convenience.

The M5 backs up all the memory cards including CompactFlash and Microdrive (for high-end DSLR cameras), SD cards, xD cards, the complete Memory Stick series, miniSD and microSD.

Besides, it also supports the most recent SD 2.0 (SDHC) and MMC 4.0 standards for hi-end memory cards.
 

Epson has made announcement about the launch of its new portable photo printer, called the PictureMate PM270 4R, in the Indian market.

Offering up a package of features in its small compact body, the printer is very user-friendly, and has less buttons.

The PictureMate PM270 can easily be folded into a box, and its handle help users to take it from one place to another without any difficulty.

Its dedicated zoom function together with a better design like membrane textured buttons gives a new look to the figures rather than plastic keys.

Washington, Dec 25: You may soon be able to listen to your favourite music over loudspeakers without annoying people standing nearby, for researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have invented a sound system, which focuses sound waves from several loudspeakers onto a listening zone.

The ‘personal sound system’ was devised by researcher Chan-Hui Lee and team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

"You may soon be able to enjoy audio without those uncomfortable earphones or headsets and not bother your neighbours," Live Science quoted Lee, as saying.

LG Electronics India Private Ltd (LGEIL) has declared that the company would launch around 20 new cell phones by the coming year.

Additionally, the company aspires to triple its business in the GSM section, and plans to sell four million handsets by the coming year (2008).

The company has decided to invest more than Rs 11 billion (USD 278 million) by 2011 in order to reinforce its share in the Indian market.

V Ramachandran, Director, Sales and Marketing of LG said, "We are targeting 8-10 per cent market share in couple of years...we expect to double our handset revenues numbers."

Mustek will introduce its new PF-i700 digital photo frame for iPods for music, videos and photos, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada in January next year.

PF-i700 features a 7-inch color digital LCD display with 480 x 234 resolution. It sports an integrated Apple iPod docking station to play iPod files.

“The new PF-i700 has expanded multimedia capabilities to play all these digital entertainment options on one screen without the cable clutter, redefining today’s iPod experience,” said David Ficken, the National Sales & Marketing Manager for Mustek.

London, Dec 26: Soon, computer games will become more realistic and lifelike than ever before, for scientists from the Glasgow University and the Semiconductor Research Corporation in the US are developing a new breed of "super chips”.

According to the scientists, the silicon chips controlling existing computers and games consoles have already reached their peak as far as speed and ability are concerned.

Lead researcher Prof Iain Thayne and other experts from Glasgow University and the Semiconductor Research Corporation in the US are now working on a 1.2 million pounds project for designing a new generation of microchips that will enable the creation of more complex, realistic graphics.