Latest Technology News

Blazingly fast 24x CD-Rs are on their way, enabling users to burn an entire CD in as little as three minutes. Major manufacturers of CD-recording drives including Yamaha, Plextor, Ricoh, and Sanyo have backed new Verbatim CD-R discs for 24x recording. Yamaha touts speeds of up to 3.5 MB/sec and 3.0 MB/sec on 24x and 20x burners respectively. The media supports legacy drives from 1x-16x, and has been fully tested on all existing and upcoming drives to ensure compatibility.

To support the 24x speed, Verbatim has revealed its "Super Azo" recording dye technology, based upon the patented Metal Azo dye developed by Mitsubishi Corporation. The recording dye is a layer upon which audio, video, and data are archived into the CD. Verbatim claims, "Super Azo technology not only withstands the high-speed lasers and drive speeds of the new drives, it maximizes their performance." The 24x media is available immediately and is backed by a lifetime warranty. Time for a new burner?

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Dwindling income from advertisers has forced many staples of the Web, including Suck.com, to recently close up shop. In an effort to avoid a similar fate, CMGI-owned AltaVista has ported its technology to provide enterprise software for intra-business searches. Employers will be able to seek out information that is scattered across networks, and as first reported by Reuters, "unstructured information" located on individual laptops or even PDAs can be included in the queries. Like the company's previous solutions, the new AltaVista software has the capacity to search in 30 different languages, and across 200 different computer formats.

Security options are included for limiting the range of files being indexed, and to permit software access to only designated employees. Interestingly, an employee's e-mail can be included in a search. The Associated Press reports that privacy advocates have sounded alarms over the potential liabilities employers may face as a result of deploying such a solution.

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Intel plans to announce today news of a groundbreaking effort made by the company's scientists in Hillsboro, Oregon at the Silicon Nanoelectronics Workshop in Kyoto, Japan. News of the achievement leaked out to Reuters just two days after an IBM press release detailed an altered form of silicon. Intel has engineered what they claim to be the fastest and smallest transistors ever to be produced.

The chip giant is forecasting the potential to create microprocessors that contain nearly 1 billion transistors running at a clock speed of 20 gigahertz. As chips approach that threshold, the search for a new material to replace silicon continues. Faster processors open a wide range of possibilities to software developers for creating powerful, new solutions.

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With the help of Big Blue, consumers will begin to see more efficient micro-electronics by 2003 that provide more power for CPU hungry applications. The current generation of semiconductor technology has received a considerable boost in performance thanks to breakthrough from IBM. A newly engineered material named "Strained Silicon" can increase chip speeds up to 35 percent, as well as reduce power consumption.

This week's announcement marks IBM's fifth major breakthrough in semiconductor technology in the past four years. Strained Silicon breathes more life into the material, which is quickly nearing its physicals limits. According to IBM, "The new technology takes advantage of the natural tendency for atoms inside compounds to align with one another. When silicon is deposited on top of a substrate with atoms spaced farther apart, the atoms in silicon stretch to line up with the atoms beneath, stretching -- or 'straining' -- the silicon." The material speeds up the flow of electrons through silicon by up to 70 percent. The result is faster performance without the need to miniaturize transistors.

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While initially tolerant of hackers modifying its product, TiVo may have been unprepared for the power of open source. A new software utility has surfaced with the ability to extract digital video directly off the recording unit, raising numerous copyright concerns. With an added network card, TiVo users may now archive and view recorded television shows on a computer.

The software, dubbed ExtractStream, reads video data stored on the TiVo and copies it to a PC via network interface. Once extracted, the raw video can then be encoded into MPEG format and viewed or transported. Possible applications include archiving favorite shows, or viewing recordings on a laptop while away from home.

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As Microsoft prepares to roll out interactive television software with selected partners, AT&T recently announced that it is scaling back its commitment to the technology. Citing that customers were not ready to accept the advanced features included in high-end set top boxes, the cable giant has re-evaluated its plans. This move strikes a blow to Microsoft's attempt to gain a foothold in interactive TV services, after having invested five billion dollars in AT&T and spending over six years experimenting with the technology.

According to Reuters, Microsoft encountered difficulty while porting its Windows-based technology to the set top boxes, which include far less processing power than PCs. These setbacks resulted in Microsoft missing key deadlines to make its software available to partners – incidentally making room for competitors. If things went according to plan, Microsoft would have been in the living rooms of over 10 million AT&T customers. Meanwhile, the Redmond giant announced that Portugal's TV Cabo, Mexico's Cablevision, and Israel's Matav Cable Systems Media have begun critical market trials of Microsoft solutions.

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NVidia better watch its back, the race may not be over yet. The Inquirer is reporting that ex-3dfx employees are working on the release of a new breakthrough graphics product, which will be released under the "3DPower" name brand. The new board is reported to be black with gold components, and packs in swift DDR memory. It is being rumored the chipset will have an official launching on June 10.

The report also states that quite a few respectable manufactures may be offering video cards based on the new chipset from 3DPower.

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In a bold move, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit in federal court to protect the First Amendment rights of Princeton University Professor Edward Felten and his team of scientists. Felten intended to publish academic findings detailing the successful circumvention of digital audio copyright technologies. A coalition of the RIAA, SDMI, and Verance, sought to prevent public disclosure of the research. The court will decide whether Felten's team may present details of the study at the USENIX Security Conference in August.

The EFF calls into question the constitutionality of a clause in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibiting the publication of methods to bypass security controls in digital media. In a letter to Professor Felten, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) threatened legal action if the results were made public. But the research community maintains that mathematics and code are not circumvention devices and thus do not violate any laws.

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This past Monday, two giants clashed over intellectual property rights. Cable and long-distance behemoth AT&T alleges that the world's largest software company infringed on its patent for a voice compression algorithm. AT&T engineered a technology which isolates and encodes speech, allowing for more efficient file transfer rates and an optimized use of storage space. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, AT&T was issued a patent on January 19, 1988. Microsoft first incorporated the technology into Windows 95 and has continued to do so with each subsequent release of Windows.

First reported by Reuters, AT&T informed Microsoft of the alleged infringement in April of 1999, and offered to license the technology to Microsoft. The software giant refused AT&T's offer, triggering a legal response. The lawsuit states "AT&T has been, and will continue to be, damaged and irreparably harmed by Microsoft's infringement, which will continue unless Microsoft is enjoined by this court."

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Currently in beta, Adobe has released a 'Save As XML' plug-in for its popular
Acrobat software. This feature enables users to save content from a tagged PDF file into XML, HTML or plain text format, allowing placement of content into other applications. A tagged Abobe PDF file is usually created from Microsoft Office 2000 applications, using the 'Web Capture' feature to convert a Web site to Adobe PDF format.

Currently, the following formats are available:

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Sony has announced that it is working to integrate Java capabilities into the PlayStation 2, which will enable existing Java-based Web applications to work with the entertainment system in the near future. Sony is aiming to release the technology by the end of 2001, hopefully indicating plans to also have broadband network capability for the PS2 on par for that date.

Sony will be collaborating with Sun Microsystems to implement the necessary support to run Java applications. Sun recently released a beta of version 1.4 Standard Edition software for the Java 2 platform.

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Developers of applications for wireless devices have a powerful new tool at their disposal. Delivering on its promise to introduce Java-enabled mobile phones, Nokia has teamed up with Boland to establish a framework for wireless application development and announced the results of their efforts at the JavaOneSM Developer Conference today. JBuilder Mobile Set, Nokia edition, is a Java2 Micro Edition (J2ME) compliant technology that fully integrates into Borland's popular JBuilder 5 development environment. According to today's announcement, "JBuilder 5 and JBuilder MobileSet, Nokia Edition include visual design tools for creating mobile applications, device emulation and debugging."

With JBuilder5 and JBuilder Mobile set, Nokia and Borland seek to hasten the development of the wireless platform. Mark Driver of Gartner's Internet and e-business technologies states, "Mobile and wireless devices are quickly being embraced and leveraged within mainstream e-business efforts." Java has had trouble gaining acceptance in a desktop PC environment due to current speed limitations, as applications are run through a virtual machine. But the language may prove to be more beneficial to the wireless platform, taking advantage of Java's code reuse and small display capabilities.

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Microsoft's attempts to protect its intellectual property and enforce licensing agreements have drawn much controversy. After reviewing comments to the initial BetaNews interview with Allen Nieman, Product Manager of Activation at Microsoft, we have decided to clear up some lingering confusion. The issues of OEM licensing, possible abandonment of Microsoft software, product obsolescence, and Microsoft's unequal treatment of customers based on regional differences are discussed.

BetaNews: What happens to Windows XP users when the product is no longer supported, will the registration servers still exist?

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From building blocks to video games, Lego has done it all. Lego Software is looking for 100 beta testers to try out the company's upcoming PC CD-ROM game, BIONICLE: The Legend of Mata Nui. Be one of the first 50 accepted and take home a snazzy BIONICLE baseball cap. All beta testers will receive a complimentary copy of the game and a mention in its credits. The sign up period ends on June 8, and you must be 13 years or older to participate without parental consent. Lego is currently only accepting applicants from the United States or Canada.

The Legend of Mata Nui is a mythical adventure game were users can, "harness elemental forces and outsmart dangerous foes in their quest to free the island of Mata Nui from the dark shadow of Makuta." Explore jungles, underwater cities, surf streams of lava, ski down a mountain, even cause your own natural disaster. The game includes several characters that will be unlocked as you play on. Concept animation and screenshots can be viewed from the beta Web site.

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Microsoft launched Thursday their much anticipated Office XP suite in 15 countries throughout the world. Conventions to celebrate the event were held in cities across the United States, including New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Washington DC also showcased the XP debut, with BetaNews in attendance.

Lacking much press coverage, the day was kicked off by Senior Executive at Microsoft, Jeff Raikes, with an introduction to Office XP and outline of key features. Individual demonstrations followed, offering further insight into functionality added by this latest release.

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