Media to go at CES

Microsoft unveiled the first fruit of its Portable Media Center project at CES, with devices from the likes of Creative debuting the system. Creative, along with iRiver, Sanyo, Samsung and ViewSonic all had devices for the announcement, which at 40GB can hold up to 100,000 images or 175 hours of video. Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group, said: 'Portable Media Centers, particularly when they are coupled with PC-based Media Centers, download services, personal video recorders and digital still/movie cameras, will change the way people acquire, use and share their multimedia experiences. ...more

E3 2003: Xbox press conference report

Doom III on Xbox! Rare shows first Xbox game! Halo 2 blasts in with ultimate gameplay spectacular! Microsoft whips out the big guns to impress. Microsoft never does things by half. While some companies are happy to woo games journalists with a civilised press breakfast and a fine selection of pastries, the Xbox press conference was held LA's Grand Olympic Auditorium with blinding spotlights, pumping techno music and cute girls in skimpy T-shirts handing out pretzels. ...more

Speculation on Intel's 64-bit computing strategy resurfaces

Rumours continue to grow that Intel will announce a shift in its 64-bit computing strategy. Last month, the issue of Intel changing its 64-bit position surfaced when president and COO Paul Otellini was discussing the company's recent financial results - Intel hears the 64bit call. Now the Financial Times is anticipating that Intel will abandon its current position and adopt the AMD strategy of x86-based, 64-bit processing for desktop machines. ...more

Novell drops Hula's hoop

'Linux' company Novell has ceased involvement in an open-source group collaboration project once described by Tim O'Reilly as 'a project to watch'. First started in February 2005 when Novell's Linux marriage was still on its honeymoon, the Hula project was billed as an open-standards, highly scalable and flexible collaboration suite based on code taken from Netmail. The company intended to use it to sell to users of commercial equivalents but which were based on 'decades-old designs'. ...more

Google Earth pairs sound with vision

Google Earth will soon be able to provide sounds to accompany its satellite images when a California firm releases its archive of 3,500 hours of recordings later this month. Bernie Krause has spent the last 40 years collecting recordings from all over the globe and his company, Wild Sanctuary, will now link this to Google Earth. He has created software that can embed those sounds, together with information about when they were recorded, into Google's application. ...more