Leisure use of Internet increases

Nearly a third of US Internet users go online just for fun and not to check e-mail, read news or search for information, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The organisation says the sharp increase of 21% in leisure use of the Internet in the past year shows the Internet has become an increasingly popular way for people to pass time, which could have a significant impact on social behaviour, reports News.Com.

The latest survey found that 30% of respondents went online for no particular reason, 34% of men surf the Internet just for fun compared with only 26% of women, 52% said they sent or received e-mail daily, 38% used search engines, and 31% read news online.

In addition to the PlayStation 3 (PS3), which is expected to be released in September in Japan and the US, Sony is planning an online games service, reports BusinessWeek.

The report says according to industry sources, PlayStation HUB will offer PS3 owners much the same services as Xbox Live, including chat, downloadable demos, independent games and online play. The service is also designed to support PSP online play as well as PS3.

Sony boss Howard Stringer is said to be pushing for all media content, such as music and movies, to be available for distribution over PlayStation HUB, thus opening up an iTunes-like distribution network for Sony.

US electrical engineers at Notre Dame University in Indiana have created a working prototype of a new chip design based on magnetism instead of electrical transistors, reports Wired News.

The new chip uses nanoscale magnetic "islands" to juggle the ones and zeroes of binary code and because the chip has wires, its density and processing power may eventually be much higher than transistor-based devices.

Developers say the new chip is ideal for portable hardware like laptops because the chip`s memory is non-volatile, its power consumption is low, and it runs much cooler than transistor-based chips.

Novell`s new CTO Jeff Jaffe says the Linux desktop is ripe for adoption by enterprises because the IT industry has built a commercial infrastructure to remove non-technical barriers and make it easy for more open source projects to be relevant to business, reports eWeek.

According to Jaffe, there was previously not enough momentum behind the desktop, but the technology has improved and corporate IT departments have become more comfortable with having the right skills for Linux.

Jaffe says corporate IT departments are developing acquisition policies to bring open source into their enterprise and adoption by the average office worker is close at hand. However, Jaffe concedes adoption of the Linux desktop by the consumer market may take a while longer.