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The wait is finally over for the Indian market for the much-hyped and equally awaited Asus Eee PC. The 'ultra portable seven-inch display' laptop, primarily aimed at students, housewives and teenagers, would be officially available to the Indian consumers in the first week of February at Croma stores across Mumbai. With strong alliances with Intel and Microsoft for product development, Asus is confident to fulfill its commitment of three Es of the new computing world: Easy to Learn, Work and Play, Excellent Internet Experience and Excellent Mobile Computing Experience.

IBM researchers and a team of doctors are building a database of digital images that they hope will enable oncologists to diagnose and treat cancer patients faster and with more success.

Researchers at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey have digitized CAT scans, MRIs and other images using a high-performance Power6 570 Series system and computational time on the World Community Grid, also known as the world's largest public computing grid. IBM donated the hardware and computational time to the center.

Expensive and error-prone digital tapes has forced BBC UK, one of the world's largest television broadcasters, to look at using computers running Linux to help produce its programs.

Speaking at the annual linux.conf.au Linux and open source conference in Melbourne, Stuart Cunningham from BBC research, said copying digital tapes is a slow process as it must be done in real-time.

"The key to solving digital tape problem is with standards-based files in the MXF (material exchange format) as you can store more in less space," Cunningham said.

Homes today are filled with increasing numbers of high-tech gadgets, from smart phones and PCs to state-of-the-art TV and audio systems, many of them with built-in networking capabilities. Combined, these devices could form the building blocks of the smart homes of the future, but only if they can be made to work together intelligently. European researchers are addressing the challenge.

We are not getting any younger. As Europe’s population grows older, the need for care is growing and we are spending more and more money to get it. A new mobile video assistance technology promises to put off the need for carers, improve the life of older people and cut the cost of assistance. Cardiovascular aerobics, package cruises in the Greek islands and high calcium diets. Today’s silver brigade may well be the most active in history, but there comes a time when even ‘super gran’ must retire.

European and Turkish doctors and technicians are perfecting a medical support system that can track patients’ real-time vital signs, link those to patient medical history, and, crucially, provide the latest clinical guidelines for patient care. Better yet, it can alert doctors when necessary. It’s not a digital doctor, but it’s getting there.
It is called Saphire, and it is an Intelligent Clinical Decision Support System (ICDSS) offering a range of services that combines scattered information stored in different systems into a new, more powerful application.

European researchers have pioneered a breakthrough interface that allows people to touch, stretch and pull virtual fabrics that feel like the real thing. The new multi-modal software linked to tactile hardware and haptics devices have enormous potential for shopping, design and human-machine interaction.
A revolutionary new interface allows users to really feel virtual textiles. The system combines a specially designed glove, a sophisticated computer model and visual representation to reproduce the sensation of cloth with an impressive degree of realism.

By monitoring tiny fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by a passing plane, a team of European researchers has developed an innovative system to increase airport safety even in the worst weather conditions. Using magnetic field detectors, a team of researchers, led by Uwe Hartmann and Haibin Gao of Saarland University in Germany, has developed a unique system to pinpoint the location of aircraft at airports even in places where other traffic monitoring systems face difficulties.

Vendors don't provide rationale behind license fees and are shifty about discounts, but the SaaS model may force them to change their ways, Forrester predicts.

When it comes to licensing software, many IT professionals think they're not getting their money's worth, according to a new Forrester Research report. They also think software vendors don't understand their business, are shifty about discounts, and don't always provide clear direction following an acquisition.

The wait is nearly over for the first service pack for Windows Vista, according to sources close to Microsoft.

Microsoft has said the highly anticipated service pack would be out in the first quarter of this year, but some say it could be available in the next few weeks, more than a month before the quarter ends on March 31.