World`s smallest radio unveiled

Apple`s iPod Nano may be small, but now researchers have made a radio that really deserves the title "nano", reports National Geographic.

A carbon nanotube, a hollow, tube-shaped molecule 10 000 times smaller than a human hair, can perform all the basic functions of a radio when it`s wired up to a few other simple parts, a new study shows.

The simple tube is 10 carbon atoms wide and only a few hundred nanometers long. Alex Zettl and colleagues at the University of California showed that a nanotube can work as an antenna, picking up radio signals from the air.

The long-awaited Googlephone is here, sort of. An actual hold-in-your-hand phone is six to 12 months away. Instead, all the announcements today are about unveiling tools for building future phones, says Forbes.

Google is also announcing a group of 34 companies that it has secretly organised over the past year into a group it calls the "Open Handset Alliance".

Alliance members have donated intellectual property that they can freely use to build mobile phones. Once an alliance member has made the first phone available to the public, the intellectual property at the heart of the alliance will be openly available to any other company developing mobile technology.

Yahoo has started a new professional social network, Y! Kickstart, aimed at helping college students to take the social networking skills they perfected for fun during college and use them to launch their professional lives, reports Computerworld.

Kickstart is designed to connect college students and recent graduates with alums and professionals to find jobs, internships and career advice, says Scott Gatz, Yahoo senior director of advanced products, writing in a blog post about Kickstart.

The site is in a "preview" release, Yahoo noted, with the company now mainly focused on getting alumni and professionals to join. The US college with the most alumni signed up on Kickstart will get a $25 000 donation to their alumni programme, Gatz adds.

Activision swung to a profit amid better-than-expected sales for the September quarter as video game fans continued to snap up copies of its popular Guitar Hero franchise, says Market Watch.

The company also raised its forecast for the year, noting that Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has already sold more than $100 million worth in its first week on the market.

The video game publisher reported earnings of $698 000, or break-even on a per-share basis, for the second fiscal quarter, compared with a loss of $24.3 million, or 9c a share, for the same period last year.