Spinning a good tale: Economist

Quantum mechanics may hold the key to a hand-held biology laboratory

BIOTECHNOLOGISTS have long dreamed of creating a “lab on a chip” that would pack the power of a full-scale analytical laboratory into an object as small and as easy to use as the hand-held scanners familiar to fans of science fiction. Such a device might detect biological weapons, run genetic tests or sniff out contaminants. Staff at clinics could use it to screen people for infectious diseases. Police could perform on-the-spot drug tests; paramedics, roadside diagnoses.

Many designs have been proposed for such a device, but none has really taken off. The latest, though, sounds promising. It uses a quantum-mechanical effect called giant magnetoresistance (GMR), which is also the basis of a computer’s hard drive. And prototypes made in laboratories in Europe and America have indeed been able to detect everything from deadly toxins to illegal drugs and markers of disease.

Giant magnetoresistance relies on devices called spin valves. These are made by interleaving thin sheets of magnetic and non-magnetic metals to form a sandwich composed of layers mere nanometres (billionths of a metre) thick. If a nanoscale sandwich is exposed to a magnetic field, the quantum spin of its electrons, and thus its electrical resistance, will change in a way that is easily detectable—which is why they are used in the heads of hard-disk readers.

In 1998, however, it occurred to David Baselt of the United States’ Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, that spin valves might also make excellent biosensors. Biological materials themselves are not usually magnetic, but they are often chemically specific. To Dr Baselt this suggested that tiny magnetic particles might be attached to molecules using either antibodies (which will bond to proteins, sugars and so on) or single-stranded DNA (which will bond to a complementary DNA strand to form the famous double helix). To search for a target molecule, then, all that would be needed would be to sprinkle a sample thought to contain it with magnetic nanoparticles coated with the appropriate antibody or DNA and then run it over a spin valve.

A simple idea. It has, though, taken Dr Baselt and his colleagues, along with researchers in several other organisations, ten years to turn his insight into a practical technology. Now that they have, things are about to go mainstream.

Though the details of the prototypes differ, the principles are similar. Both the spin valves and the paraphernalia of channels needed to feed a sample to them are built onto silicon wafers using the same techniques employed to make microprocessors. The wafer is then cut up into chips.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Spinning a good tale: Economist

How your laptop will just keep getting faster: CNN

(PopSci.com) -- Since the invention of the transistor, silicon semiconductors have been king. But now silicon-based transistors are nearing the limit of their potential. Excess heat and manufacturing hurdles are impeding the development of ever-faster and smaller processors.

Advances in materials and chip design to resist extreme heat and move huge amounts of data, quickly, will be crucial. Experts are exploring three technologies to overcome these challenges: spintronics, graphene and memristors. They are what will someday make ultra-energy-efficient supercomputers small enough to fit anywhere -- even in the palm of your hand.
Rebuilding RAMMemristors will store large amounts of data and could make your computer boot instantly
Accessing data, whether stored in a spinning hard drive or in flash-based memory, is a time-suck and a power hog. The dynamic RAM that rapidly delivers data to the processor is almost maxed out.
"Both technologies for the magnetic hard disk and D-RAM are within a few generations of hitting brick walls," says R. Stanley Williams of HP Labs's Information and Quantum Systems Lab. He believes that circuits called memristors could be the solution. Memristors recently joined the resistor, capacitor and inductor as the fourth fundamental circuit element.
But unlike the others, a memristor has the unusual ability to remember the last resistance it held, even when the power is turned off. When the current starts up again, the resistance of the circuit will be the same as it was before, providing instant-on computers. After the memristor had spent some 30 years as a theory, Williams and his team designed the first one earlier this year. Five years from now, he says, the chips could sit in computers between D-RAM and hard disks to eliminate the boot-up process. Further down the road, memristors, which have higher storage densities than the best flash memory and faster write times than D-RAM, could supplant both technologies in one fell swoop.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: How your laptop will just keep getting faster: CNN

Fraudsters’ bugs transmit credit card details to Pakistan: Daily Times

* UK customer details cloned with help of new sophisticated bugs planted in supermarket card readers
* US counter-intelligence official says bugs transmit information via wireless technology to Lahore
* US National Security Agency is tracking case because of its links to Pakistan

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Detectives are investigating a sophisticated credit card fraud against customers of some of Britain’s biggest supermarkets that may be linked to extremists in Pakistan, a Sunday Times report said. Fraudsters have targeted more than 40 stores in Britain, including those of Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, in an elaborate scam that police say involves tiny devices inserted into the stores’ ‘chip and PIN (personal identification number)’ credit card readers, according to the report.

Specialists say the technology is the most advanced they have seen and is being used in supermarket chains across Europe. The devices, which are reported to have been made in China, are reading and storing selected customers’ Mastercard and personal identification numbers as the cards are inserted into readers at supermarket checkout tills.

Pakistan: The bugs transmit the information by wireless technology to Lahore, Pakistan, according to a senior American counter-intelligence official. Customers’ cards are then cloned and used to steal money from their credit and current accounts and to pay for items such as airline tickets on the Internet.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Fraudsters’ bugs transmit credit card details to Pakistan: Daily Times

Commies in Washington?: Economistan

FREE MARKETS:Trend of nationalization and government intervention in free markets is eroding consumer confidence.

END OF FREE MARKETS
By Saad Sarwar Muhammad
Monday, September 22, 2008

When Pakistan’s central bank blocked foreign currency accounts to control the flight of capital to foreign banks in the aftermath of nuclear tests that it conducted, it was considered as interventionist and the measures were considered anti-economy and opposed to what free markets were all about. A similar thing happened again early this year when Pakistan’s main stock market shed more than $36 billion dollar of market capital in a very short span, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan put a floor on the points to curtail flight of money. Pakistani rupee also suffered at the hands of the flight of capital and the exchange rate fell from roughly Rs. 60 to a dollar to Rs. 78 to a dollar within a span of a few months. All these measures were criticized around the world because of the interventionist policies of Pakistani institutions who wanted to keep the economy in check.

The collapse of the investment banks like Lehman brothers and Meryl Lynch and firms like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac along with the imminent fall of the US insurance giant AIG put the global markets in a tailspin. UK responded with a ban on short selling of stocks to arrest the fall of FTSE its main index. The US followed suit with the ban on short selling of stocks for a month. Short selling is speculative in nature with investors betting on a company’s stock to fall driving the whole market down. Even profitable investment banks like Morgan Stanley were feeling the pinch because of the short sale. The measures worked and the stock markets around the world recovered within a day with a long and wayward week coming to an end. In the process, the Fed also ended up bailing out the insurance company AIG for a big sum of $85 billion dollars and it is estimated the cost of the Fed’s intervention to the US taxpayer might amount to $700 billion dollars overall driving the domestic debt even higher to upwards of $11 trillion dollars. All these measures, with no clear and definitive answer to whether they will work or would be enough to save the ailing US economy.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Commies in Washington?: Economistan

Shake it all about: Economist

How to use your laptop to locate an earthquake

IF YOU drop your laptop computer, a chip built into it will sense the acceleration and protect the delicate moving parts of its hard disk before it hits the ground. A group of researchers led by Jesse Lawrence of Stanford University are putting the same accelerometer chip to an intriguing new use: detecting earthquakes. They plan to create a network of volunteer laptops that can map out future quakes in far greater detail than traditional seismometers manage.

Seismometers are large, expensive beasts, costing $10,000 or more apiece. They are designed to be exquisitely sensitive to the sort of vibrations an earthquake produces, which means they can pick up tremors that began halfway around the world. By contrast, the accelerometer chips in laptops, which have evolved from those used to detect when a car is in a collision and thus trigger the release of the airbags, are rather crude devices. They are, however, ubiquitous. Almost all modern laptops have them and they are even finding their way into mobile phones. The iPhone, for example, uses such a chip to detect its orientation so that it can rotate its display and thus make it easily readable.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Shake it all about: Economist

Virtual carnivores: Economist

Struggling to protect privacy behind the great firewall

UNTOLD legions police the internet in China to block information deemed politically threatening. But the world’s biggest online population still has a wild streak. Worries are growing about internet vigilantes who mount “renrou sousuo”, or “human-flesh searches”, to ferret out perceived wrongdoers.

Zhou Zhenglong, a peasant in the north-western province of Shaanxi, began a 30-month jail term on September 27th after internet-users exposed his faking of photographs of a rare Chinese tiger in the wild. Senior Shaanxi officials, eager to attract tourists to the area, had backed the pictures’ authenticity for several months. They were eventually fired amid an internet outcry. Some posters on Chinese bulletin boards and blogs have argued that Mr Zhou was perhaps merely a hapless tool in a hoax perpetrated mainly by bureaucrats.

In the absence of a free press in China, the internet, despite attempts at censorship, can sometimes put the brakes on official abuses of power. But it can also go too far. As the state-run news agency, Xinhua, put it, “You may find yourself up before a kangaroo court of angry netizens and receive a virtual lynching.” “Human-flesh searching” is known less dramatically in English as “crowdsourcing”—using inputs from a large number of people (usually internet users) to solve problems. But often in China the practice involves mobilising people online to hunt down ordinary citizens whose only alleged sin is that of being objectionable.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Virtual carnivores: Economist

China 'spying on Skype messages': BBC

China has been monitoring and censoring messages sent through the internet service Skype, researchers say.

Citizen Lab, a Canadian research group, says it found a database containing thousands of politically sensitive words which had been blocked by China.

The publically available database also displayed personal data on subscribers.

Skype said it had always been open about the filtering of data by Chinese partners, but that it was concerned by breaches in the security of the site.

Citizen Lab researchers, based at the University of Toronto, said they discovered a huge surveillance system which had picked up and stored messages sent through the online telephone and text messaging service.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: China 'spying on Skype messages': BBC

Know-alls: Economist

Electronic snooping by the state may safeguard liberty—and also threaten it

Kobal Collection

IF A Muslim chemistry graduate takes an ill-paid job at a farm-supplies store what does it signify? Is he just earning extra cash, or getting close to a supply of potassium nitrate (used in fertiliser, and explosives)? What if apparent strangers with Arabic names have wired him money? What if he has taken air flights with one of those men, with separate reservations and different seats, paid in cash? What if his credit-card records show purchases of gadgets such as timing devices?

If the authorities can and do collect such bits of data, piecing them together offers the tantalising prospect of foiling terrorist conspiracies. It also raises the spectre of criminalising or constraining innocent people’s eccentric but legal behaviour.

In November 2002 news reports revealed the existence of a big, secret Pentagon programme called Total Information Awareness. This aimed to identify suspicious patterns of behaviour by “data mining” (also known as “pattern recognition”): computer-driven searches of large quantities of electronic information. After a public outcry it was dubbed, perhaps more palatably, Terrorism Information Awareness. But protests continued, and in September 2003 Congress blocked its funding.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Know-alls: Economist

Footloose capitalism: Economist

China’s largest Brazilian community enjoys the benefits of globalisation

IN DONGGUAN, a city of some 7m people situated 90km (56 miles) north of Hong Kong, factories abound producing everything from furniture to car parts, helping to fuel China’s economic boom. But take a closer look and you may spot something rather less familiar: a thriving community of Brazilians, estimated to number 3,000, most of them working in the footwear industry.

They trace their roots to southern Brazil, which was the bustling centre of their country’s shoe-export business until the early 1990s, when a sharp reduction of Brazil’s trade barriers, an appreciating currency and pressure from cheap Chinese labour combined to cause exports to stagnate. In 2007 Brazil exported 177m pairs of shoes, 12% below the early-1990s peak of 201m. Many firms that survived moved north, to parts of the country where labour costs less. Meanwhile China powered ahead, with its share in world shoe exports, already the largest, doubling to two-thirds over the same period. Dongguan is now China’s footwear capital, exporting 600m pairs a year. And many more are made elsewhere in China on behalf of Dongguan firms.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Footloose capitalism: Economist

Warning sounded on web's future: BBC

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.
Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation.
Sir Tim was speaking in advance of an announcement about a Foundation he has helped create that he hopes will improve the World Wide Web.

Future proof

Sir Tim talked to the BBC in the week in which Cern, where he did his pioneering work on the web, turned on the Large Hadron Collider for the first time.
The use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth particularly concerned him, he said. In a similar vein was the spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine given to children in Britain was harmful.
Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Warning sounded on web's future: BBC

Touching the future: Economist

Computing: Touch screens are becoming an increasingly popular way to control mobile phones and other devices. How does the technology work, and where is it heading?

THE proliferation of touch screens in electronic devices over the past two or three years has been so rapid that you may have found yourself trying to press an on-screen button or icon when sitting at your computer only to realise, much to your frustration, that it is not a touch screen. Many mobile phones, most famously Apple’s iPhone, now have touch-screen interfaces, as do satellite-navigation systems and portable games consoles. Confusingly, however, most computers do not—so far.

But that may be about to change. Microsoft has already demonstrated a prototype of Windows 7, the next version of its flagship operating system, based around “multi-touch” capabilities, which allow a touch screen to sense more than one finger at once. As well as being able to press buttons, tap icons, call up menus and scroll windows, users will be able to rotate and stretch on-screen objects using two fingers at a time, as they already can on the iPhone. For its part, Apple is rumoured to be working on new versions of its desktop and laptop computers with touch screens. It has already taken a half-step in this direction by putting multi-touch trackpads into its laptop computers.

So the touch screen could be on the verge of becoming a standard part of computer interfaces, just as the mouse did in the 1980s. Many people thought that would never happen: surely switching between keyboard and mouse would slow people down and make them less productive? In fact, mouse-driven interfaces can be far more efficient, at least for some tasks. The same seems likely to be true of touch-screen interfaces. The touch screen will probably not replace the mouse and keyboard, but will end up being used for some tasks.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Touching the future: Economist

Thanks for the memory: Economist

A mathematical trick may allow people to scatter their computer files across the world's hard disks

IF YOU have lots of unused storage space on your hard disk, then why not share it with others on the internet? The benefit could be distributed storage for your own files, making them available any time via the web, even if you are nowhere near your computer—indeed, even if your computer is switched off. That desideratum is what a Zurich-based firm called Caleido is aiming to provide, with a free online storage service known as Wuala that was recently introduced to the public.

Though the idea underlying it is simple, Wuala requires some nifty technology to make its distributed system work reliably. In particular, its developers, Dominik Grolimund and Luzius Meisser, have used a clever mathematical trick to compensate for the fact that the participating computers will come and go from the internet in an unpredictable way.

The challenge is how to minimise the number of copies of the same file that have to be distributed. Copying costs participants both storage space and bandwidth. Yet there have to be enough copies to ensure that there is at least one available most of the time. If, for example, each computer is online 25% of the time, then a quick calculation shows that you would have to copy each file to 100 different computers to ensure that 999,999 times out of a million there is at least one copy available when a user looks.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Thanks for the memory: Economist

Postmodern wriggle: Economist

To save Microsoft, Bill Gates adjusts his shorts

THE self-appointed marketing experts of the blogosphere immediately pounced on the opening shot of what will probably be this year’s most discussed advertising campaign. Microsoft, the huge but boring software company that has been pummelled by the advertisements of its smaller and cooler rival, Apple, is fighting back. How? By having Bill Gates, its co-founder, chairman and arguably its personification, buy shoes with Jerry Seinfeld, a comedian, as his adviser. Just look, the bloggers are screaming: further proof, if any were needed, that Microsoft just doesn’t get it.

Admittedly, the first television spot of the campaign is bizarre. All that Messrs Gates and Seinfeld seem to talk about is, well, shoes. How they “run tight”. How best to stretch them. Windows and Office, Microsoft’s ubiquitous flagship products, are not mentioned at all. The word “Microsoft” is mentioned exactly once. Computers come up only insofar as Mr Seinfeld wonders whether they might someday become “moist and chewy”. Mr Gates replies with a subliminal hint, a subtle wriggle of his boxer shorts. What does any of this, the critics ask, have to do with the purpose of the ad campaign, which is to salvage the reputation of Vista, the latest version of Windows?

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Postmodern wriggle: Economist

Pakistan's Energy Crunch: American Chronicle

Saad Sarwar

Cheap and reliable sources of energy are the driving force for any economy. In the current climate of the world where the limited supply of fossil fuels and the high energy demands is already causing havoc to the world economy, it is about time we thought of alternate sources of energy as the only real option left.

A developing country like Pakistan can ill afford to ignore the importance of alternate sources of energy and the role hydel power can play for Pakistan if harnessed properly. Pakistan is naturally blessed with a terrain that boasts some of the highest mountain ranges in the world which also serve as the sources for all of its rivers. Pakistan possesses K2 which is the second highest point on the earth with the water going all the way to sea level through a course of hundreds of miles. Water coming from such high sources serves as huge repositories of potential energy which can be harnessed not only to produce cheap energy but also as water conservation projects for agriculture. Right now millions of cusecs of water is wasted in our rivers and thrown out straight to the sea without much use. It is high time Pakistan thought of constructing small dams and water reservoirs for electricity production and agricultural purposes all over the country. Even rain water should be conserved in special reservoirs purpose built for the monsoon season which can also serve to make deserts and vast areas of Baluchistan green. Pakistan should go all out for these energy projects so that none of the industrial units or houses and businesses in Pakistan are ever out of energy. Pakistan should set its energy target as double its actual needs in order to be the best growing economy in the world. Which it could easily be, if the cost of factors of production are lowered. Pakistani textile industry always complains of power outages and high costs of energy. If we use hydel power and alternate sources of energy we can even lower cost of utilities for all Pakistanis and give something back to our populace through better energy management thereby becoming a true welfare state.

Pakistan should also think about requiring all vehicles operating in Pakistan to run on electric power by the year 2010. Many countries have started initiatives of using electricity to power vehicles. In Nepal many companies have mushroomed that offer vehicles run on electricity using multiples of car batteries. Britain has submarines that are powered by batteries. Honda has introduced its very efficient Fuel Cell Vehicle that utilizes alternative fuel technologies. Pakistan should set itself a target of being oil free by the year 2020. If steps are taken right now for generating hydel-power along with alternate sources of energy, being oil free by 2020 is not too much to ask for.

Alternate sources of energy like wind and solar power have been exploited by many countries. China even offers a full range of wind turbines, from home turbines of various production capacities to industrial wind turbines. Pakistan can easily import and employ these on mass level to help the local populace develop energy for home use in their very own homes. Some can even sell excess capacity of electricity to the government like is done in the United States thereby lowering costs of production for the government. Most wind turbines only require sustained winds at low wind speeds which are suitable for many areas in Pakistan.

Pakistan is also blessed with plenty of sunshine which can be harnessed to produce solar energy. The first and foremost use of solar panels apart from home use in Pakistan could be the conversion of all the street lights with those powered by solar panels. Installing a solar panel with each street light would not only reduce the burden of the government to produce energy but would also result in saving costs associated with wiring of the street lights as lights with solar panels do not require an exorbitant amount of wiring due to the distance between the source(solar panel) and use(light) being small. Pakistan's main artery, motorway M-2 is already fitted with solar panels that power emergency phones every few kilometers.

With the way the oil prices are rising everyday the day is not far away when we would be driving solar cars on highways lighted by solar energy into homes powered by alternate sources of energy like wind and solar power. The sooner Pakistan recognizes the potential of wind,hydel and solar power along with electric powered vehicles, the sooner Pakistan would become a world class economy whose citizens would enjoy cheap power and the country would rid itself of high current account deficits associated with high oil imports costs and low exports due to high utility costs.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan's Energy Crunch: American Chronicle

The second browser war: Economist

Google's new web browser is its most direct attack on Microsoft yet

SEVERAL years ago, Silicon Valley was rife with rumours that Google, then primarily a search engine, might be building a new web browser to rival that of Microsoft, called Internet Explorer, or even an operating system to rival Microsoft's Windows. Google mocked those rumours and they died down. But if Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, is to be believed, the speculation itself made him think that "maybe it's not a bad idea". And so this week Google did launch a new browser, called Chrome, that is also, in effect, a new operating system. The rumours, says Mr Brin cheekily, "just happened to migrate from being false to being true".

Chrome amounts to a declaration of war—albeit a pre-emptive one, in Google's mind—against Microsoft. So far, Google has been coy about admitting the rivalry (whereas Microsoft, especially its boss, Steve Ballmer, is obsessed with it). In web search and advertising, Google dominates—roughly as Microsoft does in operating systems and office applications. To the extent that Google has challenged Microsoft's core business, it is through Google Docs, its online word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications. But these, so far, have few users.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: The second browser war: Economist

How secure is your card info?: BBC

By Maggie Shiels 
Technology reporter, BBC News Website, Silicon Valley

In light of the biggest identity theft case ever prosecuted in America, the spotlight is being turned on just how secure is our credit and debit card information? 

The question is a simple one but the answer might appear to be a bit harder to pin down. 

VeriSign, a firm that secures websites for e-commerce, told the BBC that credit and debit card information is "vulnerable" but they are working with retailers to change that. 

"Credit and debit card information is just not incredibly secure," said Perry Tancredi, VeriSign's senior product manager for fraud detection. 

"But it is counterbalanced by the amount of fraud losses due to cheque fraud and direct debit fraud which is much greater than credit card fraud." 

Mr Tancredi said: "Regardless of how strong the security measures, and how vigilant, the weak part of the chain is there is always a human who is responsible and who has overall control over the information." 

He suggested the best bet was for all consumers to "assume that there will be some sort of fraud on your account sooner or later" and put in place a plan to deal with it.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: How secure is your card info?: BBC

The computer says no: Economist

Image processing could help to identify artists by their brushstrokes

THE ability of computers to analyse complex digital images is growing rapidly. Robots are being fitted with powerful vision systems that allow them to recognise and hold things. Satellite images of the Earth can be scanned for tiny features, or pictures from deep space searched for strange objects. Medical images can be analysed to find out what might be going on inside a human body. Now digital imaging is learning how to spot art forgeries too.

Scientific methods have long been used to help authenticate works of art: for instance, paint can be dated from its chemical composition or canvasses X-rayed to reveal what lies below the surface. In recent years, however, the art itself has come under more scientific scrutiny, especially through the analysis of brushstrokes. The idea is to establish the equivalent of an artist’s “handwriting” to help experts attribute paintings.

One of the most comprehensive studies using such methods was published recently in Signal Processing Magazine from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It involved analysing the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and was carried out by James Wang of Penn State University and his colleagues from other universities. It was done with the help of the Van Gogh and Kröller-Müller museums in the Netherlands.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: The computer says no: Economist

Flock Web Browser Eases Multitasking But Has Drawbacks: WSJ

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY 
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

August 7, 2008; Page D1

Even with the advent of tabbed browsing, which allows you to keep multiple Web pages open in the same window, Web multitasking can be a pain. You have to constantly click back and forth among tabs if they contain fast-changing material you check often, like the status of your friends in social-networking services, or updates to news feeds.

Trying to share information with people on your Web-based networks can introduce another layer of digital jujitsu. It can be awkward to snag a photo or a snippet of text from one Web site and send it to a friend in a social network on another, or post it to your own blog.

But I've been testing a little-known Web browser that attempts to solve these problems. It's called Flock, and it bills itself as "the social Web browser." I found that it worked well, but it isn't for everyone, and it has some important downsides.

Flock is a modified version of the excellent Firefox Web browser that tacks on some special features for social networkers and bloggers. It's available free at flock.com in essentially identical versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Flock adds a special vertical "sidebar" at the left of the browser that keeps your social networks, photo sites or news feeds visible at all times, regardless of what page you're viewing in the main browser window.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Flock Web Browser Eases Multitasking: WSJ

Say goodbye to the computer mouse: BBC

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

t's nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days of the computer mouse are numbered.

A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years.

Taking over will be so called gestural computer mechanisms like touch screens and facial recognition devices.

"The mouse works fine in the desktop environment but for home entertainment or working on a notebook it's over," declared analyst Steve Prentice.

He told BBC News that his prediction is driven by the efforts of consumer electronics firm which are making products with new interactive interfaces inspired by the world of gaming .

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Say goodbye to the computer mouse: BBC

Look for the silver lining: Economist

Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by Claudio Munoz
Piracy is a bad thing. But sometimes companies can turn it to their advantage

"MERCHANT and pirate were for a long period one and the same person," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche. "Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality." Companies, of course, would strongly disagree with this suggestion. Piracy is generally bad for business. It can undermine sales of legitimate products, deprive a company of its valuable intellectual property and tarnish its brand. Commercial piracy may not be as horrific as the seaborne version off the Horn of Africa (see article). But stealing other people's R&D, artistic endeavour or even journalism is still theft.

That principle is worth defending. Yet companies have to deal with the real world—and, despite the best efforts of recorded-music companies, luxury-goods firms and software-industry associations, piracy has proved very hard to stop. Given that a certain amount of stealing is going to happen anyway, some companies are turning it to their advantage.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Look for the silver lining: Economist

Review: iPhone 3G lives up to the hype: CNN

By Kent German and Donald Bell
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CNET.com

(CNET) -- Just over a year after Apple birthed the first iPhone, the long-awaited, next-generation iPhone 3G has arrived bearing a mildly tweaked design and a load of new features.

With access to a faster 3G wireless network, Microsoft Exchange server e-mail, and support for a staggering array of third-party software from the iPhone App Store, the new handset is the iPhone we've been waiting for.

It still lacks some basic features but when compared with what the original model was year ago, this device sets a new benchmark for the cell phone world.

With the iPhone 3G, Apple appears to have fixed some call-quality performance issues we had with the previous model--in our initial tests, the volume is louder with less background buzz than before. Music and video quality were largely unchanged, but we didn't have many complaints in that department to begin with.

We're worried about battery life--some early reviews indicate that the iPhone 3G lasts only a day--but we'll run full tests over the next couple of days and report our results on this page.

Price may well remain our largest concern. New AT&T customers and most current AT&T customers can buy the iPhone 3G for $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. If you don't qualify for that price--check your AT&T account to find out--you'll pay $399 and $499 respectively.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Review: iPhone 3G lives up to the hype: CNN

Enigma variations: Economist

Kobal

Jul 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition
A device that counts photons will secure optical data networks from prying eyes

REMOVE the outer coating from a strand of optical fibre, bend it and attach a sensor to detect the tiny amount of light that will leak out. Hacking into an optical network like this is the modern equivalent of a wire tap. But now a laboratory in Cambridge, England, has found a way to turn a hacker's screen instantly blank if he infiltrates the network. This is because the data are being encrypted in a new and probably unbreakable way with one of the first practical devices to be developed for quantum information technology.

The idea of using the more arcane aspects of quantum theory to do things that standard information technology cannot manage has been around for a while. One branch of the field is quantum computing. This, if it can be made to work routinely, promises machines that can do lots of calculations in parallel instead of one at a time, and thus solve problems existing computers cannot manage. The other branch is quantum cryptography, which promises unbreakable codes for messages.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Enigma variations: Economist

Mobile web reaches critical mass: BBC

The mobile web has reached a "critical mass" of users this year, according to a report by analysts Nielsen Mobile.

The US is the most tech savvy nation with nearly 40 million Americans - 16% of all US mobile users - using their handset to browse on the move.

The UK and then Italy come a close second and third in the 16 countries surveyed by the analyst firm.

Indonesia has the lowest take-up with just 1.1% of mobile subscribers using their handsets for surfing the web.

The firm believes the growth of the mobile web is a combination of increasing numbers of user friendly handsets, higher speed networks and unlimited data packages.

"The adoption and the experience are improving at an impressive rate," said Nic Covey, Nielsen Mobile's director of insights.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Mobile web reaches critical mass: BBC

Google must divulge YouTube log: BBC

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a "set-back to privacy rights".

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

While the legal battle between the two firms is being contested in the US, it is thought the ruling will apply to YouTube users and their viewing habits everywhere.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Google must divulge YouTube log: BBC

Free speech is thorny online: CNN

NEW YORK (AP) -- Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.

Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services -- from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video -- become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.

Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.'s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Free speech is thorny online: CNN

Asian invasion: Video Games: Economist

Jun 26th 2008
From The Economist print edition

A new business model: give away the game and charge avid players for extras

FOR millions of East Asians, online gaming is not so much a hobby as a way of life. "Massively multiplayer" online games such as "Legend of Mir 3" and "MapleStory" have legions of devoted fans who spend an alarming proportion of their waking hours sitting in front of their PCs, at home or in internet cafés, doing battle with elves, wizards and mythological beasts. Some players take their parallel gaming lives very seriously: one man murdered a friend in a dispute over a stolen virtual sword.

Many of these games rely on a business model that is different from the way the video-games industry works in the West. Rather than selling games as shrink-wrapped retail products which can then be played on a PC or games console, the Asian industry often gives away the software as a free download and lets users play for nothing. Revenue comes instead from small payments made by more avid players to buy extras for their in-game characters, from weapons to haircuts. In this way, a minority of paying customers subsidise the game for everyone else.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Asian invasion: Video Games: Economist

Huawei to deploy WiMAX network for Mobilink in Pakistan: Telecom Paper

Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei Technologies has been selected by Pakistani mobile operator Mobilink to deploy a commercial WiMAX 16e network. The network will cover central business districts and hot spots in Pakistan's six major cities of Islamabad, Karachi, Sialkot, Faisalabad, Lahore and Rawalpindi. Under the terms of the contract, Huawei will provide Mobilink with a WiMAX system including distributed base stations, an access service network-gateway and a network management system.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Huawei to deploy WiMAX network for Mobilink in Pakistan: Telecom Paper

Pakistan's IT exports reach $175 million in 2007-08: PSEB MD: Online News

ISLAMABAD:Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) has reached the figure of USD 175 million annual IT exports during the financial year 2007-08 about USD 13 million more than the USD 162 million target set for the said year.

"We are satisfied with the pace of progress of the local IT sector and ambitious about its further growth in future as this is the only industry in Pakistan that has registered a remarkable growth during the last five years," MD PSEB Talib Baloch said in a recent statement issued here.

Pakistan IT exports of US$116 million for the FY06-07 were also in excess to the set target of US$108 million, he disclosed. "This sector has consecutively registered 50 per cent annual growth in exports for the last five years showing its tremendous potential. If nurtured fully the IT industry could result in voluminous economic and commercial benefits."

He was of the view that the country's annual IT related exports could have been over USD 220 million had the power crisis not hit the national economy. "Longer load shedding hours have adversely affected the productivity of many ICT companies. However, despite these odds, PSEB is hopeful to exceed the targeted volume of exports in the forthcoming year(s)," he added.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan's IT exports reach $175 million in 2007-08: PSEB MD: Online News

Internet overhaul wins approval: BBC

A complete overhaul of the way in which people navigate the internet has been given the go-ahead in Paris.

The net's regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called "top-level" domain names, such as .com or .uk.

The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names.

A second proposal, to introduce domain names written in Asian, Arabic or other scripts, was also approved.

"We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated," said Roberto Gaetano, a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Internet overhaul wins approval: BBC

Speak up: Economist

Translation systems

Jun 25th 2008
From Economist.com

Devices and programs are getting better at translating languages

WARS often boost technological development. In Iraq the armed forces have faced a shortage of translators, both from within their own ranks and from bilingual locals whose lives can be put in peril if they are found to be working for the foreigners. This has created a demand for machines that can translate between Arabic and English. Although some experimental devices have proved unreliable, they are now improving.

A number of two-way translating devices have been under development as part of the Spoken Language Communication and Translation System for Tactical Use (TRANSTAC) programme run by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA. There are three main participants: IBM, BBN Technologies and SRI International.

SRI said recently that it had sold 150 machines to the American government for use in Iraq. IBM has provided troops with 1,000 of its devices which run MASTOR, its multilingual automatic speech translator. Both systems can translate tens of thousands of words between Iraqi Arabic and American English, even when people are speaking outside the laboratory.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Speak up: Economist

Why the future is in your hands: BBC

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website

Sales of smartphones are expected to overtake those of laptops in the next 12 to 18 months as the mobile phone completes its transition from voice communications device to multimedia computer.

Convergence has been the Holy Grail for mobile phone makers, software and hardware partners, as well as consumers, for more than a decade.

And for the first time the rhetoric of companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola, who have boasted of putting a multimedia computer in your pocket, no longer seems far fetched.

"Converged devices are always with you and always connected," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia chief executive at last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Why the future is in your hands: BBC

eBay's legal woes: Handbagged: Economist

Jun 19th 2008 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition
The online auctioneer braces itself for some court decisions in France

HIGHFASHIONX, a retailer on the American website of eBay, an online auctioneer, is offering 52 handbags, belts, necklaces, rings and pairs of shoes from the house of Chanel. It also displays something even more exclusive: an apology from Chanel's lawyers. The luxury-goods firm had accused HighFashionX of selling fakes, but its wares were in fact all genuine.

The incident is part of a war between luxury-goods firms and eBay over counterfeit goods—a war that is about to intensify. On June 30th a French court will rule on a lawsuit brought against eBay in 2006 by LVMH, the world's biggest luxury-goods firm, which is demanding damages of €20m ($31m). Further rulings are expected on court cases brought against eBay by Dior Couture, a fashion house, and by L'Oréal, a cosmetics firm. For its part, eBay is launching a campaign in Brussels against firms that, it says, are stifling the development of e-commerce in Europe.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: eBay's legal woes: Handbagged: Economist

Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon: The three survivors: Economist

Jun 19th 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by David Simonds
What the diverging fates of Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon say about the internet

AND so Yahoo! survives. The internet company—which, at the age of 14, is one of the oldest—appears in the end to have rebuffed Microsoft, the software Goliath that wanted to buy it. It has done so, in part, by surrendering to Google, the younger internet company that is its main rival. In a vague deal apparently designed to confuse antitrust regulators, Yahoo! is letting Google, the biggest force in web-search advertising, place text ads next to some of Yahoo!'s own search results. Google thus controls some or all of the ads on all the big search engines except Microsoft's. Yahoo! lives, but on the web's equivalent of life support.

Yahoo!'s descent, first gradual then sudden, during this decade marks a surprising reversal of the fates of the only three big internet firms to have survived since the web's earliest days. Back in 1994 Jerry Yang and David Filo, truant PhD students at Stanford, started to publish a list, eventually named Yahoo!, of links to cool destinations on the nascent web. Around the same time, Jeff Bezos was writing his business plan for a website, soon to be called Amazon, for selling books online. The following year, Pierre Omidyar, a French-born Iranian-American, put an auction site on the web that would become eBay.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon: The three survivors: Economist

'Shake-up' for internet proposed: BBC

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website

The net could see its biggest transformation in decades if plans to open up the address system are passed.

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed.

If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

The move could also see the launch of .xxx, after years of wrangling.

Top level domains are currently limited to individual countries, such as .uk (UK) or .it (Italy), as well as to commerce, .com, and to institutional organisations, such as .net, or .org.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: 'Shake-up' for internet proposed: BBC

Pakistan Ranks Above Iran and Indonesia in the Newest E-readiness rating by The Economist Intelligence Unit

By Saad Sarwar

Pakistan ranked sixty fourth in the latest e-readiness ranking released by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Pakistan's ranking has come down one spot from 2007 when it was ranked sixty third. However, Pakistan is ranked above Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Indonesia, Azerbaijan and Iran. India is ranked fifty fourth while the top spot goes to the US, followed by Hong Kong, Sweden, Australia, Denmark and Singapore.

For the complete report on E-readiness by EIU please click here.

LinkedIn raises $53m in funding: BBC

LinkedIn, a networking site for professionals, has raised $53m (£27m) of new funding from investors.

The financing by venture capitalists values the Silicon Valley start-up at more than $1bn, reflecting investor confidence in online communities.

Bain Capital Ventures led the site's latest round of funding, giving investors a 5% stake in the firm.

Existing partners Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Greylock Partners also invested in the site.

The company has so far raised a total of $80m in funding after the latest round of money-raising, the site's fourth so far.

The company, which is profitable, makes money from advertising and premium subscriptions.

LinkedIn's European chief executive Kevin Eyres said the firm's business model was different to that of many start-ups of the dotcom boom of the late 1990s.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: LinkedIn raises $53m in funding: BBC

Firefox fans download 9,000 copies a minute: CNN

NEW YORK (AP) -- In just five hours, the new version of the Firefox Web browser had as many downloads as its predecessor got during its entire first day, the software's developers say.

Firefox 3 reached 1.6 million downloads by early evening Tuesday to match Firefox 2's first-day downloads.

In the opening hours, Firefox's Web site was distributing nearly 9,000 copies of the free software every minute.

Downloads continued Wednesday as Firefox supporters sought to set a world record for most software downloads in a 24-hour period.

The category is new, and Guinness World Records must certify it, a process that could take a week or longer.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Firefox fans download 9,000 copies a minute: CNN

Honda makes first hydrogen cars: BBC

The Japanese car manufacturer Honda has begun the first ever commercial production of a hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicle.

The medium-sized four-seater, called the FCX Clarity, runs on hydrogen and electricity, emitting only water vapour.

Honda claims the vehicle offers three times better fuel efficiency than a traditional, gasoline-powered car.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Honda makes first hydrogen cars: BBC

Samsung's Instinct Doesn't Ring True As an iPhone Clone: WSJ

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

The parade of iPhone lookalikes continues. Soon after Apple announced the first iPhone a year ago, factories in Asia, at the behest of U.S. phone carriers, were asked to respond to the sleek, touch-screen device. Some already have reached America; more are coming.

The latest to arrive is the Samsung Instinct, to be introduced by Sprint on June 20. I've been testing the Instinct, and while it isn't a bad phone and has some features the Apple product lacks, it's no match for the iPhone. The manufacturers haven't replicated the iPhone's greatest strength: beautiful, powerful, breakthrough software.

Also, the timing of the Instinct is unfortunate. It was designed to go up against the first iPhone. Sprint even has a Web site (nowisgood.com) comparing the two devices. But the Instinct will go on sale only three weeks before Apple and AT&T start selling the new 3G iPhone, the second-generation model announced earlier this week. This second iPhone model corrects some of the first model's main weaknesses, wiping out some advantages Sprint hoped the Instinct would have.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Samsung's Instinct Doesn't Ring True As an iPhone Clone: WSJ

Your number's up: Economist

Illustration by Belle Mellor

Networking: The internet will run out of addresses unless a new numbering system is adopted. After years of inaction, there are now signs of progress

NOBODY would expect a city water system designed for 1m residents to be able to handle a 1,000-fold increase in population in just a few years. Yet that is what the internet's fundamental addressing scheme has had to accommodate. When the network was first established there were only a handful of computer centres in America. Instead of choosing a numbering system that could support a few thousand or million addresses, the internet's designers foresightedly opted for one that could handle 4 billion. But now even that is not enough.

The addressing system, called internet protocol version 4 (IPv4), cannot keep up with the flood of computers, mobile phones, hand-held gadgets, games consoles and even cars and refrigerators flooding onto the network. Nearly 85% of available addresses are already in use; if this trend continues they will run out by 2011, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a think-tank for rich countries, warned in May.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Your number's up: Economist

As Microsoft Walks Away,Yahoo Enters Google Ad Pact: WSJ

Moves May Prompt
Industry Scramble,
Regulator Scrutiny
By MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG and JESSICA E. VASCELLARO
June 13, 2008; Page B1

Microsoft Corp. abandoned its pursuit of Yahoo Inc., opening the way for Yahoo to complete a search-advertising pact with rival Google Inc. that pits the industry's two biggest forces against Microsoft.

Microsoft told Yahoo that it was no longer interested in pursuing a takeover, even at the $33 a share it offered for the Internet company last month. That price would have valued Yahoo at nearly $50 billion.

Microsoft also unsuccessfully floated an alternative proposal to acquire Yahoo's search business. It isn't clear how Microsoft valued the business, but as part of that deal, Microsoft said it was prepared to acquire an additional 16% of Yahoo for $35 a share, or about $7.73 billion, according to people familiar with the situation.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: As Microsoft Walks Away,Yahoo Enters Google Ad Pact: WSJ

So much for the scare stories: Economist

Jun 6th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Illustration by David Simonds

New evidence shows that the gains outweigh the losses

BRITONS have long been fairly sanguine about traditional forms of globalisation such as trade and international investment. But the outsourcing of work formerly done in Britain to foreign countries has aroused fears, not least because it opens up the protected underbelly of services to international competition. Until now hard evidence of its overall impact on the British economy has been elusive. New research* should dispel most of the anxiety for those who prefer crunchy facts to scary myths.

Economists at Nottingham University's Globalisation and Economic Policy Centre delved into the accounts of over 66,000 firms in order to trace the effects of offshoring. Big companies with overseas affiliates are the most assiduous offshorers. Accordingly, the study paid particular attention to 2,850 British multinationals with foreign subsidiaries.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: So much for the scare stories: Economist

Pakistan joins world’s lowest telecom tariff club: The Post

Associated Press of Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: India can no longer claim of being amongst the world's lowest telecom tariffs", as Pakistan boasts of far more competitive mobile services, especially for international (ISD) calls.
So while Indian telecom consumers have been celebrating the benefits of competition and low calling rates, they can now happily push operators and telecom regulators to lower their tariffs further.
The international calls to some of the most frequently called countries from India and Pakistan - such as United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Germany and Hong Kong - present a stark comparison of how Pakistani mobile users are so much better-off than the Indians.
"Pakistani operators offer such ISD calls at rates as low as (Pakistani) Rs 1-1.99 per minute. In comparison, Indian mobile subscribers are still paying Rs. 5-6 per minute to call these countries.
In some cases, the ISD rates from Pakistan while calling mobile phones in these countries are slightly higher, but far lower than those available to Indian consumers," says Shalini Singh, a renowned journalist of India, wrote in an article recently published in a leading Indian newspaper.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan joins world’s lowest telecom tariff club: The Post

The Worlds Biggest IT Tower to be in Pakistan: Daily.pk

The multi-million rupee IT Tower project will take about 2 years to complete after which it will be the biggest call center in the world, said City Nazim Mustafa Kamal.

The call center in Sydney is presently regarded as the biggest with 8,000 call seats but the IT Tower in Karachi will have 10,000 call seats under one roof.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: The Worlds Biggest IT Tower to be in Pakistan: Daily.pk

City unveils huge wireless network: CNN

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (AP) -- When Oklahoma City firefighters received a report that a body had been buried in a shallow grave at Lake Overholser, they consulted detailed topographical maps from the field as they pinpointed where to look.

That wouldn't have been possible without access to the city's new Wi-Fi mesh network, said fire Capt. Jim Kruta, who held a display of the network applications with police and other city officials outside City Hall.

"We pulled up a topographical map and were able to see where the water had receded and where someone might try to bury a body," Kruta said, adding, "We actually did find it."

The $5 million Wi-Fi network system covers a massive 555-square-mile area and was funded with money from a public safety sales tax and city capital improvement funds.

City officials say it's the largest city-owned and -operated Wi-Fi network in the world.

The network, which is used only for public safety and other city operations, includes 1,200 nodes, or routers, attached to street lights, utility poles and other spots across the city.

It's structured as a "mesh," meaning that if one node or router goes down, another fills its purpose.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: City unveils huge wireless network: CNN

Rummaging through the internet: Economist

Jun 5th 2008

From The Economist print edition

Computing: New techniques to navigate and gather information online promise to revolutionise web browsing

THE web has changed in many ways since it first emerged in the mid-1990s. The first web pages contained only text, and there was a big debate about whether pictures should be allowed. Today, by contrast, it is quite normal for pages to be bursting with photos, animated graphics, video clips, music and chunks of software, as well as text. In one respect, however, the web is unaltered: the clickable hyperlinks between pages are still the way users get from one page to another.

But now a Norwegian computer scientist named Frode Hegland has cooked up a new sort of navigation. His free software, a browser add-on called Hyperwords, makes every single word or phrase on a page into a hyperlink—not just those chosen by a website’s authors. Click on any word, number or phrase, and menus and sub-menus pop up. With a second click, it is possible to translate text into many languages, obtain currency or measurement conversions, and retrieve related photos, videos, academic papers, maps, Wikipedia entries and web pages fetched by Google, among other things.

All that information, of course, can already be accessed by web users willing to root around, opening a series of new browser windows or tabs. The goal of Hyperwords, Mr Hegland says, is “reducing the threshold” of satisfying curiosity, by making the quest faster and easier. Later this year he will release a new version that extends this trick beyond the web browser, turning any word in any window into a clickable “hyperword”.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Rummaging through the internet: Economist

Battlechips: Economist

Jun 5th 2008 | SANTA CLARA

From The Economist print edition

As once-distinct markets start to overlap, chipmakers come to blows

FOR YEARS the chip industry had only one story: AMD's David pitted against Intel's Goliath, as the two Silicon Valley firms fought it out in the market for microprocessors that power PCs and servers. But a flurry of announcements this week shows that things are no longer so simple, and chipmakers that once ruled separate markets have started to come into conflict.

Intel has long dominated the market for PC and server chips, but there are two other big classes of processors: those for high-end graphics and for mobile phones. Most graphics chips are made by ATI Technologies (now part of AMD) and Nvidia; most mobile handsets are powered by processors based on technology from ARM Holdings, a British chip-design company.

These markets have been largely separate because different processors need to be good at different things: PC chips must be able to run ever more complex software; graphics chips have to be good at rapidly crunching data in parallel streams; and handset chips must balance performance with power consumption. But the borders between these markets are blurring as the PC matures and portable devices become more elaborate and capable.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Battlechips: Economist