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Technology Briefs
California project to start citywide wireless access

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CERRITOS, Calif. — Browsing the Web from this Southern California city may soon become an outdoor sport.

The first phase of a project to establish citywide wireless Internet access is slated to begin next month. Ultimately, anyone with a laptop or wireless device will be able to surf the Web from virtually anywhere in the city's 8.6-square-mile area.

Scores of wireless-networking transmitters are being placed atop public buildings, traffic lights and other structures to blanket the city. The project is being touted by Aiirnet Wireless, its operator, as the largest wireless networking, or Wi-Fi, deployment in the nation.

The city struck a deal with the company that allows Aiirnet to place transmitters throughout the city for free, city spokeswoman Annie Hylton said.

The 51,000 residents of Cerritos, 26 miles southeast of Los Angeles, have not had DSL broadband access to the Internet because the city is too far from the telephone company's office. Cable Internet access has not been an option, either, Hylton said.

Coming to theater near you: movies sent by fiber optics

SINGAPORE — Movies usually are shipped to Singapore theaters on film reels. But the latest installment of the Hong Kong crime thriller "Infernal Affairs" made its way to a cineplex in the Asian city-state in a novel fashion: It got beamed through undersea fiber-optic cables.

Singapore Telecom handled the transfer of the 80-gigabyte video file as part of a wider plan by Singapore's government to combine fiber-optic networks, digital cinemas and tough intellectual-property laws to become an Asian digital-distribution hub for Hollywood studios.

The digital transfer is far cheaper than having 35-mm film reels copied and delivered by courier. And its instantaneous quality prevents pirated versions of a film from being sold on streets before the reels arrive at cinemas, said SingTel marketing vice president Thomas Yeo.

Intel to combine wireless, communications units

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Less than a week after warning of a $600 million fourth-quarter charge, Intel said it is consolidating the unit that caused the problem into another of its businesses.

The new Intel Communications Group will provide the silicon-chip-based building blocks for networks, cellular phones and handheld computers. Cellphones and handhelds were previously handled by the semiconductor giant's Wireless Communications and Computing Group.

Mobile phone will send vibrations through bone

TOKYO — Talking on the phone even in crowded, noisy places will be made easy with a new handset in Japan that sends vibrations through the human skull to relay sound.

The phone, manufactured by Sanyo Electric and called TS41 by the mobile subsidiary of Japanese telecommunications company KDDI, is going on sale this month for about 10,000 yen ($93), company spokesman Kiyoshi Yamasaki said.

It works as a regular cellphone when the folding handset is opened, but users can also use it when it is closed by putting it next to their faces. The tiny vibrations from the phone travel through bones in the face to the ear — even if the phone isn't placed next to the ear.

Hacker hits home page of firm battling IBM

SEATTLE — SCO Group, the small software maker suing IBM over the use of software code used for the Linux operating system, said its home page was brought down by a hacker attack last Wednesday.

"The attack caused the company's Web site, www.sco.com, and corporate operational traffic to be unavailable during the morning hours including e-mail, the company intranet, and customer support operations," the Lindon, Utah-based company said.

SCO claims that IBM's customers are using a version of Linux — a free operating system that software developers can modify — that includes code from the Unix operating system to which SCO owns the rights.

Compiled from The Associated Press and Knight Ridder Tribune Information Services.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company