Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie on Thursday offered a long-term view of where Microsoft and the world of computing are heading over the next few decades. Speaking at the MIT Emerging Technology Conference here, Mundie envisioned a 3D virtual world populated by virtual presences, using a combination of client and cloud services.

He called this next generation "spatial computing" and listed numerous attributes: many-core processors; parallel programming; seamlessly connected and fully productive; context-aware and model-based; personalized, humanistic, and adaptive; 3D and immersive; and utilizing speech, vision and gestures.......

Visa is adding a wireless twist to the old phrase "Charge It." The credit card processing giant announced Thursday several initiatives to allow its credit card toting customers the ability to transfer money, make payments, and receive real-time account notification alerts on their Nokia and Android cellular phones. Visa also struck a mobile deal with U.S. Bank.

Sprint Nextel announced Thursday a new downloadable application that will let its subscribers bank and pay bills from their cell phones.

The new application called MyMoneyManager will provide online banking access to accounts with BB&T, Citibank, IBC Bank and PNC Bank. Subscribers with accounts at these banks will be able to check balances, pay bills, and find nearby branches with ATMs using the application on their phone. Sprint subscribers must have a Web-enabled phone and a wireless data plan to access the service.

The MyMoneyManager application is available at no additional charge to Sprint data subscribers. In the future, Sprint plans to preload MyMoneyManager on phones. It will also include additional banks and other financial service providers.

Worldwide subscriptions to Internet-based television platforms are on track to reach 19.6 million subscribers in 2008, a 64 percent increase, according to analysts at Gartner.

Revenue from worldwide Internet protocol television is forecast to reach $4.5 billion, up 93.5 percent from a year earlier, with Western Europe boasting the largest number of IPTV subscribers and North America the largest market for IPTV revenue.

It forecast that 1.1 percent of households worldwide would be using IPTV in 2008, and expects that to rise to 2.8 percent by 2012.

"Before 2008, the IPTV operators' emphasis had been to spread their footprint and effectively provide a 'me too' solution to cable and satellite, said Jopling. "In the future, especially in the developed markets, we will see an emphasis on innovation and differentiated pay-TV services."

Gartner defines IPTV as a managed broadband network which delivers high picture-quality television and video content to a user's TV set via a set-top box. Content delivered over the Internet or only to a computer is not included.