Articles by Chris Maxcer

Alltel Wireless has teamed up with SpinVox to launch a new service, Voice2TXT, that converts voice mail messages to text messages. The launch makes Alltel Wireless the first of the five largest U.S. carriers to offer its customers the ability to receive voice mail message in text form, the company said. Any Alltel Wireless customer with an SMS (short message service)-capable phone can add the Voice2TXT service...

Microsoft took a big leap forward Thursday in its virtualization effort. The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant released a public beta for its hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, which is now called "Hyper-V." Previously code-named "Viridian," the Hyper-V beta was expected in early 2008, Microsoft said. Now, however, Hyper-V will sh...

Users of Helio's Ocean mobile phone and Internet device now have an amped-up YouTube application built especially for their phones, the consumer-focused mobile phone company announced Wednesday On most mobile phone and device services, users have been limited to a passive viewing experience of YouTube, if they're able to gain access to the content ...

Even though tablet PCs have been around for about five years, it's a category that until now Dell had not set foot into. That, however, is about change, and it will happen before the year is over The PC powerhouse announced Monday it will begin shipping its new Latitude XT tablet PC this month. The 12.1-inch convertible laptop-tablet XT starts at U...

Media-focused social networking site Imeem is barely 18 months old, but the fledgling site just went four for four in partnering with major labels: Universal Music Group (UMG) is on board with Imeem's ad-supported music streaming model. Now Imeem users, averaging 19 million per month, can listen to full-length streamed songs and videos from top-selling artists such as Kanye West, Amy Winehouse and Gwen Stefani, among others...

Hackers have penetrated an upper layer of data at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a multiprogram science and technology lab managed for the U.S. Department of Energy by UT-Battelle Scientists and engineers at ORNL work to increase the availability of clean and abundant energy, restore and protect the environment, and contribute to nationa...

Microsoft is previewing a new experimental developer toolset that will help developers distribute application code between the client and server in Web and Rich Internet Applications without manual coding between the distributed client-server tiers. Called "Volta," Microsoft's Live Labs team plans to work with customers to develop the technology and process...

Intel is working on a new low-power microprocessor apparently designed to run basic laptops in to be sold in developing areas of the world. However, the company is talking very little about it "We are not discussing the timing or the specifications of the Diamondville product yet. The target market will be emerging markets." Connie Brown, a spokesp...

Like two baseball card collectors trading player cards they already own for ones they don't, AT&T and Verizon are swapping wireless assets. The two wireless service provider giants have agreed to trade licenses, network assets and subscribers in an effort to help manage separate acquisitions made by each of the companies AT&T's extra assets and swa...

Like two baseball card collectors trading player cards they already own for ones they don't, AT&T and Verizon are swapping wireless assets. The two wireless service provider giants have agreed to trade licenses, network assets and subscribers in an effort to help manage separate acquisitions made by each of the companies AT&T's extra assets and swa...

Like two baseball card collectors trading player cards they already own for ones they don't, AT&T and Verizon are swapping wireless assets. The two wireless service provider giants have agreed to trade licenses, network assets and subscribers in an effort to help manage separate acquisitions made by each of the companies AT&T's extra assets and swa...

A New Zealand cybercrime police force nabbed an 18-year-old this week who goes by the cyber ID "AKILL," officials said. While the New Zealand officials haven't arrested the man, he is being interviewed in conjunction with a wider botnet crackdown involving the FBI and Dutch authorities The FBI said AKILL is believed to be the ringleader of an elite...

Micron Technology has entered the solid state drive (SSD) market by announcing plans to deliver 32 GB and 64 GB SSDs in early 2008 The Boise, Idaho-based semiconductor company already produces a wide variety of DRAM (dynamic random access memory), NAND flash memory, CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) image sensors and other semiconducto...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been arguing amongst itself over whether it has the authority to increase its regulation of the cable industry. At the heart of the fight is a market penetration test called the "70/70" rule and the data that would provide the catalyst for new regulation Of course, industry lobbyists have jumped into ...

The open source KDE Community has turned loose the first release candidate for KDE 4.0 Desktop, the next generation of the KDE Linux/Unix desktop application ...

Mozilla has posted the first public beta of Firefox 3. At the same time, however, Mozilla is warning that the beta is for testing purposes only and not for casual users. Because this beta is targeted at testing core functionality added to the browser, Mozilla notes that some of Firefox 3 Beta 1 is still a bit "rough around the edges." For example, many Firefox 2 add-ons don't work properly with this first beta...

AMD is weaving together several lines of high-end components to create a new platform aimed at enthusiast PC computing. Codenamed "Spider," AMD's PC platform combines the new AMD Phenom quad-core processors, ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics processors with Microsoft DirectX 10.1 support, AMD 7-Series chipsets with CrossFireX and AMD OverDrive software...

To help combat increasingly complicated home PC and networking environments, Microsoft has released the second major version to its Windows Live OneCare, a subscription service that helps manage security updates and performance of home and small-business PCs Thirty-five percent of U.S. adults now own more than one home computer, according to Micros...

A new startup company has created an online dating demo that conducts searches based on the facial features of desired celebrities and returns results showing potential mates that look like, for example, Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt. To use the demo, called "Eyealike," a user simply uploads a photo to the Eyealike Web site and conducts a search across 300,000 images scraped from Match.com and AmericanSingles.com...

Incompetent and rogue employees at small and medium businesses take note: AT&T has released a new remote video monitoring solution packed with big-business features for a small-business price The company's new AT&T Remote Monitor Service includes video cameras and a range of environmental sensor options that let business owners remotely monitor the...