Novel idea of SMS novel

The e-book is a concept that has yet to take off. But a further experiment in this area is being tried in China, with the release of a novel in text message form. The story - which is a condensed version of the Chinese novel 'Outside the Fortress Besieged' - will be made available in instalments via SMS and WAP, courtesy of a Beijing-based wireless business operator reports Reuters. ...more

Intel signs up to join Eclipse consortium

Intel has announced that it has become a supporting member of Eclipse, which is a consortium of software development tool vendors building an 'open platform' for integrating third-party tools. Developers optimising applications for the Pentium 4, Xeon or Itanium processors will be able to use plug-ins to integrate Intel compilers and the VTune Performance Analyzers into the Eclipse development environment. Eclipse describes itself as 'a kind of universal tool platform - an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular'. ...more

Microsoft warns of eight-hole course of flaws in MVM

Microsoft's Java runtime environment critically below par Microsoft has announced that its Microsoft Virtual Machine (MVM), which ships with pretty much all versions of Windows from 95 to XP, contains eight vulnerabilities, the most severe of which the company rates as critical. MVM also ships with several versions of Internet Explorer and 'other products'. The potential of exploiting the flaws range from taking over a user's system, spoofing Web sites, accessing databases with read/write privileges and system usernames to knocking out Internet Explorer. ...more

Toshiba and NEC launch High Definition DVD showcase

Toshiba, NEC and disc manufacturer Memory-Tech have highlighted their HD DVD format at a three day showcase in Tokyo. The companies are hoping High Definition DVD will become the de facto standard as the successor to today's DVD. Its rival is Blu-Ray, being developed by the likes of Sony, Philips, Samsung, HP and Dell. ...more

Amazon stock price plummets on profits forecast

Online retailer Amazon.com suffered the biggest fall in its share price in six years when it announced that this year's profits will take a hit following big investments in its toys division in the run up to Christmas and in 'aggressively cutting' prices. Following the publishing of quarterly results, investors took the news badly and the shares plummeted almost 22 per cent on the day to their lowest level for three years. ...more