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Issue no. 8, 2003 Published: Feb 21, 2003
European IT faces gloomy future
Finland most tech-savvy nation
3G launch sets scene for price war
Hasta la vista to AltaVista
Faster quantum computers on horizon
Nanowires approach the quantum realm
Study lauds open-source code quality
Word 'bursts' may reveal online trends
'Selfish' routers slow the internet
New robot face smiles and sneers
DVD-copying startup puts bounty on pirates
Mobiles 'let you control your life'

European IT faces gloomy future
Analyst organisation Forrester has forecast gloom for the European IT market, warning that many small software and services firms will struggle to survive over the next year. A new study by the analyst predicts that the UK will overtake Germany to become Europe's largest IT market by 2005, but it also warns that the technology gap between Europe and the US will grow by €63bn this year alone. By 2004, IT will form only 6.9 per cent of the European economy, compared with 9.6 per cent in the US, the report said. The analysis, based on GDP growth projection, historical spending trends, and research into industry confidence, predicts a likely decline of 0.3 per cent in Europe's IT spending this year. The analysts says that companies and governments need to boost IT investments if Europe is serious about becoming the world's leading knowledge-driven economy.
VNUnet UK Feb 19, 2003	back to top

Finland most tech-savvy nation
Finland has overtaken the US as the world's most tech-savvy nation. A survey by the Swiss-based World Economic Forum pushed Finland into first place from third place last year due to its performance in terms of the extent of technology used by its inhabitants, businesses and government. The US slipped to second place as it was less competitive in the breadth of information and communication technology use. The survey by the WEF assessed the state of information technology in 82 economies. The Networked Readiness Index of the WEF's Global Information Technology Report 2002-2003 saw Singapore jump into third place from eighth place while Sweden remained unchanged in fourth place. In recent years Finland has turned into a high-tech country, predominantly because of the success of Nokia in turning itself in the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer. Penetration rates of PCs and mobile phones and wireless data services in Finland are among the highest in the world.
Yahoo / Reuters Feb 19, 2003	back to top

3G launch sets scene for price war
A pricing war is looming as mobile operators gear up for the long awaited European launch of 3G phones. Hutchison, the Asian telco giant, plans to roll out full 3G services next month in the UK and Italy and many other operators are expected to follow suit this year. Network operators have invested heavily in 3G technology, which allows full multimedia like video and games on phones. But the rollout of phones, first in Asia and now in Europe, has been hit by delays as mobile companies struggle to balance the books. Industry pundits meeting this week at the 3GSM congress in Cannes, France, predict prices for both network subscriptions and services will drop as new companies from Asia and the US fight for a share of the European market. However, research published at the conference showed GPRS, the technology billed as the step towards 3G, has failed to catch on. Less than one per cent of the world's mobile phone subscribers currently use GPRS. Of the 4.3m GPRS users, 2.6m are in Europe.
CNN Feb 19, 2003	back to top

Hasta la vista to AltaVista
Search engine Overture has bought out the former internet giant AltaVista for $140m. Overture will pay $60m in cash and $80m in stock for AltaVista, which introduced its search engine in 1995. In August 1999, at the height of the dotcom boom, Altavista was valued at nearly $3bn. But the former online great started to crash after it unsuccessfully tried to emulate the online services offered by rival Yahoo. By January 2000, it had amassed $765m in losses and axed 500 jobs, reducing its payroll to approximately 250 employees. An Overture spokesman said that AltaVista's technology would complement its main advertisement-driven search engine, which produces its results on how much businesses pay for their ranking. The technique has enriched Overture, which earned $73m last year, as well as scores of other websites that license similar search engines.
VNUnet UK / AP Feb 19, 2003	back to top

Faster quantum computers on horizon
Japan's NEC Corp. and government-funded research group RIKEN said on Thursday they had made a technological breakthrough that brings ultra-fast quantum computers a step closer. NEC and RIKEN said they had successfully created a state of quantum entanglement between two solid-state qubits for the first time in the world. Quantum entanglement describes the entwining of two or more particles without physical contact. Quantum computers are expected to far surpass the capabilities of today's most powerful supercomputers, particularly in fields such as data mining, or searching large databases for particular pieces of information. However, a NEC spokesman said that quantum computers for commercial use were unlikely to be available before 2020.
CNN / Reuters / Nature Feb 20, 2003	back to top

Nanowires approach the quantum realm
Scientists at the City University of Hong Kong have fabricated the smallest silicon nanowires ever. The researchers believe that such wires - which have diameters approaching 1 nanometre - could be used to make UV light-emitting diodes, transistors and lasers. The researchers fabricated the nanowires using an oxide-assisted growth method that produces wires with diameters in the range of a few to tens of nanometres. The wires consist of a single crystalline silicon core and an oxide sheath, which is about one third of the diameter. The researchers removed this oxide layer and terminated the surface with hydrogen to produce an oxidation resistant wire. The team then determined the electronic band gaps of the nanowires. They found that the band gap increases as the diameter decreases - from 1.1 eV for 7 nm diameter wires to 3.5 eV for 1.3 nm wires. This is in agreement with previous theoretical predictions and provides experimental evidence for the quantum size effect on the electronic density of states in silicon nanowires.
Physicsweb Feb 20, 2003	back to top

Study lauds open-source code quality
A consulting group that scrutinises the source code underlying several operating systems has found that a key networking component of Linux is of higher quality in many regards than competing closed-source software. Reasoning, which sells automated software inspection services, inspected part of the code of the Linux and five operating systems, comparing the number and rate of programming defects. Specifically, Reasoning examined the TCP/IP and found fewer errors in Linux. Reasoning declined to disclose which operating systems it compared with Linux, but said two of the three general-purpose operating systems were versions of Unix. The Linux defect rate was 0.1 defects per 1,000 lines of code. The rate for the general-purpose operating systems was between 0.6 and 0.7 per 1,000 lines of code. The rates for the two embedded operating systems were 0.1 and 0.3 per 1,000 lines of code. The findings support the views of open-source advocates, who argue that the wider scrutiny possible with open-source software means that problems are found more quickly.
New York Times / CNET Feb 20, 2003	back to top

Word 'bursts' may reveal online trends
Searching for sudden 'bursts' in the usage of particular words could be used to rapidly identify new trends and sort information more efficiently, says computer scientist Jon Kleinberg at Cornell University in New York. He has developed computer algorithms that identify bursts of word use in documents. While other popular search techniques simply count the number of words or phrases in documents, Kleinberg's approach also takes into account the rate at which the word usage increases. Kleinberg suggests that the method could be applied to weblogs to track new social trends. Word 'bursts' within email messages sent to a company's customer support address might help maintenance staff spot a major new problem. In a simple test, Kleinberg analysed all the State of the Union addresses given by US Presidents since 1790. He found that particular word 'bursts' could indeed be linked to important events. In the years immediately after the American Revolution, for example, sudden bursts in the use of words such as 'militia', 'British' and 'savages' are found.
New Scientist Feb 18, 2003	back to top

'Selfish' routers slow the internet
A little altruism could go a long way in speeding up the internet. That is the conclusion two Cornell University computer scientists came to after finding that computer networks tend to be 'selfish' when each tries to route traffic by the fastest pathway, causing that path to become congested and slow. Today's routers test possible routes for sending information and normally choose the least congested path until it, too, becomes clogged. At that time, the router will settle on a previously neglected route. To improve how routers direct traffic, the researchers suggest they consider not only which route is least congested, but also how sending packets in that direction would affect that path. Being more altruistic, a router in some cases may end up choosing pathways that are not necessarily the fastest, which could still result in lower average times for all the transmitted data.
Silicon.com Feb 18, 2003	back to top

New robot face smiles and sneers
Researchers at the University of Texas, Dallas, unveiled a new robot that can express a full repertoire of human facial expressions. K-bot has a feminine face and is capable of 28 facial movements, including smiling, sneering, furrowing her brow and arching her eyebrows. She also has cameras in her eyes to recognise and respond to humans. The researchers sculpted K-Bot's face using an electroactive polymer with 24 artificial muscles to provide facial movement. The polymer is a combination of an elastomer and a foaming agent, which gives the appearance and flexibility of skin without requiring the complexity of human tissue. The entire robot, which consists of the face, muscles and motors, weighs two kilogrammes. It cost $400 to make but the researchers thing the cost would be even lower if the robot was mass produced.
New Scientist Feb 17, 2003	back to top

DVD-copying startup puts bounty on pirates
In an odd twist in its fight against Hollywood studios, start-up 321 Studios is offering a reward of $10,000 for information about people who use its products to illegally copy DVDs. The major studios sued 321 last December, saying the company promotes copyright infringement by offering products that allow people to copy DVDs. Specifically, the suit claims 321 is violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by selling its DVD Copy Plus and DVD-X copy programs. 321 says it merely provides a product that will allow people to make backups of DVDs they already own, a practice that has been protected under a legal doctrine known as fair use. The company said it is committed to preventing illegal copying and uses technology that prevents consumers from duplicating copies of DVDs made with its software.
ZDNet Feb 18, 2003	back to top

Mobiles 'let you control your life'
Mobile phones are used by people to decide how and when they communicate with the rest of the world, shows a three-year study into the evolution of consumer mobile behaviour by a team at UK's Lancaster University. The report suggest that mobile devices are increasingly offering people a way to control their relationships, location and self-image. Young women told researchers that mobile phones allowed them to take control over events such as walking home late at night, offering the comfort of a friendly voice in the dark. Older women said their mobiles allowed them to keep track of their husbands. This double sense of control and censorship is likely to increase with the advent of multi- media messaging, offering people the ability to demand photographic proof of another's location. Another key finding was that text messaging was not the emotional form of communication that operators assume it to be, but a form of emotional censorship because they are composed and clearly structured. Voice is still the most emotive form of communication.
BBC News Feb 19, 2003	back to top