Search and destroy

In this day and age it is really easy to get paranoid. We handle increasing amounts of data, but how do you make sure that sensitive material doesn't fall into the wrong hands? A lot of people have their own mini-shredders to do away with all those credit card receipts, but this digital age sees more people and companies storing their information on CD-R. It can be quite fun snapping CDs in two but this is hardly a safe way of destroying digital information. ...more

Apple facing pressure for music download dominance

The music industry is gearing up for an explosion in downloading at its annual get together in Cannes. Download services such as Napster, record labels and mobile phone manufaturers all predict that 2005 will be the year in which Apple's dominance of the market for both music downloads, through its iTunes Music Store, and portable devices on which to play them, such as the iPod, will come under real pressure. Some observers believe that where downloaded music is played - on a computer, portable player or phone - will not be the key issue of the year; rather, the battle will be between subscription-based services and those like iTunes which only offer paid-for-downloads. ...more

OpenOffice debuts bizdev community

The OpenOffice project has created an online meeting place for developers, consultants and business users of the OpenOffice and Sun's StarOffice office suites. Covering both OpenOffice and Sun's StarOffice the bizdev.openoffice. ...more

Symbian licenses Exchange Server protocol

Symbian, the software licensing company behind the world's most popular operating system for mobile phones, has signed a deal with arch rival Microsoft to licence the Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync protocol for use in the Symbian OS. The deal will enable Symbian to create an Exchange Server ActiveSync protocol plug-in for the Symbian OS messaging architecture. The plug-in will allow mobile phones running the Symbian OS to sync wirelessly with email, calendar, contacts and other personal information management (PIM) data on networks running Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. ...more

Napster launches in UK

The reborn, legal Napster has launched in the UK, the first big name online music store to do so, beating Apple's iTunes Music Store. According to Reuters the service will sell downloads at ?1.09 a track, compared to the $0. ...more