Digital media processor supplier Sigma Designs has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Blue7 Communications, a developer of advanced wireless technologies and ultrawideband (UWB) semiconductors.

Sigma Designs (Milpitas, Calif.) will pay $14 million in stock considerations for Blue7 (San Jose), a private start-up company focused on developing UWB semiconductor products for consumer electronics.

Equipment vendor Hawking Technologies Wednesday released a dish-shaped Wi-Fi network adapter that it claims increases range by as much as 300 percent.

The company said in a statement that the adapter is shaped like a tiny satellite dish and includes a high-gain dish antenna. It said it increases range by as much

I'm not ready to ditch my laptop in favor of my Treo 650. But if I had to make do with only a handheld for a day or two, DataViz's venerable Documents to Go would certainly help me get my work done. I tried out the latest release of the Premium Edition (version 8)

Yahoo has upgraded its platform of tiny desktop applications, called widgets, to include better integration with the portal's mapping services and search offerings. Yahoo has a small army of developers working on new widgets in an effort to draw more users to the site.
 
In releasing Widget Engine 3.0, Yahoo

Yak Communications on Wednesday announced the launch of its yakForFree Virtual VideoPhone software for Mac OS X. YakForFree enables users to make free voice and video calls to each other over the Internet using broadband connections. Optionally, the service can be used to make Voice over IP calls to land lines and cell phones

People want to be able to store their information for the long term without having to continually pay to upgrade their document software to maintain this or be forced to accept the alternative: that this data will passively disappear over time if they do not do that, Sun Microsystems Inc. officials said Wednesday. Read More...   Category: Open Source

AT&T Inc. on Wednesday said it had launched a news channel that would focus on Internet security issues for its business and government customers.
 
The largest U.S. telephone company, formed by SBC Communications Inc.'s purchase of AT&T Corp., said its 24-hour video Webcast, AT&T Internet Security News Network, would issue

This holiday season, Apple's iPod seems to be the most popular item, at least among those searching the Web for gifts.
 
According to comScore Networks Inc., a company that tracks consumer activity on the Web, consumers conducted some 6.6 million searches on the term iPod last month. Coming in second

Microsoft Corp. has split its entertainment and devices division into four businesses, the latest reorganization at the world's largest software maker, according to a company e-mail to employees seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
 
The reorganization follows Microsoft's decision in September to streamline its businesses into three divisions to compete more

A long-awaited interim update to the current version of Microsoft's Windows Server OS, called Windows Server 2003 R2, is finally ready.
 
The update, available to customers in 60 days, should be 100 percent compatible with apps running on the current release of Windows Server 2003, said Bob Muglia, senior vice