In a sign of the stronger economic ties between the U.S. and China, Verizon Communications is part of a plan to spend $500 million building the first high-speed optical communications line linking the two countries.

Intel has silently improved its Core 2 Duo line-up.

Opera has added a phishing filter to warn about fraudulent websites in its newest browser. Upon browsing to a website, Opera 9.1 will check the address against a database of possible scam websites. Fraudulent sites will be marked with a red exclamation point next to the address, while good sites will have a yellow padlock beside the address.

Microsoft has an answer for all those who have been wondering whether to buy a new computer or upgrade the hardware for Windows Vista. The company has posted the minimum requirements for Windows Vista, and there is a good chance that your four or five year old PC can run Vista.

Groundbreaking developments in the microprocessor space typically come along once a decade. Think about the Gigahertz race in the late 90s and the multi-core trend started last year. AMD is now convinced that multi-core may be a short-lived era and shifts towards what it calls "APUs." But: is it really a breakaway from multi-core and can AMD establish a new type of CPU all by itself?

Skype may be good for something other than Internet calls. According to the Financial Times, the company is working on a peer-to-peer television service that could legally deliver videos to millions of users. Code-named 'The Venice Project', the service will stream videos and encrypt videos directly from the content owners and Skype hopes this will bypass copyright issues that have dogged other video sharing sites.

Hewlett-Packard today announced the availability of color Lightscribe CDs, which join the plain grey etching on a gold background. The labeling is still a monochromatic process, but can now be applied to discs with red, orange, yellow, blue and green backgrounds.

Linksys today launched a new phone that many expected to be announced by Apple in early January: A device with the name iPhone will be available from wireless equipment maker Linksys in the first quarter of next year.

Matsushita Electric Industrial today announced that one of its subsidiaries, Matsushita Battery Industrial (MBI) is now ready to mass produce a new type of lithium-ion battery, which incorporates new technology improving safety.

Hynix Semiconductor today introduced a family of components and high capacity modules based on its 60 nm-made 1 Gbit DDR2 DRAM chips.

Graphics card vendor XFX today announced its first two overclocked add-in cards.

Boeing, the giant aerospace company, has fired an employee who had a very important laptop stolen. The computer contained the personal information of approximately 400,000 current and retired company employees. The data had been downloaded from company servers and was not encrypted.

Yahoo has issued a patch for a vulnerability in Yahoo! Messenger that could allow attackers to crash chat sessions and execute code. The vulnerability was rated as "Highly Critical" by the Secunia security website and involved an ActiveX module inside of the popular chat program.

Microsoft released an update to Windows Vista that will shut down unauthorized versions of the OS that allow users to skip the product's activation system.

Adobe has announced that it will be releasing a beta version of their upcoming Photoshop CS3 tomorrow. The program will be available for both Mac and Windows computers and should be available in the morning on the Adobe Labs website.

Digital camera fanatics will like this deal that we spied at our local Costco. The warehouse chain is now selling SanDisk Ultra II 2 GB Compact Flash cards for $48. The actual price is about $80, but you get an instant rebate of $32 at the register.

Crucial Technology has begun selling 512 MB and 1 GB microSD memory card. The cards are tinier cousins of the familiar SD card and are mainly used in cellular phones. The cards include an adapter that let users pop the card into a normal SD card slot.

A new study shows that worldwide 1.25 million people are signing up for DSL every week and that the total number of subscribers has hit 173 million. The study also shows that there are more than 263 million broadband customers which include cable, fiber to home and other technologies.

San Francisco (CA) - Toshiba, Sony and NEC announced that the companies have completed the development of a mass-production platform for 45 nm LSI devices.