Transcripts

"Tech Talk"-Chip Convenience

SUSIE GHARIB: A new way to search the Internet when you want to get personal and a new name for a popular valley. Those stories and more in Scott Gurvey`s "Tech Talk."

SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: It may be time to rename Silicon Valley. Intel`s newest processors, announced this week, replace silicon dioxide, the material of choice for 40 years, with hafnium, an element farther up the periodic table. The change makes for smaller and faster circuits which use less power and generate less heat. The new processors also add instructions to improve high definition image display. Intel`s Sean Maloney says the new technology will be rolled out quickly.

SEAN MALONEY, EXECUTIVE VP, INTEL: We`re certainly talking about the hundreds of millions of units. And over the next two to three years, you will see hundreds of millions of people coming onto the Internet for the first time. And you`re also going to see people replacing their notebooks or their desktops with these chips because they`re so much better. So, it`s a big piece of Intel`s business going forward in the next two to three years.

GURVEY: Microsoft raised eyebrows recently with its $240 million investment in facebook, the popular web site where people share pictures and build relationships. Microsoft has its own social networking project called Windows live spaces, but facebook has 49 million users. More than half live outside the U.S. and Microsoft will control the banner ads those users see. President Kevin Johnson calls it is a natural fit.

KEVIN JOHNSON, PRES., PLATFORM AND SERVICES DIV., MICROSOFT: People can upload their photos to Windows live spaces and actually click to post them and share them with their facebook friends. So we have very tight integration and a great partnership with the people at facebook.

GURVEY: A new poll from the Associated Press and AOL says teenagers use instant messaging to handle tough conversations. Twenty two percent use IMs to ask someone out on a date, 15 percent use them to break up. When you try to compete with Google you better haven edge. Spock.com thinks it does. Spock focuses on people and uses a variety of techniques to scan the Internet looking for information about people and their relationships. Cofounder Jaideep Singh says that makes it a more efficient tool for personal networking.

JAIDEEP SINGH, CO-FOUNDER & CEO, SPOCK: Google does a great job at looking at the public web, so that`s not what the problem is. The problem is really, I`ve got massive information, how do I organize this to make it easy and simple for people to understand? So, the place where we distinguish ourselves is we take a document -- we say, "OK, Scott Gurvey, is this the same person as that one? So this image or this document or this relationship is associated with this person.

GURVEY: The creators of spock.com expect it to eventually make money through targeted advertising. It is currently open for testing. Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, New York.