BenQ launches fastest burner

BenQ DW1640, $119.95, www.benq.com.au

Burning a DVD on your PC is now as common as burning CDs was a couple of years ago. And just as CD burners increased their write or burn speed every few months, the same has happened with the DVD burner.

The digital lifestyle market is booming in Australia, with sales in the 1st half of 2005 significantly higher than in the corresponding period of 2004, according to a new report.

Watch your existing movie or video collection on your Sony PSP without buying official movie titles

Movies on PSP, $69.95, www.gvae.com.au

Official movie titles for the PSP come on mini DVD-style discs known as the UMD, or universal media disc, and currently there are more movies available on UMDs that there are PSP games.

Sony’s other iPod killer?

Sony Ericsson W800i, $999, www.sonyericsson.com.au

Remember when the Sony Walkman was the only way to listen to music? These were clearly in the days when the audio cassette was King, and the iPod was a digital music nightmare that Sony was a couple of decades away from experiencing.

Database and integration software vendor, InterSystems, has thrown its support behind Australian-based software developer, QMSoftware, which has adopted its post-relational database technology to power a new product to backup and replicate oWindows file systems to InterSystems' CACHÉ database.

Who knows if they ever will

Samsung YP-T8, $299 to $499, www.samsung.com.au

Digital music players are evolving faster than ever, with the newest from Samsung a prime example of what all music players will eventually be able to do, and that’s do much more that just play music.

Is the as-yet unavailable ‘Apple Video iPod’ dead on arrival?

Sony PSP, $399, www.sonystyle.com.au

Sony’s Playstation Portable (PSP) redefines the concept of digital media convergence by offering a unit that combines gaming, movies, music, photo display and wireless Internet capabilities.

Philips Polymer Vision revealed its Concept Readius last week in Germany, a prototype of a functional electronic-document reader that can unroll its display to a scale larger than the device itself.

Wearable technology being developed at an Australian university could dramatically improve the effectiveness of disaster relief operations by creating a 3D interactive control room, linking relief coordinators to the disaster site.

Communications systems vendor, Avaya, has announced the Australian launch of the first phase of its enterprise fixed mobile convergence (FMC) applications, jointly developed with Nokia.