Technology

As the world's airlines prepare to compete for passengers by introducing in-flight communications and personal entertainment, Air France has begun to offer cell phone service on some of its flights to let passengers decide whether they want to chat with those on the ground.

The Air France voice test, launched in recent days, flies in the face of efforts by airlines operating in the United States. American air travelers have said unequivocally in poll after poll that they don't want to chat or to hear fellow passengers gabbing on their cell phones during flights.

AT&T will become the first company to bring Microsoft Surface to life in a retail environment, giving customers the ability to explore mobile worlds using touch and device recognition technology.

Microsoft Surface is the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft. Beginning 17 April 2008, customers can experience Microsoft Surface in select AT&T retail locations, including stores in New York City, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Francisco.

University of Rochester researchers on Tuesday said they have come up with a way to reproduce music into a computer file that's 1,000 times smaller than a comparable high-quality MP3 file.

The researchers demonstrated their methods by encoding a 20-second clarinet solo in less than a single kilobyte.

An evening zip down any highway these days is likely to reveal quite a few cars with a portable Global Position System (GPS) glowing on their dashboards -- small bright lights pointing the way through the night.

Auto GPS units are hugely popular, and rightfully so. It is the rare gadget that actually simplifies our lives. No more road maps, MapQuest orGoogle (NSDQ: GOOG) Map printouts, or asking for directions. Simply plug in an address and go. And it's often easier than even that.

Ericsson will conduct the world's first demonstration of end-to-end HSPA Evolution technology with speeds of up to 42 Mbps at CTIA Wireless 2008, which is being held in Las Vegas from April 1 to 3.

Speeds of up to 42 Mbps represent the next phase in HSPA Evolution. These speeds are achieved by combining new higher order modulation technology (64QAM), together with 2x2 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna technology. The first step of the HSPA evolution will be introduced during 2008.

Chrysler, the third-largest U.S. automaker, says it will be the first car company to provide in-car Internet access.

The feature will be added to existing vehicles by dealers beginning this year and later be installed on the assembly line, said Frank Klegon, Chrysler's product development chief.

The technology will allow passengers to search Web pages using signals from mobile phone towers. Consumers initially would need a subscription to a wireless phone carrier to ensure uninterrupted coverage.

"We want to make the radio itself a WiFi port," Klegon said.

The Wintel juggernaut, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Intel (NSDQ: INTC), Tuesday announced that they'll again join forces and spend $20 million over the next five years on academic research aimed at pushing the envelope on parallel computing.

As Intel and other chipmakers embark on their multi-core journeys, they've tried as best they can to give software developers new ways of writing software to take advantage of the potential performance increases inherent in packing more processors into chips.

Brazil and Germany have signed an agreement to develop a night-vision radar satellite to observe the Amazon region, the National Space Research Institute (INPE) said Sunday.

The INPE plans to build the Multiple Application Synthetic Aperture Radar with the help of the German Space Center over 18 months, in the second satellite project undertaken by the two nations.

Blue ray technology is becoming more and more mainstream. The blue ray technology is one of the biggest sensations in the techno world in the last few years. Consumers are seeing more movies that are produced with blue ray technology, and even the Playstation 3 is equipped with a blue ray player, bringing this device into millions of homes.

Now that the war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray is over and PC makers are adding Blu-ray as a regular option with new systems, people are asking: What's the big win with Blu-ray?

Obviously it's being pushed as the next big way to get your hi-def entertainment fix. But it also comes with copy-protection strings attached which may make it a tough fruit to tear into on the PC side. And while it promises up to 50-Gbytes per disc (and potentially more than that), that much storage also comes at a premium cost.