Articles by Fred J. Aun

Scientists in Europe have created a robotic salamander that uses an amphibian type central nervous system to switch from swimming to walking as it crawls onto land out of water The "Salamandra Robotica," built by the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group (BIRG) at Ecole Polytechnique Federale (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, is a groundbreaking crea...

Mixing flash memory with the traditional spinning disk, Samsung's new hybrid hard drive for Vista-based notebooks will improve boot-up speed, extend battery life and increase reliability, said the company The hybrid drive, the first of its kind, according to Samsung, is currently being sold only to notebook manufacturers. However, Samsung said it w...

Customers of AT&T's Homezone service will now be able to control their digital video recorders with their Web-enabled cell phones The company, based in San Antonio, first promised the feature in January. Similar services are also being developed by other communication companies -- as they strive to meld wired and wireless entertainment and informat...

Sony is entering the world of flash memory-based portable media devices that play video The company Thursday announced two new Walkman units that could challenge similar devices sold by SanDisk, Creative and others....

The pioneering computer game "SimCity," first written for the Commodore 64 in 1985, is being released this summer for the Nintendo DS platform, game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) said Thursday One of the most popular games of all time, "SimCity" involves the planning, creation and control of virtual cities and their residents. It was the predecess...

In time for the annual Photo Marketing Association (PMA) trade show that begins March 8, Sony Electronics, unveiled Tuesday a flock of seven new Cyber-shot digital cameras. Many of the new models can be plugged directly into high-definition televisions and feature the company's new face-detection technology The new cameras include two new super-thi...

Computer security veteran Symantec on Monday unveiled Norton 360, a comprehensive suite of PC security applications that aims to cover all system protection bases in one box The new product is "designed to work as automatically as possible," according to the company, which has positioned Norton 360 as a user-friendly, all-in-one home computer secur...

Daylight Saving Time (DST) starts three weeks earlier this year in most parts of the United States and there are fears that the change will cause problems for unprepared computer systems and digital devices If you think the scenario sounds familiar to the so-called Y2K problem that gripped the world in the days leading up to Jan. 1, 2000, you're no...

The PlayStation 3 consoles about to be sold in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Australia will not be as compatible with PlayStation 2 games as those sold elsewhere. The news may bother many gamers, but it probably won't affect Sony's bottom line "Whatever the game console manufacturers do, there are always going to be some dissatisfied g...

In a move that demonstrates consolidation among players in the burgeoning world of Web 2.0 development, Cisco Systems paid US$135 million to buy Reactivity, an XML specialist that's been selling products for only about five years Cisco, in announcing the acquisition, said its clients -- as well as major software vendors -- are moving away from the ...

A security flaw found late last year in Google Desktop was quickly patched, but the company that discovered it says the popular application's mix of Web and private hard drive searches might still be risky Google Desktop, which uses Google search technology to scan PC hard drives as well as the Web, could be hacked by someone using a cross-scriptin...

Warner Music Group acknowledged Tuesday it is still interested in purchasing EMI Group, its slumping rival in the troubled music industry, but such a deal is unlikely to solve the long-term problems facing both companies New York-based Warner Music confirmed it approached EMI on Jan. 24 to discuss a purchase. EMI, based in London, announced the pos...

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is close to making computer users out of a million children in developing nations The company building the inexpensive laptops for OLPC, Quanta Computer, has received an order for a million of the lime green notebooks, according to published reports....

It was a David versus Goliath case that made international headlines. Russian authorities, determined to fight pirated software, came down hard on a school found to have 12 computers with phony versions of Windows and Microsoft Office A court on Thursday dismissed the charges, calling the case "trivial." It seems Microsoft isn't going to reap any f...

Relentless attempts by those determined to undermine the copy-protection technology used on HD DVD movies continue to yield successes The newest discovery, revealed on the Doom9 Forum by someone with the screen name "Arnezami," involves the location of the "processing key" vital to the high-definition disc antipiracy system. This could give compute...

Yahoo on Monday began integrating its popular Web-based e-mail service with its instant messaging platform, a process that will take several months to complete In doing so, Yahoo is hardly breaking ground. More than a year ago, Google unveiled Google Talk, an application that allows Gmail users to simultaneously chat with, and telephone, other Gmai...

Advances in technology, particularly customer resource management (CRM) software, are driving e-commerce these days. In some cases, they're driving the industry down a strange road that, like a "Twilight Zone" episode, ends up in Smalltown USA, circa 1950 It's a road that has companies adopting some of the most sophisticated and dazzling methods fo...

Yahoo on Monday broadened the nascent world of cell phone advertising by launching a mobile ad platform in 19 countries. The service, which was first offered in the United States in November, allows companies to run interactive advertisements on the Yahoo Mobile Web home page The company said it signed agreements with "major global advertisers" inc...

Personal computer buyers last week rapidly snapped up machines loaded with Microsoft's new Vista operating system, buying nearly 70 percent more units during the week than they did during the same week in 2006, according to a report by Current Analysis The figures show that 67 percent more PCs were sold last week than during the comparable week in ...

Information infrastructure giant EMC is selling, through an initial public offering, a sliver of its highly successful VMware subsidiary, a move that should strengthen VMware's position in the growing virtualization software market EMC said it will retain ownership of about 90 percent of VMware and stressed it "has no intention of spinning out or o...