HP's blurred vision of the future

HP today unveiled its vision of "simplified" handheld devices that are designed to execute a single function... ...more

AOL blocks a billion viruses in a year

AOL is claiming that it has prevented over one billion viruses, worms and other nasties from reaching its members' machines in the past year. The company says it has fended off some 30 major virus attacks or roughly one every ten days. The system peaked last summer with the outbreak of the Sobig. ...more

US Supreme Court will review Microsoft overseas patent case

It is a legal ruling that could determine the reach of US patents overseas. The US Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether Microsoft should have to pay damages overseas for infringing a speech recognition software patent owned by AT&T. The high court granted Microsoft's petition to review an appeals court ruling that held AT&T could seek royalties based on the foreign manufacture and sale of infringing software products. ...more

IBM's Blue Gene wears the supercomputing trousers

IBM has claimed the top spot for the third time in a row in the global supercomputing chart with its Blue Gene/L system. The TOP500 Organisation put in a sustained performance of 280.6 Teraflops, or trillions of floating point calculations per second. ...more

AskAcademic, not Google or Yahoo!

The formation of a network of libraries is promising to provide a free reference service for online queries and research. The idea is to bring cohesion to all the data that libraries already have online. The system would provide an academically-based alternative to the likes of AskJeeves, Google or Yahoo! The librarians involved believe that their expertise and specialised catalogues will give them an edge. ...more