Microsoft kicks off 2001 in the dock

Microsoft has eschewed the New Year adage 'out with the old and in with the new', as it starts 2001 in trouble with the law facing a $5bn suit... ...more

Quark keynote addresses industry problems

Quark's keynote address at the Seybold conference in San Francisco focused on ways of dealing with the current downturn in the publishing industry. Jurgen Kurtz, vice president of product management, reminded his audience that the publishing industry is having to cope with advertising revenues down as much as 70 per cent, meaning that companies are being forced to cut staffing levels in order to keep costs down and re-purpose as much content as possible. QuarkXPress, he said, is the ideal tool for re-purposing content and the forthcoming version 5 is very much focused on making this process as automatic and simple as possible. ...more

Google denies reports of iPhone rival

Despite reports to the contrary in the Spanish press last week, Google has now denied claims that it is working on a rival to the iPhone. A representative of Google, which shares a board member with Apple and is a key services supplier for the iPhone, had previously been quoted as saying the company was working on a mobile as a means of accessing information on the move. However, while it is not working on a Google-branded hardware device, the search firm confirmed to the Australian Financial Review, that it was working on porting its search tools to a handheld, portable platform. ...more

shuffle shortage slows shipments

Demand for the new iPod shuffle is already outstripping supply, with at least one retailer in the US adding a $30 premium to the price of the portable music player. Apple's UK online store currently gives a five-day wait for shuffle shipments, but major e-retailers are completely out of supplies. The shuffle is the top-seller on the US online Apple Store, although it has yet to register on the list of bestsellers this side of the Atlantic. ...more

Lightning strikes mobile phones

Forget radiation fears over mobile phone use, it appears callers have something more dramatic to worry about. According to the British Medical Journal, lightning strikes have killed a number of people across the globe and severely injured a UK teen, because of the conductive properties of their mobile phone. According to an article in the journal, people are generally likely to survive a lightning strike: 'the high resistance of human skin results in lightning being conducted over the skin without entering the body,' it states, causing an effect known as 'flashover'. ...more