UPI Hi-Tech articles from December 2005

UPI Hi-Tech archives from December 2005

A sugar-cube-sized competitor to iPod.
December 1, 2005... Byline: ELLIOT SMILOWITZ WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- It's said that in electronics, smaller is always better. If that's the case, the iPod may have found a challenger for portable music-playing supremacy. Apple's wildly successful iPod...

Analysis: S. Korea going ubiquitous.
December 1, 2005... Byline: JONG-HEON LEE SEOUL, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- South Korea launched the world's first terrestrial mobile TV service on Thursday, marking another major step toward creating a ubiquitous network society. The country's four major local...

Nano World: Nanothermometers for cancer.
December 1, 2005... Byline: CHARLES Q. CHOI NEW YORK, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Thermometers only nanometers or billionths of a meter in diameter could boost the effectiveness of heat- or cold-based anti-cancer therapies and optimize genetic analysis devices and...

World AIDS Day online.
December 1, 2005... Byline: ANNA CARBINO WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- World AIDS Day kicks off Thursday under the theme "Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise." Organizations from the United Nations to local governments are taking part in the global day of remembrance...

Nintendo Revolution has parental controls.
December 1, 2005... Byline: CHRIS BARYLICK WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Following video-game industry expectations, Japanese console maker Nintendo has announced that it will be including parental-control features in its upcoming Nintendo Revolution video-game...

Poker TV launches online video network.
December 1, 2005... LAS VEGAS, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Poker TV Network is launching an online video network. Poker TV Network Inc. said Thursday the new Web site offers poker-related videos ranging from short news clips to full-length poker TV shows. "Poker on...

American Map debuts new site.
December 1, 2005... LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y., Dec. 1 (UPI) -- A new Web site launched this week integrates a large collection of global travel guides, maps and language learning products. The American Map-Langenscheidt Publishing Group, including Berlitz...

Review: Firefox 1.5.
December 2, 2005... Byline: MICHELLE ALEXANDRIA WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Who says free software is worthless? Last year the developers at Mozilla took on the aging Internet standard, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and had an instant hit on their hands with...

Facebook connecting more than students.
December 2, 2005... Byline: LIZZIE WOZOBSKI WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- The Facebook, the fashionable online college social directory, may be connecting more than fellow classmates. With the growing popularity of the Web site, and the sometimes controversial...

Most online shopping done by a few.
December 2, 2005... Byline: T.K. MALOY WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- Do you ever get the feeling that just a few people are doing most of the online shopping? Well this looks to be true, reports analyst firm Nielsen//NetRatings, which released a survey...

BlackBerry playing 'Russian roulette'?
December 5, 2005... Byline: GENE J. KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- A federal judge this week ruled that the maker of the BlackBerry mobile e-mail device did not have a binding settlement deal with the company that holds the patent for the wireless...

Networking: FCC eyes a la carte pricing.
December 5, 2005... Byline: GENE KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- A new regulation advocated by the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission may change the way cable network providers price services -- leading some to offer programming on an a la...

Intel inside India with $1B investment.
December 5, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Just a few days after rival Advanced Micro Devices announced its plans to grab a chunk of the Indian mindshare by helping India build a $3 billion chip plant, Intel Chairman Crag...

ZoomInfo mines deep for personal data.
December 5, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Googling someone has fast become an integral part of the English lexicon, and to Google someone before or after a date is de rigueur for many seeking that special someone. Yet the...

Nano World: New aimed nanoparticles.
December 6, 2005... Byline: CHARLES Q. CHOI NEW YORK, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- A new method to develop collections of nanoparticles that each seek out different cell types could help scientists to better spot tumors before they grow or to deliver medicines to precise...

ITV banks hope on networking site.
December 6, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Few can resist the temptation to find out what a former classmate is up to these days, be it an old flame or the prom queen who never even acknowledged your existence when you were a pimply...

The Web: Pols embracing podcasting.
December 7, 2005... Byline: GENE KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Howard Dean this week headlined the Democratic National Committee's first "podcast" on the Internet -- a brief, recorded audio broadcast that listeners around the globe downloaded, signaling,...

Dutch selloff of KPN fans takeover fears.
December 7, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Few industries have been directly affected by sweeping technological changes than the telecommunications sector, but it has also remained one of the most closely controlled by the public...

Consumer preference often drives tech.
December 7, 2005... Byline: T.K. MALOY WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- There may be many great techno ideas out there. But if the consumer is not looking for great ideas and only wants something easy to use, these concepts may never see the light of day. The...

'One Laptop per Child' project continues.
December 7, 2005... Byline: CHRIS BARYLICK WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- At a time when $100 might not buy the latest techno-gadget you've been lusting over, MIT's Media Lab thinks it can do something better: provide a laptop computer for a child in a...

Nano World: Nanoparticle impact on plants.
December 8, 2005... Byline: CHARLES Q. CHOI NEW YORK, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Nanoparticles of aluminum oxide, commonly found in everything from sunscreen lotions to environmental catalysts that reduce pollution, can stunt root growth in plants, although preliminary...

Wrong order slams Mizuho's finances.
December 8, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- It might have been an innocuous mistake in any other industry. But a single mistake in what should have been a straightforward sell order by a broker led the Japanese stock market to tumble...

Globe Talk: France Telecom's China leap.
December 9, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Few were surprised by France Telecom's announcement this week that it will be working closely with Chinese telecommunications group ZTE. Yet while the partnership may prove fruitful in the...

Wireless World: Sponge Bob calling.
December 9, 2005... Byline: GENE KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- You're sitting on the metro, heading home from work, bored and exhausted. You used to have to wait until you arrived at home to watch some entertaining TV, but not anymore. Telecom carriers...

India most interesting, but U.S. No. 1 -- Gates.
December 9, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Bill Gates may have beaten his peers in pumping in $1.7 billion of investments and announcing a bigger hiring plan in India because he finds the country "interesting," but the Unites...

Networking: Capturing baby boomers' knowledge.
December 12, 2005... Byline: GENE KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- A third of the aging baby-boom generation employees of Bruce Power, Canada's private nuclear power producer, are poised to retire in the coming years, taking decades of insights into complex...

Tracking Santa has never been so high-tech.
December 12, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- It's a Christmas tradition that many parents of inquisitive children have come to appreciate immensely, and an opportunity for the U.S. military to show its softer side to the public. Best...

Apple iPod: The new public access?
December 12, 2005... Byline: MICHELLE ALEXANDRIA WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- I have to admit that I've never been a fan of Apple's iPod -- for reasons too numerous to mention in this story -- but Apple has finally added the killer feature to its ubiquitous,...

Nano World: Clear, hard nano-based coating.
December 13, 2005... Byline: CHARLES Q. CHOI NEW YORK, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- A transparent coating loaded with particles only nanometers or billionths of a meter in diameter is far harder than other conventional organic coatings on the market, for potential use in...

Microsoft-MCI deal heats up VoIP market.
December 13, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Microsoft and MCI announced Monday that they will work together to develop a network to allow people to place phone calls from personal computers to virtually any landline phone by using...

Interview: The man in charge of Xbox Live.
December 13, 2005... Byline: MICHELLE ALEXANDRIA WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- With the successful U.S. Launch of the Xbox 360 in America, Europe and Japan, Microsoft has turned it's attention to getting everyone connected and playing together online, as a...

Challenges ahead for India outsourcing.
December 13, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Although the latest Nasscom-McKinsey study on India's information-technology and business-process outsourcing projects a scorching 25-percent growth a year for the next five years, it...

The Web: Feds flop at stopping spam.
December 14, 2005... Byline: GENE KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- The Federal Trade Commission is expected shortly to issue a report on the effectiveness of the CAN-SPAM Act, passed by Congress to combat unsolicited junk e-mail, but experts tell United...

GPS systems get smalller.
December 14, 2005... Byline: MICHELLE ALEXANDRIA WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- It used to be that in order to have a GPS system, you had to shell out big dollars on luxury vehicles. Thanks to improvements in technology, feature-rich navigation systems have...

EU allowing for TV product placement.
December 14, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- From infomercials to product placements in soap operas, being pitched products while watching a television program is only to be expected among U.S. viewers. Until now, however,...

Energy costs driving shoppers online.
December 14, 2005... Byline: T.K. MALOY WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- Many shoppers feeling the pinch from high energy costs are going online instead of to the mall. More than one out of every three online households said rising energy prices would alter their...

Commentary: Of cyberporn and democracy.
December 15, 2005... Byline: ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- The U.S. is guilty of imperial hubris, say Bush administration detractors at home and abroad. Which means a blend of high-and-mightiness and high-hattedness. And the practitioners...

High-def editing for the masses.
December 15, 2005... Byline: MICHELLE ALEXANDRIA WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- With the cost of high-definition camcorders and HDTVs quickly coming down, consumers are becoming more and more creative in how they use their video cameras. Companies like Ulead...

Mesh networking to fill in wireless gaps.
December 15, 2005... Byline: CHRIS BARYLICK WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- When wireless networking was first introduced to the public in the late 90s and early 2000s, it received a mixed response. Some were interested in the idea of completely unfettered...

Calls for closer US tabs on China tech rise.
December 15, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- Concerns about China are no longer just about it being the ultimate base for companies seeking to produce goods at ever-lower costs. Wealthy nations must be vigilant of China's growth, not...

Indian telecom presses the red button.
December 15, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- What could be the cheapest mode of communication, tying a note to a homing pigeon or making a mobile call? Ask this of Tata Teleservices, one of India's most aggressive mobile-phone...

Globe Talk: Turkey delights Vodafone.
December 16, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- There should be satisfaction in beating out the competition to win over a company in a country with much potential. But while Vodafone executives may be rejoicing over their deal to buy out...

Wireless World: Lawsuit a marketing move?
December 16, 2005... Byline: GENE KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- A lawsuit filed this week against Microsoft Corp. might be part of a sophisticated marketing and media strategy to better position the wireless software company filing the patent case, Visto...

Networking: Search term faves emerge.
December 19, 2005... Byline: GENE KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Back in the early 1990s, when the Internet first emerged as a cultural phenomenon, technology gurus reckoned that a brilliant new intellectual era was here and that Americans would soon be...

Macquarie plans to expand Taiwan Broadband.
December 19, 2005... TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- The Australian bank acquiring Taiwan Broadband Communications plans to expand TBC's range of services for Internet and cable television subscribers. Macquarie Media Group's managing director, Alex Harvey,...

IT exports seen leading Asian growth.
December 19, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Steady demand for information-technology products worldwide will bolster East Asia's economy next year, according to a report by the Asian Development Bank Monday. The Manila-based...

Web co offering 'Xtreme Web Makeover'.
December 19, 2005... Byline: T.K. MALOY WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- A Chicago-based Web design company said Monday they are searching for the "worst Web site." Intechnic Corporation, a Web development company, announced as a publicity campaign they will...

Nano World: How nanotubes enter cells.
December 20, 2005... Byline: CHARLES Q. CHOI NEW YORK, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Scientists worldwide are teasing apart the precise mechanisms behind how tubes of carbon only nanometers or billionths of a meter wide enter cells, findings that researchers could employ...

Cyber gamers get thumbs up from China.
December 20, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- The Chinese government loves computer gamers. And it will go out of its way to support them. Never mind that the Communist state shut down a gay and lesbian cultural festival at the...

Bollywood set to embrace digital cinema.
December 20, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- While studios and theater owners in Hollywood fight over who pays for the expensive computer-based projection systems for digital screening of movies, digital cinema distribution is...

The Web: Europe's cyber privacy declines.
December 21, 2005... Byline: GENE J. KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- The European Union is no longer the online privacy sanctuary that it once was, as government officials there are enacting a new Internet monitoring law in the aftermath of last summer's...

Making filmmaking a game.
December 21, 2005... Byline: MICHELLE ALEXANDRIA WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Thanks to technology, independent filmmakers and wannabes have yet another unique way to get discovered. Video-game maker Activision has released a brand new PC game about the film...

Lenovo's bid to challenge Dell.
December 21, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- The Chinese computer group that bought out the personal computer unit of IBM earlier this year said late Tuesday its chief executive officer would step down after only eight months on the...

Stubbs The Zombie.
December 22, 2005... Byline: CHRIS BARYLICK WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- In the midst of a futuristic city, a rotting, green-skinned zombie in a fedora hat and ruined suit shambles across the landscape. Spotting a lone citizen, he quietly creeps up, grabs his...

China faces barriers in RFID adoption.
December 22, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- Wal-Mart may be trying hard to convince its leading suppliers to use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tagging on shipments, but pushing this technology's introduction to the...

Wireless World: Premature predictions?
December 23, 2005... Byline: GENE J. KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Predictions that the maker of BlackBerry wireless e-mail technology was about to collapse due to protracted and bitter patent litigation were premature, experts are now telling United...

Globe Talk: ECI looks to India's engineers.
December 23, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- China has become de facto the factory to the world, while multinational corporations ignore India as a country to base their customer service operations at their peril. But while cutting...

Satellite launch to boost DTH in India.
December 23, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- The successful launch Thursday of India's heaviest satellite from spaceport of Kourou in French Guyana may have boosted the country's space research efforts to yet another level, but...

Networking: Gigabyte battlefields.
December 26, 2005... Byline: GENE J. KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Researchers are developing sophisticated networking technologies that enable military commanders to share tactical information -- right from the battlefield, in real-time, experts tell...

Novel anti-virus for handhelds from India.
December 27, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Imagine anti-virus software for handhelds that's less than the size of a typical PowerPoint file, needs no yearly subscription, yet it can protect mobile phones, PDAs, iPods or any...

Politics took a back seat on blogs in 2005.
December 27, 2005... Byline: T.K. MALOY WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- A year-end review of the blogosphere by Intelliseek's BlogPulse.com finds less politics and more variety of almost every other kind in blog content. According to BlogPulse, politics took...

The Web: Fifteen years of browsing.
December 28, 2005... Byline: GENE J. KOPROWSKI CHICAGO, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Fifteen years ago this Christmas week, Tim Berners-Lee, an obscure scientist working in a European laboratory, invented the Internet browser, now a fixture of the digital economy, experts...

PetCell helps locate and recover lost dogs.
December 28, 2005... Byline: CHRIS BARYLICK WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- On the Rock Creek Parkway running trail in the heart of Washington, D.C., a steady stream of joggers runs past a tabbed flier attached to a utility pole describing Peaches, a missing...

China may back local 3G tech first.
December 28, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Even as China, by far the world's biggest telecom market that is anxiously awaiting the go-ahead from its government for third-generation telecom services, is trying out all the...

Commentary: Living forever.
December 29, 2005... Byline: ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Praised as the Thomas Edison of the 21st century, Ray Kurzweil was selected as one of "16 revolutionaries who made America," along with the great inventors of the past two...

Philippines opens up to 3G networks.
December 29, 2005... Byline: DENNIS POSADAS MANILA, Philippines, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- In a bid to beef up the country's wireless network, the Filipino government has approved four major domestic carriers to provide third-generation cellular services from 2008. ...

AT&T to splurge on post-merger ads.
December 29, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- AT&T may have had more than its fair share of being in the public limelight this year as national and local lawmakers debated the pros and cons of the company merging with rival SBC...

Terror enters India's IT community.
December 29, 2005... Byline: INDRAJIT BASU CALCUTTA, India, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Late evening on Dec. 28 terror finally struck Bangalore, India's IT sector hub. A masked gunman opened an indiscriminate fire on a group of delegates at an international conference on...

Online holiday shopping soars.
December 29, 2005... Byline: T.K. MALOY WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Online holiday sales jumped this year, with one prominent survey reporting a 30-percent increase over last year's cybershopping. The Goldman, Sachs & Co., Nielsen//NetRatings and Harris...

Wireless World: Feds vacate airwaves.
December 30, 2005... Byline: GENE J. KOPROWSKI WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- The government is getting out of the way of next-generation mobile broadband services -- a new niche being developed by cell-phone companies -- by preparing to spend $936 million to...

Globe Talk: U.S., Europe still under pressure.
December 30, 2005... Byline: SHIHOKO GOTO WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- The telecommunications industry continued to be cutthroat in 2005 worldwide, not least with SBC Communications buying out AT&T and Verizon expected to merge with MCI by early next year. ...