Alcohol - laptop fuel of the future

Alcohol could provide the key to greatly extending the battery life for portable computers if research conducted by Sony and NEC lives up to its promise. The two Japanese IT giants are both working on methanol-based fuel cells which promise ten times the fuel to weight ratio of the best lithium-ion batteries found in PC portables. NEC held out the prospect of laptop computers working for weeks in between recharging rather than the several hours, which the best systems offer today. ...more

China closes gaps in the Web

If you have been following China's stance on the World Wide Web, you will know that the powers that be aren't too keen on its citizens downloading any unsuitable material. According to report from Reuters, the Ministry for Public Security has upped the ante with the release of its new Internet Police 110 software. This new software package has been designed to keep all that unhealthy information from seeping into the Chinese consciousness via the Internet. ...more

BT hits one million ADSL milestone

BT has hit its target of one million ADSL broadband connections. The summer 2003 target was set in February last year, when broadband connections totalled a mere 145,000. To celebrate BT has reduced every trigger level for exchanges yet to be broadband enabled by 50 registrations, which meant that a 69 of these exchanges will instantly qualify for upgrades. ...more

British Red Cross wants your mobiles

Award-winning comedian Graham Norton has spearheaded a campaign on behalf of the British Red Cross for people to donate their unwanted mobile phones. This Christmas is expected to see thousands of brand new phones appear under Christmas trees up and down the country. With this in mind, the Red Cross decided to launch its campaign and hopefully pick up all the discarded phones from people who have upgraded over Christmas. ...more

Next-gen OpenOffice makes beta 2 available

Open-source office suite developer Openoffice.org has released beta 2 of the software, incorporating bug fixes and Windows compatibility improvements. Among the improvements over the previous beta, Openoffice highlights GUI support for XSLT-based filters; enhanced OLE editing support on Windows; support for printer-independent layout; improvements to PDF export and a raft of bug-fixes. ...more