The nation’s top utility regulator has made it easier and cheaper for SBC Communications and other Internet phone service providers to get 10-digit phone numbers–another federal boost for the mushrooming broadband phone industry. In essence, the Federal Communications Commission gave SBC permission to get telephone numbers directly from their official source–a privately run, quasi-government agency known as the North American Numbering Plan Administration. It’s a much cheaper alternative. Before the FCC’s action, only those Net phone providers certified by states...

“The beta version of Google Maps is now online, offering an alternative to Mapquest with what some might describe as a very much improved user interface, offering a cleaner layout, drop shadows, clickable waypoints and keyboard controls that allow you to move and zoom the map. For IE and Firefox/Mozilla at this point (no Safari or Opera support, as yet).” Slashdot [ article ] Sucks man its only in the U.S!

The chip that will run the next version of the PlayStation video game machine will have nine processor cores and run faster than 4GHz, the chip’s designers revealed Monday. Engineers from Sony, IBM and Toshiba revealed those and other specifications for the Cell processor during a press conference at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, where technical papers on the Cell design will be presented this week. The three companies have been working on Cell for several years, promising to deliver a high-performance chip optimized for multimedia applications. Test production of...

The year of the dual-cores is coming sooner than many expected. After a few months of speculation, it appears that Intel is indeed ready to roll with dual-core parts, and not only just for Itanium. The company is now talking dual-core Pentium 4s in the second quarter of this year, which means we may see parts as early as April. But what kinds of parts will we see? SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 7, 2005 Intel Corporation today announced it has completed initial production runs of dual-core processors and provided further details about its multi-core plans to its customers, signaling the beginning...

got this from mess.be: EXCLUSIVE: New Messenger Plus! 3.50 feature REVEALEDdwergs says:   I’m very excited and proud to exclusively announce the new “killer feature” Patchou has been working on for two months (which is a lot more than the time spent on anything else in Messenger Plus! since its creation). Get ready for Custom Emotion Sounds… to be included in the Messenger Plus! 3.50 release in March 2005! The Custom Emotion Sound feature brings sound integration in MSN Messenger to the next level and allows you to add and send any sound you want to your contacts....

Computers are getting faster all the time, or so they tell us. But, in fact, the user experience of performance hasn’t improved much over the past 15 years. Peter looks at where all the processor time and memory are going. About 10 years ago I remember people complaining that Microsoft Word was too slow on the Mac. You could type faster than the processor handled input on such a large application. Imagine my disappointment when I recently discovered that the same thing still holds true. Similarly, my first computer with a hard drive loaded a small command-line utility in under a second...

A British terror suspect held in Guantanamo Bay for 33 months plans to sue the government, it is reported. Martin Mubanga claimed in the Observer that an MI6 officer played a key role in consigning him to the US camp in Cuba, following his arrest in Zambia. Mr Mubanga, 32, from Wembley, London, said he was brutally interrogated and daubed with urine at the camp. The home secretary said he would not be launching an investigation and that the media reports were not “well informed”. Mr Mubanga, who has dual British and Zambian nationality, was one of four Britons who were released...

UP to seven British paratroopers are to be charged with murdering an Iraqi civilian, military sources revealed yesterday. Senior lawyers have given the go-ahead for them to be brought before a court martial. The move, to be officially announced soon, will be a huge blow for both the British Government and its army. It will increase the damage to the army’s reputation and morale caused by the shocking photographs of British soldiers allegedly abusing Iraqi looters. The danger of revenge attacks will also increase. The troops are said to have become involved in a car chase near the city of...