IBM demonstrated a blade server board based on the Cell architecture at the E3 show this week, and reportedly plans to sell the boards in rack-based server systems.

The board carried two Cell processors running at up to 2.8Ghz, as well as 1GB of DRAM split across two chips, according to Nikkei’s TechOn service. The demo box ran on Linux.

The massively parallel architecture has been jointly developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba, and so far they seem to be pitching it at every market that comes to mind, from consoles, to PDAs, mainstream computers, and digital home appliances.

Source: The Register

Research and Markets has announced the addition of Broadband over Power Lines in the Real World: Early Commercialization in Manassas, Virginia to their offering.

Broadband over power lines (BPL) promises faster, cheaper, and more accessible Internet service via the local electric utility system. To shed light on how BPL is faring in its early stages, we took a close look at Manassas, Virginia, where the municipal utility was the first in the nation to advance BPL from a pilot program to a commercial offering.

Manassas missed its goal of having the entire city — 12,500 homes and 2,500 businesses — wired for BPL by mid-2004. Even so, without any advertising, BPL has attracted substantial interest: There are a few hundred users on the system and a backlog of 1,300 requests for service.

Early adopters in Manassas say the system is easy to set up, reliable, and fast. Some customers are being won over from competing broadband Internet options, all of which carry higher prices. Download speeds are comparable to digital subscriber line (DSL) service, although not as fast as the peak speeds achieved over cable modem.

BPL received a green light in an October 2004 technical ruling from the Federal Communications Commission. Nevertheless, substantial challenges may impede BPL from achieving its full potential. Amateur radio operators are fighting BPL deployments over the issue of interference. System economics are still uncertain, especially in rural areas that are often seen as the biggest natural market for BPL. And utilities that were burned in the last big wave of telecom investments are moving slowly and cautiously.

The Mozilla Foundation is preparing to release the first alpha version of its next Firefox Web browser within the next few days.

The release, called Deer Park Alpha 1, is targeted to Firefox’s base of testers and will include developer-focused features such as support for additional Web standards, extensions improvements and a way to report incompatible Web pages, Mozilla officials said.

Source: eWeek

Bank of America will protect 13.2 million online banking customers with a new authentication service it calls “SiteKey,” the company said in a statement.

The free service will be launched in Tennessee in June and will eventually be rolled out nationwide.

SiteKey uses a combination of an image, user-created phrase and three challenge questions to authenticate both the customer’s identity and the authenticity of Bank of America’s Web site when customers log on, Bank of America said.

The new service is intended to help protect customers from identity theft, because information that is only known to the account holder must be presented, in addition to a customer ID and password, Bank of America said.

The user-selected image will also prove the authenticity of the bank Web page to a customer and deter fraudulent sites used in identity theft attacks called “phishing scams.”

Source: eWeek