Chris Jenkins | August 17, 2007

MICROSOFT has moved to bolster its Xbox 360 line-up for the second time this week, setting a date and price for the Australian launch of its HDMI-equipped Elite variant, which will be joined next month by a Halo 3 special edition console.

The stripped-down Core edition and standard Pro edition of the Xbox 360, both of which had price cuts announced this week, are only able to connect to televisions via a component interface.

But both the new Elite and Halo 3 editions will offer HDMI ports, which are set to shortly become standard on all Xbox 360 consoles sold in the US.

HDMI, or High-Definition Multimedia Interface, connections allow the transmission of full 1080p high-definition video signals, as well as multi-channel audio.

HDMI ports would become standard on all Australian Xbox 360 machines later in the year, a Microsoft spokesman said. However, Microsoft declined to name a precise date for the availability of the new-spec machines.

In addition to HDMI, the new Elite variant will feature a 120GB hard disk drive, wireless controller and a headset and will come housed in a new black casing.

It will be the most expensive Xbox 360, priced at $729.95, and go on sale August 30.

The Halo 3 version, meanwhile, will come with a 20GB drive and feature Halo 3-themed case and accessories. The machine would be released on September 20, days before the launch of the Halo 3 game itself, the spokesman said.

The latest version of the title that helped put the original Xbox on the map for serious gamers, Halo 3 is one of the most widely anticipated game releases this year.

August 15, 2007

NOKIA has warned that up to 46 million batteries used in some of the company's handsets could be faulty and pose a risk of overheating.

The advisory applies to batteries manufactured by Matsushita Battery Industrial Co Ltd between December 2005 and November 2006, the world's largest mobile phone maker said.

Japan's Matsushita is one of several suppliers that have together made some 300 million BL-5C batteries.

The lithium-ion battery is one of 14 different types of battery used in Nokia phones.

Nokia said 100 incidents of overheating of the Matsushita-made BL-5C batteries had been reported worldwide, but added that "no serious injuries or property damage have been reported".

All the cases of overheating have occurred during charging of phones, the Finnish company said. "According to Nokia's knowledge this issue does not affect any other use of the mobile device."

Randolph Schmid in Washington | August 14, 2007

IT'S a battery that looks like a piece of paper and can be bent or twisted, trimmed with scissors or moulded into any shape needed.

While the battery is now only a prototype, the researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who developed it have high hopes for it in electronics and other fields that need smaller, lighter power sources.

"We would like to scale this up to the point where you can imagine printing batteries like a newspaper. That would be the ultimate," professor at the Centre for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies Robert Linhardt said.

Brian Bergstein | August 16, 2007

A NEW online tool called WikiScanner reveals just who has been making changes to the pages of online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

As the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, Wikipedia encourages participants to adopt online user names, but it also lets contributors be identified simply by their computers' IP addresses.

Often they do not provide much of a cloak.

In one case, PCs in US congressional offices were discovered to have been involved in Wikipedia entries trashing political rivals.

Those episodes inspired Virgil Griffith, a computer scientist about to enter grad school at CalTech, to automate the process with WikiScanner.

The tool is located at http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr but intense attention has knocked it out of service many times this week.

Chris Jenkins | August 15, 2007

MICROSOFT is set to drop the price on its Xbox 360 games console in Australia in an effort to give the games machine a better shot at the Christmas market.

The fully-featured Xbox 360 Pro will drop from $649 to $579, while the stripped down "core" system drops from $499 to $399 – putting it on-par with Nintendo's $399 Wii.

The Xbox 360 price cuts follow similar moves made by Microsoft in the US last week.

The cuts make Sony's $999 PlayStation 3 the most expensive console in the Australian market by an even greater margin.

Xbox regional director David McLean said the price of the Xbox 360 had been the same for 17 months, claiming this was the longest any console had been on the Australian market without a price drop.

The new prices had been made possible by reductions in manufacturing costs, he said. Nevertheless, there would be no price cut for the HD-DVD player accessory for the Xbox 360, he said.

Mr McLean said Microsoft had seen no slow-down in sales as a result of reports of the Xbox 360 suffering overheating problems.

Microsoft announced last month it would incur costs of $US1.15 billion in the June quarter to fix what it called an "unacceptable" number of faulty Xbox 360 units.

"The way we've communicated it has given customers surety about what we have done," he said.

Correspondents in Los Angeles | August 16, 2007

BLU-RAY movie discs outsold films on the rival HD-DVD format by two-to-one in the United States in the first half of 2007, Home Media Research has reported.

The division of Home Media Magazine said total sales of Blu-ray discs, using a Sony -backed technology, totalled 1.6 million units from January 1 through to July 1, compared with 795,000 HD-DVD discs sold during the same period.

HD-DVD was developed by Toshiba and backed by Microsoft and film studios such as Warner Bros.

Both formats were launched in 2006. An estimated 3.7 million high-definition discs have been sold, including 2.2 million in Blu-ray and 1.5 million in HD-DVD through to the end of July, according to Home Media.

A Home Media spokeswoman said Blu-ray got a further boost in August from strong sales of the 300 title. Stephen Nickerson, senior vice president, market management at Warner Home Video, reported sales of about 190,000 Blu-ray units of the film, compared to 97,000 in HD-DVD since July 31.

Correspondents in Moscow | August 16, 2007

A MOSCOW court has thrown out a case against the former head of music download site allofmp3.com and rejected the damages claims made by three major recording labels.

Mr Mamotin has insisted that by paying royalties to a Russian licensing group, allofmp3.com was in compliance with Russian laws. Recording companies contend, however, that the licensing group never had the permission of music industry to collect and distribute royalties on its behalf.