Science & Technology Today

A group of technology companies got together to announce the Climate Savers Computing Initiative with the goal of the new broad-based environmental effort is to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by setting aggressive new targets for energy-efficient computers and components, and promoting the adoption of energy-efficient computers and power management tools worldwide. The leading companies supporting this effort are industry leaders like Intel, Google , Dell, EDS, EPA, HP, IBM, Lenovo , Microsoft, PG&E, World Wildlife Fund and others. This initiative is targeting to reduce global CO2 emissions from the operation of computers by 54 million tons per year, equivalent to the annual output of 11 million cars or 10–20 coal-fired power plants by 2010.This effort will lead to a 50% reduction in power consumption by computers by 2010, and committed participants could collectively save $5.5 billion in energy costs Going green will come with a cost of $20 for PC and $30 for a se...

Omnifone is all set to break Apple's hold on digital music. Its software Musicstation is estimated to run on millions of mobile phones in Europe and Asia. Omnifone has decided to take on Apple's music-playing iPhone , weeks before its launch in the USA. Musicstation software, which has already started being loaded in mobile phones in Europe, is estimated to be in 100 million mobile phones in Europe and Asia in the next 12 months. Big mobile phone operators and all music majors have signed up to Musicstation .All the company wishes to do, is to break Apple's hold on digital music and they believe mobile phones are the way to do it.The advantages of a Musicstation over the iPod and iPhone is that music can be downloaded anywhere, without a computer needed. Musicstation will also work on a range of handsets offered by mobile phone operators.The songs will be stored on a server and not on the phone that can get lost or stolen.So it implies that the songs are rented not ...

Everybody seems to be upset with Tipping Point- a the leading provider of network based intrusion prevention systems for awarding $ 10,000 price to Dino Dai Zovi as a top prize in a hacking contest they conducted recently. The so called a - MacBook Pro hijack exposed vulnerability in input handling in Safari, Apple Inc.'s web browser and this has started a wide debate over the “responsible disclosure” of vulnerabilities. Most of the security experts and vendors seem to up against the Tipping Point for this act, as it seems to be against the Organization of Internet Safety ( OIS ) guidelines. Whatever these guidelines may stipulate, I do not see any problem in rewarding efforts of independent security researches. In fact, the two security vendors Tipping point and VeriSign who are engaging independent security researches accounted for 25 % of total vulnerabilities reported for Windows, Linux/Unix and Macintosh. I would suggest that other security vendors may be better of to ...

Nokia has launched a new N-series multimedia device — Nokia N92 — the world's first DVB -H enabled device that will support live broadcast mobile TV from DVB -H service providers. It should a great news for Modeo and India's public broadcaster Doordarshan which has recently launched DVB -H mobile TV services in Delhi. The TV picture is displayed full screen and the quality of the picture is excellent, and channel changing is near instantaneous. It is difficult to get across how good it looks without seeing it for yourself, but between the high resolution screen and the DVB -H technology, the N92 offers an unsurpassed mobile television experience. The N92 is a chunky handset and given what is packed inside it is not surprising that it tips the scale at a relatively heavy 191g, but size-wise at 107 x 58 x 25 mm it is not a total pocket buster. With the XpressMusic brand attached, the N92 is also a capable music phone. Music can be copied directly to the phone thanks to the U...

In continuation to my earlier post on the of launch of the mobile WiMax network, let us see how the WiMax handset market is shaping up. Samsung was first to unveil World's Mobile WiMAX Handset, the Samsung M8000 in early 2006.M8000 is a Windows Mobile handset with a built-in sliding QWERTY keyboard and is compatible with high speed broadband connectivity offered by WiBro (Koren broadband operator).Since then they have launched new Mobile WiMAX devices, the SPH-P9000 and the M8100 . The SPH-P9000 is a true Mobile WiMAX convergence device, which enables wireless broadband access and voice communications, while the M8100 is the first commercially available Mobile WiMAX PDA device.The SPH-P9000 is an UMPC-like convergence device capable of providing voice and multimedia data communications through Mobile WiMAX technology. Hailed by early reviewers as the "ultimate convergence machine", it combines Windows XP, a large 30GB hard disk, 256MB RAM, a 1GHz CPU, WiMAX, CDMA EV-DO, a...

When Apple announced that they would be selling DRM -free music on the iTune store, everyone thought that this would herald a new thinking on DRM . It turns out that their proprietary anti-piracy measures are even worse. Apple uses a technology known as Fairplay to limit what people can do with downloads. Fairplay can be circumvented by burning tracks to a CD and then converting them to another format. It was found that Fairplay is embedded within them the full name and account information, including e-mail address, of who bought them. It is only a matter of time before a utility program was produced which could strip out the identifying information. Apple needed to explain why the data was present.

All the devices running the Symbian Series 60 platform operating system could be infected by Commwarrior virus that invades a phone either through Bluetooth or Multimedia Messaging Service ( MMS ) and then sends infected SIS files to other phones, which means all Nokia phone could be potential victims. In addition to spreading over Bluetooth , the Commwarrior will also read the user's local address book for phone numbers and start sending MMS messages containing the Commwarrior SIS file. Whether by Bluetooth or MMS , the person receiving a virus would have to choose to install the virus, either by selecting that option from the Bluetooth notification or choosing to download and run the embedded file from the MMS message they receive. The virus cannot be spread to the receiving device unless the user of the device chooses to run the application.So keep on the watch out for text messages with an unknown or unusual subject line. Example of affected messages include: SymbianO...