Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
ie8 fix

devices

Oracle to acquire Relsys

Oracle on Monday announced plans to acquire Relsys, which develops drug safety and risk management applications.

The acquisition, which is expected to close by June, is designed to bolster Oracle's Health Sciences Global Business Unit, formed last summer. Health sciences is one of a number of industry sectors into which Oracle is delving via a buying spree.

Relsys develops applications designed to aid drug, biotech, and medical-device companies in streamlining their operations, adhering to regulatory compliance and improving the safety of their products.

With the acquisition, Oracle aims to provide its customers with the ability to identify safety risks … Read more

Mobile Internet usage more than doubles in January

Mobile devices are becoming the virtual newspaper.

According to a report released Monday by market researcher comScore, the number of U.S. residents using mobile devices to access news and information more than doubled to 63.2 million in January over the previous year.

"Over the course of the past year, we have seen use of mobile Internet evolve from an occasional activity to being a daily part of their lives," Mark Donovan, comScore's senior vice president of mobile, said in a statement. "This underscores the growing importance of the mobile medium as consumers become more … Read more

Intel partners with LG on mobile Internet devices

BARCELONA--Intel announced here Monday at the GSMA Mobile World Congress that LG Electronics will use its latest generation technology to build a new class of device called mobile Internet devices, or MIDs.

Specifically, Intel and LG will work together to build these new devices using a processor that Intel has code-named Moorestown. The devices will also use a version of the Linux open-source operating system called Moblin. The LG device is expected to be one of the first Moorestown designs to market. And Intel has said that devices using the new Moorestown chips will hit the market by 2010.

Intel … Read more

AMD extends deadline for Abu Dhabi spin-off vote

Faced with a lackluster voter turnout, Advanced Micro Devices announced Tuesday it is extending the deadline for its shareholders to vote on the proposed spin-off of its manufacturing business.

AMD, which in October announced plans to spin off its manufacturing operations, failed to get a quorum of its shareholders to vote on the issue. As a result, the deadline for casting votes has been extended to February 18. A majority of the shares is required to vote to establish a quorum.

The chipmaker reported that as of Tuesday, 42 percent of the eligible shares had been cast. Of this group, … Read more

PaperShow review: Presentations made snappy, fun

If you are a frequent presenter and are tired of the mouse and keyboard, your presentations could be significantly enhanced by this new alternative input device.

It's called the PaperShow, a product announced last Monday by Canson, a French company. The kit include a specialized Bluetooth pen, special paper, and a USB Bluetooth adapter. Basically, the kit allows you to write, scribble, sketch, etc. on the paper by hand and also digitally at the same time.

I tried the kit for a few days and found it work as intended and was quite fun. It's rather expensive, however, … Read more

Intel files $50 million suit against insurance firm

Update at 1:50 p.m. PST, with information from American Guarantee's lawsuit against Intel in the Delaware Chancery Court.

Intel has filed a $50 million lawsuit against insurance carrier American Guarantee and Liability Insurance, alleging breach of contract.

The alleged breach involves the insurance firm's failure to pay for Intel's legal defense related to antitrust lawsuits filed by rival Advanced Micro Devices and consumers.

Intel, in the lawsuit filed last week in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, alleges that American Guarantee did not step up to the plate and begin paying for the … Read more

Price Watch: Refurbished Magellan GPS, $59.99

Ladies and gents, we have a new low! Buy.com has the Magellan RoadMate 2200T GPS for $59.99 shipped (after a $30 mail-in rebate). It's a refurbished unit, but it's also the least-expensive navigation system I've seen yet.

Needless to say, this model is a couple years old, so don't expect a lot of bells and whistles. It does offer text-to-speech, music and photo players, an optional traffic-monitoring kit, and a "smart detour" feature. Hmmm. Come to think of it, you get some bells and whistles, after all. It's even waterproof!

CNET awarded the RoadMate 2200T 3.5 stars out of 5, … Read more

Acer patent app reveals MID aspirations

With so much attention paid to Netbooks lately, the MID category has been largely ignored as a portable device that basically exists for accessing the Internet. But not by Acer, which looks to be readying a device for the category.

An application filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office shows a small, rectangular device whose front is taken up entirely by screen except for a thin bezel. Besides what appears to be a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and dock connector for PCs, there's not much else in the way of distinguishing features revealed in the drawing.

It'… Read more

Behind the design: frog designer Robert Curtis talks about creating SanDisk's new flash drives

SanDisk, the world's largest supplier of flash storage cards, has introduced an innovative new family of USB flash drives, including the world's first backup USB flash drive with simple backup software activation at the touch of a button. frog design, my employer, provided the design language for the entire new SanDisk USB family, and I asked my colleague Robert Curtis, executive creative director industrial design at frog, a few questions about the design process:

What was the first thing SanDisk said to you about the design when they initially approached you and your team? Robert Curtis: SanDisk is … Read more