Pokemon virus on the loose

Pikachu and chums have moved out of the world of surreal children's entertainment to begin attacking PCs. Nicknamed "Pokey", the virus is attached to a message which purports to be sent from the Pokemon Website and carries the subject line "Pikachu Pokemon". Upon opening the attachment, a picture of Pikachu (the little yellow Pokemon) appears, along with the heart-warming - if badly-worded - message: "Between millions of people around the world I found you. ...more

Email has lowest response in marketing campaigns

Email is one of the least effective methods of getting response to marketing campaigns. With only the sixth highest response rate which at 1.12 per cent email marketing lies well behind other methods of getting potential customers to respond The most effective is telemarketing at 5. ...more

Apple revisits the (PRODUCT) Red iPod

Apple has just announced an 8GB model of the iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition - in response to 'outstanding customer demand', according to the company. The 8GB charity model will cost ?169 (?143.83 ex VAT) - the same as the standard 8GB nano - with the UK Apple store quoting two day's notice for delivery. ...more

TDK spins CD-R/RW into triple performance

Forget DVD-RAM, the future is the humble CD, as TDK has gone into a joint venture with Calimetrics Inc to produce a new technology that will triple the capacity and write speed of CD-R/RW drives. The technology should enable write speeds of 36 and a storage capacity of up to 2Gb on special MutiLevel recording (ML) discs, as well as allowing you to write 700Mb to a standard CD-R/RW at 12-speed. The new ML CD-R/RW drives will only differ from standard drives in that they use new integrated circuits and will not therefore be much more expensive. ...more

PlusNet launches optimised low-cost broadband package

PlusNet has launched a new low-cost broadband package free of data limits and usage payments; instead it promises 'traffic shaping' during peak periods to give priority to email and surfing over high-bandwidth activities. Traffic shaping is a hardware driven solution to the problem of certain users hogging the amount of bandwidth available. During peak usage hours, traffic that uses disproportionately large amounts of bandwidth - peer-to-peer file sharing and the downloading of binaries via Usenet for example - will be deprioritised in favour of the basics such as email and Web surfing. ...more