Technology

A group of web publishers filed suit in federal court this week against the Internet ad network Gator, charging that Gator sells ads on their Web sites without authorisation and pockets the proceeds

Fancy an Athlon-based, dual head laptop, then Xentex Technologies have the toy for you

Boeing engineers have designed a super-efficient aircraft that would look like a giant bat and slash the cost of air transport. The Blended Wing Body concept, outlined more than ten years ago but now said to be almost perfected, would have no fuselage or tail. Rather, it would basically be a wing with a belly that would accommodate the passengers and freight

A team of Japanese engineers has come up with a way of blocking mobile phone signals using wood panels containing magnetic material. The panels would be useful in cinemas, theatres, or anywhere where ringing mobile phones cause exasperation

Researchers at Philips have integrated a space-saving optical mouse into a mobile phone for the first time — via Slashdot

The guys at cluelessmailers.org have made a map of spam. It shows the relationships among spammers and other entities — legitimate or not — including organisations that track spam, advertises with, shares addresses, e-mails through, and all sorts of other data

Microsoft is warning people that a series of flaws in its Windows Media Player could allow a malicious hacker to hijack people’s computer systems and perform a variety of actions

Members of the Toledo police computer crimes task force and FBI agents served search warrants at 13 residences, including an apartment, a condominium, and single-family houses. Investigators believe cable modems that connect Buckeye Express customers to the Internet were altered, allowing computer users unauthorised access to excessive amounts of bandwidth

A new technique being developed by GE and IBM to further decrease the size needed to magnetically store data. This new technique could produce 150 gigabits per square centimetre — that’s a terabyte on a laptop size hard drive

An e-mail gateway start-up, IronPort Systems, is pushing marketers to back a plan that would let spam recipients charge companies for unwanted messages

NSW Central Coast fleet supplier, Cellular One, has identified a malfunction that occurs when Nokia’s 6310 is used with a hands-free accessory supplied by Beyond Holdings

Companies planning on moving old programs to the Microsoft’s .Net software plan may get a dose of sticker shock: Making the conversion could cost roughly half of the original development cost

ISPs are pressing Telstra to provide another weapon in the war against spam by activating caller line identification for all dial-up internet connections

Space Data says its plan to create America’s first floating wireless network — by putting disposable transmitters on government weather balloons — has already undergone successful testing and is economically viable

Hundreds of housing estate residents in Melbourne will be given a free computer and cheap internet access as part of an initiative to help low-income families into the IT age

DaisyMan at ArsWare has come up with a software based Dead Man’s Switch that will, if you don’t check in every so often, post a message — presumably about your demise, but whatever you wish — to various message boards, send e-mail — maybe that incriminating evidence? — to your friends, and encrypt specified files on your computer so that they can’t have them