Monday, November 27, 2000		Latest in IT world

Net through power outlets on cards

A pipe dream is about to turn into reality: connecting PCs and other electronic devices to the Net by plugging them into existing power outlets at home. Companies have long envisioned a future in which all appliances with power cords can be networked in the home-PCs, telephones, stereos, even refrigerators. It was once thought of as stalled technology after several years of fruitless development efforts by companies such as Intel. But now companies are proving that technology works. Demonstrations at Comdex showed how to plug a computer full of MP3 music downloads into a regular electrical outlet in the den and then listen to the music by plugging the Sonicblue Rio music player into a power outlet in the bedroom. Motorola, Phonex Broadband and Sonicblue — the maker of the popular Rio MP3 music player — showed off new technology at the recently concluded Comdex fest in Las Vegas that lets person’s use their homes’ internal electrical networks as the medium to share Net access, play video games, and enjoy movies and music.

The latest virus on the block, Romeo and Juliet, has aimed the Outlook Express and is currently attacking computers in Europe and USA. However, the treat perception about this virus is not as serious as the deadly love bug. According to major anti-virus companies, this virus is actually a worm that is transmitted through the Outlook Express in the HTML form with e-mail and with one of the subject like "ble bla, bee;" "I Love You;" "sorry... Hey you!;" "Matrix has you...;" or "my picture from shake-beer.". However this virus is spreading slowly and basically exploits some vulnerabilities of the Outlook Express. But the threat perception on this virus is low, as it does not destroy the files either by deleting them or renaming them. Some of the other recent virus alerts are "Hybris" and "Navidad" — which means Christmas in Spanish — is also aimed to attack the Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail application.

Net2Phone, which is a part of the largest long distance telephone company of the US- AT&T, has announced the service of free computer to phone calls in the USA. Net2Phone is the market leader in the Internet telephony and holds a good market share. The company also has a tie-up with the Yahoo, where persons using Yahoo messenger can call any telephone number in the USA over the Internet from any part of the world. It has also announced its plans to offer free software from CallWave that records and stores voice mail messages while persons are using the Internet. This software is kind of Internet answering machine and is popular and lets the user return the call from the computer without disconnecting the Internet.