Apple to hold another 'special event' next week

Apple will hold another of its 'special events' next week, a little over a month since the last one where CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPod nano. The event, to be held next Wednesday, 12 October, is heralded with the tagline 'One more thing.. ...more

Ericsson takes lid off digital pen

The ChatPen from Ericsson will enable users to order products from catalogues by beaming the information straight to a Bluetooth-enabled GPRS phone. The device works by using a scanner that will detect an almost invisible dot pattern printed on paper. But the ChatPen can also double as an input device for mobile phones, letting the user write out SMS messages straight to a mobile phone, PC or PDA (or any other device that has Bluetooth capability). ...more

BT commits to GPRS, but only for professionals

More good news for those hoping to get into GPRS: BT Cellnet has ordered 175,000 GPRS wireless handsets from US manufacturer Research in Motion. But before you get too excited, the handsets - which are mainly for emailing and paging - are for business users only. According to a press release on the Research in Motion site, BT Cellnet is purchasing RIM's BlackBerry handhelds, which look like a cross between a PDA, a calculator and a pager and connect to the PC through a docking cradle. ...more

HP puts its stamp on nanotechnology

HP is seeking a pay-off from 10 years's investment in nanoscale electronics with the announcement of a new licensing programme. It is for technology that HP says could enable the fabrication of semiconductor chips significantly more powerful than those available today. The technology involves a nanoimprint lithography (NIL) process, a method of stamping patterns less than 50 atoms wide on a substrate. ...more

US slaps fine on company blocking VoIP

In what is thought to be the first case of its kind, the Federal Communications Commission has acted to prevent a North Carolina company from blocking VoIP phone calls over its network. A local telco, Madison River Communications Corp., which runs a number of phone companies in rural areas in the south-eastern and mid-western United States, agreed to refrain from blocking VoIP calls and pay a $15,000 dollar fine to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). ...more