Technology

The founders of revolutionary Internet telephony firm Skype unveiled a test version of an online television service on Wednesday that will be free to users.
Niklas Zennstrvm and Janus Friis said they "combined the best of TV and the best of the Internet" in a venture called Joost to enable people to watch television online with "choice, control and flexibility."
Joost was a "piracy-proof" Internet platform based on the open-source Mozilla web browser and was crafted to guarantee copyright protection for creators and owners of content, according to its founders.

The pillars glide by as you float through the courtyard of an ancient palace. Moments later, the world turns blue as you slip along the ocean floor and poke through the Earth's crust in search of oil.

The journeys take place in Room 278 at the Joshi Research Center, a data-crunching, virtual-reality hub where visitors are immersed in a dizzying array of computer-generated 3-D images.

Long a darling of the military, aviation and video-game industries, virtual reality is being embraced by more businesses as the falling cost of computer power makes it more affordable.

Mobile phone manufacturers were hoping to begin selling 3G mobile phones in China, where, according to a recent survey, over 80 million customers would like to switch to 3G. But it looks like both customers and manufacturers will have to wait until 2008, as the government is preventing the 3G network operators to provide 3G services.

ONE OF THE overriding themes at CES has been the dramatic improvements in LCD panel technology.

Every major manufacturer has introduced a 120Hz model, along with claimed improvements in contrast, colour reproduction, and noise reduction. Each of these innovations is striking, but when combined in one year they make for a dramatic change in the performance of LCD panels.

The 120Hz overscan virtually eliminates the motion blurring that occured on 60Hz LCD models. In scenarios where the content is panning there is a dramatic benefit from having the additional frame generated.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Veges this week, I got to spend a good deal of time with Nokia's top of the heap model, the N95 multimedia computer (it's not called a smartphone by Nokia).

Hollywood studios have approved a new technology and licensing arrangement that should remove a major obstacle consumers now face with burning movies they buy digitally over the Internet onto a DVD that will play everywhere. Sonic Solutions Inc. is introducing on Thursday the Qflix system for adding a standard digital lock to DVDs burned in a computer or a retail kiosk.

Toyota Motor Corp. is developing a fail-safe system for cars that detects drunk drivers and automatically shuts the vehicle down if sensors pick up signs of excessive alcohol consumption, a news report said Wednesday.

Cars fitted with the detection system will not start if sweat sensors in the driving wheel detect high levels of alcohol in the driver's bloodstream, according to a report carried by the mass-circulation daily, Asahi Shimbun.

An Indian chess player has been banned for 10 years for cheating after he was caught using his mobile phone's wireless device to win games, chess officials said on Wednesday.

The player, Umakant Sharma, had logged rating points at a rapid pace in the last 18 months and also qualified for the national championship, arousing the suspicion of officials and bemusing rivals.

Sharma was finally caught at a recent tournament when officials discovered that he had stitched a Bluetooth device in a cloth cap which he always pulled over his ears.

While artificial intelligence has come a long way, computer users are still the ones charged with security of their data, networks and computers. Human beings at the keyboards should take seven key steps to assure the maximum possible computer and network security as New Year?s Eve approaches in a hacker-prone-era rife with data theft, historically high levels of SPAM, and increasingly innovative computer fraud.

THE NEXT GENERATION disk format has been settled once and for all. Thanks to the due diligence, hard work and unprecedented cooperation between the media companies, the hardware vendors and the OS vendor, we finally have a solution. It is quite easy, Piracy, the better choice(TM).