Five European universities are collaborating on the New Ties project, where they plan to create millions of “software beings” (human beings that live in computers) with the goal of studying how they interact and evolve. The software beings don’t have names, but they do have distinct characteristics, including gender, life expectancy, size and metabolism. Their […]

Creative may have opened a can of worms with its lawsuit against rival Apple. On the same day it sued the Cupertino company over the so-called “Zen Patent,” Apple countersued in a Wisconsin District Court claiming Creative’s digital players infringe on four of its own patents. Apple holds nearly an 8-to-1 margin in sales of […]

Consumer electronics manufacturer Thomson on Friday introduced its first HD DVD player in the U.S., the $499 RCA HDV5000. The device, which is based on Toshiba’s next-generation HD DVD format, can output HD content through an HDMI 1.1 interface in either 720p or 1080i resolution, but not the 1080p format. Other HD DVD player models […]

Adobe Systems is working on software meant to blur the line between the Web and desktop PCs. The company is working on a project code-named Apollo, which will let applications written for Adobe’s Flash presentation software run without a Web browser, Kevin Lynch, chief software architect and senior vice president of Adobe’s platform business unit, […]

Japanese Web and telecom conglomerate Softbank Corp. is working with Apple Computer Inc. to develop mobile telephones with built-in iPod music players reports the Nihon Keizai Shimbun a news agency in Japan. The music playing phones can download songs directly from Apple’s iTunes store. Last year Apple along with Motorola had developed the Rokr phone […]

The Orchard, a digital distributor of independent label music, announced on Friday that it has signed a license agreement with Russian digital music retailer Yanga. Under the deal, Yanga — Russia’s first legitimate online music service and the first company in the region to secure digital rights to a major Western catalog — will distribute […]

A few days ago, a relatively unknown company called IO2 Technology released the Heliodisplay M2 and M2i displays. The M2 is unique in the fact that it creates a non-holographic image projected into mid-air. Without a point of reference, the Heliodisplay appears to be 3D, giving the viewer the illusion of a floating […]

Sharp has now begun using its 2-way viewing LCD technology on mobile devices _ including in-car entertainment systems and notebooks. With a parallax barrier superimposed on a normal TFT-LCD, these displays can show different information simultaneously depending on the viewing angle. Videos after the jump.

Microsoft is starting a game of hide-and-seek with malicious code writers. Windows Vista Beta 2, released last week, includes a new security feature designed to protect against buffer overrun exploits. Called Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR), the feature loads key system files in different memory locations each time the PC starts, making it harder for […]

USA Video Technology, a holder of video distribution technology patents, announced on Thursday that it sued cable TV providers Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Charter for infringing its patents with their video-on-demand (VOD) services. Earlier this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against the company in an appeal of a similar case it […]

Microsoft has vowed to better disclose the actions of its antipiracy tool once it is installed on Windows PCs. The tool, called Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications, is designed to validate whether a copy of Windows has been legitimately acquired. However, it also checks in with Microsoft on a daily basis. This has alarmed some people, […]

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, Microsoft’s released browser update, sports a new feature that has long been present in upstart browsers like Firefox, Opera, and Safari: a search box in the default toolbar for those quick and dirty searches you know you need to do. If you have used any of the competing web readers, […]

The Internet governing body’s decision to reject a .xxx Internet domain for pornographic sites is a clear case of U.S. political interference in the Web’s governance. The board of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, known as Icann, voted 9- to-5 to dismiss the application to register the domain name, which would have […]

Otterbox and H2O Audio announces the release of the H2O Audio waterproof headphones. The H2O headphones are made of the highest quality materials and have been designed to operate in dynamic environments. These headphones are also compatible with all Otterbox products. Therefore, you can ski, swim, or hike without worrying about damaging your iPod. The […]

Verbatim introduces ScratchGuard, a new ultra-hard protective coating designed to significantly prolong the life of high quality Verbatim DVDs. ScratchGuard protected Verbatim DVD Discs provide a surface which does not become statically charged and so does not attract any dust, which otherwise acts like sandpaper when the disk spins in the drive. At the same […]