Paul Mah

According to a report by Techworld, it appears that Sony has filed for a U.S. patent on a liquid airbag technology for electronics, in particular, hard disks. While the use of liquids to absorb shock has been suggested before, Sony’s engineers are confident that their version is more effective and will be able to absorb …

Even though Microsoft’s Windows platform is still the dominant platform for application developers, it is losing traction as far as North America is concerned, according to the results of an Evans Data survey released on Tuesday. In a survey involving more than 400 developers and IT managers in the United States, it was found that …

It looks like Intel is working on an anti-cheat technology, although this is only a research project at the moment and hardly ready for prime time. The concept is simple: A chipset records all input from the keyboard and mouse at the hardware level — the game also does the same. If the two doesn’t …

Microsoft is current beta testing free data storage for end users as part of its new Windows Live hosted services. Assuming all goes well with the 5,000 beta testers currently trying it out, Windows users could well be receiving the invitation to sign up for this free service by this fall. Subscribe to the Cloud …

Sun Microsystems president and CEO Jonathan Schwartz, speaking at a company event, said that Sun’s ZFS file system will be “the” file system for Apple’s upcoming Leopard version of Mac OS X. This has stirred up some debate over whether he misspoke about whether ZFS will be made into the default file system as opposed …

Oracle has just released its newest installment of the Oracle Lite 10g product line in the form of Release 3. The key features added in this iteration are automatic synchronization, as well as a broader range of platform support. In terms of platforms, support has been added for client database on Windows Mobile 5, Windows …

Intel has teamed up with Asustek Computer, the Taiwanese circuitboard maker, to mass market a $199 notebook computer. This competes squarely with the “XO” made by OLPC (One Laptop Per Child Foundation), which runs on Linux and uses an AMD processor. You can read more about the XO here. Subscribe to the Innovation Insider Newsletter …

Microsoft has announced that the next version of Visual Studio, previously known by the code name “Orcas,” will now be formally known as Visual Studio 2008. Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008 will become available later this summer and will include a new feature known as the Visual Studio Shell. Subscribe to the Developer Insider …

Hot on the heels of news that quad-core processors could be appearing on laptops as early as the year 2008, Ars Technica recently published an article on future versions of Windows. They interviewed Microsoft executive Ty Carlson, who is the director of technical strategy at Microsoft. According to Carlson, future versions of Windows will be …

According to PC World, at the recent Intel Developer Forum conference in Beijing, Intel revealed that it is working on quad-core processing for laptops. Set for release in 2008, the quad-core mobile processor is aimed at high-level gaming and mobie computers, where users will trade battery life for more performance. Mooly Eden, vice president and …

Shrugging off the previous uproar in the open-source community, Microsoft has just signed a set of broad agreements with Linux provider Xandros that includes patent protection for Xandros customers. The five-year deal for joint development is similar to the one Microsoft signed with Novell Inc. last year and where Microsoft said it wanted to enter …

Further to my hardware roundup last week on Gb networking gear and falling prices of DRAM, it appears that the glut was caused by DRAM makers ramping up to meet the anticipated huge demand for DRAM that Vista was supposed to fuel, and which never did materialize. According to MarketWatch: Suppliers of DRAM chips “overforecasted …