Samsung wins race to build 2.0Gbit/sec GDDR3 memory

Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics has announced what it claims is the fastest commercial memory for graphics cards. The company, already the world's biggest manufacturer of memory chips says that it has built a 512Mb 2.0Gbit per second GDDR3 (Graphics Double Data Rate 3) DRAM device. ...more

Sun moves to simplify Java development for Sun One

Sun has announced the availability of a developer studio for Sun ONE (Open Net Environment). This is Sun's platform for delivering Web services, a rival to Microsoft's .Net offering. ...more

MGM backs Blu-ray

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is the latest movie studio to back the Blu-ray consortium headed by Sony. The studio is behind the James Bond and Pink Panther franchises. It is also of course the copyright holder of some of the biggest movies and TV programmes of the last 100 years and its archive will give a huge boost to the number of titles available on the new format - many of which will be in high definition for the first time. ...more

BP plugs its workers into the Internet

BP has unplugged 18,000 of its 85,000 laptops from its LAN and connected them directly to the Internet in a bid to thwart attempts to steal its internal data and user identities. Instead of hiding behind the corporate firewall and a single external IP address, the laptops will all be individually secured with their own Net connection, even when being used in the office. 'Typically, companies use a firewall and assume that the local area network is secure,' Ken Douglas, technology director of BP, told the UK Technology Innovation & Growth Forum. ...more

Price Check: January Sales

In a departure from our usual targeted spot check on prices, we've toured the PC vendor sites to see what's on offer in general for the January sales. PC World has Sony's multiformat DVD burner for ?99 (?30 off), and ?20 off Lexmark's all-in-one multifunction device, at a penny less than ?50. And for the someone in your life that has nothing, you can get ?200 off the PC that has everything: including digicam, printer, scanner and so on, for just under ?900. ...more