Apple Computer is eyeing a technology that could make the iPod more likely to survive a fall.

The company has applied for a patent on technology that would allow a portable media player to detect when it is falling and then stop reading or writing to the hard drive. Such technology would work by detecting the acceleration that accompanies a drop.

"The portable-computing device protects its disk drive by monitoring for such accelerations and operating to avoid usage of the disk drive during periods of acceleration," Apple said in the patent application, which was published Dec. 16. "Through such protection, the likelihood of damage to the disk drive or loss of data stored on the disk drive is able to be substantially reduced."

Like many fast-growing, hair-on-fire startups, Bungie has the feel of a frat house. The average employee is just 29, and only two are women. The close-knit staffers practically live in the big, cluttered room that passes for an office, working and hanging out until all hours of the night. They survive on delivery food, and think about nothing but video games. The only difference? This irreverent bunch happens to reside smack dab in the middle of Microsoft's corporate headquarters.

The Mozilla Foundation is hatching yet another software project to challenge a key Microsoft title.

The new project, code-named Lightning, aims to integrate Mozilla's calendar application, Sunbird, with its recently released Thunderbird e-mail application. That integration is aimed right at the heart of Microsoft's widely used Outlook software.

"I think Outlook leaves a lot of room for a fast competitor," said a Mozilla volunteer involved in the project, who asked not to be named. "There's a lot of user dissatisfaction out there, and it will be interesting to see what the market looks like once there's a strong open-source alternative."

The mandate of Lightning, headed by longtime Mozilla volunteer and current Oracle technical staffer Mike Shaver, will be to integrate Sunbird features into Thunderbird so that users can do things like search across e-mail documents and calendar entries, and click a button to turn an e-mail message into a calendar task or reminder.

"Thunderbird does not offer an equivalent comparison to Microsoft Office Outlook," Microsoft said in a statement. "Customers expect much more than simple calendaring and the ability to send and receive e-mails. The integration of Exchange and Outlook far outweighs any feature that Thunderbird may deliver, and we don't see it as being applicable for serious business use."

• RoE takes place two years after the events in DOOM 3
  
• You play as a different marine this time around
  
• Sent to assist Dr. Elizabeth McNeal in investigating a strange beacon on the planet
  
• Betruger sends three demonic hunters after you when you discover a weapon known as the "Artifact"
  
• When you defeat each hunter, their abilities are transferred into the Artifact
  
• The abilities resemble, berseker, slow-mo and invulnerability and are all "stackable"
  
• Roughly one half to two thirds as long as DOOM 3
  
• Having the story revolve around two characters may bode well for co-op

Apple's market share in personal computers peaked at 16 percent in 1986 and has hovered in the low single digits since the late 1990s.

Even as the iPod was becoming a cultural and business phenomenon, the company ranked just 10th among all PC-makers in the third quarter of this year with 1.9 percent of the market, according to research firm IDC.

It's a familiar story for Apple watchers. Creating innovative technologies and high-quality products that lead the industry has been a hallmark of the Silicon Valley company, but it is equally famous for failing to maintain momentum.

Some examples: Apple produced one of the first personal digital assistants, the Newton, which disappeared after the Palm and Microsoft-based Pocket PC devices appeared.

It revived itself with colorful, bubble-shaped iMacs in the late 1990s, but they produced only a small upward blip in market share that has since subsided.

Now, Dell, Rio and others are nipping at Apple's heels with their own digital-music players, and analysts do not expect Apple to hang onto its enormous lead in that market forever.

Basing a laptop on open source operating system and applications software, Wal-Mart and Linspire said Monday they have broken the $500 price barrier with their $498 Balance laptop.

The laptop uses the Linux-based Linspire OS, an Internet suite from Mozilla, and OpenOffice's Microsoft-file-compatible office suite. "Wal-Mart and Linspire worked together to offer (this) laptop," Linspire stated. "The Balance notebook is the lowest-priced laptop currently on the market to include a complete operating system and office suite."

Linspire said the offering also includes Mozilla's Internet suite with browser and e-mail programs. The OpenOffice applications enable users to open, edit and exchange Microsoft-compatible word processing documents (.doc), spreadsheets (.xls), and presentations (.ppt). The Internet suite features spam blockers, and a built-in firewall. The laptop package also includes access to hundreds of free software application programs.

The laptop has a 1.0 GHz processor, 128 MB RAM, and a 14.1-inch LCD screen.

The laptop is available at Walmart.com and Linspire.com.

We are proud to announce the availability of VMware Workstation 5 Beta, the latest generation of VMware's desktop application for software developers/testers and IT professionals. VMware Workstation allows users to run multiple operating systems and their applications simultaneously on a single PC in fully networked, portable virtual machines - no rebooting or hard drive partitioning required.

We have taken an exceptional product and improved it with new features and functionality that increase both individual productivity and team collaboration. Now we want to know what you think of it! As a beta tester, you can provide us with real-world testing and product feedback that will ensure the final release provides the functionality and quality that you expect from VMware Workstation.

New features:

New Teams functionality makes it easier to create and manage connected virtual machines and simulate "real world" multi-tier configurations. Multiple snapshot and snapshot management capabilities makes it easier to capture and manage multiple configurations. New cloning functionality makes it easier to copy virtual machines and share them with colleagues (full and linked clones). Movie record and playback feature for capturing activity in a virtual machine. Improved performance, especially for multi-VM and networking workloads, for suspend/resume and snapshot operations, and for shared folders and sound features. New and improved Linux user interface. New guest OS, host OS, and hardware support - 32 and 64 bit. Support for a new class of USB devices, including webcams, microphones, and speakers. Command line interface enables the automation of certain manual steps.

Portable photo technology puts Playboy's sexiest models at your fingertips.

Portable MP3 players and other handheld media toys are this year's must-have geek gadgets. The latest thing is Apple's new-generation iPod -- the iPod Photo -- which does for pictures what the original iPod did for music. Now you can view individual images or entire slide shows in the palm of your hand at the tap of a button to beautify your dull commute or just to pass the time in the lecture hall.

Playboy has harnessed this latest digital innovation so some of our sexiest girls next door can be added right to your portable player. Simply download this free image gallery to your desktop from Playboy.com and upload it to your iPod Photo handheld device. If iPod Photo is "a feast for the eyes" on its own, it's a veritable ocular orgy now that Playboy.com has dialed up the heat a few notches.

Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer has squeezed the entire circuitry of a two-decade-old Commodore 64 home computer onto a single chip, which she has tucked neatly into a joystick that connects by a cable to a TV set. Called the Commodore 64 - the same as the computer system - her device can run 30 video games, mostly sports, racing and puzzles games from the early 1980's, all without the hassle of changing game cartridges.

Sold by Mammoth Toys, based in New York, for $30, the Commodore 64 joystick has been a hot item on QVC this Christmas season, selling 70,000 units in one day when it was introduced on the shopping channel last month; since then it has been sold through QVC's Web site. Frank Landi, president of Mammoth, said he expected the joystick would be distributed next year by bigger toy and electronics retailers like Radio Shack, Best Buy, Sears and Toys "R" Us. "To me, any toy that sells 70,000 in a day on QVC is a good indication of the kind of reception we can expect," he said.

[The] success [of the iPod] has yet to cause a surge in sales of Apple computers. In fact, the company is selling more music players than its signature Macintosh computers, for which demand has been slowing. According to a report out by Merrill Lynch, PC unit growth will likely peak in 2004, with yearly revenue growth expected to slow from 6% to only 2% over the next two years. Compared to other computer makers, Apple had a 4% decline in unit sales worldwide from the previous quarter while its competitors gained an average 14%.

No other home computer vendor in the top 10 posted a decline in year-over-year unit growth worldwide except Apple.