Nokia takes camera phones past one megapixel

Nokia will unveil its first one megapixel camera phone at CeBIT, prior to a summer launch. The 7610 takes 1152x864 images that can be previewed on the 65k colour screen and sent to a printer via the in-built Bluetooth wireless capabilities or uploaded to the online photo album - courtesy of preloaded Kodak software - from where you can even order prints. 'Digital imaging has developed in ways that were unimaginable when digital cameras first entered the mainstream only five years ago,' says Juha Putkiranta, Nokia's Senior Vice President, Imaging Business Unit. ...more

Dixons to move online

Dixons has announced that it is abandoning the high street in favour of the Internet. DSG, which owns Dixons as well as Currys and PC World, is to spend ?7mn on a makeover of Dixons' ecommerce operation and expects to save around ?3mn a year as a result. 'The Dixons brand will focus exclusively on e-commerce operations to deliver a leadership position in specialist electrical e-tailing,' a spokesperson said. ...more

TSMC and Nvidia reaffirm ties amid reports that IBM has won Nvidia orders

Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reaffirmed their close cooperation following reports that IBM won a multiyear contract to build new computer-graphics chips for Nvidia. IBM said on Wednesday that it will make new graphics chip for Nvidia, winning business that would have otherwise gone to TSMC, Reuters reported. Nvidia contracts TSMC to produce its graphics and core logic chipsets used in personal computers, laptops, workstations and Microsoft's Xbox game console. ...more

Koreans slay Chinese for monster droppings

Korean online gamers are joining forces to slaughter Chinese players, and all over a load of monster droppings. The problem, reports the FT, is grounded in etiquette. Proper protocol for online fantasy games such as NCSoft's Lineage is that once you've whipped your monster, other players nearby stand back and let you go through its pockets for gold and special items. ...more

Enhanced performance from smaller chips, promises AMD

While Intel holds court at its Developer Conference in San Jose, AMD has been trumpeting technical innovations of its own - the production of 10 nanometer double-gate transistors. AMD is highlighting its research as the basis for a ten-fold performance leap for the transistors - the basic on/off switches within integrated circuits - that are the basic building blocks of microprocessors. The breakthrough relates to the Fin Field Effect Transistor (FinFET) design, which AMD has now achieved on transistors one sixth of the size of the smallest currently in production. ...more