Wireless network equipment shortage worsening

Wireless network equipment makers in Taiwan, which supply nearly 80 per cent of global WLAN equipment, find themselves in a worsening situation for the supply of components, local IC distributors said. According to an earlier report, Taiwan-based networking equipment companies have already been troubled with 802.11b chipset shortages. ...more

Media Player 10 debuts in Europe

The latest version of Microsoft's Media Player software makes its European debut today. Windows Media Player 10 is available from Microsoft's website and will hook into online music services from MSN Music, Napster and Tiscali, among others. Version 10 includes software to rip music to MP3 as well as WMA and includes the latest versions of Microsoft's video and audio codecs for efficiently encoding and decoding media. ...more

British engineer gets $10,000 magazine reward from Intel

Intel has given a British engineer $10,000 for a copy of a magazine that has been lurking under his floorboards for thirty years. David Clark, from Surrey became the first person to contact Intel to say he had a near mint edition of the magazine that first expounded Moore's Law. Intel had placed an advert on eBay asking the world if anyone had a copy of the 1965 issue of Electronics Magazine in which the company's founder Gordon Moore first set out in print the idea of 'Moore's Law'. ...more

ISO green lights Microsoft's OpenXML formats

The ISO committee overseeing the standardisation process of Microsoft's Office OpenXML formats has given the go-ahead for them to move on to the Fast Track process. According to newswire reports, an email from the secretariat of ISO's Joint Technical Committee (JTC-1) on Information Technology, Lisa Rajche, revealed that the specifications for Microsoft's new formats, along with the comments and criticisms from voting countries, would be put forward for ballot. Although the email did not detail when this part of the process will begin, it is likely to happen shortly, kicking off a five-month review that could see the formats ratified as standards by August. ...more

Macromedia preview next Flash version

Macromedia has released a beta version of its next-generation Flash Player for Web browsers. The player allows browsers to play Flash content in websites. Performance enhancements in the new version include a 15 to 70 per cent improvement in video performance, improved quality of gradients in video and increased ActionScript performance, particularly for scrolling text and initialising components. ...more