James Niccolai

Almost half the world's airlines plan to offer some form of in-flight communications for passengers by the end of 2007, with most favouring Internet access, e-mail and SMS (short messaging service), according to a new study released this week.

Using a mobile phone for 10 years does not significantly increase the risk of developing a tumor, according to a new study from the U.K.'s Institute of Cancer Research. The investigation was the biggest to date that has studied the relationship between mobile phones and a type of tumor that occurs close to the ear called an acoustic neuroma, according to the study's authors.

Results from a trial of mobile broadcast TV in Helsinki suggest that some people will pay to watch news, sports and other content on their mobile phones. Some analysts are skeptical, however, and at least one operator involved in the trial said it was still deciding whether to launch a commercial service.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) has challenged Intel Corp. to a public fight to see which company has the best-performing 64-bit dual-core server processors. The company placed advertisements in major U.S. newspapers Tuesday proposing a contest that would pit the fastest server based on a dual-core AMD processor with the fastest server based on an equivalent chip from Intel, AMD said.

IAnywhere Solutions Inc. plans to offer the first details on Monday about the next big upgrade to its SQL Anywhere mobile database software, and said developers can register now to try out the beta. The Sybase Inc. subsidiary said it would discuss the software, code-named Jasper, at Sybase's TechWave user conference in Las Vegas, which started over the weekend.

iAnywhere Solutions Inc. has released an upgrade to Answers Anywhere, a middleware product for building application interfaces where users can submit queries using natural language, the company said this month.

Security vendors have reported several new variants of the worm infecting PCs running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 2000 operating system. Groups of virus writers are competing to cause the most damage, according to one security company, although the worm appears less severe than some first feared.

The days of double-digit growth may be over, but an uptick in spending by the media, communications and health-care industries will help to keep worldwide IT spending growing at a healthy clip through 2009, IDC predicted.