Monday, April 8, 2002		Latest in IT world

They have it in Spain, France and India, but mobile-phone jammers are not likely to make their way here, even if you are sorely peeved over the ringing of mobile phones interrupting meetings and movies. While companies can pay between $1,600 and more than $12,000 to buy a frequency-jamming device from overseas, it is illegal to use such equipment without a licence from the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). So far, IDA has not issued any licences for jammers, Straits Times reports. To qualify, the applicant must submit 'specific and appropriate justifications for the need for such devices', said an IDA spokesman. Recently, people in countries such as France and India have been installing jammers in various places to block annoying mobile-phone calls coming in and going out. For example, the leaders of India's Parliament have installed them in the building to thwart lawmakers who refuse to turn their phones off. In Singapore, one of IDA's key concerns about using jammers is that they will affect emergency calls to doctors, police or civil defence officers.

Yahoo! Inc. has launched a new fee-based games service, saying the growth of the online games business was outpacing other forms of online entertainment, Reuters reports. The new service, call Yahoo! Games All-Star, will let serious players run their own private game rooms, and set up tournaments and chat rooms. Subscription to the new service will be priced at $7.95 for one month, $19.95 for three months and $59.95 for one year. Yahoo! said it will continue to make its online games available for free, but will charge people using the new community and personalised features. Yahoo! said its games site hosts 1,40,000 simultaneous players at peak times, and hosts 3.5 billion minutes of online game-play per month.

The high-tech industry has grappled for years with how to create some easier way to enter data into the machines. The trusty mouse, a mere sidekick to the keyboard, is the main innovation so far. Apart from that, keyboards remain as cumbersome and difficult to use as ever. Now a four-year-old Israeli start-up has won backing from several major computer and mobile equipment makers recently for a digital pen that could provide the long-sought after alternative to keyboards and mice in new electronics, USA Today reports. The potential breakthrough from OTM Technologies allows mobile phone and handheld computer users to gather and edit text from various sources, play games and sketch drawings, even navigate a screen with mouse-like "point and click" movements.

In a bid to provide effective E-learning opportunities to UAE nationals, a fully online e-Learning course in business was launched for the first time by the Knowledge Village at the Dubai Internet City, Khaleej Times reports. The course was developed by Knowledge Village, the Dubai Technology and Media Free Zone's new knowledge initiative, in collaboration with three higher education institutions in the UAE - the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), UAE University and Zayed University. The launch marks the first joint venture of its kind in the UAE. It is also the first time that an electronic course had been recognised for credit in all three universities.