Technology

Though it was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, Motorola's latest WiMAX hardware is aimed at business users who don't have high-speed Internet access, according to one executive.

Nintendo Corp.'s Wii game console is a breakout hit in large part because users control the play by waving around a motion-sensing wireless controller.

Many new gadgets are taking the idea of such an intuitive interface several steps further. Soon, you may be able to control computers, television sets, even cell phones with hand gestures alone.

Yong Guan had scribbled 12 arrows across his office whiteboard, each black line going from one little box he had drawn to another little box. He had written five long formulas up there, too.

And that was bad news for cyber criminals.

Once celebrated for cameras that made their own prints, Polaroid Corp. plans to update the concept this year by selling a portable printer for images on cell phones and digital cameras.

And like those old Polaroid instant-film cameras, the new printers should have a wow factor: they require no ink, because they employ a thermal printing technology from startup Zink Imaging Inc.

High-definition television is taking center stage at the 2008 International CES. The consumer-electronics show will spotlight innovations such as Pioneer's self-proclaimed "world thinnest" plasma HTDV (it's only 9-mm thick), a fully integrated wireless set from Westinghouse, where the power cord is the only tethered connection, and even the first laser televisions.

Hollywood studio Warner Bros. Entertainment on Friday said it would release its high-definition DVD titles exclusively in the Blu-ray disc format starting later this year, dealing a major blow to Toshiba and other supporters of the competing HD DVD format.

Warner Bros. chairman and chief executive Barry Meyer said dropping HD DVD was a "strategic decision focused on the long term and the most direct way to give consumers what they want." Warner Bros. was the only major studio releasing titles in both formats.

A new year always brings changes and new challenges for IT managers, and 2008 will be no exception. While there are dozens of emerging technologies that have the potential to disrupt current standards, five that have significant opportunity to lead to major implications for enterprises in the coming year are: virtualization, the role of Apple and managing cross-platform shops, managed data centers, video over IP networks, and presence-aware applications.

Flat-panel TVs look lovely on a wall -- the cords hanging from them, less so.

After a few years of false starts, the industry finally seems close to tackling that problem. At least three dueling wireless technologies for high-definition TVs will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which starts Monday. Manufacturers promise that sets incorporating these technologies will be in stores before the next holiday season.

THE "clean feed" filtering system Communications Minister Stephen Conroy hopes will halt internet porn has already been defeated by British researchers. Richard Clayton, of the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory, said the innovative blocking system CleanFeed, devised by British internet service provider BT, could be circumvented in a number of ways.

For anyone looking to buy a workstation or server CPU, quad-core CPUs have become mainstream. Therefore it’s important to know what you’re getting for the money so I’ve compiled a chart with general purpose computing performance using the SPEC CPU database with the highest scores as of December 28 2007. I included single and dual processor solutions to help you decide whether you want to go single CPU socket or dual socket motherboard. You and also read more about energy efficiency on server processors here.