Technology

It's not 'if' but 'when' Australian organizations will tire of their trusty old PABXes and latch onto sexy new IP telephony according to the buzz around the convention rooms. And there's no doubt that stacked against goodies elsewhere on the information technology and telecommunication shopping list, IP telephony looks like a hot item.

It's just a pity for vendors of this stuff that many would-be customers remain wary of various hurdles and have scheduled the 'when' beyond 2004.

Loyal readers may remember my passionate enthusiasm a year ago upon the release of a new Web search product called Grokker (Making online searches more useful).

This software tool takes the data culled by an online search and organizes it visually into categories that enable you to quickly dig deeply to find the exact site or information you need. Grokker broke new ground, but later ran out of gas when the Northern Lights search engine, on which it was based, went out of business.

No, they're not quite ready for prime time. But in the year ahead, these promising innovations could start to hit the marketplace.

If a rapid-fire series of announcements from cable and telecom bigwigs this week confirms that Voice over IP has a future as a mainstream consumer technology, it's worth noting that the electronic surveillance mavens in the FBI and Justice Department saw it coming.

At 32, Elon Musk has already launched two successful online startups. But it's on a rocket that his reputation may ultimately ride.

Indic Input Method Editor
is a utility for entering the Indian scripts Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil, and Telugu directly into a browser on Windows® operating systems.

Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. said Friday that the DVD Forum, an international association of electronics makers and movie studios, has approved the two Japanese companies' standard for next-generation DVDs.

The move gives Toshiba and NEC a leg up on a rival standard based on the Blu-ray disc format, which has a larger recording capacity, advocated by Sony Corp. , Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes the Panasonic brand, and Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands.

Why?

Well, I set this up basically for one reason. I like music. I like my music, and have rather eclectic/eccentric taste. So before I left the house for work the other day, I thought I would make my MP3 collection accessible from the web, so I could listen at work. Now, I'm no bootlegger, I'm just a nerd that keeps all of his CD's on his hard drive (in MP3 format), because my PC is the entertainment center in my home (I don't have cable, but I have broadband - that should clue you in to where I'm at). So now that we've established why, let's get on to the disclaimers.

During his regular evening walk, software executive Steve Crandall often nods a polite greeting to other iPod users he passes: He easily spots the distinctive white earbuds threaded from pocket to ears.

But while quietly enjoying some chamber music one evening in August, Crandall's polite nodding protocol was rudely shattered.
Crandall was boldly approached by another iPod user, a 30ish woman bopping enthusiastically to some high-energy tune.

You may need to read the following sentence twice: Aluminum foil hats will block the signals emitted by the radio tags that will replace bar-code labels on consumer goods.