New Hatter
Sun Microsystems will reveal more about its Mad Hatter desktop environment for Linux at the SunNetwork event in San Francisco next month. With the first release imminent, the suite will bring Sun's Star Office (the original version of the OpenOffice suite) and Java together with Mozilla's browser, Ximian's Evolution email and scheduling package and the Gnome Desktop user interface. Sun hopes this will compete with Microsoft's Windows products. Attendees will be invited to suggest future developments for the Mad Hatter bundle. Martin Butler, president of British analyst firm the Butler Group, believes Mad Hatter will force Microsoft to add significant benefits to Windows to retain its desktop dominance.
sunnetwork.sun.com/sf2003/conf/sessions/display-1569.en.jsp
Health aids
Microsoft and 12 of its software partners are targeting healthcare with a range of products based on Office System 2003. The majority of the products concentrate on information discovery, access and sharing. Accompanying the launch of Office in October will be a knowledge and document-sharing portal from Quilogy and, from Elsevier, interactive access to dictionary definitions of medical conditions and drugs information. Clicking on a word or phrase in an Office document will get the latest information from the database. The interaction between applications and the ability to generate reports is simplified by using XML wherever possible.
www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/aug03/08-21OfficeHCVendPR.asp
Tough diamond
Japan's NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) is investigating diamond to replace silicon in its next generation of frequency amplification semiconductors. A prototype to demonstrate the advantages of these carbon crystals runs at 81GHz suitable for high-frequency, high-power devices to replace vacuum tubes in digital TV transmitters and radar.
Microprocessors based on diamond are only at the concept stage because large-scale wafer production is hindered by graphite impurities in the crystal medium. With nanotube technology making rapid progress and silicon-germanium chips promising 200GHz, the diamond processor could be outmoded by the time the problems are solved.
Identity crisis
British business travellers to the US may face delays when the deadline for biometric passports expires next year. From October 26 next year, visitors will have to present hi-tech passports containing fingerprint, iris or facial recognition data at US immigration desks to gain fast-track entry to the country. Failing this, a biometric visa will have to be obtained from the US embassy to avoid arduous security checks at airports. The current schedule for the UK passport service is to start issuing passports with at least one form of biometric identifier by 2005 and new passport smart cards in 2006. This will mean the end of postal applications as physical attendance at an issuing centre will be required to scan in the data.
www.ukpa.gov.uk/images/UKPSAnnualReport2003.pdf
Gillette in denial
Gillette has denied a report in the Financial Times that it is backing away from attaching RFID (radio frequency identification) chips to individual products. But the company says it will introduce the tracking technology first within its supply chain. "We can see it being applied to pallets and cases in five years," says a spokesperson for the US firm. On tagging individual items, a practice that has raised privacy concerns, "current opinion is that it will be unlikely for at least 10 years". RFID chips are currently too expensive, the company says. "That does not mean we have backtracked on the technology," the spokesperson added.
A US privacy group, Caspian, recently launched a boycott of Gillette following trials of RFID chips on individual packets of Mach 3 razor blades, at sites including Tesco's Cambridge branch. Gillette's spokesperson says it will respond directly to Caspian, but adds that the company wants to work towards integrating the technology into the existing framework of privacy and consumer protection laws.
