Google launches voice-controlled search engine

Google has unveiled the latest venture from its Labs, a voice-based local search tool for mobile phones. Google Voice Local Search lets you search for a local business in the US simply by speaking the search term. Users simply dial a freephone number and are then connected directly to the relevant business or can opt to receive its details via SMS. ...more

'Racetrack' wires gain on hard-disk storage

A German scientist is claiming a major breakthrough in research that could eventually lead to wires replacing spinning hard disks for storing data. IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, first came up with the idea of what it called 'racetrack' storage in 2004. As opposed to hard disk drives (HDD), where the disk or disks move to enable a head to read data in a fixed location on the disk, 'racetrack' moves the data itself using a pulse of electric current along a fixed wire. ...more

SiS, ALi to feature non-Springdale products at IDF

With technology licensing issues over the new Springdale platform still not settled, Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and ALi Corporation (formerly Acer Laboratories) are expected to put the spotlight on their current Pentium 4 chipsets and peripheral-use chips at this year's Intel Developer Forum (IDF), which will kick off on February 18 in San Jose. Intel's change in Springdale specifications last November made all three Taiwanese chipset designers fall behind in the launch schedule of their new P4-supporting chipsets. Though SiS and ALi are said to have no problem producing their Springdale-based chipsets at the moment, the two companies are not planning to display the chip samples at IDF due to the concern about the licensing issue. ...more

DVD Jon attacks Windows Media encoding

Notorious software hacker DVD Jon has succeeded in removing encoding on Windows Media streams that restricts playback to Microsoft's Windows Media Player software John Lech Johansen, who got his nickname after hacking the copy protection on DVDs so that they could be copied to a computer hard drive, revealed in his So sue me blog that he had reverse engineered encryption coding in order to allow people to access the content using open source media player software. Derk-Jan Hartman, who works on one such open source player, VideoLAN, said that he and a fellow developer had expressly asked Johansen to help. 'VideoLAN members need to multicast video, but the Windows Media Player creates NSC files that contain encoded text,' he said. ...more

Intel squeezes more speed from the Pentium 4

New versions of the Pentium 4 arrive with a faster system bus and new chipset. In the relentless march towards the physical barrier of what can be etched on chips with ultraviolet light, Intel has squeezed more speed out of its 0.13 micron manufacturing process - 2. ...more