A new optical recording method could pave the way for data discs with 300 times the storage capacity of standard DVDs, Nature journal reports.

The scientists used the nanoparticles to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location. This is a major improvement over traditional DVDs, which are recorded in a single colour wavelength with a laser.

Their approach used 10-layer stacks composed of thin glass plates as the recording medium.

The service, currently named Greenlight Inc., approached the Time Warner Cable and Embarq, proposing they use the infrastructure for a more reliable and faster internet connection for a cheaper price.

After doing some research, the government found out that the service would be extremely cheap to run and would give the government huge profits. So, they decided to run Greenlight Inc. themselves.

Unfortunately for Greenlight Inc., Embarq and Time Warner Cable found out about this and realized that they would be competing against an ISP that was faster, more reliable and cheaper.

The BlackBerry is an 8830, the standard business handset, but the added software encrypts both calls and messages. Cellphone calls are encrypted anyway, but there are some back doors if you know where to find them (and of course, the NSA knows exactly where they are).

Giving the SecurVoice such a big endorsement will either mean that the encryption is indeed unbreakable (and therefore fit for the president) or that it wants everybody to think that it is unbreakable, therefore giving the NSA back-door access to every single SecurVoice customer. Paranoid conspiracy theory? Hell yes. Accurate speculation? Maybe.

The drive, RE4-GP, has what WD claims is "next generation" green technology, saving up to 40 per cent more power than normal drives. The cache is claimed to be good for a 25 per cent increase in performance as well, so this appears to be a win/win before you even consider the massive size.

The drives, available now, are going to retail for $329, or just under 17 cents a GB.

Electronic book readers are still a minority pursuit for book lovers, but the devices have the potential to become the norm one day.

Struggling newspapers could be offered a lifeline by the new format - especially as the devices' tech is developing to include colour and flexible displays.

The main drawback comes down to price, because e-books are still not cheap.

Huge news for real-life ray guns: Electric lasers have hit battlefield strength for the first time -- paving the way for energy weapons to go to war.

The next step is to start trying out the ray gun, outside of the lab. The Army is planning to move the device to its High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility at White Sands Missile Range. Testing is supposed to begin by this time, next year.

A Hitachi subsidiary has agreed to a $31m fine for its role in an industry-wide conspiracy to fix the prices of monitors sold to computer and handset manufacturers.

Hitachi becomes the fourth maker of LCD monitors to cop to price fixing charges. LG Display in December agreed to pay $400m to settle similar charges, while Sharp has coughed up $120m after also pleading guilty. Chunghwa Picture Tubes, meanwhile, has been ordered to pay $65m.

The US and the UK are trying to refurbish the aging W76 warheads that tip Trident missiles to prolong their life and ensure they are safe and reliable but plans have been put on hold because US scientists have forgotten how to manufacture a mysterious but very hazardous component of the warhead codenamed Fogbank.

'This is like James Bond destroying his instructions as soon as he has read them,' says John Ainslie, the co-ordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, adding that 'perhaps the plans for making Fogbank were so secret that no copies were kept.'

It seems that just about every pitch these days is for "cloud computing", and the folks with the money are getting a little weary of it.

The plethora of storage businesses are a great example of what I am talking about; if you read closely, there are actually a variety of products and services being offered under that moniker among the participants. Thus, defining yourself as Storage-as-a-Service or "cloud storage" may just not be enough any more.

We called Seanodes a "disruptive" factor in the data storage business -- not because it has a new concept, but because it has taken an older idea and refined it for the virtualized world of IT. Its shared internal storage concept clashes completely with conventional enterprise storage operations because it requires no external storage hardware.

It puts to work virtually all of a system's wasted spinning disk capacity for a hugely less power draw than a typical one that spins up numerous NAS, SAN and SATA disks and cools them in racks.

The latest development in the Seanodes package is that the product now has a business continuity feature. Whenever a disk anywhere in the system goes down or is replaced, whatever may be running on the system is not affected.