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Tech News for Thursday October 26th 2000

Playstation 2: Now shipping in the US.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: ZDNET Added by: Kim Heise

For lunch today my friend and I visited the local EBX store where they had a Playstation2 running various demos. At this point I must say I'm still waiting to be impressed. The graphics do look very "smooth" from the fighting game and NFL sports game shown but it's nothing overly exciting. Some of the screen shots that have been floating around from upcoming titles look very impressive so I will reserve my final judgment for later. The DVD addition is a nice feature but it appears as if you are required to purchase an additional adapter card to take advantage of that particular feature.

The PlayStation video game console has been one of the most successful products in the history of consumer electronics, and Sony had planned to build on that success with its PlayStation 2.
With only 500,000 units available to retailers by Thursday's launch, that won't happen immediately. That's the bad news. The good news, analysts say, is that consumers have short memories.

"Twelve months from now, people will have forgotten about this," said Gartner Group analyst P.J. McNealy. "The majority of the 75-some-odd-million owners of the original PlayStation will remain loyal."
The PlayStation 2 incorporates home-entertainment features designed to expand its audience beyond hard-core gamers. Games for the original PlayStation can be played on PlayStation 2.
Blaming a component shortage, Sony (NYSE: SNE) last month said it would ship half as many units as it originally promised by the Oct. 26 launch date, plus 100,000 units per week until the end of 2000. That may make the PlayStation 2 hard to find this holiday season, but analysts say it won't hurt the long-term success of the system.

Hitachi Claims Highest-Capacity Disk Drive.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: TechWeb Added by: Kim Heise

Hitachi has managed to squeeze 73.9GB of data on a drive that's 1inch by 3.5 inch in size. That beats the closest competition by 3.9GB but wait a couple of days and see what Maxtor or Seagate is going to drum up. The hard-drive race is a game of leap frog that changes almost weekly.

Hitachi Ltd. is expected to announce on Thursday the DK32DJ-72, which the company claims to be the highest-capacity 1-inch-high, 3.5-inch hard drive available, at 73.9 Gbytes. The 10,025-RPM drive contains a standard 4 Mbyte buffer with an option to expand it to 16 Mbytes. Pricing and availability were not disclosed.

Internet World Gets A Whiff Of Click 'N Sniff.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: TechWeb Added by: Kim Heise

Now this is something very unusual if you asked me for my opinion. I heard about this technology (and I think it's been mentioned here in the past) but I figured it would be "vapor-ware". Not so if you visited Internet World.

DigiScents technology will be available in Asia-Pacific via the Internet, e-commerce, and interactive television network of Pacific Century CyberWorks Ltd. (stock: PCW). DigiScents also has an alliance with The Procter & Gamble Co. (stock: PG).
"Digital scent will be added to the streaming media, e-mail, online games, e-commerce, and advertising," Bellenson said. "You will be able to watch scented flash presentations, send scented greeting cards, download aromatherapy tracks, and design your own smells and flavors."
Co-founders Bellenson and Dexster Smith got the idea for DigiScents while vacationing in Florida. While savoring the flavors of tropical drinks, the fragrance of suntan lotion, and the soothing aroma of the ocean, they imagined broadcasting these scents over the Internet for others to enjoy.

Qualcomm rolls out chips to enable wireless data at 2.4-Mbits.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: SemiBIZNews Added by: Kim Heise

A blazing 2.4Mbit data stream from your cellphone (the though of the radiation to your brain scares me) would be very exciting. You could stream MP3 audio or even watch a movie on your portable wireless device - this is one more distraction on America's motor freeways that we do not need.

Having 2.4Mbit wireless communication in the house would be fantastic.

Qualcomm Inc. here today officially announced its cellular-phone and base-station chip set line that would enable handsets to obtain wireless data like the Internet at speeds up to 2.4-Mbits.
The new MSM5500 and CSM5500 line of chip sets supports the so-called 1x Evolution (1xEV) standard. This technology evolved from Qualcomm's proprietary High Data Rate (HDR) scheme, which enables wireless data at speeds up to 2.4-Mbits.
1xEV uses a spectrally efficient 1.25-MHz channel to provide a peak rate data throughput of 2.4-Mbits. This technology will provide the lowest cost per bit of any existing technology for wireless high-speed data transmission, said Don Schrock, president of Qualcomm's CDMA Technologies Division.
The MSM5500 chip set and system software provides several features on the same device, including Bluetooth, GPS, MP3, MPEG-4, and Compact Media Extension (CMX) MIDI-based multimedia software.

3D movies on your PC.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: MSNBC Added by: Kim Heise

I have yet to visit their web site and download the free-plugin to see how it works. Let me know if you try it.

Many of the displays at this year’s Internet World show deal with the business end of the Web. Companies are hawking server, networking, e-commerce and online banking solutions in hundreds of giant, multimedia displays. But there was one small booth that attracted a steady stream of gawkers — standing around with silly 3D glasses on their faces and their mouths wide open.

Dynamic Digital Depth, Inc. (DDD) was founded in western Australia under the name Xenotech more than seven years ago. Since that time, it has been hard at work, in its own words, “defining the 3D experience”. That means developing both software and hardware 3D technologies. Nearly three years ago, DDD delivered the first screenings of 3D giant-screen IMAX film segments.

Now, DDD is introducing its OpticBOOM Stereo 3D plug-in for the Apple QuickTime media player. DDD explains in their own words how its 3D system is different from the 3D you see in video games:

“Geometric 3D, like an artists picture, is a 2D representation of a 3D world. Light, shading, textures and vanishing points are used to create the appearance of depth, but the image remains 2D. Stereo 3D recreates images so we can view them the way we actually view the world, with a left eye and right eye view. We see what we would see if we were really there.”

MS announces pricing for UltimateTV satellite service.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: CNET Added by: Kim Heise

I'm not sure the average consumer is ready for this sort of technology. While it is very exciting and we will undoubtedly see devices like this in households of tomorrow I think people are still having a tough time trying to figure out what to do with it now. I can't see myself sitting in front of the TV to surf the web and would prefer to just sit and turn off my brain to a good movie. On occasion it would be handy to surf the web for information regarding a topic of interest on the TV but that would be rare.

Microsoft announced pricing Thursday for its UltimateTV satellite service, which allows customers to record their favorite TV shows onto a hard drive, surf the Internet, and play along with game shows.
The service, announced in June, will be launched in conjunction with satellite service provider DirecTV and consumer electronics giant Thomson Multimedia, which makes the set-top boxes. The service will likely launch in December, Microsoft said.

For $9.95 a month, subscribers get the digital video recording service, interactive television and three hours of Internet access. Those who want more Net access can either use their own Internet service providers and pay $14.95 per month or hand over $29.95 each month for unlimited UltimateTV access. None of those prices includes DirecTV's monthly fee for satellite TV or the cost of the set-top box, which can run several hundred dollars.
Karl Empey, Microsoft's product marketing manager, said the consumers most likely to subscribe to UltimateTV will probably have an Internet service provider already, so most will probably opt for the $14.95 plan. There's one catch, though: UltimateTV is compatible with many ISPs, but not with America Online.

Napster for the Mac.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: BetaNews Added by: Kim Heise

Mac users are not to be left out in the dark with Napster. Go and download the first beta release for Mac users from http://www.napster.com.

For those of you who may be interested, Reuters is reporting that Napster has rolled out a beta version of Napster for the Macintosh. Working with the authors of the "Macster" software, the new software should provide Mac users with a good solution to sharing MP3 files over et. It seems that the lawsuits are not slowing down Napster at all, as they roll out new software and continue talks with other companies about the current state of the company and future business opportunities.

IW2000: Voice-Driven Web Browsing.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: BetaNews Added by: Kim Heise

This looks like very promising technology specially for situations when you shouldn't be distracted by keyboards and screens. For example while driving down the road in your car you could ask for directions using your voice commands.

Live From IW2000: A very interesting demo was going on as I walked by the One Voice Technologies booth here at Internet world. When I stopped to check it out I was pretty impressed with what I saw. With this new software, dubbed IVAN (Intelligent Voice Animated Navigator) and a microphone you can navigate your way through the Web by talking to the little IVAN charecter.
You simply ask questions in normal language (like Ask Jeeves only you speak) and the speech interpreter and IVAN do the rest. According to the product information, IVAN "understands not just how words sound, but what they mean." He is also a dynamic program, that learns from each request and can quickly adapt to you and your style. And because he is "intelligent" you can search by concept rather than the usual keyword. Businesses can use IVAN to talk to customers and "develop true one-on-one relationships."
Along with IVAN, One Voice Technologies also has VoiceSite, which can create two-way conversation with site users through an applet. Dialogue Studio (part of VoiceSite) does not affect existing HTML code nor does it require special tags or code.
The other part of VoiceSite, Dialogue Design Language, can be used in any scripting language and utilizes voice-enabled pull-down menus, check boxes, and radio buttons for customer interactivity.
I highly recommend checking out IVAN, it seemed to be a very interesting and innovative technology that could be fun to use. You can check it out at MyIvan.com or visit One Voice Technologies at www.onevoicetech.com

ATI R200 info.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: Digit-Life Added by: Kim Heise

As if ATi has not surprised the video industry enough this year when they stunned us with the very respectable ATi Radeon video card.

We continue to publish the facts on different companies future products. So, recently we informed you about the second generation Radeon chip from ATI code-named R200. Today we have some details for you (we can also talk about Radeon VE, but there is nothing special in it).
R200 won't be only a higher clocked chip but it will have some improvements in its architecture - first of all it will have 4 pipelines with 3 texture blocks on each pipeline. Besides, R200 will support the technology similar to Matrox DualHead or NVIDIA TwinView.
R200 will be announced in H1'2001 (probably in April-May).
But ATI will not be alone with its announcements in spring :)

Adaptec Seizes More Than $1 Million in Counterfeit Products.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: AnandTech Added by: Kim Heise

You see hundreds of counterfeit sunglasses and clothing ware on the market but in the technology sector the forgers had better be careful.

More than 5,000 faked Adaptec AHA-2940 and AHA-3940 host bus adapters, together with infringing software and documentation, were confiscated by U.S. marshals, October 15, at GlobalNet Computer Components of Canoga Park, Calif., Amcotec, Inc. of Livermore, Calif., Lexy Pacific Corp. of Mountain View, Calif., Globe Cargo, Inc. of Hawthorne, Calif., Unisun Group, Inc. of Foothill Ranch, Calif., and Global Source Technology of Thornton, Colo. Several other defendants are also being sued on allegations of trademark and copyright infringement for trafficking and possessing counterfeit goods, according to Adaptec president and CEO, Bob Stephens.

Spec released for PCI bus successor.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: ZDNET Added by: Kim Heise

It's about time the motherboard/chipset designers do something about the PCI bus. The PCI bus is clocked at a depressing 33mhz while your CPU runs at 1,000mhz! Can you spell bottleneck?

InfiniBand 1.0 is the first version of the standard being touted as the successor to today's PCI bus architecture.
InfiniBand, which relies on a switched fabric-based architecture, will provide a scalable throughput performance range of 500MB per second up to 6GB per second.
More specifically, a single InfiniBand link operates at 250MB per second point-to-point in a single direction, but since each link consists of a pair of "fabric threads," with one dedicated to input and another dedicated to output, the total throughput is measured at 500MB per second.
Bandwidth can be further increased by adding more links, or channels. Currently, development plans are under way for four-channel InfiniBand, offering 2GB-per-second throughput, and 12-channel InfiniBand, offering 6GB-per-second throughput.

ATi Lands A Deal With Dell.
Posted: 10/26/2000 Source: Electic Tech Added by: Kim Heise

ATi has lost several OEM's due to nVidia's aggressive market move with the GeForce series video cards. With the recent release of the Radeon card ATi has once again turned some heads. While it's by no means the fastest video card it does have more features than any competing product for the price. If ATi fixes the driver head-aches the company can return to being a competitor to nVidia.

ATI Technologies Inc. announced today that Dell Computer Corporation has selected the RADEON™ 32MB DDR graphics board to provide the graphics and video acceleration for a number of Dell Dimension 4100 desktop systems, designed for consumers and small business operators.
The RADEON 32MB DDR board delivers high performance, extensive functionality, and industry-leading multimedia capabilities supported by double data rate memory, the fastest memory solution on the market. It will be matched in the Dimension 4100 with up to a 1Ghz Intel® microprocessor, 30 GB hard drive and DVD ROM drive.
"ATI is pleased and excited about the selection of the RADEON 32MB DDR graphics board by Dell for some Dimension 4100 systems," said Gerd Queisser, senior vice president, worldwide sales, ATI Technologies Inc. "The board offers industry-leading performance and is ideal for the OEM who wants to differentiate its desk top product in the marketplace."

Tech News for Tuesday October 24th 2000

Ray Ozzie to unveil Napster-style networking.
Posted: 10/24/2000 Source: ZDNET Added by: Kim Heise

ZDNET posted this brief news flash this morning on their news burst section. No more details at this time but it could be interesting.

Ray Ozzie, the programmer who designed Lotus Notes, is ready to unveil his next big software idea: a product that he hopes will transform small-group computer collaboration and bring Napster-style networking to the corporate world. Full story to follow. -- Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft Bolsters Security In Office 10 Beta 2.
Posted: 10/24/2000 Source: TechWeb Added by: Kim Heise

Microsoft is beefing up the latest release of Office 10 beta 2 to include some more solid security features. No word on a final release date but I would expect it sometime during Q2 2001.

A second beta of Office 10, the code name for the best-selling productivity suite from Microsoft Corp., will be shipped to a large set of technical beta customers next week, the Redmond, Wash. software giant said Monday. Beta 2 is said to include additional security features in an Outlook E-mail Security Update. Publisher, a Microsoft (stock: MSFT) program for creating business cards, newsletters, brochures, greeting cards, and more, has been added to Office 10 Beta 2. PhotoDraw, however, will not be included in Beta 2.

Intel rolls out integrated chip set for mobile market.
Posted: 10/24/2000 Source: SemiBIZNews Added by: Kim Heise

This took me a little by surprise. I had no idea that Intel was planning to release a new integrated chip for laptops. This is good news because some of the new features include AGP4x, ATA/100 and Dolby Digital full surround sound. I suspect the next generation laptops are going to pack substantially more multi-media power than previous generations.

Stepping up its efforts in the portable computer market, Intel Corp. here today introduced an integrated chip set for use in notebook PCs and other products.
Designed for mobile systems based on Intel's Pentium III and Celeron processors, the 815EM chip set integrates core logic, graphics, as well as options to utilize external AGP4X or AGP2X controllers. The new chip set also supports the company's SpeedStep technology featured in mobile Pentium III processors, said Don MacDonald, director of marketing of Intel's Mobile Platforms Group.
The 815EM chipset is based on Intel's advanced Hub Architecture, featuring a new I/O controller hub (ICH2-M) for greater system performance and flexibility. The ICH2-M enables several features, including an additional Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, a local area network (LAN) connect interface, dual Ultra ATA/100 controllers for faster hard drive performance, and support for Dolby Digital full surround sound.
The 815EM chip set is designed with integrated graphics and external AGP4X graphics that can be easily upgraded. The chip also features integrated hardware-assisted motion compensation to improve DVD video quality and a digital video-out port to connect mobile PCs directly to televisions or flat panel displays.
In 1,000-unit quantities, the Intel 815EM chip set is priced at $47.50 each.

Retailers plugging PlayStation 2, but consumers beware.
Posted: 10/24/2000 Source: CNET Added by: Kim Heise

The way it works is simple: If you did not pre-order the much hyped Sony Playstation 2 then you can expect a long wait as Sony is having a very tough time keeping up with the demands. At this point the Sega Dreamcast sales are up substantially because it looks like Sony is not going to be able to fill even half of the demand by Christmas.

Also next year look out for Nintendo's Game Cube which looks very impressive.

Ad circulars in weekend newspapers began touting the PlayStation 2 (PS2), although retailers concede that your chances of getting one are slim when the game console debuts Thursday.
The ads themselves sound promising. Target, for example, is offering a free vertical stand to those who buy the game console at Sony's suggested retail price of $299. Best Buy is also selling units for $299 and including a PS2 coupon book. Circuit City said it will offer the game console for $349, throwing in the Fantavision game, Gameshark sampler disk, and other goodies.

However, the fine print was less encouraging. Neither Target nor Best Buy are offering rain checks, meaning it's catch as catch can. Circuit City has a warning on its Web site that there are only a "small number" of machines in each store and that it expects they will sell out within minutes of stores opening at 10 a.m. Thursday.
Sony last month chopped in half the number of units it expected to ship at launch, to 500,000 units from earlier projections of 1 million. The crunch is expected to hit hardest the smaller retailers and online stores that had hoped to offer the game consoles this holiday season.
"I think every retailer is in the position that they did not receive as many consoles as they initially expected or as many consoles as they can sell," Circuit City spokesman Bill Cimino said. He would not specify how many units the company managed to secure but said each of the company's 619 outlets will have some Thursday on a first-come basis.
Target and Best Buy also refused to say how many PS2s they will have on their shelves Thursday. However, Kmart is advertising that it will have at least 25,000 of the game consoles for the debut.

KDE 2 Final Released.
Posted: 10/24/2000 Source: BetaNews Added by: Kim Heise

If you are a X-Windows (UNIX) user and have been eagerly anticipating the release of KDE 2.0 desktop interface then your wait is finally over. X-Windows UNIX graphical interfaces are not as severely limited as Microsoft Windows operating systems and KDE is just one possible interface you can use with X-Windows.

After a long beta period, the good folks at KDE have released their latest and greatest shell over X Windows, KDE 2.0. The new release comes bundled with some neat new features that give Gnome a run for its money... er, open source profits. Dubbed Kopernicus, the latest version is developed by creators spanning over 30 countries.

"With the experience gained from developing KDE 1, we almost completely re-engineered KDE 2 to make it even more intuitive, powerful and user friendly," noted founder of the KDE project, Matthias Ettrich.

As stated in the press release, "KDE 2 offers the desktop user the benefit of standards compliance and an array of new technologies, from Konqueror, a full featured web browser and file manager, to KOffice, an integrated office suite, as well as a slew of usability enhancements, such as KDE's expanded themeability and configurability and a new KDE Help Center. It also offers developers an assortment of powerful new tools -- from KParts, KDE's component object technology, to KIO, KDE's network transparent I/O architecture -- for rapid development and deployment of first-rate free or proprietary software."

Check out the rest of the press release here.

New filter scours servers for illicit content.
Posted: 10/24/2000 Source: CNET Added by: Kim Heise

The spread of porn on the Internet is very much out of control and some sort of filtering system would be much applauded. It makes me very nervous to allow children on the Internet with so much smut online. I'm not saying it needs to be banned but as a individual you should be able to work (and choose) in a environment where you are not bombarded by porn or any other spam.

A Paris-based technology company Tuesday will unveil a filter that sends an email alert to customers whenever it finds a lewd picture or photo on a Web site. ImageFilter, the newest product from Internet infrastructure provider LookThatUp, is an "image recognition engine" that breaks down photos or drawings into their unique visual attributes.

ImageFilter software classifies visual information by color, texture, shape and spatial configuration. It then analyzes the data to create a sort of visual thumbprint for each image that can be compared to other images that may be perceived as pornographic. If a client's server is hosting a questionable image, ImageFilter will send an email alert to that client.
Conventional filters detect offensive words or phrases in blocks of text. Such filters are unreliable and unable to keep up with Internet slang that can sneak past them. Few filters can detect lewd art or photos because a photo's pixels are far more complicated to analyze than blocks of text.
Alex Moha, vice president of business development for LookThatUp, said ImageFilter would be perfect for companies such as eBay, which hosts thousands of products posted by individuals. The San Jose, Calif.-based auction company announced plans last week to ban graphic sexual pictures and relegate steamier items to a "Mature Audiences" area.

New Intel shortage shock.
Posted: 10/24/2000 Source: The Register Added by: Kim Heise

As if Colorado doesn't have enough growth it looks like Intel is going to be attracting more people to the once serene state.

Over 2000 people will eventually work at the fab, and some 800 technicians and admin staff have already been taken on to work at the Colorado Springs plant, reports The Denver Post. The opening date for the 500,000sq ft plant was originally scheduled for next month, with production starting a few months later.

But a 120,000sq ft cleanroom won't be ready until early next year as a result of a shortage of plumbers and electricians

"There's a nationwide shortage of electric workers and pipefitters, and we've had troubles finding enough of them," said the construction manager for the plant.

Seagate future plans.
Posted: 10/24/2000 Source: Digit-Life Added by: Kim Heise

The ever changing hard-drive industry is always working up some new surprises and here is the latest plans from Seagate.

We'd like to tell you about Seagate's plans on HDDs for the nearest future.
The hottest facts: the company will renew its Enterprise (i.e. SCSI disks) products line; next Monday the Barracuda 18XL successor will be officially announced - it will be Barracuda 36ES (7200 rpm, two disks, U160 interface), which will appear on sale in November-December.
And now about announcements scheduled for the beginning of November (probably, Nov. 6th):
- At Mainstream segment Cheetah 18XL will be replaced by Cheetah 36XL (10000rpm, U160/FC). Shipments will start in Q1'2001.
73LP (10000rpm, U160/FC) will be the added to Cheetah 36 LP - Q1'2001.
- At Capacity segment Barracuda 180 (or Barracuda 144+, 7200rpm, U160) will appear at Q1'2001 to replace Cheetah 73HH
- And finally at Performance segment we'll see the new member of Cheetah X15 - the first Seagate's disk with Ulra 320 interface - Cheetah X15 (36/18GB) - Q2'2001.
As for SerialATA - Seagate is going to release the first devices using this interface in mid 2001.

PCI-X - The Next I/O Revolution.
Posted: 10/24/2000 Source: HipHardware Added by: Kim Heise

It's about time we do something about the over-taxed PCI bus system on today's PC's. Our processors are cruising at 1ghz or more but our PCI bus architecture is still crawling at a miserable 33mhz. The new PCI-X architecture will be clocked at a respectable 133mhz.

PCI-X uses what is called “Register-to-Register” protocol. The Sender, just as before, sends the signal to whichever Receiver it needs to communicate with. Once it has propagated across the bus, the signal is sent to a register (flip-flop circuit) that holds the signal until it is needed in the next cycle. By doing this, the Receiver has an entire clock cycle to decode the signal, and respond accordingly. On the third cycle, the Receiver responds to the Sender and the data transaction can take place. In other words, if there is a transaction that takes 20 cycles on the current PCI bus, it will take 21 on the PCI-X bus, as it needs the extra cycle to decode the logic.
Now you’re probably thinking that this will cause it to run slower because it’s taking an extra cycle. But we’re not running at 33 MHz, we’re running at 133 MHz; 4 times faster than the old PCI bus with the same amount of data integrity. It takes a 33 MHz bus 600 nanoseconds to complete 20 cycles. The 133 MHz PCI-X bus takes 150 nanoseconds to complete the same amount of cycles. Even at 66 MHz, it finishes the task in 300 nanoseconds, and with twice the data integrity of the conventional 66 MHz PCI bus.

Tech News for Monday October 23d 2000

AT&T considers four-way breakup.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: ZDNET Added by: Kim Heise

It's going to be very interesting to see what happens to their stock over the next couple of days. Also I hope the split does not create too much confusion within the company that leads to a downgrade in customer services.

Plan would create separate consumer, business, wireless and broadband operations through a complex series of spinoffs and tracking stocks.

AT&T Corp. has created a plan to break the telecommunications giant into four stand-alone businesses, with its largest and most profitable unit, the Business Services division, becoming the new AT&T, according to people familiar with the situation.
The plan, dubbed "Project Grand Slam," would create separate consumer, business, wireless and broadband operations through a complex series of spinoffs and tracking stocks.

RealNetworks launches new RealAudio 8 with Sony.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: ZDNET Added by: Kim Heise

RealNetworks is getting very nervous over Microsoft's push into the online media streaming market and the company hopes a deal with Sony is going to boost their market share.

Internet media software company RealNetworks Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK) Monday unveiled its latest technology for broadcasting sound over the Internet, RealAudio 8, teaming up with electronics giant Sony Corp. in a move it hopes will one-up crosstown rival Microsoft Corp.

LSI Logic, AMD Team Up For CDMA Solutions.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: TechWeb Added by: Kim Heise

AMD is expanding it's horizons which is a good method for not having "all the eggs in one basket". For example with all of Intel's CPU debacles the company barely "sweats" because they have so many other products on the market.

LSI Logic Corp. (stock: LSI) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (stock: AMD) said Monday that they will collaborate on applications -- such as video streaming and Internet audio -- for CDMA wireless phones. Under the agreement, the companies will develop optimal interfaces between baseband processors and flash memory devices for the CDMA marketplace. In addition, the companies will develop multichip package solutions to house the product. LSI Logic, Milpitas, Caif., makes communication chips for broadband, data networking, wireless, and set-top box applications. AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., is a semiconductor manufacturer.

Smart Tires to Warn Drivers Via Mobile Messages.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: Yahoo Added by: Kim Heise

One message you would never like to see from your pager "I'm going to explode!".

Talking cars may not yet be cruising the roads, but in the not too distant future, drivers will start receiving real-time mobile phone messages from their wheels, a Finnish tiremaker said on Monday.
In the first wave of intelligent tires, individual chips installed in each wheel will work together to monitor tire pressure and temperature, reporting changes to the driver's mobile phone, tiremaker Nokian Renkaat said.
No extra installations are necessary within the car itself, the only requirement is that drivers own a phone that uses Bluetooth, a technology that allows phones to communicate wirelessly with other devices, it said.
The plan is to develop the technology so that future tires will also warn drivers of tire-wear, hydro-planing and slush-planing as well as informing them of theft.
Nokian Tires, which is in the process of looking for development partners, said the system would be available from next year, with trucks, vans and high-speed rated passenger car tires being the first to be installed with the smart chips.

Intel Pentium 4 available now.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: iXBT Labs Added by: Kim Heise

If you have $1270 USD in your pocket and you have nothing better to do with it - like purchase a whole computer including monitor - then you can pickup Intel's much hyped Pentium 4 processor. Don't forget to include the cost of the plane ticket or shipping charges from Japan.

Well, it looks as if Pentium 4 launching wouldn’t be postponed any more. In other words, on 20 November we will witness the announcement of this new CPU working at 1.4GHz and 1.5GHz. The official cost for 1000 pieces is set $644 and $819 per unit correspondingly. However, if you are anxious to get one now you don’t need to wait till the official launching. The Pentium 4 1.4GHz samples are already available in Japanese shops for $1270. Just go and get it!

Palm seeks new sources as industry faces parts shortage.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: CNET Added by: Kim Heise

This is one reason why Palm PDA's are a little expensive because there is a major shortage of components. For sometime it was impossible to find a color Palm PDA because of display shortages.

Palm, the world's No. 1 maker of handheld electronic organizers, is increasing suppliers of parts needed to manufacture its Palm VII and other branded products, as it faces an industrywide parts shortage.
In short supply are flat-screen panels, flash memory and radio transmitters, Satjiv Chahil, chief marketing officer at Palm, said in an interview. The shortage stems from growing demand for mobile devices, such as electronic organizers, digital cameras and mobile phones, he said.

Lucent replaces CEO, cuts outlook.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: CNET Added by: Kim Heise

Out with the old and in with the new.

Telecommunications equipment maker Lucent Technologies ousted chairman and chief executive officer Rich McGinn on Monday, replacing him with former chairman Henry Schacht in what analysts are saying is a much-needed overhaul.
Lucent, which is expected to announce its earnings after the market closes Monday, also cut its fiscal first-quarter outlook, saying it expects revenue to decline about 7 percent and pro forma earnings to break even. Lucent was originally planning to announce earnings Tuesday.

Surf Safely with SafeWeb.com.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: ActiveWin Added by: Kim Heise

This is a pretty smart idea to make it easier and more secure to surf the web in privacy. That's why governmental organizations who wish to spend money on web monitoring tools are wasting their money (and ours!). Think about it: For every new monitoring system someone will develop a work around to circumvent the recording system

A new web service providing security and privacy has been officially launched today. The free service, entitled SafeWeb, allows any user to type in an Internet address, and then view that page in a new "safe" browser window. The page is fetched without exposing any of your computer's details, and encrypted before being sent. Any data which is sent from your computer is also encrypted.
SafeWeb's mission is to be "nothing less than safeguarding each individual's privacy and security on the Internet." The company intends to become the Internet's first and premiere Privacy Service Provider (PSP).
You can try out the service for yourself at SafeWeb.com[https://www.safeweb.com].

DirectX 8 - RC 1 Released To Testers.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: ActiveWin Added by: Kim Heise

Just and FYI for those of you who are waiting for Microsoft's latest version of DirectX. So far as I know the ATI Radeon is the only fully DirectX 8.0 hardware compliant video card on the market.

For those of you who are not familiar with DirectX it is a applications interface between programs (such as games) and your multimedia hardware (audio/input/video).

Microsoft has reached what is expected to be the final release candidate for the next version of DirectX - DirectX 8. Release Candidate 1 was release yesterday to Microsoft's beta testers and is due to go gold as early as next week with a release in 2 weeks time.

Guide To Benchmarking.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: nVNews Added by: Kim Heise

Benchmarking your system is not as easy as using one single program. To obtain accurate and unbiased results you need to employ several benchmarking tools to obtain a final result. Mike Chambers who hosts nVNews has posted a online guide to benchmarking your system.

Most benchmarking is done using games on PC's because nothing taxes the system more than a process intensive 3D game that fully tests your sound and video hardware.

Since I run a variety of benchmarks here at nV News, I thought it would be a good idea to put a game benchmarking guide together. Benchmarks serve a purpose in that they gauge the performance of your PC. In most cases, benchmarks concentrate on measuring the performance of a specific sub-system as there are benchmarks designed to test the processor, memory, hard drive, modem, etc.

This guide covers benchmarking the performance of the 3D graphics subsystem by testing with an assortment of popular games. The benchmarking process I cover in this guide is based on the procedures I normally use when benchmarking the performance of a graphics card for a review.

Ultra160 MegaRAID For Itanium.
Posted: 10/23/2000 Source: AMI Added by: Kim Heise

No matter how cheap IDE hard-drives have become SCSI drives are still more reliable and require much less CPU-overhead for severe disk activity which is typical for multi-user servers.

Looks like Intel's Itanium server platforms are going to pack some serious punch in terms of storage bandwidth. Take a look at this:

American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) today announced its MegaRAID® controllers--including AMI's state-of-the-art 64-bit, 66-MHz Ultra160 SCSI RAID controllers--will support the Intel® Itanium(TM) processor. AMI has passed all preliminary testing on its IA-64 ready Ultra160 MegaRAID controllers, the Express 500, Elite 1600 and Enterprise 1600, for compatibility with Intel's Itanium processor platform. The test results assure AMI's customers that its line of controllers will support future motherboard processing technologies.
For entry-level needs, the Express 500, a 32-bit, 33 MHz PCI single channel Ultra160 SCSI RAID controller, is the ideal single channel solution that provides unequaled performance at a reasonable price. The Elite 1600, a 64-bit 66 MHz PCI RAID controller, was designed with mid-range system requirements in mind. As the only product on the market with two Ultra160 SCSI channels in a true half-size form factor, the Elite 1600 is ideal for integrators, resellers and OEMs searching for enterprise quality for their mid-range designs. With four channels of Ultra160 SCSI at its heart, Enterprise 1600 is poised to take over the high-end of the PCI RAID market with its blistering speed. It is a 64-bit 66 MHz PCI RAID controller featuring four Ultra160 SCSI channels, 500 MB/sec. sustained sequential throughput and multiple battery backup configuration support.

Last modified: Friday, April 04, 2008