Will Intel get back into the business of selling computer memory? It might, if one of the ideas in a recent chip prototype moves into manufacturing. On Tuesday, Intel showed off an 80-core processor at its developer forum taking place in San Francisco this week and one of the prominent features of the chip is that each core is connected directly to a 256MB memory chip through a technology called Through Silicon Vias, or TSV. The memory wedded to the processor cores could constitute the entire memory needed for a computer, Intel CTO Justin Rattner told News.com in an interview during the Intel Developer Forum. TSV could be used in a variety of chips, not just the 80-core monster. As a result, computer makers, when building a system, would get their memory when they bought their processors from Intel.

NS BASIC Corporation announced the results of their 7th Programming Contest. As expected, many entries took advantage of the new capabilities of devices and NS Basic.

Movistar, the leading cellular telephone company in the Peruvian market, and Palm, announced the launch of the Palm Treo 650 smartphone on the Movistar network in Peru. The Treo 650 smartphone combines a compact full-featured mobile phone with email, a Palm OS organizer, messaging, Internet access and a digital camera, enabling users to organize and simplify their personal and professional lives in just one device.

Palm, MobileOne, and Microsoft announced the first Asian availability of the new Palm Treo 750v smartphone, bringing for the first time to Asia the hallmark Palm experience on Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 over a wireless 3G/UMTS network. The new Treo 750v will be available next month through M1, Vodafone’s network partner in Singapore.

In the last installment of our Wacky iPod Accessories series, we reviewed a $39.95 product that we described as “tacky, crappy, cheesy, and disappointing”. Before we pulled it out of the box, we fully expected to give the $99 HoMedics iCush, a digitally-enabled massage pad, a similar beating. We were very, very wrong. Read this article to find out why.

Read this Computing Unplugged article.

Microsoft said Wednesday that it is teaming with “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson to create content for its Xbox 360, in part to get more mainstream users interested in the company’s video game console. Just don’t call these products “games.” “I don’t want to classify it as a game. I’m hoping to stretch the definition of interactive entertainment to go beyond the game,” said Shane Kim, a corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft Game Studios.

General Electric said on Tuesday that a company laptop containing the names and Social Security numbers of 50,000 current and former employees was stolen in early September. The laptop, issued to a GE official who was authorized to have the data, was stolen from a locked hotel room, the company said. The Connecticut-based company began mailing letters earlier this week to the people whose names and Social Security numbers were on the laptop, to notify them of the breach and to offer a year’s free access to a credit-monitoring service.

Nordic consumer regulators and Apple moved closer to solving a dispute over iTunes music downloads in their first face-to-face meeting this week. Consumer ombudsmen from Norway, Sweden, and Finland wrote to Apple in June to claim that its policy of making songs exclusively compatible with its iPod, among other restrictions, violate Scandinavian law.

Many people are just getting used to snapping pictures, listening to music, watching videos, sending text messages and getting e-mails over their cell phones. It turns out the phones can handle much more. Companies at this week’s DEMOfall 2006 tech conference are demonstrating how the communications gadget lining millions of people’s pockets also can be used to scan documents, personalize photos and listen to podcasts.

There was excited chatter as the revolutionaries met in a nondescript garage in Menlo Park, California, but in the beginning few of them really knew how they would change the world. And yet within a year of that first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club on March 5, 1975, a computer was in the hands of consumers for just a few hundred dollars and the personal computer revolution was under way. Steve Wozniak says that meeting inspired him to design and build the first Apple computer, but he almost didn’t show up.