MSN Music to add subs service

Microsoft is looking into expanding its MSN Music downloads store to include a subscription service. Like Apple's market leading iTunes Music Store, the US-only MSN service currently sells individual track or album downloads, while rival offerings from Real, Yahoo! and Napster have made a big deal of offering subscribers the chance to access their entire library on payment of a monthly fee. However, there's a downside: if you stop paying the fee, you no longer have access to the tracks you have downloaded. ...more

BT wants you to Ask Jeeves

British Telecom is not that well known for answering questions, so to rectify the matter it is handing over that side of its website to snooty search engine Ask Jeeves. If you are not already familiar with the search engine, it is fronted by Jeeves, the butler from PG Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster stories. You will be able to ask the virtual butler things relating to BT such as "How do I order an extra line" or "Can I pay my bill by direct debit?" The Jeeves character should be appearing on the bt. ...more

Intel announces high capacity MP3 player

The Intel Pocket Concert Audio Player is equipped with 128MB of memory for storing digital audio in the form of MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA). The huge amount of memory is twice that which appears with most of its rivals, except for those that make use of Iomega Pocket Zip memory, which holds up to 80MB of data. Intel claims that the player's memory is sufficient for it to store up to 4 hours of music at 96Kbps, or around 20 hours of speech. ...more

Amazon leaks palmOne's 4GB PDA

Details of palmOne's worst-kept secret - the new hard drive equipped PDA - have, as is the fashion these days, been leaked by Amazon. The LifeDrive is listed at a few cents under $500 with an 18 May shipping date. As we revealed last month, it will have a 4GB disk and be capable of mounting on a computer via USB 2. ...more

Next-gen Xbox to be unveiled at E3 show

Xenon, Xbox2, NextBox, call it what you will - Bill Gates says Microsoft's new gaming console will be unveiled later this month. After all the jostling to be first into the next-gen console market, it seems Microsoft has successfully stolen a march on the imminent PlayStation 3. The new version of Microsoft's gaming console will be showcased at the E3 games show 17 May, reports Reuters. ...more