Microsoft and other games publishers bid for 3DO

Microsoft looks to add to its Xbox roster Seven videogames companies have qualified to bid for the assets of bankrupt company 3DO, and the sale has attracted a number of big hitters. The full list of interested parties is Crave, Eidos, JoWood, Microsoft, Namco, Turbine and Ubisoft. 3DO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in late May; the auction will include the rights to bid on in progress titles like Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Street Racing Syndicate, though there's no news on whether or not any new Army Men titles are in the pipeline. ...more

Online child pornography virtually wiped out in the UK

Online child pornography has been virtually wiped out in the UK, according to the organisation Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Content hosted in the UK has dropped from some 18 per cent in 1997 to 0.2 per cent in the first half of this year, the IWF's latest report reveals. ...more

Sony joins UK online music market

Sony has agreed to make part of its music catalogue available to online downloads supplier OD2. OD2 provides music download services and infrastructure to a host of online services, including HMV, MSN and Freeserve. It has agreements with the five major record labels and with numerous independents. ...more

A Trojan full of Trojans

Sophos has alerted its users to a new Trojan virus that appears as an 'administrative email'. Troj/Peido-B arrives as an administrative email with an error.hta attachment and contains the text 'THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE'. ...more

Telewest trials wireless broadband

Telewest is trialling wireless broadband to select customers in the North-West region using a NetGear 802.11b access point that plugs into the cable TV/modem set-top box. The self-install package is being trialled at ?25, although this is by no means a final price for the service. ...more