Martyn Williams

Square Enix Co. Ltd. has named the launch date for

A satellite that promises to deliver broadband Internet access to all corners of the Asia Pacific was launched into orbit early Thursday from the European space port in French Guiana, South America. The Thai-owned IPStar satellite, also called Thaicom-4, was carried into space on top of an Ariane 5 rocket at 8:20 a.m. GMT. The launch had been due to take place about two hours earlier but was postponed after a problem on the launch pad.

Researchers at NEC Corp. have developed a new type of rechargeable battery that is based on organic compounds and could be useful in a wide range of IT-related applications.

Swiss chemical company Clariant International AG and Japan's Toshiba Corp. have jointly developed a dye that is necessary for dual-layer recordable HD-DVD discs capable of storing 30G bytes of data, they said.

Fujitsu Ltd. is developing two applications that could help enterprises make better use of their data and better handle information flowing into the company. The first is a search tool for the "semantic Web," which refers to a web of interconnected servers filled with information that is tagged so it can be easily understood by machines. The second piece of software is aimed at helping manage the flow of information coming from outside a company and uses the RSS (really simple syndication) format.

NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have begun work on a new Java platform for cellular handsets. The work, which began last year but was first revealed two weeks ago at Sun's JavaOne conference in San Francisco, is aimed at refreshing the mobile Java platform for today's more advanced handsets and applications. It could also be promoted as a cross-industry standard, the companies said.

After failing to break into the mainstream of computing, the Tablet PC might have been written-off by many, but it still has at least one strong supporter. Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corp., said Monday he still believes in the form-factor and repeated a prediction that, with better hardware and software, it could still dominate over traditional laptop PCs.

The Java-based ThinkFree Office suite is about to get its first major update since South Korea's Haansoft Inc. acquired it in 2004, the company said Wednesday.