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Sony, NXP to cooperate on NFC standard
Using cellphones to pay for stuff via NFC (near-field communications) is certainly nothing new; Sony, for one, has been doing it for years with its FeliCa system in Japan. Regardless of how dominant FeliCa or NXP's Mifare are, though, standardization is always a welcome move in an industry that hasn't quite taken off yet on a global scale. Sony and NXP have committed to putting their noggins together to come up with a unified standard for NFC payments that will ultimately support both FeliCa and Mifare-based equipment, while also bringing together two of the most widely-deployed systems to date. Given that both Sony and NXP parent Philips are members of the NFC Forum, we have hope that this announcement lines up nicely with that group's efforts, too, rather than going against the grain with a parallel effort. Not to say we'd put that kind of buffoonery past Sony, of course.
Sony adds Core Solo, Celeron options to SZ notebooks
Sony has just announced several new configurations for its SZ series of VAIO notebooks, the VGN-SZ91 and -SZ81, which add Intel Core Solo and Celeron processor options to the Core Duo procs already available. Both 13.3-inch models sport 1,280 x 800 WXGA displays, but the SZ91 incorporates a thinner LCD that lobs off a few millimeters of thickness compared to the SZ81. Battery life is also slightly better on the SZ91, with a claimed 7-hours of juice in Pentium-equipped models, which is about an hour more than the SZ81 supposedly can muster using the same processor. Other than these relatively minor differences, the features on both laptops are basically the same, with integrated graphics (GeForce Go 7400 available for extra), from 512MB to 2GB of RAM, 802.11a/b/g, PCMCIA/ExpressCard slots, and options for Bluetooth 2.0, FeliCa support, and a fingerprint reader. Sony will drop both models on the 13th of this month, with the SZ81 starting at $1,343 and the SZ91 at $1,486.
Sony's So-net VOD HDTV box with FeliCa
Sony seems intent to prove you can -- and one day will -- buy just about everything with FeliCa, their contactless payment system we've been talking up for years now. Latest on the block is So-net distributed high definition video on demand service, which plays back MPEG-2, VC-1, and h.264 video on a Sentivision set top box with a 600MHz CPU and a 40GB internal drive; you pay for the privilege instantly with your FeliCa card, phone, implant, etc. We know, we know, it hurts; but one of these days when a large swath of this ginormous nation gets fiber to the home, we'll probably ourselves likely see similar VOD / IPTV systems.[Via Impress]
