technology Articles


Nikon releases new COOLPIX cameras

According to an article on MacCentral announces new cameras from Nikon. The cameras are upgrades of the COOLPIX family, lower priced and featured than the D-1 and D-100. More pixels, smaller form factors, 256-level metering...


Better flight information

Thanks to Tom, I've found a new service for getting flight information. Their data source is the air traffic control network. Go to Flight Explorer and type in the flight number in the box in the lower left hand corner and you'll get all of the flight data you'll ever …

IBM powers up first Power5 machine

According to an article on CNet, IBM has now powered up and booted the first computer based on the new Power5 architecture of processors. The Power5 is supposed to be available in 2004 and is targeted at high-end servers and low-end workstations.


802.11g standard updated

As part of the IEEE standards process, the 802.11g wireless standard is being revised to version 6.1 from the previous 5.0. The proposal is scheduled to become a standard in June, at which point many of the manufacturers of existing pre-standard hardware are stating that they will …


Sony's portable wireless web server

Leave it to Sony to come up with a Portable Wireless Web Server to drag your web site around with you. The info here is in Japanese, but you'll get the idea from the pictures. If somebody wants to read the Kanji and post a translation, I'll be happy to …

Symantec slammed over knowing about slammer

An article in Wired reports that Symantec knew about this month's slammer worm before most security organizations did and didn't share the information for hours (except with their own customers). The article details complaints from a number of other security groups and ISPs who complained that Symantec should have raised …


New music information database launched

For those of you familiar with CDDB and Gracenote and the various precursors that spawned being able to identify your audio CDs by inserting them into your computer, you may be interested in hearing about MusicBrainz. The site/free service is a community-based open-source and open-database answer to the problem …

The future of laptop batteries?

According to an article in EE Times UK, Neah Power Systems (of New York) is creating fuel-cell based batteries for laptops that can fit in existing bays. Their current statements predict hitting 150WH by the end of the year, which would be basically 3x the current crop of Li and …

Lucent readies new high-speed cellular

According to an article on CNet, much-beleaguered Lucent Technologies is releasing a new cellular phone technology for data that will be ten times as fast as today's fastest cellular network, NTT DoCoMo. According to a Lucent press release, the chip that powers this speed has been developed by the same …

TiVo answers upgrade dilemma

The folks at TiVo, who earlier this year announced their Series 2 product (with more storage and upcoming home-network connectivity features), have answered the pleas of current TiVo users who purchased lifetime TiVo subscriptions by allowing them to upgrade to the new system while preserving their existing membership. This announcement …

Kentucky mandates broadband for public housing

According to an article on Wired, the state of Kentucky has issued a mandate that all new public housing units that receive funding of 50% or more from the State's housing corporation (the KHC) be wired for high-speed internet access. The KHC has also stated that they're working on a …

IEEE comes out against DMCA

In a recently published article in the IEEE's magazine, The Institute, the organization is calling for congress to take a second look at the DMCA. To quote the article: "Two recent court battles, as well as concerns raised by members, have prompted IEEE-USA?s Intellectual Property Committee to re- …

Microsoft files .NET patents

Not surprisingly, Microsoft has filed for a number of patents regarding their .NET initiative. An article on CNet is reporting that at least one of these patents is very broad and may well make the entire API to Microsoft's .NET platform a patented product and therefore stymie the efforts of …

Sun Java complaints under Solaris

A number of sites have pointers to this internal memo allegedly from Sun Microsystems and posted on InternalMemos.com. The gist of the memo is that more resources need to be committed within Sun to make sure that the development efforts necessary are spent on Java and that it is …

Japan's move toward open source

According to an article on Yahoo, the Japanese government is continuing to invest money in supporting developers who are working on open source solutions for consumer electronics and government desktops.

Liberty Alliance publishes white paper

The Liberty Alliance Project released a white paper entitled "Liberty and 3rd Party Identity Systems", which aims to describe how the Liberty Project compares to and inter-operates with identity packages such as .NET Passport (Microsoft) and Verified by Visa (Visa).