Mobile companies to set standards for Super 3G

Twenty six of the world's leading companies in the mobile phone business are reported to have come together to set the standard for what is already being called 'Super 3G'. The companies, including Japan's DoCoMo, Vodafone and Siemens, plan to develop a system that will be up to ten times faster than today's 3G services. According to the Japanese business news service Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the plan is to finalise the standard by 2007 with the first commercial services arriving in 2009. ...more

Logitech buys out Labtec

PC peripheral specialist Logitech announced yesterday that it has agreed to purchase fellow computing accessories company Labtec. The cash and shares deal sees Labtec valued at $125 million and the exchange is expected to start in two weeks time and will be completed during late March or April. Labtec's operations in Vancouver will remain and the company president, Bob Wick, will be made a senior vice president and general manager of Logitech's new Audio Business Unit. ...more

Seagate delivers Momentus encrypted laptop disk drives

Seagate is shipping its fully-encrypted 2.5-inch hard drive, two years after its original announcement. The disks, available in 80, 120 and 160GB capacities, are fully encrypted, using hardware-based AES encryption. ...more

A Power Point to your Palm

Data Viz's Documents To Go software enables PowerPoint, Excel and Word content to be read on any Palm-OS based handheld. The Professional Edition, Version 4.0, uses DocSync technology to present Office data without any loss of formatting and, as well as supporting Microsoft Office files, it will view Quattro Pro and Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets and files from WordPerfect and Word Pro. ...more

CeBIT 2005: Samsung launches first 7 megapixel phone

While it took the photographic industry several years before it produced the first 7 megapixel compact digital camera, the mobile phone industry is wasting no such time. Samsung has today announced a world first with the 7 million pixel SCH-V770 which, it has been reported, boasts manual focus, shutter priority, AE lock and an optical zoom as well as MP3 functionality and a business card reader. The SCH-V770, which can also take telephoto and wide-angle converter lenses, is due to make its debut at CeBIT, Germany tomorrow. ...more