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Intel looks beyond WiMax, readies Core i7 chip

There's life beyond WiMax. At the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei Intel is looking beyond that wireless technology to other communications methods for its upcoming Moorestown smartphone platform.

Intel senior vice president Anand Chandrasekher, speaking Monday at IDF, said that Intel will collaborate with Ericsson for High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) data modules for the Moorestown platform. WiMax is also supported, but it faces stiff competition from entrenched wireless technologies and may not be compelling enough to rise above the fray.

In addition to WiMax and HSPA, other wireless technologies including WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and mobile TV will be … Read more

No "Innovation Gap"? WEF ranks U.S. top in Global Competitiveness Report

The United States tops the overall ranking in the World Economic Forum's "Global Competitiveness Report 2008-2009". Switzerland is in second position followed by Denmark, Sweden, and Singapore. European economies continue to prevail in the top 10 with Finland, Germany and the Netherlands following suit. The United Kingdom, while remaining very competitive, has dropped by three places and out of the top 10, mainly attributable to a weakening of its financial markets.

The rankings were calculated from both publicly available data and the Executive Opinion Survey, a comprehensive annual survey conducted by the World Economic Forum together with … Read more

How 'carders' trade your stolen personal info

Debit cards and PINs are hot subjects on the criminal underground forums these days, Tom Rusin said on a recent visit to CNET. Rusin is president of North American operations at Affinion Group, a company that monitors the criminal underground for several thousand banking institutions by lurking in carder chat rooms.

"Carders" are the people who buy, sell, and trade online the credit card data stolen from phishing sites or from large data breaches at retail stores. Affinion is one of the largest identity protection companies in the world, with offices in more than a dozen countries. Over … Read more

Security Bites 115: Inside ID fraud's underground forums

This week Tom Rusin, president and chief executive officer of Affinion's North America operation, is Robert Vamosi's guest. His company monitors the criminal underground for several thousand banking institutions by lurking in carder chat rooms.

"Carders" are the people who buy, sell, and trade online the credit card data stolen from phishing sites or from large data breaches at retail stores. Affinion is global, with offices in more than a dozen countries. And over the years they have provided a wealth of information to the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI. A few weeks ago, … Read more

IDF news and the end of back-to-school: The week in laptops

This week's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco kept us all busy this week, with plenty of new components and products that use them. We'll start off with the event host, Intel, which announced small-form-factor versions of its Centrino 2 processors (that should ignite plenty of rumors about a Centrino 2-based MacBook Air). Intel also broke out a SATA solid-state drive and announced a dual-core version of its Atom processor, due next month. The company also showed off an update to its tiny Classmate PC, which will include a touch screen.

There were plenty of other manufacturers' Netbooks … Read more

Gallery: Ultramobile, Web-friendly PCs

Honestly, I don't get the allure of ultramobile PCs. Neither small enough to be pocketable nor large enough to work on comfortably, most seem to me to be expensive toys. Although some serve needs in specific industries--medical, retail, automotive, and military applications--historically, these platypus PCs have had bizarre (but creative) keyboards and have squeezed the standard Windows interface onto screens really not designed for the desktop experience.

But with Intel's new low-power and low-cost Atom CPU, the prices for these machines are coming down to almost reasonable levels. And many vendors, realizing that no standard mouse-and-keyboard-based UI is … Read more

Yahoo plans software push for Net-enabled TVs

Yahoo on Wednesday announced an effort to provide the software underpinnings of network-enabled TV, a move that could transform not only what it means to watch TV but also what it means to advertise on it.

Though the TV experience has been spiced up by voting for American Idol contestants, it generally has retained its famously passive character. Yahoo wants to change this by bringing a version of its Yahoo Widget Engine, a software foundation that can run small applications called widgets, to network-enabled TVs.

This new version, called the Widget Channel, will resemble the version that's available for … Read more

Bran Ferren at IDF: Storytelling beyond cartoons

At the Intel Developer Forum on Tuesday, I skipped out of the sessions on CPU thermal management and USB sideband optimization and headed into a session where Bran Ferren, co-founder of Applied Minds and former president of Disney Imagineering, was giving an interesting talk at a somewhat more metaphysical level.

His thesis: "Storytelling is how ideas become permanent." He believes that the Internet is taking off (present tense, not past) because the technology is getting good enough now for storytelling. Since we process so much information visually, Ferren believes that new technologies for visualization are what makes the … Read more

Intel thinks big with solid-state drives

SAN FRANCISCO--Intel will finally enter the high-capacity solid-state drive business with the goal of replacing hard-disk drives in both consumer and corporate markets.

This comes 20 years after Intel introduced its first flash memory--a 256KB flash chip in 1988. The world's largest chipmaker is announcing the line of solid-state drives at the Intel Developer Forum here.

The presence of Intel will intensify an already intensely competitive market. "Intel's entry into the SSD market has been expected for a while and although a bit delayed, represents the start of what we expect to be a very competitive market,&… Read more