Tomorrow's News Today

Please visit our Sponsor

RSS Feeds

• Anandtech

• CNET News

• CrankyGeeks

• DailyTech

• Endgadget

• Security Now

• TechARP

• TGDaily

• Winsupersite

The New 'Face' of E-Mail.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: Fox News  Added by: Kim Heise

Facemail has developed an interesting and unique method for delivering email to your desktop. Not sure how popular this will be in the corporate work area since the thought of 50 employees all having their machines talking back and forth would lead to insanity.

Though the software, which can be downloaded from www.facemail.com, is free, LifeFX licenses the technology to companies that use the virtual people as guides or greeters on their Web sites. Some customers include Whirlpool, KiwiLogic and IBM, among others.

NVIDIA's new pricing strategy.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: XBit Labs  Added by: Kim Heise

Expect to see the price of the GeForce3 to drop to around $350 or less by the time the card actually ships. ATI and the new Kryo II video card are beginning to nip on the heels of NVIDIA's latest flagship - The GeForce3. Also I suspect all the media comments regarding the insane price of $550 when it was first announced have been wearing off on NVIDIA's marketing department.

NVIDIA today announced a new pricing strategy determining the recommended prices on the graphics cards based on NVIDIA’s chips. According to the today’s press release, NVIDIA has added a new set of board level products and price points designed to address the high-end, midrange and value retail market segments. This new strategy includes a family of desktop products ranging from $99 to $399:

GeForce2 MX 200 32MB - $99
GeForce2 MX 400 64MB - $129
GeForce2 Pro 64MB - $199
GeForce3 64MB - $399

The rumors about GeForce3 based graphics cards to be much cheaper than it had been expected before have been confirmed. NVIDIA reduced significantly the recommended price of GeForce3 based graphics cards, which made all graphics card manufacturers drop the starting cost of their products. By the time the cards begin selling in retail, which is expected to take place in May, the price is supposed to get even lower that’s why it should be quite possible to get a GeForce3 for about $360-370 at that time.

D-Link DI-711 Wireless Home DSL/Cable Router review.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: System Logic  Added by: Kim Heise

It appears that D-Link has added all the bells/whistles to their wireless DSL/Cable router and for a reasonable price. System Logic reviews this handy solution to anyone who despises tearing up their house/office to drop in network cables.

Wireless routers allow you to share a single internet connection (DSL/Cable) wirelessly through out your house/office (depending on the size of your house/office). Imagine sitting by the pool with your laptop being able to connect wirelessly to the internet.

The idea behind this product is obviously to introduce wireless networking into the home and allow wireless connections to integrate with wired connections. It's a step forward in technology for use in households. This is a product made to help people implement a wireless network in their homes along with their wired network. D-Link has been aggressively introducing new and better networking products in the wireless section for the past few months and it keeps improving and getting easier so that's a big plus for D-Link and their ongoing support for new technologies. Other companies such as Linksys, Sohoware, etc… have products but not near the selection available for different people as D-Link have.

Portwell EZDRV-300NCF review.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: PC Stats  Added by: Kim Heise

Take a look at this three-in-one combo drive which sports a CDROM, a floppy drive and a hard drive which all fits in ONE 5.25" drive bay.

Every once in a while we stubble across a really useful product. The Portwell EZDRV-300 fits into a 5.25" drive bay, and what makes it really unique is that is contains a CD-ROM, floppy drive and hard drive in just one bay! The unit manages to squeeze in all these things because it uses drives originally designed for notebooks - stack up an ultra-thin CD-ROM, FDD, and a 3.5" HDD and they are less than 40mm in height.

Ultimately this set of drives is the perfect space saver for cases which have run out of free bays, for serves where expansion space is always limited, or for anyone faced with installing or testing lots of computers (like a IT person) that generally carries around a HDD, FDD and CDROM taped together to get the job done. Of course that last one won't apply to many of you, but in terms of space saving capabilities this is one very compact solution. It can give any server, or for that matter any case, some well deserved extra room for burners, zip drives, RAID drives, or whatever.

Apple release QuickTime 5.0
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: Apple  Added by: Kim Heise

Apple has finally released QuickTime 5.0 for both Windows and Apple operating systems. The new media player supports a multitude of new file formats. Take a look and see:

QuickTime 5 is the latest version of Apple's complete technology for handling video, sound, animation, graphics, text, music, and even 360-degree virtual reality (VR) scenes. A gateway for rich media including images, music, MIDI, MP3 and more, QuickTime lets you experience more than 200 kinds of digital media with your Mac or PC and it offers unparalleled quality, ease of use and functionality.

Seagate Barracuda 180GB review.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: Storage Review  Added by: Kim Heise

No, I did not make a typing mistake and did not accidentally write 180GB instead of 80GB. Don't expect to find one of Seagate's new 180GB drives in your local CompUSA or Best Buy any time soon.

One such niche is the market for massive capacity. Huge databases, data warehouses, etc require multi-terabyte arrays to effectively manage information. A large-capacity drive, even in a 1.6" high form factor, can yield long-term benefits in reliability and cost. Not so long ago one required hundreds of drives to create a magical TB array. With drives such as Seagate's new Barracuda 180, however, a fully redundant TB array requires only 12 drives.

The 'Cuda 180 is a 1.6" high drive that packs 15 gigs of data onto each of its 12 platters to yield its monstrous 180 gig capacity. Since maximal storage space with a minimum amount of heat and power consumption was the goal, Seagate's largest drive features a 7200 RPM spindle speed. At 7.4 milliseconds, the 180's specified seek time is on the high side for a contemporary SCSI drive. The drive features a rather large 16 megabyte buffer. A five year warranty protects the drive. While the unit reviewed here features a standard Ultra160 SCSI interface, as one may expect, the 'Cuda 180 is also available in SCA and Fibre Channel versions.

AMD touts size advantage of new chip.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

AMD's upcoming new processor will be about half the size of Intel's Pentium 4 processor when it becomes available. I hope AMD is not about to repeat history with too much market hype and then not deliver the products on time with the advertised specifications.

One of AMD's earlier mishaps was the overzealous marketing division and unfortunately the production side could not deliver the product on time and as promoted.

Good things come in small packages, Advanced Micro Devices executives told investors Thursday at the company's annual shareholders meeting.

AMD disclosed that the first of several forthcoming processors, code-named Clawhammer, will be only 105 millimeters square--about the same size as a current Athlon chip and half the size of Intel's current Pentium 4 chips. But it will deliver more than three times the clock speed of the first Athlon, and its small size will help AMD hold down capital expenditures.

Intel surprised the chip industry last year when it revealed that initial Pentium 4 chips would be more than double the size of previous processors, increasing manufacturing costs. The Pentium 4 will shrink significantly, however, as Intel shifts to a new manufacturing process around the same time Clawhammer hits the market.

<SNIP>

AMD is developing its own chipsets to accompany Clawhammer, he said. However, the company will also license them to third-party chipset makers. Chipsets connect the processor to other PC components such as memory and network cards.

Chips in the Hammer family--which also includes the Sledgehammer server processor--also will have the ability to process data in either 32-bit or 64-bit chunks, increasing performance for applications that are tuned for 64-bit.

Intel's forthcoming 0.13-micron Pentium 4 chip, code-named Northwood, is expected to be about 116 millimeters square, much smaller than current 0.18-micron chips' 217 millimeters square.

Future wireless Instant Messaging standard.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

Three major wireless companies Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson are teaming up or a wireless instant messaging protocol for cell phones. If you have ever used Yahoo Instant Messenger or any of the other online chat programs then you know what this is about.

Wireless messaging can be compared to sending email back and forth in real-time so you can literally chat as it was done eons ago on modem dialup bulletin boards.

Three of the top four handset makers are joining forces to create a way for cell phone users to send instant messages to each other, regardless of their phone's make, model or the software inside.

Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson are involved in a joint effort they are calling "Wireless Village" to create a set of specifications for handset makers and carriers to follow. The set of specifications should be published by year's end, according to Nokia spokeswoman Megan Matthews.

She expects products built around the specifications to start reaching consumers by the end of 2002.

If successful, Wireless Village could knock down a hurdle that some analysts believe stands in the way of a struggling telecommunications industry and the billions of dollars in revenue projected for the years to come.

Hacking Contest Reveals Solaris Vulnerability.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: Tech Web  Added by: Kim Heise

I think it is a good idea for security companies to hire "hackers" constructively to help them locate loopholes in any security system. This leads me to the point that I strongly believe in outside beta testers for most products because independent testers use more real world testing methods and are not constrained by company testing policies.

Argus Systems awarded a team of four hackers $48,000 for accessing a server protected with its PitBull intrusion-prevention software.

Argus had promised the prize money to any hacker who could beat PitBull. This was the fifth such hacker challenge issued by the security-software maker.

Claiming the prize are four-person crewmates Michal Chmielewski; Sergiusz Fonrobert; Adam Gowdiak; and Tomasz Ostwald, collectively known as Last Stage of Delirium.

Argus CEO Randy Sandone said the hackers actually exploited a vulnerability within Solaris 7 for Intel x86 machines, not one within the PitBull software.

In fact, he contends that the successful hack validates the need for software such as PitBull.

Argus says hackers were able to create ahole in the Solaris/x86 OS kernel. No patch is required for PitBull because the hackers found no vulnerability within its software, according to the company.

But Sandone warns that the flaw used by LSD "could potentially affect every system running the x86 architecture."

Extra CPUs At The Flip Of A Switch.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: Tech Web  Added by: Kim Heise

This is an interesting concept of purchasing fully loaded systems and you can simply activate more CPU's or extra memory by purchasing an additional serial number. I wonder what the cost would be involved for the hardware vendors to ship out all the hardware that will sometimes never be used.

Software/hardware hackers are going to have field day with this system so it would have to be developed rather smartly.

While the concept of CoD  (Capacity on Demand) is simple, the technology required to make it happen is complex. In Sun's case, the system is based around the use of a customer-activated code. "The hardware is installed and ready to use, but the customer initially buys the licenses for the CPUs he needs up front," Enns said. "When the user needs more, he acquires the right to use a license."

A license, in this case, is a key—"just a coded line of characters," Enns said, that can activate the needed CPUs. "We allow the user to turn on the resources," Enns said. "Then, they're essentially obligated to cut us a purchase order and send it to us."

Sun can remotely monitor CPU usage to compare it against the number of CPU licenses the user has purchased. The fear among skeptics inside Sun was that users would buy a system fully stocked with CPUs and then swap them into other systems, getting CPU power on the cheap. "So far, we have not found a case where a user was using the resources without paying for them," Enns said. "Still, we want users to be aware we have a mechanism in place to keep track of the licenses."

Sony tests Linux on PlayStation 2.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: ZDNET  Added by: Kim Heise

Something interesting I stumbled on while reading the press over at ZDNET. US and UK Playstation owners don't hold your breath on this since it requires a Japanese version to work.

Officials at Sony's UK offices confirmed on Thursday that the company is to release an official version of Linux to run on the PlayStation 2. However, it will only be compatible with Japanese versions of the console at this stage.
According to Sony, the move is in response to consumer pressure, which has included online petitions. Users will receive a hard drive with built-in 10Mbit Ethernet socket that will plug into the console's PCMCIA slot, a mouse and a keyboard, as well as a PS2-compatible version of the popular open source operating system. The PS2 Linux Kit will cost the equivalent of about $200 and will go on sale in June 2001.

Only 1,000 copies of the Linux kit will be manufactured initially. "The decision whether to ship more will depend on the feedback and requests from the Linux communities," said Sony in a press release.

However, the new release will not be available for PlayStation 2 users in the U.S. or Europe. "The Linux release is only for the Japanese market, and I'm not aware of any plans to offer it in America or Europe," said a spokesman for Sony.

PlayStation 2s include regional encoding, so that a Japanese console cannot play games released in Europe and vice versa. This led to allegations that Sony was overcharging European consumers, who did not have the option of importing a cheaper unit from the U.S. or Japan. Sony has consistently denied this charge.

Self repairing servers.
Posted: 04/27/2001     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

The idea of severs being able to "fix" themselves is very interesting but nothing overly new. The concept of having a computer that "fixes" itself is also known as failover systems that we see around today in one form or another.

Granted, nothing out there is a sophisticated as IBM discusses in the following article.

IBM has embarked on a new multibillion-dollar effort called eLiza to build computer systems that can fix themselves while problems are in the early stages.

The effort is an attempt to bring some of the self-healing abilities of living creatures to the brittle world of computers, where component failures can bring down larger systems and ripple across a network to other computers as well.

"Just like the human body, when you sweat, it evaporates and cools you down," John Patrick, vice president of Internet technologies at IBM, said in an interview about the program. "And when you're cold, you shiver and that warms you up. When you cut your finger, you bleed and that heals the wound.

<SNIP>

With eLiza, computers would monitor everything from patterns in a power supply's electricity consumption to how many people are using a Web site, Patrick said. When the behavior of an element of the computing system starts showing the first indications of distress, automatic services would fire up backup systems, order replacement parts or take other measures to ensure that people using the system don't notice problems.

One element of eLiza will be a project called Project Oceano, a prototype that consists of a bunch of Linux servers that can share jobs among each other, with new servers being added into the mix or removed as necessary. The system can even install operating systems and stored data without human intervention.

Intel extends chip lead over AMD.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: MSNBC  Added by: Kim Heise

Don't you just love the war between AMD and Intel? Never in the history of computing have we ever witnessed these tremendous leaps and bounds in processor power over such a short period of time. Not to mention the incredible price drops that occur almost weekly.

Intel announced today the new 1.7Ghz Pentium 4. I wonder who is going to hit the 2Ghz mark first and you can bet that it will happen long before the end of the year.

The market for new PCs may have slowed down a bit, but the race to build faster processors keeps zooming along. With the announcement today of the 1.7GHz Pentium 4 processors, Intel has extended its lead — at least in terms of raw clock speed — over rival AMD (the Athlon chip currently tops out at 1.33GHz).

<SNIP>

Of course, all this doesn’t come cheap. Available starting today, the Gateway Performance 1700XL we tested costs $2,699 direct. But if you want the ultimate in desktop performance and features, it deserves a spot at the top of your list.

Gates toppled as world's richest man.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: CNN  Added by: Kim Heise

Poor Mr. Bill Gates is going to have to wait for the next two processor updates from AMD and Intel before he can upgrade. Seriously now - Bill Gates is still worth $54 billion but has been overtaken by the deceased Sam Walton with $65.4 billion.

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has been ousted as the world's richest man by Sam Robson Walton, the chairman of the Wal-Mart retail empire and eldest son of its founder, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Early editions of The Sunday Times newspaper, which compiles an annual list of the richest people in the world, said Gates had lost pole position to Walton after the worldwide plunge in the value of high-technology stocks over the past year.

For three years Gates beat all-comers with a fortune that rose to $76.50 billion in 2000, but the value of his holdings has fallen to $54 billion, the newspaper said.

Walton is now said to be worth $65.4 billion. His fortune is based on the retail empire started by his father, Sam Walton, from a single shop in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. Sam Walton died in 1992. Wal-Mart now boasts more than 4,000 outlets worldwide.

IBM Deskstar 60GXP HDD review.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: Digit-Life  Added by: Kim Heise

Digit-Life has reviewed IBM's new Deskstar 60GB hard drive. Read the conclusion for some valid concerns over the new drive but I won't spoil the conclusion by pasting it in the excerpt below. Read the review here.

At last we have got a sample of a new IBM series in our lab - Deskstar 60GXP. It is interesting that neither the package nor the case have the mark "60GXP". Instead, there stands "IC35L040AVER07-0". Well, 040 is its size, and the other symbols, as I understand, make a series name. As for me, I prefer the older marking, especially considering that the appearance of the disc hasn't changed absolutely.(After the publication of this review there came a description of the marking system which gives an answer to many questions. Though this marking system is more informative it is less demonstrative).

Digital TV sales soar in first quarter.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

Last Friday night I visited my friend Lance who is lucky enough to own a HDTV. To say I was impressed would be a understatement as the picture has to be seen by your own eyes to be believed. During a basketball game demonstration you can actually see the threads that make up the basketball net. Very impressive.

Undoubtedly with the strong acceptance we have seen by the public the future of television is most certainly  HDTV.

The sale of digital television sets and displays soared 158 percent during the first quarter year-over-year, the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said Sunday, suggesting Americans are beginning to more widely embrace the new, crisper broadcasts.

More than 234,000 sets and displays worth more than $462 million were sold during the first three months of 2001, compared with almost 650,000 sets and displays sold during all of 2000, the industry association said during the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual trade show here.

"Consumers have overwhelmingly embraced the digital experience," said Gary Shapiro, chief executive and president of the CEA. "Our research shows as more and more consumers purchase DTV products, they are looking for high-quality, high-definition TV programming."

IBM returns fire at Sun in Unix clash.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

While IBM and Sun are "duking it out" the market separation between server and desktop systems is beginning to become more and more difficult to see. The power of the average desktop PC has increased substantially in terms of CPU and storage capacity to become powerful enough to power most server demands.

The only clear distinction between the desktop "power horse" and a server is the fail-over systems that are typically embedded in servers.

IBM announced new midrange Unix servers Monday in a tightening market that has Big Blue and its chief competitor, Sun Microsystems, at each other's throats.

As reported earlier, the new systems, the free-standing p620 and the rack-mountable p660, each can accommodate as many as six CPUs and costs tens of thousands of dollars. They're the first midrange Unix servers to use CPUs with IBM's silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, which allows faster speeds without higher temperatures.

The new models arrive after new systems from Sun using its UltraSparc III chip and price cuts on older models.

TI rolls out optical platform for 100Mbit/s wireless Ethernet.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: EBNews  Added by: Kim Heise

100Mbit/s wireless Ethernet? Now we are talking a 10 fold improvement over current wireless networks. No word on the price yet.

 
Drawing from resources throughout its semiconductor operations, Texas Instruments Inc. today will unveil a platform for the optical delivery of wireless 100Mbit/s Ethernet connections.

The reference design includes an analog micromirror and transceiver based on technology TI developed over the past 20 years for use in its digital light processing (DLP) display systems. The wireless platforms also will include a TI DSP and ARM-based processor similar to the company's wireless handset solution, as well as analog and mixed-signal ICs.

The platform is expected to wirelessly connect high-bandwidth corporate Ethernet networks, eliminating the expensive and often cumbersome practice of stringing fiber cable through office buildings, said Matt Harrison, business manager at TI's recently created Optical Wireless Solutions unit.

Xybernaut Ships Wearable Computers to Navy.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: Internet News  Added by: Kim Heise

Just something I stumbled on while looking over several news sites for interesting news posts.

Xybernaut, based in Fairfax, Va., is a provider of wearable computing hardware, software and services. The Mobile Assistant IV (MA IV), Xybernaut's patented wearable PC, runs all major PC operating systems, including Windows 98/2000/NT, Linux and SCO Unix. Xybernaut also provides hyper linking, multimedia authoring tools, project management, asset management and speech software toolkits.

The company also has offices and subsidiaries in Germany an dJapan, and a Web site at http://www.xybernaut.com.

TOP    MORE

Lexra claims 32-bit CPU blazes past MIPS core.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: Silicon Strategies  Added by: Kim Heise

AMD and Intel are not the only CPU companies who are in strong competition with each other. There is a another CPU architecture using the RISC design that has been typically lead by MIPS Technologies that is facing serious competition by Lexra.

A more popular MIPS based processor is the PowerPC/G3 which is more commonly found in Apple computer systems.

As an FYI - the current AMD and the Intel processor line are reported to be hybrid processors using both RISC (reduced instruction set computer) and CISC (complex instruction set computer) architectures. Overall both processor brands mainly rely on CISC instruction sets.

Napster Obtains Song-Filtering Technology.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

Now that's more like it as Napster finally discovers a method for more accurately filtering MP3 audio. Unfortunately there are still methods for circumventing this filter.

As an example you could use ZIP or RAR to compress the MP3 file and rename the extension from .zip or .rar to .mp3. One simply downloads the song, changes the extension from .mp3 back to .zip or .rar and uncompress the song. BINGO!

Did you get all of that?

Embattled song-swap company Napster Inc. on Friday said it licensed privately-held Relatable's acoustic fingerprinting technology to help filter songs in compliance with an injunction.

The technology from Relatable, Alexandria, Va., identifies music based on the recordings themselves and analyzes the acoustical properties of a recording's waveform to identify it precisely, regardless of its audio format, bit rate, or minor signal distortion, the companies said.

Microsoft Retires Clippy with Humorous Ad Campaign.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: WinInformant  Added by: Kim Heise

Goodbye or good riddance? Personally the thought of "Clippy" disappearing from Office and Outlook makes me happy.

It had its beginnings with Microsoft Bob, the much-maligned but misunderstood user interface experiment in which Microsoft ushered in its first product featuring software assistants, or "agents." But with the release of Office 97, the company gave a far wider audience its first taste of this technology, which was almost universally loathed across the board. These assistants, which were personified by the default "Clippy the paperclip" character, would appear onscreen any time an Office application was started, and in Office 97 they were hard to remove. One of Office 2000's primary advantages, oddly enough, was that Clippy and company were easier to remove from the screen. But in Office XP, Clippy has been reduced in stature once again. And now, the company that spawned this awful technology is having fun with it. And they're launching an ad campaign in which Clippy will retire.

Pentium4 runs At 50 Percent Speed when overheating.
Posted: 04/23/2001     Source: Electic  Added by: Kim Heise

In order to protect the Pentium4 CPU core the processor has the ability to reduce the clock speed by 50% should the processor core temperature become to high. This would be very useful in server environments where stability is more important than performance on the short run. It's better to have a working server at 50% speed than no server with a melted processor core.

Thermal Monitor controls the processor temperature by modulating the internal processor core clocks. The processor clocks are modulated when the TCC is activated. Thermal Monitor uses two modes to activate the TCC. Automatic mode and On-Demand mode. Setting the Automatic Thermal Control Circuit Enable bit by the BIOS is a required specification. Once automatic mode is enabled, the TCC will activate only when the internal die temperature is very near the temperature limits of the processor. When TCC is enabled, and a high temperature situation exists (i.e. TCC is active), the clocks will be modulated by alternately turning the clocks off and on at a a 50% duty cycle. Clocks will not be off or on more than 3 µs when TCC is active. Cycle times are processor speed dependent and will decrease as processor core frequencies increase. A small amount of hysteresis has been included to prevent rapid active/inactive transitions of the TCC.

When the processor temperature is near the trip point. Once the temperature has returned to a non-critical level, and the hysteresis timer has expired, modulation ceases and TCC goes inactive. Processor performance will be decreased by ~50% when the TCC is active (assuming a 50% duty cycle), however, with a properly designed and characterised thermal solution the TCC most likely will only be activated briefly when the system is near maximum temperature and during the most power intensive applications.