Mari-Len De Guzman

The strip is out and the chip is in. At least in the payment card arena, as MasterCard Canada last month announced plans to introduce chip-enabled credit cards by 2010, following support from card issuers and acquirers.

The market for RFID technology may see increased uptake over the next three years as Canadian manufacturers and distributors begin to feel the pressure of complying with mandates from big retailers and the U.S. government, industry observers say.

Spyware beware, as a new document released by the Anti-Spyware Coalition (ASC) signals a seriously escalating breakdown of potentially unwanted programs. The new

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Expect to see more heated competition between Oracle Corp. and its German competitor SAP AG as their customers get caught in the middle of an ongoing database tug-of-war, according to industry observers.

The year 2005 saw many movements in the industry as technology convergence and vendor consolidation were the trends that plagued the newswires throughout the year. Most notable of which was Oracle Corp.'s spate of acquisitions geared at enhancing its technology prowess beyond database management and into the vast enterprise application space - from the high profile, US$10.3-billion acquisition of PeopleSoft Inc. to the less prominent Retek and ProfitLogic buys, to the most recent Siebel Systems Inc. purchase

Chipmaker Intel Corporation is giving mobile computing a boost in performance and much better power efficiency, with a goal of enabling eight-hour continuous battery life by 2008. Intel's sequel to the Centrino mobile platform, codenamed Napa, is equipped with its Yonah dual-core processor technology that promises to be nearly 40 per cent faster than the current Sonoma Intel Pentium M 780 processor.