More wireless Internet options for Palm

Palm and Sprint PCS have come together to create more wireless Internet options for mobile handheld devices. The alliance, which was announced yesterday, will see Palm take advantage of Sprint PCS's large US wireless network coverage. Also, the companies will be offering a "co-branded" version of the recently launched MyPalm portal. ...more

Ofcom does away with Oftel

Culture Secretary Chris Smith has announced a White Paper in the House of Commons today shaking up media and telecommunications regulations. Under the government proposals, bodies such as telecoms regulator Oftel, the Independent Television Commission, the Radio Authority and the Broadcasting Standards Council would be rolled into one catch-all regulator, probably called Ofcom. The move will no doubt please ISPs, who have been complaining about Oftel's lack of power to regulate BT for some time. ...more

Intel brings Core 2 Duo technology to laptops

Intel has brought its Core 2 Duo technology to laptops, with the release of its 'Merom' processor. The energy efficient dual-core chips, which are based on Intel's new micro-architecture, have been released in mobile form, as part of the new 'Centrino Duo' platform. The desktop equivalent - 'Conroe' - was released back in July, with promises of a 40 percent increase in performance while being 40 percent more energy efficient than its predecessors. ...more

Microsoft delays Xbox launch

The launch of Microsoft's first gaming system, the Xbox, has been delayed. The US launch date is now officially 15 November, a week later than originally planned. Microsoft had previously denied reports that production problems existed, supposedly with the Intel motherboards. ...more

Apple releases iPod shuffle reset utility

Apple has released a reset utility that addresses four potential problems with first-generation 512MB and 1GB iPod shuffles. The software fixes the following: with the iPod shuffle switched on, pressing the Play button will cause amber and green LEDs to flash for a few seconds, and the unit will not play any music, nor can you sync music to it from iTunes; on a Windows PC, iPod shuffle will appear in My Computer as a 'Removable Disk', but the iPod shuffle volume will not mount correctly; on a Mac, the unit will only be recognised in Apple System Profiler under Hardware>USB and will not appear or mount in the Finder; when attempting to restore, the unit may not be recognised at all and if it is (possibly after several minutes), the restore may fail with an error dialog 'Firmware update failure. Disk write error' or another error - it may take three restore attempts before the error appears. ...more