UK online retail set to boom

Forrester's latest research expects online sales to fatten to ?10.4bn by the end of the year - a girth-widening increase of 46 per cent increase year on year. Forrester Senior Analyst Rebecca Jennings: 'Today, 65 percent of online adults have bought and paid for a product or service online, and UK Net shoppers spent an average of ?237 online in the past three months. ...more

China issue changes Microsoft's blogging stance

If you were ever unsure quite how important the 'China thing' is right now, look no further than Microsoft's latest announcement, stating it has changed its policy on blogging. In a speech to government officials and community leaders in Lisbon, Portugal, Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Brad Smith, said that blogs on MSN Spaces would no longer be removed outright if they contravened local law, but rather access to them would be restricted from the territory in question. Either way, users in that country won't have access to the content in breach of that country's law, and maybe on another day this slight a change wouldn't make the news. ...more

Apple attacks Microsoft settlement

Apple has attacked the $1 billion settlement proposed my Microsoft in response to more than 100 anti-trust lawsuits that accused the software giant of overpricing its software. Apple's lawyers filed a 36 page brief with the US District Court for the District of Maryland which challenged that, 'Every part of the settlement must be carefully examined and changed where necessary to eliminate those aspects that will irresistibly compel schools to adopt Microsoft products.' Apple CEO Steve Jobs added to the brief in a statement saying, 'we're baffled that a settlement imposed against Microsoft for breaking the law should allow, even encourage, them to unfairly make inroads into education - one of the few markets left where they don't have monopoly power. ...more

Freeserve upgrades to save

Freeserve has announced it has moved all of its streaming media services on to RealNetworks' Helix Universal server, saving ?15,000 a month. RealNetworks released the server platform in July, but this is the first major ISP in the UK to fully migrate to it. With its ability to serve almost any media format, including MPEG 4 (QuickTime) and Windows Media, and its support for multiple platforms, including Windows and Linux, Freeserve now serves all its media from a single server. ...more

BT invests further ?12 million for 21CN

BT is trumpeting a ?12 million investment in an international voice platform based on internet protocol (IP). Due to be completed in March 2008, the project is part of BT's '21st Century Network' (21CN) initiative, its next-generation telecommunications network. The MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching)-based network will span across 30 countries worldwide, and will - according to BT - dramatically increase the scale of BT's global voice capabilities. ...more