BlackBerry® 8700 in China

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) and Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM) have expanded their partnership with the signing of a strategic agreement for the distribution of BlackBerry® smartphones in China. The first smartphone offered to Chinese enterprise customers through this agreement will be the 8700 model.

Shuttle Discovery STS-120 Launched

The space shuttle Discovery and its seven-member crew lifted off Tuesday, Oct. 23, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:38 a.m. EDT to continue construction of the International Space Station.

During the 14-day mission, designated STS-120, Discovery's crew will continue construction of the space station with the installation of the Harmony connecting module, also known as Node 2. The crew, led by Commander Pam Melroy, will conduct five spacewalks during the mission, four by shuttle crew members and one by the station's Expedition 16 crew.

Improving Memory Devices Using Nanotechnology

Arizona State University’s Center for Applied Nanoionics (CANi) has a new take on old memory, one that promises to boost the performance, capacity and battery life of consumer electronics from digital cameras to laptops. Best of all, it is cheap, made from common materials and compatible with just about anything currently on the market.

“In using readily available materials, we’ve provided a way for this memory to be made at essentially zero extra cost, because the materials you need are already used in the chips — all you have to do is mix them in a slightly different way,” said Michael Kozicki, director of CANi.

Trends in Cybercrime, Microsoft Research

Microsoft Corp. released research showing an acceleration in the number of security attacks designed to steal personal information or trick people into providing it through social engineering.

The most recent Security Intelligence Report shows that attackers are increasingly targeting personal information to make a profit and are threatening to impact people’s privacy. The report found that during the first half of 2007, 31.6 million phishing scams were detected, an increase of more than 150 percent over the previous six months. The study also shows a 500 percent increase in trojan downloaders and droppers, malicious code used to install files such as trojans, password stealers, keyboard loggers and other malware on users’ systems. Two notable families of trojans detected and removed by the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool are specifically targeted at stealing data and banking information.