Latest Technology News

For those who doubt the change our daily lives have undergone thanks to increased connectivity, Domino's Pizza presents to you....Pizza Tracking.

While it premiered Pizza via SMS late last summer, and most national pizza delivery franchises already support online ordering, Domino's has taken their newest feature from the postal sector.

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Once again Microsoft redefines the concept of "launch," releasing today the retail edition of a suite that was said to have "launched" last November, though whose "launch party" remains scheduled for late February.

It's one of the guests of honor at a formal launch party still slated for February 27 in Los Angeles. But with one guest bowing out early -- specifically, SQL Server 2008, whose RTM may come as much as six months later -- Microsoft decided today to balance things out by moving up its retail release of Visual Studio 2008 to today.

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IBM is beefing up both its System p and Power-based Unix systems and its i Servers, once dubbed AS/400. Now, Linux-based binaries created for x86-based PC environments will be able to run unmodified on IBM Unix servers.

To help lure more SMBs away from Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, IBM this week rolled out a new virtualization capability for migrating PC-based Linux applications to its Unix systems, in addition to new entry-level "Express" Unix systems for SMBs.

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BetaNews examines why Nomura financial analyst Richard Windsor toyed with the idea of Motorola surrendering its handset business to focus on enterprise and government solutions.

Recently, Nomura analyst Richard Windsor discussed the possibility of Motorola Inc. leaving the handset business in favor of becoming what he calls "an enterprise and government company." He noted that rumors of a Chinese buyout of Motorola are increasing, but the company's problems would not be easily fixed by such a buyout. He closed by saying Motorola will most likely regain its unsure footing after this year.

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The Gendarmerie Nationale is dumping Microsoft in the move towards open source software which first began in 2005.

At that time, the only applications transferred to open source were word processing applications. This was followed by the move to open source Internet browsers the following year.

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A practice used by scammers to siphon off hits from users who misspell URLs in their browsers could be rendered impossible this year, as the organization responsible for the Internet's domain name system may end the program that makes the practice possible.

Just a few days ago, Google got some attention for announcing a policy that would effectively give it credit for killing off the practice of "domain name tasting," or "domain tasting," by exploitative DNS registrants. But as it turns out, one of the Internet's principal governing bodies, ICANN, had been preparing since last summer to come out against the practice anyway, and it did so yesterday.

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News reports indicate that the two sides may be preparing to sit down at the bargaining table once more to combine their respective WiMAX networks.

Attempts at contacting either company by BetaNews had not been returned as of press time.

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Eye-Fi, a company that makes SD cards with built-in wireless 802.11g/b/n connectivity, has announced that Nikon's new D60 Digital SLR camera will come out of the box with enhanced Eye-Fi capabilities.

Though this new company says the technology works seamlessly with any camera that accepts SD cards, the Nikon D60 is actually the first camera designed with Eye-Fi's wireless connectivity in mind.

The SD cards feature Static WEP 40/104/128, WPA-PSK, and WPA2-PSK security, and have a wireless range of over 90 feet outdoors and 45 feet indoors. Once a user has set up the connection, the camera can automatically send the photo data to many photo sharing, printing, blogging, and social networking sites, automatically resizing photos according to the criteria of their destination. Photos can also be wirelessly sent to the user's computer running the Eye-Fi manager software.

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Western Digital today introduced a new series of portable USB hard drives with capacities as high as 320 GB in a package comparable in size to a Nintendo DS Lite.

The My Passport USB drive series was redesigned to complement WD's line of My Book external drives, and have a footprint of 5.1" x 3.14" x .6" and weigh only 5 ounces. They range in capacity from 60-320 GB.

These 2.5-inch 5400 RPM hard drives are bus powered and promise the USB 2.0 transfer speed of 480 Mb/sec. Obviously, speed of transfer is not this device's strong point among a field of many competitors. However, the unit's small size, coupled with its large capacity narrow down the competition slightly.

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Now in beta test, EffectiveUI's new eBay Desktop is aimed at letting users shop, search and buy from their desktops instead of inside Web browsers, as well as to simplify user tasks and 'optimize rich media' along the way.

In an effort to give the eBay online auction site a richer and more adaptable front end, a software vendor named EffectiveUI is now beta testing a stand-alone eBay console. Its functionality will be provided by the AIR platform, Adobe's Flash-based UI production environment that expects to meet a heavy challenge this year from Microsoft's Silverlight.

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At MTV's VLES site, kids in chat rooms are sipping on "virtual Pepsis." At Gaia Online, teens and 20-somethings are dressing up avatars in virtual Disney T-shirts. But is this strategy of "immersive branding" paying off for them?

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - Virtual reality -- the keyphrase of the 1990s, adopted just after "information superhighway" started to deteriorate from the public vernacular -- is making a comeback as an advertising tool. This re-emerging category includes not just Second Life and other places for grown-ups, but online communities for the younger crowd, too.

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With rival Facebook's open API gaining traction, MySpace on Wednesday said that it would launch its own API on February 5.

The launch will also herald the promotion of the market-leading social network's business development chief Amit Kapur to the position of chief operating officer. Kapur will be tasked with heading up the program.

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Scathing words yesterday from the federal judge overseeing Microsoft's compliance with its antitrust decree, accompanied an order that effectively extends the DOJ's oversight period into the next US presidential administration.

Apparently agreeing with the European Commission's assessment that Microsoft has yet to provide adequate documentation for its communications protocols, US District Judge Kathleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an order yesterday extending the Dept. of Justice's oversight period for the company by two years, until November 12, 2009.

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The average usage share of Mozilla's browser among European nations rose to 28 percent in December, up .7 percent from the month previous, XiTi Monitor finds.

A report by the Web survey institute XiTi Monitor released yesterday showed that, when European nations' averaged their Web sites' usage shares together, usage share for Firefox appeared to rebound slightly.

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Online auction powerhouse eBay announced this morning steep fee cuts and several other strategies, as incentives to its customers to help it stay on top.

Speaking at a keynote address at the eCommerce Forum yesterday, outgoing eBay North American division president Bill Cobb highlighted several key changes: First, the site will reduce its own upfront insertion fees by 25% to 50% when sellers list items, while increasing fees when items are successfully sold. Items sold under $25 on EBay will see a commission rise from 5.25% to 8.25%, a move that could have a dramatic impact on used media sold on the site.

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