Google share floatation imminent, speculates Wall Street Journal

Google is expected to announce its first public share offering (IPO) within days, the Wall Street Journal reports. Under new US financial regulations Google will soon have to disclose more information about its business because it has reached a certain size. The WSJ says that according to lawyers such disclosures 'can be a trigger for companies to list their shares'. ...more

Software crackers stand trial at the Old Bailey

Two men accused of cracking commercial software and posting it on the Internet were described in court yesterday as having the delusion of being 'latter-day Robin Hoods', reports the BBC. Bruce Houlder QC, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey that the pair did not do it for the money, but for 'streetwise credibility'. But however they justified their activities, they were committing fraud, said Houlder. ...more

BT Cellnet says WAP is on the up

Despite reports that the tide is turning against WAP, BT Cellnet has reported that its WAP-enabled phone sales have increased 40 per cent on the last quarter, boasting some 245,000 new connections. The company claims to be the largest in the UK mobile Internet market with 420,000 WAP customers, excluding sales made by banks with which BT Cellnet has distribution deals. BT Cellnet also revealed that WAP customers spend almost ?100 a year more than voice-only customers with 20 per cent of calls being made to surf the Net or email. ...more

Yahoo! to add Wiki power under new agreement

Yahoo! has announced it will help support the Wikipedia project, providing the open source encyclopaedia initiative with servers and bandwidth. In return, presumably, it will be on the inside track to index and search the Wikipedia content. The user contributed online encyclopaedia consists of 195 language editions and contains approximately 1. ...more

UPDATED: BT warns strike action will affect end users

BT is seeking an injunction to prevent a planned strike by engineers, on which 40 per cent have voted in favour of striking. BT is to ask the High Court for an injunction preventing three 24-hour strikes by its engineers over a bonus plan. The Communication Workers Union, which is organising the strikes, got a 40 per cent vote in favour of action, representing about 5,600 of its 14,000 workforce. ...more