Sumner Lemon

Microsoft Corp. Friday announced the establishment of a research and development (R&D) lab in Beijing for Internet advertising-related technologies. The Microsoft adCenter Incubation Lab (adLab) is a joint effort between two parts of the company: Microsoft Research Asia and MSN adCenter. The goal is for adLab researchers to develop technologies that can target advertisements based on audience intelligence information, matching ads with the interests of consumers

When 21-year-old British student Alex Tew needed to raise money to pay for his university, he came up with an idea many might dismiss as wishful thinking: raise US$1 million by selling 1 million pixels worth of advertising space on his Web site for $1 each.

Two recently announced vulnerabilities in BlackBerry Enterprise Server permit a malicious attack that can prevent users from being able to open e-mail attachments, or disrupt the flow of information between BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry Router, the system's developer, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), said.

The value of IT hardware products manufactured by Taiwanese companies grew by 10.5 per cent during 2005 to US$77 billion and that growth is expected to continue into 2006, with Taiwanese companies further expanding their dominance of the hardware manufacturing industry, according to Market Intelligence Center (MIC), a market research company in Taipei.

An undersea telecommunications cable, called SEA-ME-WE4, that links France with Singapore entered operation this week, according to two companies involved in the project.

Taiwan's Quanta Computer Inc., the world's largest maker of notebook computers, will manufacture an ultra-low-cost laptop developed by Nicholas Negroponte, the chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab. Negroponte, who is also chairman of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) non-profit group, has said he expects the laptops to be available to governments next year at a price of US$100 each. The first notebooks are expected to hit the market during the fourth quarter of next year.

Access to Google Inc.'s free Web log service, Blogger, appears to once again be blocked by official censors in China, less than two months after the service became accessible to users here. The Chinese government has a policy of blocking access to Internet sites that it deems undesirable but the specifics of these efforts, which can change over time, are not generally acknowledged by officials in public.

Microsoft Corp. and telecommunications provider MCI Inc. announced Tuesday a multi-year partnership to offer software and services that will allow users to call from a PC to almost any phone in the world.