Giant pandas may well prefer bamboo to laptops, but wireless technology is helping researchers in China in their efforts to protect the endangered animals living in the remote Wolong Nature Reserve.
Wireless technology recently installed by Intel (INTC) in the mountainous 500,000-acre reserve is helping researchers communicate with one another as well as download and record data about the pandas' lives and movements -- simple activities that were cumbersome and time-consuming in the preserve before the technology upgrade.
About 300 giant pandas live in the Wolong Nature Reserve -- half in captivity and half in the wild. Only about 1,500 of the animals are left in the world.
- - -
ICANN gives green light: Two new internet domain names -- ".post" and ".travel" -- could appear online as early as next year as the net oversight board announced preliminary approval on Wednesday.
ICANN said the decision on ".post" and ".travel" had less to do with relative merit and was primarily based on the level of technical and commercial details their sponsors were able to quickly provide.
Negotiations will now begin on creating and running the domain names. The process could take months, though officials warned that there was no guarantee the domains would ultimately be accepted.
- - -
Supercomputer hopeful: The builders of a new NASA supercomputer claim the 10,240-processor machine is the fastest in the world -- an exciting prospect for researchers even if the speed title has yet to be officially bestowed.
Project Columbia, named for the space shuttle that was destroyed in early 2003, was built in less than 120 days at NASA's Ames Research Center. The cluster of 20 computers working as one will be used to speed up spacecraft design, environmental prediction and other research.
At the $50 million machine's public unveiling, the science shared the stage with claims of record-setting performance from system-builder Silicon Graphics (SGI), processor-provider Intel (INTC) and NASA.
- - -
Games on the go: Sony gave a price more fitting of a video-game machine than a slick movie-playing gadget for its new PlayStation Portable -- $186.
The PSP, which uses a new disk format, is being billed by Sony (SNE) not only as a game machine but also as a mobile gadget for watching movies and listening to music files.
The PlayStation Portable, or PSP, goes on sale in Japan on Dec. 12. Dates and prices for the United States and Europe are still undecided, although overseas sales are being planned for the first quarter of next year.
- - -
Want a chip with that device? Computer memory chip maker Micron said it had indications that demand for DRAM memory chips, used mainly in personal computers, would be robust enough to soak up rising supply in 2005.
Relatively tight supply also means that selling prices will remain constant for the rest of this year, creating a healthy outlook for a sector that is able to cut production costs by between 30 and 35 percent every year, said Micron (MU), the worlds third-biggest memory chipmaker.
Many DRAM makers have indicated they will increase investments in new factories next year, which will increase output. This has investors worried that prices may crash if an oversupply situation were to occur.
- - -
Compiled by David Cohn. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
