Technology

Google Inc.'s Michael Jones likes to take pictures with a super high-resolution camera like those used on spy planes during the Cold War.

His fascination is not to monitor military camps but to shoot photos so detailed he can spot, from miles away, a cosy Japanese noodle shop to have lunch in.

Jones' obsession is mirrored in his work. He is the Chief Technology Officer of Google Earth, a product used by 100 million people that combines satellite images, maps and local data to display geographical information of the world.

The format war around next generation DVDs may be over before it has begun, thanks to a breakthrough from a British media technology company.

Britain-based New Medium Enterprises (NME) said on Tuesday it had solved a technical production problem that makes it possible to produce a cheap multiple-layer DVD disk containing one film in different, competing formats.

As demand for clean energy rises around the world, the nation's high-tech hub is looking to squeeze more money out of silicon.

Engineers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are taking advantage of their expertise in computer chips to design and manufacture electricity-generating solar cells that they hope will be increasingly competitive with traditional energy sources such as coal and natural gas. Most solar cells and chips are made from the same raw material from which the valley gets its name.

IT managers grew tired of having to separately maintain countless infrastructure management and monitoring software tools, so vendors began packaging their point products in dedicated appliances. Well, that may be fine for your old-fashioned, real-world infrastructure. But what about your virtual computing environment? Andres Kohn,

And you thought the fight over radio frequency identification technology was all about whether Big Brother would be able to track unsuspecting individuals as they go about their daily lives. In some corners it?s still about that, but RFID has matured to the point where debates have more to do with what kind of RFID is appropriate for government applications than whether it?s appropriate at all.

The RAAF has taken delivery of new high-tech helmet systems which will enable F/A-18 Hornet pilots to pick targets simply by looking at them.

US defence company Boeing delivered the first of the Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing Systems (JHMCS) as part of an ongoing Hornet upgrade program.

Under the program, all 71 RAAF F/A-18 fighter-jets will be upgraded with JHMCS by 2008.

The technology is already used in US aircraft and is being fitted to Hornets operated by other nations.

Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is, for reasons best known to it, earmarking Y300 mn in its 2007 budget to produce what the Asahi Shimbun terms a lie-detector for online information.

Ask graphic designer Parker Weintz the time and he doesn't look to his wrist, he pulls a cell phone out of his pocket -- and he's not alone.

The proliferation of cell phones, with their list of extra features, has had the knock-on effect of eliminating the need to wear a wristwatch unless it is to make a fashion statement.

Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia are hoping computer programmers can help them with a solution to a decades-old "cocktail party" problem.

The researchers have found a mathematical solution that allows them to separate one sound from a recording of a noisy environment -- like a single voice from the din of conversation at a cocktail party. Mathematics professors Dan Casazza and Dan Edidin and Radu Balan, of Siemens Corporate Research, solved the problem and demonstrated that it is possible to isolate distinct voices and reconstruct spoken words.

The Chinese capital's police will equip ATM machines with a face recognition system to detect criminal suspects and prevent cash withdrawal frauds.

More than 1,000 bank ATMs will be linked to the police emergency response network, known to the public as hotline 110, by the end of October, according to the local police authorities.

Experts are exploring the possibility of including the face recognition technology, a branch of biometrics which identifies people through their unique physical features, in the network.