Gartner: Tech spend will accelerate

Technology spending is poised to return to solid growth in 2004 and beyond, as companies shift from cost-cutting to focus on innovation that drives sales, consulting group Gartner said yesterday.

CNet reports that Gartner is advising its base of 10 000 corporate and government clients to spend more in 2004 on wireless networks, Web services and technologies that help businesses grow, not just save costs.

US federal and state regulators have voiced concern that a feature in Windows XP that enables online music purchasing may violate terms of Microsoft`s anti-trust settlement, reports ZDNet.

The site reports that the issue surfaced in a court briefing, filed jointly by Microsoft and regulators. "Plaintiffs are concerned that the feature invokes Microsoft`s Internet Explorer, rather than the user`s chosen default browser, in a manner that may be inconsistent" with the settlement, according to the filing.

Moonv6, a collaborative project to build and demonstrate the largest-ever IPv6 network in the US, completed initial interoperability testing last week at the University of New Hampshire, reports ConvergeDigest. Organisers of the project believe that while adoption of IPv6 in Asia and Europe has been a foregone conclusion for several years now, a great deal of doubt has persisted in the North American market.

The primary test event held last week involved approximately 80 servers, switches and routers configured in dual stack mode, with IPv4 and IPv6 running in tandem. The tests verified basic connectivity and interoperability of various routing, switching and tunnelling applications in an IPv6 environment and demonstrated the performance of new IPv6 protocols including RIPng, OSFPv3, iBGP4+ and eBGP4+.

Citing factors such as supply shortages and rising costs from overseas disc manufacturers, Memorex plans to increase CD-R and CD-RW media prices by 10% to 15%, beginning January.

CNet reports the vendor`s reasoning that manufacturing costs have increased 35% this year because of patent royalty fees, rising production costs for petroleum-based plastics used to make optical media, as well as transportation costs to deliver products to warehouse and retail facilities.

Canadian researchers have demonstrated a new way of producing electricity from flowing water which could provide power for anything from mobile phones to the national grid, reports ABC Science Online.

Professors of engineering at the University of Alberta report a new method of generating electric power by harnessing the natural electro-kinetic properties of a liquid, such as ordinary tap water, when it is pumped through tiny micro-channels. The technique is based on understanding that when a non-conducting glass container is filled with water, the glass develops a tiny electric charge while the water takes on the opposite charge.

Processor core designer ARM and NEC Electronics have signed an agreement to develop a multi-processor core for multimedia devices and mobile handsets, the companies announced yesterday.

IDG News reports that the companies will marry NEC`s multiprocessing technology with the ARM11 processor core to enable designers to develop handsets, set-top boxes and multimedia devices that can take advantage of cores with multiple processing units.