Technology News

In spite of rumors that the first USB 3.0 products wouldn't surface until the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Buffalo Technology has beaten all comers to the punch by announcing today it was shipping its new DriveStation HD-HXU3 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 drive.

OfficeMax has the HP Pavilion dm3 laptop for $525 with free shipping, which is $125 off the retail price for this configuration and $50 lower than what competing vendors charge. This ultraportable laptop has a 1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo X2 dual-core processor, an ATI Radeon HD 3200 discrete graphics card, a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, 4GB of memory, a 320GB hard drive, a 6-cell battery, and Windows 7 preinstalled.

Amazon has the Samsung PD-P3600 Blu-ray player, which sells for $219 with free shipping; that's $80 off the retail price and about $20 lower than competing retailers' prices. This Blu-ray player made waves earlier in the year for its slick design, 1GB of internal flash memory for BD-Live content, and support for Netflix and Pandora streaming over Wi-Fi.

Of all the Mario Kart games, the best was probably the first, and now you can see why for 800 Wii Points, or about eight US dollars. We're talking the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) original here, born 17 years ago in 1992. It supported 1 to 2 players, packed eight playable Mario-verse characters, and offered three championship cups divvied into three distinct 'kart' classes.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - French videogame powerhouse Ubisoft will have a virtual fitness coach whipping Wii users into shape starting Tuesday.

Microsoft wants you on Xbox LIVE for the weekend with, of course, a view toward forever, and it's prepared to temporarily waive the cover fee to grab your attention.

Canadian pop singer Justin Bieber owes his entire career to the Internet. When he was the ripe old age of 13, Bieber and his family began posting videos of his performances on YouTube. Someone in a suit liked the tunes and boom -- Bieber was signed with Usher's label. Now his infamy shall be cast in the iron of the Web, as one of Bieber's team was arrested for not using Twitter. One more time: arrested for not using Twitter.

Spotify, the popular music streaming service available only in select European countries, introduced on Monday a mobile application for the Symbian operating system, which includes Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung phones.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Swedish streaming software Spotify announced on Monday the launch of a music application for the Symbian platform, used by the world's biggest mobile phone maker Nokia and other smartphones.

BOULDER, Colo. - A leading climate change scientist said hackers breaking into a university's computer server and then posting documents online show the nasty politics of global warming.

DETROIT - A federal judge has sentenced a suburban Detroit man described as one of the world's most prolific senders of spam e-mail to more than four years in prison for his role in a 2005 stock fraud scheme that netted him $2.7 million.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Hong Kong resident and three other men, including the self-proclaimed "Godfather of Spam," were sentenced to prison on Monday for their roles in an email stock fraud scheme, the Justice Department said.

In a battle between AT&T and Verizon Wireless that never seems to end, AT&T's partner Apple now appears to be getting into the mix with two retaliatory iPhone TV ad that air Monday night. The ads comes hot on the heels of AT&T's TV ad campaign that aimed to "set the record straight" around Verizon's "there's a map for that" campaign.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Hackers have built a virus that attacks Apple Inc's iPhone by secretly taking control of the devices via their Internet connections, security experts said.

Is an iPhone an acceptable device for business users? Verizon Wireless and AT&T have been involved in a public multimillion-dollar spat over the question with dueling television advertising campaigns -- and a lawsuit to boot. Now Apple is stepping into the fray with its own ads.

Redmond turned red-faced upon learning that an automatically installed Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation plug-in for Firefox opened a major security hole. Following Microsoft's disclosure of the bug, Mozilla blocked the plug-in. According to Mozilla, Microsoft agreed with the move, even though it had released a patch to close the underlying flaw.

When Google unveiled its open source Chrome OS on Thursday, many commentators were quick to dismiss the new operating system as unimpressive and underwhelming.

San Francisco - Ruby, the popular open source dynamic language, is making headway not only on Java but also on the Windows and Mac platforms.

NEW ORLEANS - The creatures living in the depths of the ocean are as weird and outlandish as the creations in a Dr. Seuss book: tentacled transparent sea cucumbers, primitive "dumbos" that flap ear-like fins, and tubeworms that feed on oil deposits.

A child's never-ending "why's" aren't meant to exasperate parents, scientists say. Rather, the kiddy queries are genuine attempts at getting at the truth, and tots respond better to some answers than others.

GENEVA - A spokesman says the world's largest atom smasher has used its accelerator for the first time to speed up the proton beams in an initial test of its ability to reach much higher energy later.