8 February 2006 Technology News

last SG · 2006-02-09T09:55:45+00:00

Lost an IPod or Wallet? Look for It Online BOSTON - Maureen Silliman felt her empty pocket and gulped: Her new $300 iPod must have bounced out as she ran t...

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Nvidia revs up game notebooks

Nvidia on Thursday unveiled new technology that will let gamers double the number of graphics chips in their desktops and notebooks.

The company's SLI (scalable link interface) technology now allows PC users to put up to four graphics processors in their desktop PCs to handle the most demanding high-definition video and games, Nvidia announced at the CeBit technology fair in Hannover, Germany. PC makers such as Dell, which previewed a Quad SLI system at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, and others like Alienware, Voodoo and Falcon Northwest can now offer the technology to their customers.

However, like most PC users, gamers are increasingly using notebooks as their primary systems. They'll also now be able to take advantage of multiple graphics processors with support for two GeForce Go 7800 GTX processors in Nvidia's nForce4 SLI chipset. Sager, Alienware, Velocity Micro and Voodoo announced notebooks with the technology at CeBit.

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Week in pictures: Gadget heaven

Intel Developer Forum, CeBit attendees find themselves in gizmo paradise. Also: Mashups, cult films and the 'Godfather.'

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Lego addicts chase their dream

SAN FRANCISCO--In a third-floor art school classroom here, lifelong Lego fan Robin Dodd pitted his prodigious building skills against the rest of the best in Northern California.

Dodd, an 18-year-old from Salinas, Calif., was one of 20 contestants at Thursday's San Francisco stop of Legoland California's seven-city search for a new master model builder. In each city, the Legoland judges are picking several finalists, each of whom will be invited to the May 23 finals at the Carlsbad, Calif., theme park.

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Netflix meets used-CD store as 'La La' nears launch

Not many start-up businesses have been inspired by a rock band, but Fountains of Wayne is indirectly responsible for a newly launched music discovery and trading community called La La.

Company co-founder Bill Nguyen has been friends with the band since before the group's "Stacy's Mom" was a hit. They often commiserated over how online and physical retailers offer such a limited selection and how hard it is to discover new music.

Nguyen already had considerable success creating technology-based companies, so he harnessed his experience to start La La. Then he raised $9 million in first-round funding from Ignition Partners, Bain Capital and other investors.

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Feds suggest 21-day deadline for Google subpoena

The U.S. Justice Department has set a suggested deadline for Google to hand over information about its users' search habits: 21 days.

In court documents submitted Thursday to U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Jose, Calif., federal prosecutors said they need a prompt response because of the compressed schedule of the case. They're asking Ware to set a 21-day deadline that would begin as soon as he makes a decision.

"Delay in this court's resolution of the motion to compel would be unwarranted," the three-page brief says.

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Police blotter: Ex-employee faces suit over file deletion

"Police blotter" is a weekly report on the intersection of technology and the law.

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Police blotter: Ex-employee faces suit over file deletion

"Police blotter" is a weekly report on the intersection of technology and the law.

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Mozilla revenue speculation erupts

The Mozilla Corp., the commercial arm of the Mozilla Foundation, has said that despite the success of its online applications, it is focused on strong products, not big profits.

Responding to online speculation around the company's actual earnings, Christopher Blizzard, a Mozilla Corp. board member, said in a blog this week that money is just a "tool" that allows the organization to direct its own development and "make a great product."

"Money is one of the last things we worry about, and people shouldn't get hung up on the numbers, except to realize that it gives us options," he said.

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Feds bust fans for pirated Ryan Adams tunes

A pair of apparent Ryan Adams fans ran afoul of a new law making it a crime to publish songs before their release to the general public when they made portions of the singer's latest album available on a Web site frequented by his fans, federal authorities said Thursday.

Robert Thomas of Milwaukee and Jared Bowser of Jacksonville, Fla., were indicted under a provision of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (FECA) law that makes it a separate federal crime to pirate music and movies before they are released to the public, Memphis-based U.S. attorney Jim Vines and FBI special agent My Harrison said.

The indictments are believed to be the first under the prerelease provision of the 2005 FECA law. The men are alleged to have posted portions of Adams' "Jacksonville City Nights" on a fan Web site about a month before its official release last September. Adams records for Lost Highway Records, whose Universal Music Group parent did not grant authority for the Internet distribution.

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EU consultancy wants to help on Microsoft

A consultancy retained by the European Commission in the Microsoft antitrust case believes it can help break an impasse to avoid a large fine against the firm, a source familiar with the situation said Monday.

OTR Consultants of London has helped the Commission in the Microsoft case for several years, but its contract is nearing an end because of time limits imposed under Commission procurement rules, a second source said.

Now OTR has suggested a new role for itself: it would help improve Microsoft technical documentation that the Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, says is inadequate.

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Fujitsu announces quad-blade server

Fujitsu will begin selling technology next quarter that lets four dual-processor blade servers be linked into a single machine with eight Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron chips.

The new option, available in April or May, will be available with AMD's latest 2.6 GHz dual-core processors, said Richard McCormack, senior vice president of marketing for Fujitsu's Sunnyvale, Calif.-based U.S. subsidiary, Fujitsu Computer Systems. The company announced the product in conjunction with the CeBit trade show in Germany.

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Ubuntu Linux leader proposes six-week delay

New versions of Ubuntu Linux have been released at a steady six-month cadence, but project founder Mark Shuttleworth is considering a six-week delay to improve the reliability of an important new version.

The next version, called Dapper Drake, is due in April. It's the first version that will have longer-term support commitments--three years for the desktop computer version and five years for servers, compared to 18 months for the current 5.10 "Breezy Badger" version.

Getting those features right is important, Shuttleworth said in an e-mail on Friday. "We will live with Dapper for five years--so let's give it a few extra weeks now so that it can be a real asset to the Ubuntu project for the full duration of its lifespan," Shuttleworth said.

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Potential Sun Grid customer: No thanks

SAN FRANCISCO--At first blush, Greg Gianforte would seem to be the ideal candidate for Sun Microsystems' Grid service. But the chief executive of RightNow Technologies isn't interested.

RightNow runs its own customer relationship management (CRM) software on its own computers at three company data centers. Customers pay to use the resource, making RightNow a prime example of the software-as-a-service business that Sun executives describe as "ground zero" for their Sun Grid project.

In a meeting here with reporters on Friday, Gianforte said reliability and cost issues mean the company isn't interested in managed hosting services, including the $1-per-processor-per-hour Sun Grid.

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Grid start-up Univa names new CEO

Univa, a company trying to commercialize supercomputing software for pooling the resources of many computers, announced Monday that Michael Ellis is its new chief executive. He most recently was managing director of a consulting firm, Ellis Management Group, and before that was a senior vice president at i2 Technologies.

Co-founder and former CEO Steve Tuecke now is chief technology officer. The Chicago-based start-up has a strategic partnership with IBM and raised $8 million in 2005.

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Microsoft pauses work on Adobe rival

Microsoft has temporarily halted development work on some aspects of its upcoming professional graphics application as it tries to bring companion tools and its next-generation Windows Vista operating system to market.

The application--called Expression Graphic Designer--was first released in test form in June last year, and is based on Expression, the tool Microsoft acquired with its 2003 purchase of Hong Kong company Creature House. But despite being widely seen as a rival for Adobe Systems' Photoshop and Illustrator products, Microsoft does not see the product as a standalone offering.

"At the moment, there's no great reason for us to release it as a standalone product," Wayne Smith, the company's senior product manager for Europe, the Middle East and African professional designer markets, said last week.

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IBM turns inside out for partners

IBM will give qualified business partners access to its researchers, part of a broader push to stimulate revenue through closer collaboration with partners.

The computing giant announced the research initiative on Monday at its annual PartnerWorld conference in Las Vegas.

The company is also scheduled to formally unveil a new organization within IBM, called Technology Collaboration Solutions. The unit is tasked with licensing IBM's intellectual capital and co-developing products with clients. In one instance, IBM partnered with the Mayo Clinic to design a line of electronic medical devices.

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AMD slips to 'sell' on rumors of price war

A Wall Street analyst downgraded Advanced Micro Devices to "sell" from "buy" Monday, citing reports from Intel supply chain representatives that the chip giant was preparing to launch a price war.

AMD, as well as Intel, also received lowered earnings and revenue forecasts, as a result of concerns over a price war, according to analyst Eric Ross in a ThinkEquity research report.

While price wars between Intel and AMD are not uncommon, this move would come as AMD is riding the wave of strong market growth with its Opteron chips and Intel, which issued a first-quarter warning earlier this month, is feeling the pain of a slight market share loss and weaker chip demand.

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SAP spruces up its supply chain software

SAP plans to launch a new version of its supply-chain management suite in June.

The most significant new features in the suite are found in the service-parts management component. This is largely aimed at business sectors, such as small-scale manufacturing and distribution, that put a premium on getting the right components in the right place on a "just-in-time" basis.

The new software, MySAP Supply Chain Management version 5.0, was unveiled late last week at the CeBit trade show in Hannover, Germany. The company said this latest version can efficiently manage even low-value components and should help businesses evolve traditional, linear supply chains into more flexible and dynamic networks of supply chain partners. A lack of flexibility has been a particular criticism of SAP manufacturing software in the past.

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Windows Live parental controls due this summer

Microsoft expects to release a first version of new, no cost parental control software for Windows XP by the end of June, the company said Monday.

As reported earlier, Windows Live Family Safety Settings software is designed to help keep Web content that parents deem inappropriate from reaching their children. A preview version of the tool is currently available to testers.

The first version of the new software will let people filter online content and get activity reports on Web sites that were visited by others, Microsoft representatives said.

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Prosecutor: Debit card crime ring busted

Law enforcement officials in New Jersey have arrested 14 people in connection with a crime spree that has forced banks across the nation to replace hundreds of thousands of debit cards.

The suspects, all U.S. citizens, are accused of using stolen credit and debit card information to produce counterfeit cards that were used to make fraudulent purchases and withdrawals from card-holder accounts, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said. Most of the arrests were made during the past two weeks.

Some of the stolen credit card information came from the office-supply chain OfficeMax as well as North Carolina's State Employees' Credit Union and other businesses, DeFazio told CNET News.com on Monday. "We had cooperation from the security people from many victimized businesses," he said.

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