IBM has released a set of routines designed to be integrated into portals that will allow for accessing web sites via Cellular (and presumedly other) phones. The code (called the Transcription Applet) is written in Java (of course), and is available as a free trial (along with some interesting documentation …

Intel has an article on their site describing "Audio Visual Speech Recognition" and the technique employed to achieve higher reliability in recognizing human speech. The kicker is that there is open source code available as well. Way to go.

A consultant using a TabletPC running Microsoft Windows XP has written about his experiences in the first 150 days for Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine. The long and the short of it is that he likes it, with some quirks. Especially for the kinds of meeting related and document review work …

I'm not thinking this is an appropriate counter story to the Mac users new iTunes services and software, but the folks at XM Radio announced that they will make available their satellite radio service directly on PC desktops using the cryptically named XMPCR.

An article in Wired details that "Mike" Hawash (previously mentioned on this site in another article) has finally been charged by the government. I never had an opinion on his guilt or innocence, just on the issue of detention without information or charges, and because of that I'm even more …

Georgia College and State University has come up with an interesting use for Apple's iPod. MacWorld is reporting that the university is running a program where students can load up iPods with audio tracks of lectures given during the semester. The specifics are interesting in terms of why and …

To almost nobody's surprise, Apple announced a series of new products related to personal music. In the follow on to "Rip, Mix, Burn", Apple is now encouraging people to "Buy, Mix, iPod". Stay tuned for a series of reviews on the music service and the new iPod (ordered today, hopefully …

An article from InfoWorld reports that the new devices from Palm) may finally start to compete with the latest Microsoft PDA products. At the core of the advances are more memory (64MB), integrated WiFi, and a faster CPU. However, the key feature is the battery life, which is supposed to …

The following article contains language inappropriate for pop stars and this web site, so read at your own risk. In an attempt to inspire what can only be believed to have been guilt in her "listeners", Madonna released a series of new tracks to the P2P service KaZaA last week …

Although it is terrible that the artifacts from ancient Iraq have disappeared from view as a consequence of the war in Iraq (and events leading up to it), there is a story in Wired about an attempt to soften the blow by making a virtual exhibit available online.

In order to fight some of the bad press that Intel is getting about the Itanium processor in comparison to the Opteron processor from AMD, Intel has announced that they will be producing a 32-bit "converter" to allow 32-bit code to run on the 64-bit architecture. The article in Information …

In the first manned space flight since the Columbia disaster, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with one Cosmonaut and one Astronaut on board has docked with the International Space Station on a mission to replace the current crew.

Here are some recent updates on the "progress" of MPAA-sponsored Super-DMCA legislation. Once again, the librarians are at the fore on opposing this legislation.

An article on MSNBC (including audio clip), details the scam by one cramming tele-marketer who may have added insult to injury by altering tapes. Cramming is the act of adding unnecessary charges to a telephone bill by calling the customer under a false or misleading pretext.

An article on CNet describes an odd executive order signed at the end of March that makes it possible to reclassify secrets that had previously been released to the public. In particular, critical infrastructure may be covered by this, including technology like the Internet.

An article[1] on CommsDesign (part of EETimes) describes the work going on to implement and make available RDMA over Ethernet (Remote Direct Memory Access over Ethernet). This struck me as mildly amusing in the context of the recent IP over FireWire work because FireWire is basically a DMA protocol …

Bulletproof Monk is another martial-arts film starring Yun-Fat Chow (also referred to as Chow Yun-Fat), one of the more successful Chinese action stars. Following in the footsteps of Jackie Chan, Yun-Fat has parlayed a couple of cross-over roles into larger-budget films based in the US with more elaborate special effects …

An article on XtremeTek.com recounts confirmation from AMD that using any form of thermal grease (except Shin Estu G 749) will void the warrant on any AMD CPU.

An article on The Register provides information about the 19 -year-old now being charged with Economic Espionage for giving away DirecTV secrets for financial gain of third parties.

An article on SlashDot indicates that Microsoft is the new home for a free, downloadable version of The Unix Hater's Handbook. The manuscript is nearly 10 years old, out of print and the author appears to be working for Microsoft...