Resco announced the availability of a new version of Resco Photo Viewer 5.30. Resco Photo Viewer version 5.30 is an ideal enhancement product for a digital camera. The new version offers numerous improvements in terms of speed and memory use optimization. A new feature of the product is the ActiveSync filter, which allows conversion of Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. The editing capabilities of the application have been extended and improved as well.

EarthLink Wireless and palmOne announced the availability of the Treo 650 smartphone, which offers a compact, full-featured mobile phone with email, a Palm OS organizer, messaging, Web access and digital camera, letting users organize and simplify their business and personal lives all in one device. This powerful multi-featured mobile device is built on the Treo 600’s design and features EarthLink’s exclusive TotalAccess software for users on the move.

Handy Solution software has released a new version of Handy Service. The program is intended for sales and shopping assistance, job management and work log tracking using Palm OS handheld computers. It’s targeted toward waiters and service staff, salesmen, contractors, business owners and home users. Handy Service helps to track orders for goods, dishes and services, maintain shopping lists, plan purchases, estimate of purchase expenses and see reports. The program allows users to track jobs for multiple clients and accounts.

Researchers at Penn State University and Ion Power have developed a process for fuel cells that can harvest the hydrogen produced when bacteria consume organic matter. The process can yield four times more hydrogen than the ordinary fermentation process. The process also doesn’t require external oxygen and can use a wider variety of organic material, or biomass, than can be used in the fermentation process.

Userplane announced the deployment of its instant messaging solution, Userplane Webmessenger, on Friendster, one of the most popular social networking sites. Enhancing the one of the Web’s premier destinations for staying in touch with friends and meeting new friends, Userplane’s Webmessenger will enable Friendster members to communicate with each other in online conversations through Web-based one-on-one text conversations. Webmessenger’s text messaging includes popular features like the ability to change text style, add graphical smilies, link to URLs, and get alerts and feedback about the system and the other user’s activity. Its real-time communication provides unprecedented performance, stability and efficiency, allowing users to easily detect who is online and send messages seamlessly.

A hacker has created a virus that targets music lovers by deleting MP3 files on infected computers, according to antivirus company Sophos. The worm, dubbed Nopir.B, spreads over peer-to-peer networks and appears to have originated in France, security researchers at Sophos said Friday. Nopir.B is designed to look like a DVD-cracking program, to fool people looking for a program that will circumvent copy-restriction technology on the discs. When the worm is downloaded and run, it attempts to delete all MP3 music files and wipe some programs from the infected PC, the company said in its advisory. Sophos said it believes the author of the virus may be looking to stamp out music piracy.

Retail sales of video games rose to $2.2 billion in the first quarter, according to new data released by The NDP Group. The figures represent an increase of 18 percent over the last quarter of 2004, and growth of 23 percent compared with the first quarter of last year, the market researcher said. Total unit sales rose to 63 million units. The revenue figure includes retail sales of portable and console hardware, software and accessories.

Microsoft and Samsung showed off a prototype hard drive Monday that can record data while idling, a twist that has the potential to significantly cut power consumption in notebooks. The trick is that the hard drive contains a 1Gb flash memory chip from Samsung’s OneNAND family. Incoming data is directly recorded to the chip. When the chip is about full, the hard drive wakes up, takes the data, records it and goes back into idle. Typically, hard drives rotate. Hard drive motors, along with LCD screens, are two of the largest consumers of power inside a laptop.

Anonymizer today announced that its online identity protection products now protect against pharming, the most sophisticated Internet attack. Statistics from SANS Internet Storm Center show that at least 1,300 sites were compromised through pharming attacks in early March. Anonymizer’s online identity protection solutions proactively defend users against pharming attacks by routing all customer Internet traffic through Anonymizer’s protected DNS servers, which are secured against all known instances of pharming attacks. In addition, Anonymizer solutions intercept all browser requests before returning the page to the end user. Due to the fact that the user’s host file is never accessed, people using Anonymizer are protected from these vicious attacks.

The wireless industry is creating a rating and filtering system that eventually will be applied to all content, including music, offered on such networks. The work is being done through the industry’s trade group the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA). Driving this effort is the recent explosion of interest that the adult entertainment industry has shown in providing cellular content.