6th February 2002 Archive

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Palm unveils new OS, but defers big-bang to 2003

No pain, no gain

Palm finally has a modern, 32bit operating system to boast about, but has staggered the roadmap so that most of the gain - and most of the pain for developers - is deferred until the next major release. "The next OS release will be even bigger - a lot bigger in terms of new APIs," said PalmSource's David Fetter. PalmSource is …

Personal 6 Feb 2002, 01:20
Motorola samples 200Mhz+ Palm chips

Fiery Dragonballs

Motorola is giving Palm loyalists a glimpse of high speed RISC processors running PalmOS at the PalmSource conference this week. Having powered Palm for six years with its Dragonball processor - a cut down, low-power derivative of the 68000 series that powered the original Macintosh, Amiga and Atari [*] micros - Motorola is …

Channel 6 Feb 2002, 09:22
Novell adds clout to Liberty Alliance

Robust standards

Novell threw much - needed support behind the Liberty Alliance yesterday stating that it had some very useful experience to bring to the table. It wasn't joking either - we were wondering how the Alliance would function without such a backer. The Liberty Alliance was created with one over-riding aim: to address the increasingly …

Hardware 6 Feb 2002, 09:37
Don't ask – don't tell: Palm clarifies OS strategy

Analysis Clear as mud

Talk about rotten timing. As Palm's PalmSource developer conference was due to kick off yesterday, much of central San Jose, which was hosting the jamboree, suffered a power brown-out. Traffic lights were dark as motorists tried to negotiate three-lane wide four-way intersections without guidance, and hundreds wer e trapped in …

Software 6 Feb 2002, 10:28
DARPA funds open-source bug hunt

Uncle Sam wants you

Conventional wisdom has long held that open source software garners extra security from the sheer number of people who are free to review the code -- "Many eyes make all bugs shallow," the adage goes. The reality is often different; it turns out many of those eyes have little interest in the thankless task of examining other …

Software 6 Feb 2002, 10:46
PayPal rules the P2P epayment waves

Grassroots pressure

PayPal is America's most popular online person-to-person (P2P) e-payment service. (It's also the most unpopular, as a cursory inspection of the paypalsucks bitch board shows. A Gartner survey of 1,000+ American online consumers reveals that PayPal is the most trusted and most used of all Internet P2P epayment systems with 27 …

e-Business 6 Feb 2002, 11:02
MS trawl for iTV developers at Milia

MS TV platform plods onwards

Microsoft Corp this week used the Milia 2002 entertainment trade show in Cannes, France to announce two interactive TV deals aimed at persuading developers to adopt its Microsoft TV platform. The company will work with Macromedia Inc to offer developers discounts and support when designing Flash graphics for iTV projects. …

Software 6 Feb 2002, 11:27
VIA touts P4 DDR mobo

Uncorks bottlenecks

VIA today launched a "feature packed" P4 DDR SDRAM-supporting mobo. Called the P4PA, the product uses the Apollo P4X266A chipset and incorporates support for Ultra ATA/133 and USB 2.0 bottleneck-easing fast connectivity standards. The board is designed for "high performance desktop PCs, servers and workstations" based on the P4 …

Personal 6 Feb 2002, 11:45
O woe is InterX trading

Needs new owner

The game as an independent looks over for InterX, the UK content management software developer. Today it issued a trading statement and depressing reading it makes too for shareholders in the former stock market darling. The company is losing £1m a month, and it has approx. £5m left in the bank. In the light of poor sales, …

e-Business 6 Feb 2002, 14:30
DivXNetworks licenses MPEG format to Fraunhofer

Selling sand to Arabia

In what looks to be a case of selling sand to Saudi Arabia, DivXNetworks Inc said yesterday it has licensed its controversial DivX MPEG-4-based video technology to the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (Institut Graphische Datenverarbeitung, IGD), inventors of the MPEG-based MP3 audio format. Darmstadt, Germany- …

Software 6 Feb 2002, 14:56
Nvidia takes on all comers with GeForce 4

Especially ATI

After all the hype and pre-launch leaks, perhaps the most notable thing about today's debut of the Nvidia GeForce 4 GPU family is its market segmentation. For Nvidia is immediately setting out its GeForce stall for mainstream commercial systems. The usual gig for a PC graphics chipmaker is to launch high first and soak up …

Personal 6 Feb 2002, 16:07
MS chief lashes out at German Free Software petition

'Undemokratisch? Wir?'

A petition lobbying for the use of Free Software in the German Bundestag has rattled Microsoft Germany sufficiently for the company to retaliate. Microsoft Deutschland chairman and EMEA VP Kurt Sibold has responded to the ringleaders, complaining of discrimination, and of being accused of being a hindrance to democracy. (Pause …

Software 6 Feb 2002, 16:48
Amstrad unveils new telephone

The e-m@iler plus

Amstrad has unveiled a new silver telephone. The "phone" lets people call others and speak to them. Equally, it lets people receive phone calls. And there's an answering machine built in as well. Which is handy if you’re out. Or don't want to speak to someone because you’re busy. Oh yes, and bolted on is a small screen and …

Personal 6 Feb 2002, 21:09
MS taunted with ‘trustworthy computing’ Web page

Links to Google hall of shame

Someone with a sense of humor has either registered or hijacked the domain TrustworthyComputing.com, and is using it to refer Web surfers to a vast archive of news stories covering Microsoft's dismal record in, well, trustworthy computing. We may recall Chairman Gates using the phrase with initial caps (as if preparing to …

Software 6 Feb 2002, 21:56