Acer and Microsoft target Europe and China for Tablet PC push

Acer and Microsoft will focus their co-marketing efforts this year to push Tablet PCs into the mainstream of the Greater China and German markets, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported Saturday. This strategy was finalized during a meeting of top executives from the two companies held in Taipei last week, the report said. Acer had originally hoped to boost its sales of Tablet PCs to around 20 per cent of its notebook shipments in the six selected markets of Australia, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Taiwan and the US in 2004. ...more

Intel and Microsoft add a pinch of Salt to speech apps

Industry giants collaborate on Speech Application Language Tags (SALT) for talking over the Web. The initiative will involve reference designs for both software and hardware speech technologies. The idea is to enable businesses, such as ISVs (independent software vendors) and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), to more easily build and deploy telephony and speech application systems. ...more

New Orleans home brew WiFi network under threat

New Orleans, still struggling to recover from the effects of Hurricane Katrina that struck last year, has come up with a way to restore Internet communications to the City. As the landline infrastructure is still devastated in parts of the city, the authorities have lashed together a 'mesh' WiFi network that is providing free 512K bandwidth to the residents. Based on a million dollars worth of donated equipment, the network uses hardware mounted on street lights. ...more

Source warns of Sony PSP delay

European gamers itching to get their hands on one of Sony's new PSP games consoles may have to wait a little longer. According to Reuters, a source at Sony throws doubt on the company's ability to hit its end-of-March shipment date. The source at Sony is saying that 'there's a possibility that the launch could be delayed'. ...more

Grand Theft Auto makes grab for Sega games

Take-Two Interactive Software, the people behind the Grand Theft Auto game series, has acquired Sega's sports game development studios. In a $24mn deal it has taken over Visual Concepts Entertainment and Kush Games, reports Reuters. According to the news agency, the cash deal includes the rights to the 2K sports video game brand. ...more