Samsung eyes online music market

Samsung has revealed that it plans to launch its own online music store to compete with Apple's iTunes and Microsoft's imminent Zune service. The South Korean consumer electronics manufacturer will tie up with MusicNet to launch a combined subscription and downloads service in the UK, France and Germany later this year, before expanding into the rest of Europe and Asia. MusicNet will provide the underlying technology and music library. ...more

14-04-2001 Essential news of the week

Brought neatly together and presented on a plate, here is a roundup of some of the week's main news stories from the world of IT. Sun applies quality control to its own workforce Motorola posts a loss and hears from Tony Blair Office XP shot Clippy The Napster monster won't lie down< Director 8.5 - first review Pirates claim more than 90 per cent of the games software market UK jobs axed by Marconi Acrobat 5. ...more

US teens wary of social networking sites

In spite of the high profile of social networking websites such as MySpace and FaceBook, US teens are not flocking to them en-masse. According to recent research from the Pew Internet Project, little more than half are using them. The headline 55 per cent total may strike you as being on the low side and this is, in fact, the Pew perspective: 'There is a widespread notion that every American teenager is using social networks, and that they're plastering personal information over their profiles for anyone and everyone to read,' says Pew's Amanda Lenhart. ...more

President Bush appoints an anti-piracy tsar

President Bush has appointed an anti-piracy 'tsar' to co-ordinate efforts against global intellectual property theft. Chris Israel, a former Time Warner executive, will be Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement with responsibility for the entire gamut of piracy, from movie swapping on the Internet to counterfeit car parts, according to US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. Top of Israel's list of priorities will be China, where an estimated 90 per cent of movies and music in circulation are illegal copies, although Gutierrez acknowledged that achieving the administration's long-term aim of reducing China's piracy level to zero will not be easy. ...more

Intel's chip to make camera phones cheap

Intel announces a new integrated processor. Designed to ease the manufacturing of today's high-end feature-phones and put them in the bargain buckets of tomorrow, Intel's PXA800F processor combines processing power with dedicated multimedia components on one chip. Code-named Manitoba, the processor is manufactured using Intel's 0. ...more