IBM slows light, readies it for networking

IBM has created a chip that can slow down light, the latest advance in an industrywide effort to develop computers that will use only a fraction of the energy of today's machines.

The chip, called a photonic silicon waveguide, is a piece of silicon dotted with arrays of tiny holes. Scattered systematically by the holes, light shown on the chip slows down to 1/300th of its ordinary speed of 186,000 miles per second. In a computer system, slower light pulses could carry data rapidly, but in an orderly fashion. The light can be further slowed by applying an electric field to the waveguide.

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, have slowed light in laboratories. IBM, though, claims that its light-slowing device is the first to be fashioned out of fairly standard materials, potentially paving the way toward commercial adoption.

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Gates: We're entering live era of software

Kicking off what he called the "live era" of software, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday in the United States that the company plans to launch new Internet-based complements to its core products.

Gates said Microsoft is working on two products, "Windows Live" and "Office Live," that create opportunities for the company to sell online subscriptions and advertising. Both are targeted at smaller businesses and consumers.

The products won't replace the company's ubiquitous operating system or productivity suite, and people don't need to have that software loaded to tap into the Web versions. "They are not required to use Windows or Office," Gates said at a press event in San Francisco.

Gates said that Windows Live is a set of Internet-based personal services, such as e-mail, blogging and instant messaging. It will be primarily supported by advertising and be separate from the operating system itself. Office Live will come in both ad-based and subscription versions that augment the popular desktop productivity suite.

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HP Proposes Open Storage Management

HP is sticking to its storage management guns in the face of the Aperi open source consortium IBM launched last week.

The Palo Alto, Calif., company has released Storage Essentials 5.0, the latest version of its storage resource management (SRM) software, as an alternative to Aperi, a group formed to work on a common storage software management platform.

The package includes assets from HP's purchase of AppIQ, which closed last week.

AppIQ makes StorageAuthority, a suite of SRM and storage area network (SAN) management tools geared to help businesses with several types of hardware work as one. With AppIQ's technology, IT administrators can control all of their storage gear through one console.

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