Technology

Most organisations have measures in place to protect their systems from spyware and viruses. They use spam filters to cut down on unsolicited emails and have a firewall in place to minimise exposure to hacking.

Even if more recent developments such as blogs and instant messaging have yet to be addressed by many, existing efforts indicate a broad awareness of the risks of internet use and the need to put measures in place. But many small organisations have yet to develop formal written policies.

BMW AG said it will conduct test drives of the world's first mass-produced liquid hydrogen-fuelled vehicles on public roads in Japan between July and December.

The German carmaker will test two of the environmentally-friendly vehicles, which emit only vaporised water, in major Japanese cities. The company is aiming to appeal to consumers but problems such as the shortage of charging stations for hydrogen automobiles will need to be resolved if the vehicles are to become popular in Japan.

Getting CIGS solar panels to market is turning out to be a little tougher than expected.

Some companies that hope to make thin, inexpensive solar cells out of copper indium gallium selenide, or CIGS, have had to delay commercial production of their products or change their product line.

The PC maker revealed that it is working on the machine and showed a prototype of it on a company blog.

"I'm here to confirm that we are entering the [tablet PC] market, and we will enter the market later this year," said Jeff Clarke, senior vice president of Dell's business product group, during the minute-long video.

The chilling sounds of gunfire on the Virginia Tech campus; the hateful taunts from Saddam Hussein's execution; the racist tirade of comedian Michael Richards.

Those videos, all shot with cell phone cameras and seen by millions, are just a few recent examples of the power now at the fingertips of the masses. Even the man widely credited with inventing the camera phone in 1997 is awed by the cultural revolution he helped launch.

Google has warned Web users of the increasing threat posed by malware that can be dropped onto a computer as a Web surfer visits a particular site.

The search giant carried out in-depth research on 4.5 million Web sites and found one in 10 Web pages could successfully launch a "drive-by-download" -- such as a Trojan -- onto a user's computer.

The software potentially allows hackers to access sensitive corporate information or install rogue applications.

Michael Schuppenhauer, a biotechnology consultant, lives in an idyllic canyon off the Pacific Ocean near Half Moon Bay, California. On the other side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, just 40 minutes away, lies the heartland of the Internet: Google's headquarters and Silicon Valley.

A SOLAR power project in India supplying electricity to 100,000 people will be widened to other developing nations after showing that clean energy can be cheaper than fossil fuels, a UN report says.

The $US1.5 million ($1.82 million) UN-backed project would be extended to China, Indonesia, Mexico and Algeria and several other nations to help people in rural areas break dependence on kerosene lamps or unreliable grid-supplied electricity.

Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious -- students were writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each other.

Now, schools across the country are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device. Devices including iPods and Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say.

A company that supplies motion-sensing technology for video games is bringing that technology to cell phones.

Earlier this week, GestureTek announced that NTT DoCoMo in Japan would be embedding the EyeMobile gesture recognition technology into two new FOMA 904i series handsets.