Nvidia launches its GeForce 6800 series of desktop GPUs

Graphics chip designers Nvidia has launched its GeForce 6800 series of GPUs for desktops. The company claims that the new models offer eight times the floating-point shader power, four times the shadow processing power and double the vertex processing power over its GeForce FX chips. The key to the 6 series is a 16-pipeline superscalar architecture and built-in GDDR3 memory and an on-chip video processing engine aimed at delivering high-definition video and DVD playback. ...more

Canadian scientists weave solar cells into clothes

Scientists in Canada have invented a new material based on nanotechnology which may one day remove the need for batteries. Instead, clothes may be woven with ultra fine solar cells which can gather the sun's energy and turn it into electricity. The team at the University of Toronto led by Ted Sargent, says that the solar cells based on a type of plastic collect infra red radiation rather than visible light used by conventional solar cells. ...more

Legal P2P radio gets cash boost

The P2P internet radio company Mercora has landed $5 million worth of venture capital funding. The company says it plans to use the money to expand its team and range of services. Using the Mercora software, anyone can be a radio station. ...more

Microsoft could face XP opposition

The imminent release of Windows XP has not gone unnoticed by the US state attorneys behind the current Microsoft antitrust case. Two of the attorney generals believe that the company may be continuing in its efforts to build a monopoly by including features within Windows XP such as Instant Messaging and Smart Tags that allows Microsoft to influence consumers' Internet use and Internet Explorer, which is at the heart of the current antitrust case. Richard Blumenthal, attorney general for Connecticut, and Tom Miller, attorney general of Iowa, put down their feelings about Windows XP in a press release yesterday, re-iterating that they had "serious concerns" about the operating system and Microsoft's continuing business strategy. ...more

Play an online book

Everyone likes a good old fashioned role-playing game (RPG) but Digital Tome has gone one step further by releasing its RPG series, The Siege of Avalon, as a series of interlocked chapters. You can download the first chapter for free from its site, and the company plans to publish a further five chapters. The second chapter is already out and can be purchased from the site for a mere $9. ...more