Technology

Opera Software is developing a new Internet browser that allows users to talk to their computer, the company announced Tuesday.

The new browser incorporates IBM's ViaVoice technology, enabling the computer to ask what the user wants and "listen" to the request. Opera declined to give a launch date.

The browser is at its developmental stage. At a demonstration, a pizza order form was promptly displayed when the tester told the computer, "Order pizza." But the browser misinterpreted an order for "a pizza" as "eight pizzas."

Come 2005, radio frequency identification will no longer be an option for the U.S. military. It will be the law.

For the Pentagon, RFID systems are part of a major logistics revamp. And the deadline for suppliers to attach RFID tags to many of the goods they ship to the American armed forces is indeed looming.

During the past few years the two most significant focuses for remaining IT budget have been security and cost saving systems capable of demonstrating rapid ROI. But in almost all areas of business there is a trade off between risk and cost. As companies have double-locked the doors by spending on security for the data network, they may have left the windows open by pursuing saving in areas such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).

Chinese officials have closed two Internet sites used by tens of thousands of people to post online diaries known as blogs because they carried content deemed objectionable.

Some Chinese Internet users said the sites were shut because one or more personal Web pages carried opinions on a well known doctor's letter to China's senior leadership asking them to reassess the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.

A computer program which can read words before they are spoken by analysing nerve signals in our mouths and throats, has been developed by NASA.

Preliminary results show the button-sized sensors, which attach under the chin and on either side of the Adam's apple and pick up nerve signals from the tongue, throat, and vocal cords, can indeed be used to read minds.

Nextel Communications wants its popular walkie-talkie cell phone feature to work when a wireless network isn't available, a move that could give it a leg up on carriers that offer similar so-called push-to-talk technology.

At an investor conference Wednesday, Nextel Chief Executive Tim Donahue described the new service as an "off-network push to talk" with a much shorter range than the company's current nationwide DirectConnect push-to-talk service.

Sony Electronics unveiled on Wednesday two DVD recordable drives based on double-layer technology.

The internal DRU-700A and external DRX-700UL drives will offer almost double the storage capacity of current, single-sided discs, the company said. The forthcoming devices will let users record up to 8.5GB of data, which translates to 4 hours of video or more than 2,000 songs. They will have a double-layer data-recording speed of 2.4x initially, and also will feature the ability to record using both the "plus" and "dash" formats at high speeds (up to 8x DVD+/-R).

A Utah company launched what it called a digital cable-style subscription television service "for the rest of us" on Tuesday, an alternative that eliminates the coaxial cable and strips basic service to a few essential networks with a price to match.

For $19.95, USDTV gives subscribers in Salt Lake City 32 channels, including local broadcast outlets. ESPN, ESPN2, Disney and Discovery Channel are five of the 10 cable networks currently included in the package, but more may be added.

Nanotechnology will amount to nanoprofits, they worry as they tick off a list of technologies from artificial intelligence to virtual reality that looked cool in the lab but have foundered commercially.

Such voices were all but drowned out this month at Nanotech 2004, the industry's largest conference.

And why not? The economy is rebounding, investors are interested and last year President Bush signed a bill to invest nearly $3.7 billion for nanotech research in the coming years.

Symbiot, a Texas-based security company, plans to release a corporate defense system that fights back against distributed denial-of-service and hacker attacks by launching counterstrikes.

Security experts are expressing alarm at the company's plans for the product, set for release at month's end.