Scale up
Intel has announced a new family of XScale (Arm-based) processors "designed to meet the multimedia, low power and security requirements of advanced cellphones and wireless PDAs," says the company. The PXA27x, formerly code-named Bulverde, supports GSM/GPRS, Wi-Fi (802.11b) and Bluetooth. It also includes Intel's SpeedStep technology for increased battery life, Wireless MMX for advanced video and games, and Quick Capture to support four megapixel cameras. Chips will be available at speeds from 312MHz up to 624MHz, with prices starting at $32 in 10,000 unit quantities. www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases

Spam and the City
Spammers may be illegally boosting stocks and share prices by offering bogus financial tips. Clearswift, an email management and security firm, says in its March Spam Index that a large number of spam messages offering advice may persuade enough people to buy and artificially boost share values. This would allow the spammers to buy, promote and then sell shares at a profit. According to Clearswift, financial spam more than doubled to 26% during March. "Pharmaceutical" emails, mainly promoting sex aids (56%), top the chart. Pornographic emails (8%) trail in third.

Immersion litho
Water is the front-runner in the search to develop higher definition tools for microprocessor production. Researchers are looking for a fluid that can break the 45 nanometre limit for the lithographic etching process. Despite various oils being tested, Rochester Institute of Technology has found that water's refractive properties and its non-reactiveness with microprocessor materials makes it ideal for the job. Liquids have long been used in microscopy to improve image resolution and this advance reverses the process for projecting a microscopic image on to the semiconductor surface. Chip makers will require new tools for purifying the water and delivering it in an even, steady stream across the silicon wafer. www.rit.edu/~635dept5

Roam day
Wi-Fi users can have problems because it is hard to roam between different networks of "hot spots" from different provides. RoamPoint hopes to help by acting as an intermediary between network operators and service providers. "By connecting to RoamPoint once, service providers and hotspot networks can implement multiple roaming agreements between each other easily," it says. www.roampoint.net

Homeland security
America's National Cyber Security Partnership (NCSP) task force has launched a campaign to get companies, non-profit organisations and educational institutions to take responsibility for their online security. It points out that there are three elements to the problem - people, processes and technology - so it is not just a matter for IT but for "executive management and boards of directors". The NCSP has published a report on corporate governance on its site, and a paper on Awareness for Home Users and Small Businesses. www.cyberpartnership.org/init-governance.html

Shorter Longhorn
Microsoft is limiting some of the features promised for the next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn. The project aims to develop a radically new version of Windows by 2006, but plans looked too ambitious to meet the schedule. Analysts are speculating that the Windows File System (WinFS) may be a casualty. Instead of a company-wide search system that will cover any data source on a network, the service may be initially confined to individual computers. This kind of winnowing occurs during the development of every version of Windows, when Microsoft requires developers to decide what they will commit to delivering on a fixed schedule, even though they never keep to it. http://msdn.microsoft.com/ longhorn

Better relationships
Salesforce.com and NetSuite are continuing to refine their online application services to attract small- and medium-sized businesses. Salesforce has introduced features for its hosted customer relationship management (CRM) software to make it easier to customise without high-level programming skills. The previous version of the software provided generic tabs for displaying CRM details, but these are now customisable. Tabs can be created to show details for product sales by type, region, department or sales team. Competitor NetSuite provides similar customisation through its dashboard display, and is offering a money back guarantee if its online service does not meet its 99.5 % uptime commitment. Other application service providers offer 95% uptime guarantees. www.salesforce.com
www.netsuite.com