CeBit 2005 cancelled

The CeBit America 2005 trade show has been cancelled because it was unable to create sufficient revenue to justify a third year, reports ZDNet.

With the show receiving growing interest from the public, the cancellation of the show - due to take place in New York in June - comes as somewhat of a surprise, says CeBit America brand and customer development VP Bill Sell. "We were making some significant progress; some pretty significant partnerships that weren`t announced yet."

Future shows will need a more specific focus, adds Sell. "You need to make it worth it to people, and having Xbox next to flat panels next to servers doesn`t work."

Joachim Schafer, president of Hannover Fairs USA, the organiser of the global CeBit fair, says the show will not likely be back, and the company will now focus on well-defined vertical markets. According to the company, all other CeBit events will not be affected by the cancellation.

Rio will launch its latest product - Carbon - this month, to compete with Apple`s iPod in the MP3 player market.

Carbon makes use of Seagate`s ST1 hard disk, which offers 5GB of storage - 1GB more than the iPod. Rio also says the Carbon will offer users 20 hours of playtime, compared with the iPod`s eight.

The device will support Microsoft`s next-generation DRM software. Codenamed Janus, the software will permit content owners to share across portable players, but will block further duplication. Napster is also expected to roll-out Janus services in the future.

The Carbon device is due to be released at the end of August, and will retail at around $250 (R1 550) - around the same price as the iPod.

Several new players have entered the 64-bit arena, bringing competition to a market currently monopolised by AMD.

According to CRN, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell are all introducing servers based on Intel`s new Xeon processor with 64-bit extensions. In addition to the 64-bit CPUs, the servers have a number of new technologies in common, including DDR2 memory, 800MHz front-side bus and PCI Express I/O.

Advanced Solutions Group account executive Dave Henn says 64-bit computing will offer a simpler, cheaper service to consumers. "The 64-bit (Xeon) is important because everybody is trying to go there without using Unix or Linux. Right now, they have to use Linux."

Technology terms MP3 and MPEG - and a host of others - have been officially included in the latest version of the Merriam-Webster`s Collegiate Dictionary, ZDNet reports.

The terms were particularly noteworthy because of the speed at which they have been accepted into mainstream culture, says Merriam-Webster president and publisher John Morse. "It`s striking how quickly words having to do with the Web establish themselves in the language. So many of them were metaphors for life in the print world - clipboards, browsers, pages.

"The people who coined Web terminology were wise to have latched on to words that carried with it that metaphor and made easy for people to make it part of their lives."

The term MP3 was officially coined in 1996, while even the fastest of new words take up to 20 years to make it into the dictionary.

Looking at any possible new technology-related entries, Morse says they are monitoring the term 'blog`. "In this political season, it seems once and for all to have established itself as a part of the language."