Listening to how secretaries speak

Speech recognition specially designed for company secretaries was being demonstrated at the Windows eNTerprise 2000 show today by The Speech Recognition Company (SRC). While the speech-recognition engine manufacturers build their vocabularies from standard-english sources, this purpose-built vocabulary is created from the "jargon" of company secretaries. Over five million words were sourced from Companies House, the Institute of Chartered Secretaries & Administrators and the Institute of Directors, among other bodies. ...more

Symbian licenses ARM Jazelle technology

The UK chip-designer ARM is in the news twice over: licensing technology for Java on mobiles and reporting healthy financial results. Symbian has become the first OS vendor to license ARM's Jazelle technology, which enables mobile devices to run interactive Java applications, whether they involve gaming, banking or on-line ticketing. The goal is to attract more Java developers to Symbian's EPOC platform, because developers mean applications and applications mean content, which can only help to establish Symbian's position as the OS of choice for mobile devices, such as Nokia's 9210 Communicator. ...more

Microsoft puts a price on virus writers' heads

Microsoft has announced it will offer $250,000 for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the authors of the SoBig and Blaster viruses. The announcement came as part of a $5mn fund given to US and EU law enforcement agencies to help them crack down on those responsible for creating the swathe of worms and other malicious programs that have exploited flaws in Microsoft products this year. Indeed the Blaster worm was configured to launch a denial of service attack against windowsupdate. ...more

Acer aims to ship 10 million notebooks in 2006

Acer expects its notebook shipments to reach 10 million units in 2006, and the company claims it has a good chance to become the world's third largest vendor for the segment. Acer chairman JT Wang stated the company has raised its notebook shipment forecast for next year by 25 per cent from the original goal of 8 million units. Acer has already adjusted its notebook shipment goal for this year to seven million units, up from the original forecast of six million. ...more

States reject Microsoft delay appeal

The nine US states that have rejected the proposed settlement of anti-trust proceedings against Microsoft have opposed the software company's request for more time to assemble its evidence. The states' call for much stronger penalties to be imposed on Microsoft, and their case is due to be heard in March. Microsoft insists that the call for new penalties amounts to a new case against it and that it needs nine months to go through millions of documents. ...more