While Toshiba has publicly announced its achievement of developing a triple-layer HD DVD-ROM (read only) disc with a capacity of 51 gigabytes, Ritek is disclosing behind closed doors at CES its own achievements in multi-layer HD optical media. Ritek claims to not only have been able to produce a three-layer and four-layer HD optical discs, but to have successfully designed HD media with a full 10 layers. The company says that its multi-layer process can be applied to both HD DVD and Blu-ray formats

Trading movies and other large data files online through the popular BitTorrent delivery platform may soon happen on simple consumer devices, thanks to a pair of companies that are creating specifically designed processors that can handle what PCs can do today

Camero, a company out of Israel that has developed a camera that can see things through solid walls, has raised $14 million, bringing the total is has raised to $20 million

Firefox 3 and IE8 are both in the works. It’s obvious that IE will continue to hook into the advanced functionality that Vista offers, while Firefox will become more of a vehicle for independent web services (particularly those from Google). So with IE8 and FF3 we will likely see the two biggest browsers head off into different directions

Northern Territory schools will become the first in Australia to test a revolutionary new laptop computer that costs just $US100 ($128). The One Laptop Per Child project — which is shipping hand-cranked laptops to Brazil, Argentina, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand — has sparked the interest of the NT Education Department, which will begin testing the machines when schools recommence later this month

Will Apple release a version of its Safari browser for Windows? The Mozilla Foundation seems to believe such a move is a distinct possibility. The outlook is buried in the wiki information the Mozilla Foundation posted this week about its future plans for Firefox

Scientists in the US have created a tiny cable — much thinner than a human hair — through which they can transmit visible light. This potentially paves the way for improvements in solar energy, computing and medicine

A cheap self-assembly device capable of fabricating 3D objects has been developed by US researchers. They hope the machine could kick start a revolution in home fabrication — or rapid prototyping — just as early computer kits sparked an explosion in home computing. Rapid prototyping machines typically cost from $20,000 to $1.5 million. The standard version of the Freeform fabricator — or fabber — is about the size of a microwave oven and can be assembled for around $2400. It can generate 3D objects from plastic and various other materials. Full documentation on how to build and operate the machine, along with all the software required, are available on the Fab@Home website, and all designs, documents and software have been released for free

Over the next few months, eBay will be offering its PayPal users a new tool in the fight against phishers: a $5 security key. The security key is actually a small electronic device, designed to clip on to a keychain, that calculates a new numeric password every 30 seconds. PayPal users who sign up to use the device will need to enter their regular passwords as well as the number displayed on the key whenever they log in to the online payment service

Following a splashy keynote delivered by Steve Jobs to introduce a new smartphone, Cisco has filed suit against Apple in a wrangle over the trademarked name iPhone

On Tuesday, Microsoft released its monthly round of patches to fix vulnerabilities in Windows and Office, but conspicuously absent were fixes for two known flaws in the widely used Microsoft Word application. The vulnerabilities were first reported in December, and were ranked critical by security firms because they could be used by malicious hackers to gain complete control over a system

Top electronics retailers are lining up behind a new universal DVD format created by Warner Bros to bridge the gap between the competing HD DVD and Blu-ray camps. The new DVD media, dubbed Total HD, is the latest solution in the problem over dueling next-gen DVD standards: Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD

The past few years have seen a clear trend toward ridding desktop PCs of wires. But the VGA cable connecting your system to your monitor has been a stubborn holdout. Now a company called Quartics is looking to sever that tie, using technology that will allow monitors to link via wired or wireless USB connections

Office for Mac users who’ve been wondering about a new version — and Office 2007 compatibility — got some answers today as Microsoft said it will ship Office for Mac 2008 by year’s end. At MacWorld in San Francisco, officials of Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit also announced plans for spring delivery of beta versions of converters that will allow the current version of the popular suite, Office for Mac 2004, to open, edit, and save files in Office 2007’s new default XML formats for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The final converters will appear six to eight weeks after Office for Mac 2008 ships