XplanaZine

Updates on: Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Wikia Search release, Lenovo computers enter US markets, Intel leaves One Laptop Per Child project, Netflix and LG team up on Internet-connected TV, Creative Commons dual-license option, the fight between HD DVD and Blu-ray format, San Francisco’s free wi-fi

More than 20,000 new gadgets and technologies from more than 2,700 companies will be on display at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) January 7-10 in Las Vegas. The round-up so far: robot toys by Wowwee; radio for the deaf project by National Public Radio, technology firm Harris Corporation and Towson University; wireless High-Definition Television (HDTV); and technology allowing users to control their homes remotely. — BBC News

Wikia Search, an open source search engine promising to offer transparency, will go public in rough form next week. Co-founder Jimmy Though Wales has expressed a fondness for Google but has also criticized the search engine and said he wants to encourage Web communities to produce something better. He believes search should be open, transparent, participatory, and democratic. — Information Week

China’s Lenovo Group Ltd introduced its first consumer computers in the United States, expanding in a region it entered in 2005 with the purchase of IBM’s PC business. The unveiling of three new notebook computers with advanced features is part of a broader expansion by Lenovo into the global consumer PC market. The company also plans to sell the new consumer computers in France, Russia, South Africa, India, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, among other markets. — Reuters

Citing “philosophical” differences, Intel has withdrawn its funding and technical help from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Intel joined the OLPC in July 2007 and was widely expected to work on a version of the project’s laptop that used an Intel chip. Many expected this machine to be unveiled at the CES technology fair which opens in Las Vegas on January 5. The first versions of the OLPC or XO laptop were powered by a chip made by Intel’s arch-rival AMD. — BBC News

DVD-by-mail service Netflix Inc. will begin delivering movies and other programming directly to televisions later this year through a set-top box, made by LG Electronics, that will stream entertainment over a high-speed Internet connection. — CNN

The Creative Commons foundation recently released the CC+ protocol, which allows authors and other content makers to release their work for free (under the Creative Commons noncommercial license) and charge a fee for commercial use at the same time. CC+, an extension that may be applied to the existing Creative Commons license, is an option for those who wish to dual-license their work. — Campus Technology

Toshiba Corp has insisted that its HD DVD high-definition video format is far from dead despite being dealt a major setback by Warner Bros studio’s decision to exclusively back Sony Corp’s rival Blu-ray technology. Toshiba’s defiant remarks were the latest salvo in a long-running battle over which format will dominate the next generation of technology for delivering high-definition movies to consumers. The rivalry has been compared to the video-cassette-recorder format war of the late 1970s and early 1980s which ultimately Sony’s Betamax lost and JVC’s VHS won. — Reuters

Meraki Networks‘ plan to cover San Francisco with free Wi-Fi, with residents’ help, could be a way around the political and business barriers some municipal wireless projects have run into. The startup, partly funded by Google, believes it will succeed where EarthLink and Google did not: Building Wi-Fi access throughout San Francisco at no cost to the city. It expects to finish by year’s end, filling the whole city with 1M bps (bit per second) coverage. — PC World