25 per cent of Internet users will abandon CDs

A recent MORI poll of Internet users, conducted for Creative Labs, has shown that the CD's days are numbered, with one in four expecting to turn to the Internet as the sole source of music. In the 15-24 age bracket the figure was as high as 37 per cent. The survey reveals just how widely accepted and understood the concepts of codecs and streaming digital music have become. ...more

Photographic miniatures

Panasonic has announced a tiny multi-function digital camera and printer. The camera, the SV-AV10 can take 640x480 stills and MPEG4 movies at 320x240. It also functions as a voice recorder and has an audio player built-in that can play back AAC (advanced audio coding) formatted music on an SD card. ...more

Opera raises curtain further on version 9

The second technical preview of the Opera 9 browser, which is now available for download, features support for widgets, thumbnail previews, site-specific preferences and improved pop-up blocking. By the term 'widgets' Opera means small Web apps that run directly on the desktop. These can interact with online services - such as news feeds, dictionaries or search engines - and Opera's hope is that users develop their own . ...more

Legal music downloads triple in popularity

Legal music downloads tripled in the first half of 2005, while the level of unauthorised file sharing remains flat, despite extensive efforts to suppress it. The latest figures from the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) show that 180 million downloads were sold in the first six months of this year, more than three times the 57 million figure for the first half of 2004. The total number of downloads, so far, for 2005 is already in excess of the total for the whole of last year, 157 million. ...more

Dell bids to change its name

Dell is bidding to change its name, from Dell Computer to simply 'Dell Inc'. The move is intended to represent the growth of the Texan company from its original PC box-building days. As well as enterprise-scale server systems, Dell is also in the services, networking and storage business. ...more