Wi-Fi, one of the year's most hyped new technologies, landed at Heathrow Airport with the opening of a high-speed wireless computing zone for travelers.
Wireless fidelity will allow people to access the Internet from their laptops at public hot spots including airport lounges, hotel lobbies and coffee shops equipped with special transmitters.
Intel (INTC) is one of the technology heavyweights banking on the expectation that wireless surfing will jumpstart tepid demand for laptop computers. The company has invested tens of millions of dollars to market Centrino, a new wireless technology that enables wireless surfing using 802.11b technology.
David Mitchell, head of brand marketing for Intel UK, said that Britain is the second-most-advanced Wi-Fi market in Europe, behind Scandinavia. The United States has the most Wi-Fi connection points.
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Apple comes on strong: Apple unveiled new versions of software the company hopes will continue to broaden the market for its digital film and DVD-editing products.
Apple (AAPL) unveiled Final Cut Pro 4, along with the DVD software and an upgraded version of its special-effects software, Shake, at a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas.
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said the new Final Cut software also allows editors to create movie titles and soundtracks, while the new DVD Studio Pro is designed to allow users of Final Pro Cut to author their own customized DVDs. Shake 3, the latest version of the Apple special-effects software used in movies like Lord of the Rings, makes Academy Award-type effects available to all video editors and broadcasters, Schiller said.
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Earnings forecast slashed: Nintendo lowered its earnings forecast for the recently ended fiscal year on Monday, citing slower-than-expected sales of its GameCube console.
The maker of the Super Mario and Pokemon video games expects to report earnings of $547 million, compared with its earlier forecast of $663 million in profits. GameCube sales totaled 5.6 million machines and failed to reach the target of 10 million for the year ended March 31, said company spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa.
GameCube, which went on sale in 2001, is competing worldwide against rival consoles such as Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 2, the industry leader, and the Xbox from Microsoft (MSFT).
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Adobe goes triplicate: Adobe Systems (ADBE) unveiled new versions of its Acrobat software, which should be shipped by the end of the current quarter ending in May.
The new product lineup will include Acrobat Elements, a stripped-down version of Adobe's existing Acrobat product. Its former Acrobat product has been beefed up and renamed Acrobat Standard. The company will also offer Acrobat Professional, targeted at engineers and others who want additional control over the documents they create.
The company is also changing the name of its free Acrobat Reader to Adobe Reader.
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Cities want biotech dollars: In an earlier era, Springfield, Massachusetts, had a knack for the next big thing. Now, the city hopes to recapture its place on the cutting edge. It's one of dozens of cities across the country pushing to become the next hotbed of biotechnology.
More than 80 percent of those states and municipalities that responded to a 2001 Department of Commerce survey listed biotech as one of their top two targets for development. New Jersey has designed tax credits to appeal specifically to biotech companies, while Michigan is spending tobacco money.
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A cancer cure for everyone? An early try at making a universal cancer vaccine seems to be safe, and shows some indication that it may even work, researchers at Geron said.
The first few cancer patients immunized with the vaccine showed no bad reactions, and in fact seemed to mount an immune response against their own cancers. The results are very preliminary but suggest the research approach is valid, Geron said in a statement. Geron shares rose slightly on the news, to $6.70 a share in mid-morning trading.
Geron GERN was scheduled to present its findings at a meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in Toronto, but the meeting was canceled because of fears about SARS.
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The war hits advertising: In the latest warnings from the sector, two more media companies and a marketing firm lowered their first-quarter outlooks, citing lowered advertising revenue because of the war in Iraq.
Belo (BLC), publisher of The Dallas Morning News and owner of a number of broadcast and cable television outlets, said earnings would be lower than its previous estimate of 15 to 16 cents per share, hurt by softer ad revenues in the last half of March. The company expects first-quarter revenue to grow slightly compared with a year earlier. It is expected to post its first quarter results on April 23.
Pulitzer (PTZ), which publishes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, said its first-quarter earnings would be no better than the low end of analysts' previous estimates of 35 cents a share to 42 cents a share. Marketing company Harte-Hanks (HHS) also joined in, noting that the first three months of the year have been weaker than the company had expected. The warnings follow similar statements from other media companies, including Hearst-Argyle Television (HTV), The New York Times (NYT) and Gannett (GCI).
- AP and Reuters contributed to this report.*
