The Friday Tech Round-up

There's been a few snippets of Tech news today. Sadly nothing that warrants a full post so i thought i'd start a new feature on the blog, The Tech Round-up. Hopefully i'll be able to make this a regular post. Once more info comes through on the more interesting stories from below i'll post in more detail.

1 Terabyte DVD Recorder
The world's first 1 Terabyte DVD recorder has been created in Japan by Hitachi. Featuring the joint storage capability of two 500Gb hard drives, the recorder can reportedly store over 5 days of high-def television (128 hours). The move is hoped to gain market share from main rivals Sony and Matsushita. However, there is no planned release for the product in either Europe or the US due to "lack of demand", according to Hitachi. Shame.

8 Hour Laptop Battery
Although not "Emerging Tech", increased laptop battery life is something every laptop owner would love to see. My Sony Vaio states 3 hours on a full charge...40 minutes later i'm scrambling for the power adapter! An 8 hour battery does look to be on the cards for early next year. Based on lithium-ion technology and created by Intel and Matsushita, it can store up to 30 percent more juice and is being developed to work alongside current power-saving techniques employed by Intel in order to further extend battery life.

Music Service Provider
How much do you pay for your broadband connection? £20, £30? Do you download bucket-loads of music from less than legal sources (Limewire, Kazaa, Grokster)? Maybe you'd benefit from a subscription to PlayLouder MSPLaunching in September, the first legal file swapping service in the UK has partnered with Sony BMG and gives customers a 1Mb broadband connection and access to Sony's complete back catalogue of music, all for £26.99 per month. The issue of burning your freshly downloaded tracks to CD or sharing them elsewhere is being dealt with via a digital "fingerprint".

"All music supplied through the PlayLouder MSP will be given its own unique 'fingerprint', a short digital code that enables a computer file and any copies to be identified. The fingerprint will be used to provide a definitive set of information, for instance artist and track names, and will serve as the key to a universe of relevant up to date music and events information only available to PlayLouder subscribers."

That's all for the moment,

Will O'Hara - Emerging Tech - Grab the feed