Intel Corp. President Paul S. Otellini demonstrated new chips scheduled for release next year that simultaneously run tasks such as burning CDs and playing video games. We're not writing video game reviews for kids who play five hours a day. We're writing for the grown-up who may play five hours a week. Hoping to increase the 5-hour adult gaming average, Perpetual Entertainment will develop the first major online game based on Paramount Pictures' 'Star Trek' for a monthly fee.

High-resolution images of 21 original Shakespeare texts, in 93 different versions, are now available on the British Library Web site. Viewers can read the plays in the same format that Shakespeare himself and the actors who performed his plays for the Globe audiences did. http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html

Sun Microsystems and Microsoft next month plan to provide more details on work they are doing to make their products interoperable. The goal is to have an event and to demonstrate interoperability. The settlement ended a bitter legal dispute between the rivals that started in 1997.

A Japanese telecommunications equipment maker has come up with a tricky way to hide audio speakers in houseplants. The Ka-on, which means "flower sound" in Japanese, consists of a magnet and coil at the base of a vase that can be hooked up to a CD player, stereo or television set. When flowers are placed in the vase, the sound vibrations move up through the stems into the petals and leaves, filling the entire room with music. The vases and amplifiers come in several sizes, priced from $46 to $460, and the device has an added bonus -- the vibrations discourage insects and make the flowers last longer. Gerberas and sunflowers work especially well as speakers."

Adware company Claria (formerly Gator) has quietly settled litigation brought by Wells Fargo, Quicken Loans and other online businesses, who charged that its pop-up ads violated their trademarks. In recent months, it also has quietly settled with UPS, Hertz, L.L. Bean, Tiger Direct and Six Continents, and still faces a lawsuit from retail florist Teleflora. WhenU.com has a case pending filed by Wells Fargo and Quicken Loans on the same matter and Google currently involved in two cases lawsuits from American Blind and Wallpaper and Geico.

"Wireless sensors have moved out of the labs," said Intel spokesman Kevin Teixeira. "The technology is being figured out." the battery-powered, wireless sensors sometimes known as "smart dust" are here, and they're making their way into our lives. Some take pictures. Others are sensitive thermometers. There are even tiny sensors that can detect gunmetal and tanks. Analysts and researchers predict that networks of these tiny monitors may eventually link refrigerators, printers, car keys and other everyday objects to the Internet, allowing you to keep track of your stuff remotely.

A U.S. Senate committee approved bills intended to fight computer spyware and to protect wireless phone customers from potential privacy problems associated with a wireless phone number directory. the SPY BLOCK Act would prohibit the covert installation of software on computers and prohibit installing software that automatically collects and transmits information about the user without permission.

Stamps.com is in active discussions with the U.S. Postal Service regarding whether or not to continue its personalized postage stamp pilot program. The stamps cost about twice the price of a regular stamp. The market test was supposed to end Sept. 30. Now the U.S. Postal Service will decide whether to continue with the program or not.

Microsoft US is now charging for a Hotmail feature that allows users to access their e-mail using the Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail clients. Microsoft is making the change because the feature is being abused by senders of spam.

Vivisimo, founded by three former Carnegie-Mellon computer scientists, is hoping to challenge Google's dominance in the search field with a new search service that clusters results into categories to make them easier to sort through. The launch of Clusty comes on the heels of Amazon's introduction of its A9 search service, which also organizes information as it retrieves it. "Search will look more like the magazine business than the soda market," predicts Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist at the University of Washington who sits on the Vivisimo board. "The competition has shifted from crawling the Web and returning an answer quickly to adding value to the information that has been retrieved."

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