lastminute newsletter gaffe confuses author

The person behind the lastminute email describing the delights of children's attractions in the capital as 'Like Gary Glitter in a sweet shop, you too can have your pick of kiddy treats in London's theatre world', is relying on others to correct future PR disasters. The lastminute email motivated recipients to complain to the Advertising Standards Agency who considered the email 'likely to cause serious or widespread offence'. According to Internet sources, a subsequent internal email to lastminute staffers by the author puts the responsibility on them to raise alarm bells. ...more

iPod maker defends its working conditions

Foxconn, the Taiwanese iPod maker, has defended the working conditions in its Chinese factories, denying claims made by the Mail on Sunday. Foxconn said that the report was a vicious attack on the company and that there are huge discrepancies between the truth and the newspaper's allegations. The Mail on Sunday claimed that Foxconn employees were working in 'slave' conditions, with one plant near Shenzhen employing 200,000 people, who worked 15 hour days for $50 per month and lived 100 to a room in company dormitories. ...more

SCO sets sail with flagship OpenServer 6

Unix company SCO has announced OpenServer 6, its flagship product, and one it hopes will help rejuvenate an ailing Unix market. It describes the product as the result of many years and millions of dollars worth of development and has certainly convinced the likes of HP, who will be selling a range of ProLiant servers running the Unix platform. 'As the worldwide market share leader of SCO Unix installations, HP is focused on delivering the latest technologies to HP ProLiant customers,' said Paul Miller, vice president of marketing, Industry Standard Servers, HP. ...more

Optical discs face obsolescence

Research from Forrester predicts that online entertainment services will cut hard into revenues from physical media from 2005. 'On-demand services are the future of entertainment delivery. CDs, DVDs, and any other forms of physical media will become obsolete,' said Josh Bernoff, principal analyst at Forrester. ...more

Music industry takes new view on music downloads

The music industry appears to have something of a change of heart about the effect of music downloading on CD sales. Sales in the US are up 9.4 per cent this year despite the success of online stores such as iTunes and Napster. ...more