Here’s a new way of finding what you want to buy: Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves started out as a place you could ask normal questions (‘How long is a piece of string?’) and get answers that closely match your question, culled from the web (‘Want to buy a G-string?’). At least that’s been my experience.… Read More »
Microsoft has launched new voice recognition and control software to allow mobile phone and handheld computer users to control most functions of their phones without fiddling with tiny controls. Microsoft Voice Command, Reuters reports, will be sold as a $40 add-on for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC software for PDAs and mobile phones, allowing users to… Read More »
A story from Reuters that says one of the biggest hurdles facing RFID tags — the widgets that store information about products — is that they still aren’t very good. “The tags fall far below the 99 percent reliability rate of UPC tags because of the difficulty of transmitting clean radio signals,” the piece says.… Read More »
Interesting article by Reuters’ Franklin Paul on the death of the PDA (no link available, I’m afraid). “The truth is, the PDA as it was first envisioned – as nothing more than a fancy digital pocket organizer – may be nearly extinct,” he writes. Three years ago, consumers rushed to buy PDAs, but “today, its… Read More »
It’s now pretty clear where this Instant Messaging thing is going, and why Yahoo and Microsoft have suddenly started blocking third parties from piggybacking their services. Microsoft have announced a hook-up with news agency and financial data transporter Reuters allowing users of the Messenger network to chat with the 50,000 members of Reuters own internal… Read More »