Survey: men hog Internet access shock

A survey has shown that nearly two-thirds of those polled thought men hogged computers to access the Net. Presumably with the TV remote in hand.. ...more

VideoWave opens Windows to DVD

Roxio has updated its movie and DVD authoring suite: VideoWave 7 Pro. The company claims that it 'provides everything consumers need to easily turn raw video footage into compelling home movies ready to watch on the PC, via the Internet or DVD players'. As well as an updated user interface, the new release includes a media management system (for organising and viewing video clips, photos and audio files), a label creation tool (for designing and printing disc labels and inserts) and a smart capture utility that works consistently across different media sources, including CD, DVD-Video, scanner, video and photo cameras. ...more

Palm's handheld of de-Zire

Palm's new Zire PDA is officially on shop shelves today for a high street price of ?90 As the common or garden variety handheld, Palm is tipping the fun side of handheld computing as much as the organisational benefits. Within its 2Mb memory the device has standard Palm OS 4.1 apps: address book, date book, note pad and to-do list; and four games: Puzzle, Minehunt, Giraffe and Hardball. ...more

Ricoh chooses both Blu-ray and HD DVD

The headache consumers face in choosing between the HD DVD and Blu-ray formats could be soothed by a new multiformat component developed by Ricoh. According to reports, Ricoh has developed an optical laser system able to read both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats, as well as existing DVD and CD standards. The device uses a single pickup and objective lens rather than separate components for each format and employs a 'diffraction grate' to adjust the laser beams to the correct incident ray so that they are focussed through the objective lens at the right point on the disc respective of each format. ...more

Microsoft's stakes Web services claim with huge data centre

In a century-old farming town in central Washington state, Microsoft has built a farm for the Internet age. But rather than corn or cows, this farm teems with computer servers and data storage systems that will serve as the backbone of Microsoft's effort to combat escalating competition on the Web from Google and others. Microsoft's new data centre in Quincy, Washington, is its largest 'server farm' to date - big enough to house seven football fields - and a physical manifestation of the company's giant ambitions to be a force in the world of Web services. ...more