Bank wary of chip-and-PIN

Financial services group Abbey says its customers do not see the need for two-factor authentication devices as the technology represents too much hassle, reports Computing.co.uk.

A study carried out by the bank with 1 000 customers found that only 32% of customers want the chip-and-PIN-style authentication devices.

Despite the apparent concerns for online security, only 30% of Abbey's clients welcomed more security questions.

Yahoo, Google and MySpace have formed a foundation to promote the OpenSocial platform as a neutral, community-governed specification for building social-networking applications, says IT World.

Yahoo's involvement in the project is new. Google launched OpenSocial in November to simplify the creation and adaptation of applications for social-networking sites via a common set of application programming interfaces. MySpace was among the first backers of the project.

Yahoo has been "extremely impressed" with the progress of OpenSocial since its launch, Wade Chambers, Yahoo's VP of platforms, said during a news conference. The company has also been impressed with the number of social-networking sites and developers using the platform, he said.

The PC industry is experiencing a shortage of laptop batteries partly because of a recent fire at a major supplier, but Dell is working with other suppliers to limit any price increases, reports eWeek.

Dell, the world's second-largest PC maker after Hewlett-Packard, said prices of its separately sold batteries used as replacements or for surplus power had gone up because of the shortage caused partly by the 3 March fire at LG Chem's Ochang plant.

LG Chem is the second-biggest South Korean battery maker. The fire contributed to a worldwide battery shortage that could affect up to 40% of second-quarter shipments at Asustek Computer, an Asustek executive told Reuters.

Intel has introduced two 45nm processors that the company claims are low-voltage chips that work as much as 25% faster than Intel's previous generation products for servers and workstations, says Information Week.

The quad-core Xeon L5420 and L5410 processors run at 2.5GHz and 2.33GHz, respectively; and use 12.5 watts per core, or a total of 50 watts. Both feature 12MB of on-die cache and dedicated 1333MHz front-side busses.

System vendors supporting the latest server processors include Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens, Gigabyte, HP, Hitachi, IBM, Microstar, NEC, Quanta, Rackable, Supermicro, Tyan and Verari. Intel plans to ship, in the next quarter, a dual-core low-voltage processor that will use 40 watts of power and will have a clock speed of 3GHz, 6MB of cache and a 1333 FSB.