Microsoft shares spare technology

Microsoft is to license some of its spare technology from its research and development arm to start-up companies, BBC News reports.

Microsoft wants investors in small start-up companies to take advantage of 20 technologies that have not yet been released. Developments to be made available include face detection, tracking software and a natural language-processing technology.

Microsoft Intellectual Property Ventures senior director David Harnett says the move will ensure technologies will reach the market sooner and that new companies and jobs will be created.

However, in some cases Microsoft will take part ownership of the young companies using the technology or claim royalty payments.

Cisco has announced a tracking device designed to allow organisations to monitor the location of devices or people within a wireless local area network.

The Cisco 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliance uses technology acquired when Cisco bought wireless switch start-up Airespace earlier this year, reports The Register.

The appliance, due for release in June, relies on the radio frequency fingerprinting capabilities of the Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS) to triangulate the location of 802.11-enabled devices to within approximately 5m.

It can track wireless laptops, PDAs, voice over wireless LAN handsets, rogue access points and clients and devices equipped with active 802.11 radio frequency identification tags. The location of each device is graphically displayed on floor plans within the Cisco WCS.

The voice over IP (VOIP) security alliance says it is concerned that VOIP`s rapid growth could be followed by revelations of security vulnerabilities and electronic attacks.

According to PCWorld, the VOIP experience could parallel the WiFi example, in which rapid growth coincided with a steep increase in vulnerabilities identified.

Two concerns that could affect home users are the interception of digital calls and denial-of-service attacks making networks useless for Internet telephony.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) that oversees the Bluetooth personal-area wireless specification wants to take advantage of emerging ultra-wideband (UWB) technology to create fast networks that are compatible with Bluetooth products, reports PC World.

UWB is designed to deliver much greater bandwidth than a WiFi wireless LAN, but over a distance of only a few meters. Promoters envision it as an interconnect for consumer electronics applications such as home entertainment networks that support streaming video.

The Bluetooth SIG industry group sees piggy-backing on UWB as a way to speed up Bluetooth for future products such as mobile phones that can capture large video files or store large amounts of digital music.

A new global network of media, games and ad agencies aims to make it easier to put real adverts into PC and video games and track their impact, reports BBC News.

The IGA Worldwide group has gathered advertising experts and will use its own technology to ensure adverts that appear in games are more effective. Its technology means that advertisers will be able to automatically update and control ad campaigns in titles.

In-game advertising is seen as a way to reach the 18- to 34-year-old group, with recent studies indicating that product recall within games is as high as 70%