Wanadoo goes big in virtual reality

The R&D unit of France Telecom - parent of UK subsidiaries Wanadoo and Orange - is investing heavily in virtual reality technologies that will drive bandwidth-intensive services of the future. The prospects for virtual reality may seem to have disappeared over the horizon in the last few years, but France Telecom has been beavering away on a number of projects, some of which are already on the marketplace. Perhaps the biggest wow factor belongs to Quintesens: a fully sensual environment that delivers 3D, spatial sound, a degree of olfactory awareness, and haptic (tactile) means of interaction. ...more

AMD attacks megahertz-myth with new XP processor

AMD describes its new Athlon XP 2600+ as the 'world's highest-performing processor for desktop PCs'. For what is its new flagship desktop processor, AMD asks consumers to ignore the simple headline figures for operating speed in terms of clock cycles per second (the XP 2600+ clocks 2.13GHz). ...more

'Geek spam' emerges as spammers play new trick

Hosted security firm Messagelabs claims geeks are being targetted explicitly by spammers using new techniques to subvert spam filters. It says that over the past few weeks it has seen a new spamming trend arise, which uses 'technobabble' to confuse spam filters into trusting spam mail. MessageLabs is calling it 'geek spam'. ...more

ATI and Nvidia product shipments slowed by flip-chip-substrate shortage

A shortage of flip-chip substrates in Taiwan may slow the shipment of graphics processors designed by ATI Technologies and Nvidia, according to sources in Taiwan. ATI has had difficulty delivering the RV410 and R430 graphics processors to graphics-card makers since it has had problems with its major chip-packaging partner, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), according to sources at graphics-card makers. Nvidia has also faced the same problem with its NV43 products, the sources stated. ...more

Intel rounds out its range with 64-bit Xeons

Intel has brought Xeon, its mid range server processor, into line with its other offerings with the launch of the 64-bit 'Truland' version of the chip. However, these are the first 64-bit offerings from Intel designed for multiprocessor machines using four or more CPUs. In keeping with its new 'platform' strategy of offering solutions rather than just silicon, Intel has launched a new E8500 chip set along with five versions of the 64-bit Xeon . ...more