From an NEC press release:

NEC Corporation (NEC) and The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited, the owner and operator of five-star luxury hotels, The Peninsula Hotels, in Asia and North America, today announced the deployment of an integrated voice and data VoIP network system linking The Peninsula Hotels’ fourteen hotels and offices worldwide. This globally-connected VoIP network is the first ever built in the hotel industry.

The Peninsula Hotels’ global VoIP network was mainly built by upgrading software, which incorporates IP Networking functionalities into NEC’s IP-PBX. The IP connectivity is used in the hotel’s fourteen locations including the hotels in Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, New York, Chicago and Beverly Hills. This network system was designed and built with a minimal initial investment and completed in a short time.

With the new VoIP network, The Peninsula Hotels has an lower initial investment as compared with a global VoIP network using a conventional method that requires VoIP gateway in each PBX locations, a significant decrease of cost from the cheaper international communication costs , and a Global Customer Service Centre located in Hong Kong which handles the global reservations of Peninsula customers.

“The Peninsula Hotels has been working to curb the cost of international calls since the communication among its hotels worldwide has become more frequent as a result of global expansion. The new network system was built in response to this, and it will expand along with the establishment of new hotels.” says Mr. Shane Izaks, General Manager, Information Technology of The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited.

The Japanese electronics makers Toshiba and Fujitsu are recalling batteries made by Sony for their laptop computers while personal computer maker Dell expanded its earlier recall of Sony battery packs. The batteries can short-circuit and have been blamed for causing some computers to catch fire.

The latest announcements bring the tally of recalled Sony batteries to about 7 million worldwide, and are a major embarrassment for the Japanese electronics and entertainment powerhouse.

Toshiba Corp. said today that it is recalling 830,000 batteries made by Sony for its laptop computers. Hours later, Fujitsu Ltd. recalled an undisclosed number of Sony batteries that are used in 19 of its laptop models, according to Fujitsu spokesman Masao Sakamoto.

The recalls comes as Sony Corp. is in the midst of a major overhaul of its operations, closing plants, shutting divisions and trimming jobs.

Sony said earlier Friday it had asked manufacturers using its problem batteries to carry out a recall.

It has said the batteries could catch fire in rare cases when microscopic metal particles came into contact with other parts of the battery cell, leading to a short circuit. Typically a battery pack will shut off when there is a short circuit but on occasion the battery would catch fire instead.

The Toshiba recall involves Dynabook, Qosmio, Satellite Portege and Tecra models, but regional breakdowns and dates of manufacturing weren’t immediately available, said Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Omori.

Omori said Toshiba’s recall was in response to Sony’s request, and Toshiba had not found any cases in which the laptops were at risk of catching fire.

“But we wanted to assure and satisfy our customers,” he said.

Dell Inc., the world’s largest personal computer maker, said Friday that it is increasing the recall of Sony battery packs used in its systems to 4.2 million units from 4.1 million units. It already was the largest electronics-related recall in U.S. history.

Based in Round Rock, Texas, Dell said that the increase in the recall was made due to additional information received about the battery packs containing cells manufactured by Sony.

Dell and the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the initial recall on Aug. 15, blaming Sony battery cells. Dell began shipping replacement batteries on Aug. 15.

On Friday, Dell said customers should recheck their batteries if they have not ordered or received a replacement battery.

On Thursday, IBM Corp. and Lenovo Group, the world’s third-largest computer maker, said they were seeking the recall of 526,000 rechargeable, lithium-ion Sony batteries purchased with ThinkPad computers after one of them caught fire at Los Angeles International Airport this month.

In August, Apple Computer Inc. recalled 1.8 million batteries worldwide, warning they could catch fire.

Last week, Toshiba said it was recalling 340,000 laptop batteries, also made by Sony, but that was for a problem that caused the laptops to run out of power.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lenovo has recalled just 526,000 ThinkPad notebook battery packs because of a risk of fire. The battery packs were made by Sony.

Although only one report of a fire has been noted, that incident occurred on an airplane at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this month, inside a ThikPad T43 notebook. Lenovo promptly obtained the notebook and began investigations.

To be safe, Lenovo has recalled ThinkPad battery packs associated with the following model numbers: the T Series (T43, T43p, T60); R Series (R51e, R52, R60, R60e); and X Series (X60, X60s), according to Lenovo.

The battery packs and notebook PCs were sold between February 2005 and September 2006, Lenovo said.

The batteries may be identified with an “ASM” or a “FRU” number; affected ASMs include 92P1072, 92P1088, 92P1142, 92P1170, and 92P1174. Affected FRU (field replaceable units) include the following codes: 92P1073, 92P1089, 92P1141, 92P1169 or 93P5028, and 92P1173 or 93P5030.

Customers are encouraged to call Lenovo at (800) 426-7378 anytime or log on to Lenovo’s battery recall web site to determine if they have an affected battery.

Apple, Dell, Panasonic, and Toshiba have all recalled notebook PCs. All of the affected models have included Sony battery cells.

Both Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo have previously admitted using Sony cells inside their notebooks. However, Lenovo claimed previously that its methodologies and built-in safety mechanisms would prevent incidents like the one that happened at LAX. HP had also claimed that its notebooks would be safe from fire; HP has not yet recalled any notebooks because of the Sony cells that affected its competitors.

From a Sharp press release: 

Sharp has developed the Triple Directional Viewing LCD, a display that controls the viewing angle so that the display can show different images from the left, right, and center simultaneously.

Using a proprietary parallax barrier on a standard TFT LCD, the screen splits light in three directions—left, right, and center—and displays three separate images on the same screen at the same time.

Imagine, for example, people taking a drive in a van. The driver uses a car navigation system screen, the person in the passenger seat checks out tourist sites and restaurants, and the person in the back seat enjoys a movie on DVD, all in full-screen view. One LCD that plays three roles at once.

Sharp Triple Directional Viewing LCD is also ideal for multipurpose signs in public: it could display three different ads for stores or restaurants, each aimed at people walking in a certain direction.

Microsoft Corp. has vowed to put considerable money and effort behind its bid to dethrone Apple Computer Inc.’s market-leading iPod, but it won’t be using price as a weapon.

Microsoft announced today that it will charge $249.99 for its new Zune music player, about the same as Apple Computer Inc. charges for an iPod with the same storage capacity.

Microsoft’s portable music player and its companion online music service will debut on Nov. 14 in the United States, just ahead of the holiday gift-buying rush.

The music service will let people buy songs individually for about 99 cents, the same amount Apple charges for songs from its popular iTunes Music Store.

For Zune, Microsoft will use the same payment system as its Xbox Live online video game service, which lets people without credit cards buy prepaid cards at some retail stores.
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Microsoft also will offer a Zune Pass subscription service, which will let users listen to any of about 2 million songs for $14.99 per month. RealNetworks Inc. charges the same monthly fee for its online music subscription service, Rhapsody to Go.

Scott Erickson, senior director of product management for Zune, said Microsoft is hoping that people will use the subscription service to seek out music they might not have known about, while also buying some songs outright.

Microsoft has said it plans a major promotional effort for Zune, but analysts say the world’s largest software maker faces an uphill battle against the iPod and iTunes.

After all the complaints surrounding iTunes 7.0, Apple quitely releases an update.

When Apple announced its new range of iPod music players two weeks ago, it also launched a new version of iTunes. iTunes 7.0 boasted a slightly redesigned interface, the ability to sync an iPod to more than one computer, a new “Cover Flow” view for album management, the ability to download album art from the Internet and support for full-length feature film downloads.

Shortly after the release of iTunes 7.0, however, the complaints started to poor out from users. There were problems with high memory usage, unexpected program crashes and muffled audio playback. Apple has seen fit to correct these issues and as a result has released iTunes 7.0.1. From the release notes:

iTunes 7.0.1 addresses issues with audio playback. In addition, iTunes 7.0.1 also addresses stability and performance issues with Cover Flow, CD importing, iPod syncing, and more.

All iPod users are encouraged to download the update or use the program’s auto update feature.

iTunes update here

Intel’s next-generation notebook will have an integrated 3G chip from Nokia and improved graphics support for Microsoft’s Windows Vista, the company announced Wednesday.

Nokia’s HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology will appear on motherboards bearing Intel’s Santa Rosa package, Dadi Perlmutter, general manager in Intel’s mobility group, said at the Intel Developer Forum here.

Notebook makers have been experimenting with integrated chips that can connect to cellular data networks, and with these plans, Intel will make Nokia’s technology part of its Centrino package of chips.

Santa Rosa is the code name for the next iteration of Centrino, which blends a processor, chipset and wireless networking technology. Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor, already on the market, will be joined to a new chipset called Crestline that comes with support for the company’s Active Management Technology (AMT) and improved graphics performance. AMT is a nod to Intel’s business customers with support for PC management technologies. The company will also move its networking chips to the faster 802.11n wireless standard.

Santa Rosa is scheduled to arrive in the first half of 2007, Perlmutter said. Around that time, Intel also plans to deliver a new chip based on a different architecture from the Core 2 Duo for ultramobile PCs, he said. This chip will consume half as much power as Intel’s current mobile designs but at one-fourth the size.

Before that chip arrives, Intel will work on Santa Rosa’s power consumption, using two technologies involving its front-side bus architecture and its power management controls. The company is increasing the speed of the front-side bus, which connects the processor to the memory, to 800MHz. That bus can also now dynamically scale down its operating speed, as required by the operating workload.

Also, Intel can now put its processor into a deeper sleep state, because the Crestline chipset is intelligent enough to recognize whether data is stored on the processor’s on-chip cache memory or in memory. This means the chipset doesn’t have to wake up the processor to check the on-chip cache memory, and waste energy.

Is it Lenovo’s turn to have batteries burst into flame?

Excerpt from eWeek story:

Lenovo Group has experienced a single notebook battery pack failure similar to those seen recently by Apple Computer and Dell, leading analysts to believe it too may have to issue a battery pack recall.

The battery pack, housed inside an IBM ThinkPad T43, caught fire at Los Angeles International Airport earlier this month, Lenovo officials in Raleigh, N.C., confirmed. Lenovo, which purchased IBM’s PC group in May 2005, obtained the LAX ThinkPad, and the early stages of an investigation by its engineers in Yamato, Japan, have determined that the pack contained Sony battery cells of the same type that have been involved in overheating incidents and fires reported by Dell and Apple, Ray Gorman, a Lenovo spokesperson, told eWEEK.

Given that Lenovo is still investigating the incident, it is too soon to say what its next move will be, Gorman said.

But, while the chances of a notebook battery pack overheating or catching fire due to a battery problem—improperly manufactured lithium-ion battery cells produced by Sony were at the root of the recall of 4.1 million battery by Dell on Aug. 14 and the recall of 1.8 million battery packs by Apple on Aug. 24—are slim, analysts believe that Lenovo may have no choice given that it appears to have experienced a similar problem to that of Dell and Apple.

“Extreme cases of battery failures such as this are very rare in Lenovo notebooks,” Gorman said. However, he added: “Our number one concern is public safety. We’ve launched an investigation. We will take whatever measures necessary to serve the interest of our customers and public safety.”

Right now, Lenovo “is falling right in the statistical norm. If Dell had 4 million [Sony-cell-based battery packs] ship over a two-year period and you map Lenovo shipments over the same period…you’d come up with one or two failures in the same period,” said Roger Kay, president of EndPoint Technologies Associates, in Wayland, Mass.

But, “the implication is that [Lenovo] would be just as vulnerable,” Kay said. “The implication is that they’ve got to do a recall.”

Excerpt from San Fransiscon Chronicle:

Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn has resigned from the board of Hewlett-Packard Co. amid widening allegations that top executives at the Palo Alto technology giant were more deeply involved in the company’s spying scandal than earlier reported.

Dunn’s departure as chairwoman and director was announced Friday by Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd, who said he will assume the role of chairman immediately and continued to deny that he was aware of the use of false identities in the company’s investigation of directors, employees and journalists.

The development is the latest in a corporate scandal at HP that has dominated headlines for three weeks. The company, in an effort to find out which board members were leaking information to the media, embarked on an investigation that included possibly illegal tactics to track directors, employees and reporters. Surrounded by investigations and allegations, the company’s leadership is struggling to unwind the scandal.

While analysts welcomed Hurd’s attempt to set the record straight on what happened, some also portrayed Dunn as the scapegoat in a scandal that is raising serious questions about Hurd’s credibility.

After an emergency board meeting last week, Dunn agreed to step down as chairwoman in January. Friday’s announcement accelerated her departure dramatically.

Sony’s forthcoming 20-gigabyte version of the PlayStation 3 video game console will feature an HDMI 1.3 output, the company announced on Friday at the Tokyo Game Show.

The port, which had been previously announced as standard on the stepped-up 60GB model, enables games to be played in full high-definition video and audio.

The company said its decision was made in part by the “sharp increase” in flat-panel televisions now sold with High-Definition Multimedia Interface, or HDMI, ports.

Sony also announced that the price of the PS3 in Japan will drop to 49,980 yen ($426), including tax.

After several delays, Sony has said it will release the PS3 on Nov. 11 in Japan and Nov. 17 in the United States, two days before rival Nintendo plans to release its next-generation game console, the Wii.

In the U.S. market, the 20GB model of the PS3 will cost $499, and the stepped-up 60GB version will cost $599. Both versions will have a Blu-ray Disc optical drive inside. Xbox 360 owners will soon be able to purchase an external HD DVD drive, Blu-ray’s opposing format in the next-generation high-definition video race.