Technology Briefly
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, December 27, 2003
Domain demand: One more sign the technology sector is rebounding: An Internet domain name is again commanding seven figures.
Last week, a Florida man sold men.com for $1.3 million, a healthy profit over the $15,000 he paid for it in 1997.
The buyers, largely entertainment industry folks who have opted to remain anonymous behind the acquiring company, men.com LLC, want to create a portal for men.
“In the last couple of years, the domain names were selling for significantly less than what they did in ‘99, 2000,” said Monte Cahn, chief executive of Moniker Online Services, which brokered the sale.
He said the seven-figure price tag for men.com “is a big indicator of what’s yet to come.”
At the market’s height, a handful of domain names sold for millions of dollars, including $7.5 million for business.com in late 1999 and $3 million for loans.com in January 2000.
But countless others sat unclaimed, and the dot-com bust forced many domain name speculators to give them up when they came up for re-registration, at roughly $30 apiece.
Log on to your furnace: Japanese companies are developing ovens that can cook dishes after downloading recipes, and home-heating systems that can be adjusted from mobile phones.
To make all those appliances talk to one another, four electronics makers have agreed to create a common standard. Besides making appliances compatible, the standard should help cut development costs.
Toshiba Corp., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Sharp Corp. and Sanyo Electric Co. are calling their system “iReady” – as in “Internet ready” or “I am ready.”
The companies are asking others to join in developing the technology, including possibilities for offering it overseas. The first iReady products are expected by next year, Sanyo spokesman Ryan Watson said.
Net-linking home appliances without iReady are already available in Japan, though they have yet to catch on.
Lines of communication across the Great Wall: Soon scientists in the United States, China and Russia will be able to collaborate over a new high-speed computer network that includes the first direct computer link across the Russia-China border.
The network, separate from the public Internet, will enable scientists to transfer huge volumes of information more quickly and collaborate in real-time on high-tech experiments.
Russian and U.S. scientists have had direct computer linkage for about five years, but Russia and China often exchange scientific information by meeting in Chicago, said Greg Cole of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, one of the leaders of the Little GLORIAD project.
Finishing touches are being made on the Sino-Russian cable, and the global network should see its first traffic Jan. 5. The network rings the Northern Hemisphere, connecting Chicago with Amsterdam, Moscow, Siberia, Beijing and Hong Kong before hooking up with Chicago again.
Not just playing games: Sony Corp. has postponed the Chinese launch of its PlayStation 2, blaming an “unfavorable environment” for the delay.
A statement posted on the company’s Chinese-language Web site didn’t elaborate on the decision or set a new launch date.
Sony and other game makers such as Nintendo have been wary of launching products in mainland China, despite huge potential demand, largely because of fears of piracy.
There have also been reports suggesting that PlayStation 2’s advanced computer chips and graphics functions might have military applications that would preclude export to China under U.S. and Japanese law.
Kenichi Fukunaga, a spokesman at Sony headquarters in Tokyo, said the company simply had not prepared in time for the China launch. He wouldn’t comment further.
Although plans to bring the latest PlayStation to the Chinese market remain up in the air, Sony manufactures the first version of the popular console in China and has announced it plans to shift production of PlayStation 2 consoles to the mainland as well.
Associated Press
