eBay revealed its plan of developing an alternative backend for Skype in its 10-Q regulatory filing on July 30, 2009. Skype uses Joltid’s software to make its P2P connections on the backend. Recently, Joltid’s creators Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom turned against Skype and told that Skype can’t use, possess or modify certain source code as part of the license agreement.

Following this action, Skye filed a claim with the English High Court of Justice in March 2009 asking for declaratory relief. The trial won’t take place until June 2010. Hence, e-bay has decided to develop a new backend for Skype before spinning off the VoIP service next year.

“Although Skype is confident of its legal position, as with any litigation, there is the possibility of an adverse result if the matter is not resolved through negotiation,” the company wrote in its 10-Q. “If Skype was to lose the right to use the Joltid software as the result of the litigation, and if alternative software was not available, Skype would be severely and adversely affected and the continued operation of Skype’s business as currently conducted would likely not be possible.”

Globalfoundries is a California-based joint venture of microprocessor manufacturer AMD and financial investor ATIC (an investment company wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi). STMicroelectronics has become first true outside customer of Globalfoundries.

Today, an official contract is signed by the two companies, to make low-power chips using a 40-nanometer process which will be ideal for the next generation of wireless applications, handheld devices, and consumer electronics. Whereas, Intel pioneer in the chip manufacturing company manufactures flash memory chips at the 34-nanometer level.

“To ensure ample capacity for our customer/partners at the leading-edge of low-power design, ST needs an agile and high-performance manufacturing partner that can adapt to our changing needs,” said Jean-Marc Chery, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, STMicroelectronics. “With a strong commitment to manufacturing and technology excellence at the leading-edge, we believe Globalfoundries is an excellent partner to collaborate on low-power design innovation in 2010 and beyond.”

Globalfoundries has planned to extend its structure by building a wafer manufacturing facility at the cost of $4.2B in Malta, N.Y. Once complete, the additional facility is expected to be the most advanced semiconductor foundry in the world.

Video chat rooms are a great place to communicate with people effectively. The productivity of many companies is greatly improved by using video chat rooms. A lot of valuable time can be saved, when you can record videos of meetings or interviews from your own office without traveling to interviewees place. It is not only useful for business people, but also applicable for regular users who want to chat with their friends from comfort of their own homes.

Recently, I came across a new site called as Wetoku which allows you record videos in the chat room and embed them in your blog. Once the recording is done, the interviewer can copy URL of video to easily embed the interview content on blog or other sites. The service is wholly free and there is no software to install. Bloggers can directly use their webcam to conduct the real time interview over the web and post the recorded video on their blog right away. Also the interview videos can be placed in your video library for future reference.

With this service interviewing someone on the internet is so easy. It helps interviewer create an interview session through webcam recorder and make the interview process easier than before.

Recent developments in sensor network technologies have taking the virtual world into a smarter level. The projects of the Responsive Environments Group at MIT explored an emerging trend called “Cross reality”. The cross reality experiments are done in second life, a 3D virtual world community with 15 million current subscribers.

Well, what is cross reality? It connects “location specific 3D animated constructs” in the virtual world to in-building sensor installations.  In one of the projects, they chose to use power strips as they are present everywhere plus they have a power and can be connected to a network. MIT made the strips to blow and take the virtual world into the next level. The researchers also added some features to the power strips via expansion boards such as motion sensors, temperature sensors, and memory cards for local data logging.

The group has created a whole portal network known as Ubiquitous sensor portal in the real world media lab. It has an array of sensors as well as audio and video capabilities for user interaction. There are 45 portals currently in the Lab; each one is integrating a myriad of environmental sensors such as motion, light and sound level, vibration, temperature, and humidity.

They also showed a set of simpler 2D visualizations that enable mobile devices to efficiently browse and interact with sensor network data. The group of MIT is still working on this experiment to give the best result.

Toyota has developed a mind-controlled wheelchair in collaboration with researchers in Japan. Basically, the chair uses Brain wave-detecting technology, or electroencephalography (EEG) to respond to human mind. A cap wired with sensors, detects a person’s brain waves and sends the detected data to a computer. The computer analyzes the information and delivers neuro-feedback to a driver which controls the wheel chair motion.

Scientists are working the technology for decades, and had difficulty achieving short response times. Toyota’s chair has the quickest response time yet: 125 milliseconds, or 125 thousandths of a second. Owing to its quick response, plans are under way to turn the wheelchair into a commercial health care product.

Toyota hopes the system could ultimately be applied to brain waves generated by emotions.

On 18/05/2009, Microsoft said that the company has struck a deal to bring Netflix’s streaming movie service to Windows Media Center

Microsoft has also said in a statement, “We’re building on our broader vision to alleviate the need to jump from Web site to Web site to find TV shows, movies, sports and news. With Windows Media Center, (users) can now find it in one place.”

Just install Media Center plug-in MyNetfix and start watching videos directly through Windows Media center without going through your browser. Also you can tackle all your Netfix Management from the comfort of your couch.

Graham Hawkes maker of Deep Flight Super Falcon, explains it as “This one, instead of being a crab you drop to the bottom, is like a dolphin. It will fly off and move through the ocean with grace. It looks like a big animal moving and can do barrel rolls with whales,”

He calls it as “the most beautiful machine ever built” in the launching event of Falcon at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Already he had sold a Super Falcon to Mr. Tom Perkins who made his fortune as a venture capitalist backing companies like Google, Symantec and Genentech.

Mr. Perkins commented on Falcon as “I believe the Super Falcon is the future for underwater adventuring.”

The main principle behind Falcon is use of downward lift on the wings to fly down to depth. It is the first aqua machine to operate on the same principles as flight. One more advantage of Falcon is the reduction of the internal volume of the pressure hull.

Falcon is powered by a set of Lithium polymer batteries. The cabin pressure is maintained at one atmosphere, hence there is no issue with crew or passengers suffering from the so-called bends or their pressure related illness.

The next mission of Mr Hawkes is to turn Super Falcon into an “ambassador of the seas.”

Mathematica inventor Stephen Wolfram is ready to launch a computational engine ‘Wolfram Alpha’ on this Friday. It has created a great buzz among net surfers even before its launch. Most of them have visualized Alpha as ‘Google Killer’. But it is not like Google which returns documents according to search query, instead Alpha computes the answers to a wide range of questions.

Alpha uses built-in models of fields of knowledge to compute the answers to questions. For instance, if you type in “San Francisco to Tokyo”, it will fetch you data on how many miles apart they are, the projected flight path, and current local times. It sounds very interesting to watch the Alpha results as it displays graphs, images and other data related to the questions.

Are you eagerly for its launch? You can also view its launch live on Justin.tv. The company will be live broadcasting its launch starting at 8pm ET using video streaming service Justin.tv.

The dream of controlling TV channels with thoughts will soon come true. Not only TV channels, you can control light switches, door and any households in a smart home through thoughts. No more hassle of lost keys and remotes, thanks to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology which was being developed in Europe. BCI technology lets users perform everyday tasks with thoughts alone.

“The BCI lets people turn on lights, change channels on the TV or open doors just by thinking about it,” explains Christoph Guger, the CEO of Austrian medical engineering company g.tec that developed the application.

g.tec has teamed up with a group of international universities and research institutes as part of the EU-funded Presenccia project to incorporate its BCI technology into virtual environments. “A virtual environment could be used to train a disabled person to control an electric wheelchair through a brain-computer interface,” explains Mel Slater, the coordinator of the Presenccia project. “It is much safer for them to learn in Virtual reality than in the real world, where mistakes could have physical consequences.”

This project could offer liberating possibilities for disabled people. The BCI technology will gain ground in medical applications for the disabled and for rehabilitation. The g.tec CEO says that g.tec’s smart home application will soon be deployed in a real smart home.

Xerox is shipping its first A3-size (tabloid-size) multifunction printers (MFPs), ColorQube 9200 series which represents the first incursion of solid-ink printing in its category. ColorQube is capable of printing 50 pages per minute (ppm) for monochrome and offer different default speeds for color. The three models that offer color printing in the ColorQube 9200 series are the ColorQube 9201, ColorQube 9202, and ColorQube 9203, respectively offering 38 ppm, 45 ppm and 50 ppm.

The main advantage of using ink stick is size reduction and less maintenance. Solid-ink printers use large blocks of ink that sit side by side inside the printer, instead of the more common toner cartridges. Instead of replacing drum units, waste cartridges and other consumable multiple times, just replace a cleaning unit that’s good for an average of 200,000 pages.

Apart from economic benefits, it also offers environmental benefits as it doesn’t require cartridge. Hence no need for material to make cartridges and no more recycle process.