Google Maps gives Europe a good going over

Google has extended its street maps, driving directions and integrated local search service into mainland Europe. Google Maps now covers France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Street-maps have also been rendered for several other countries, though these have to be accessed via the countries listed above. ...more

PlayStation2 edit opens the Web

Owners of Sony's online gaming kit in the UK can now get out of Sony's walled garden and on to the rest of the Web by pointing their networking kit to look at a Web page that incorporates browsing capabilities. By changing the IP address that the network card looks for when it connects to the Internet to 217.33. ...more

Google extends adsense service to smaller sites

The world's favourite search engine Google has announced an extension to its AdSense programme which will enable smaller sites to make money through the Google advertising service. The new self-service option for AdSense allows website publishers to serve contextual ads relevant to the content on the web pages. Google pays the site per click on these ads. ...more

Apple on the menu of Creative patent suit

Creative has sued Apple for an alleged breach of its 'Zen' patent covering software menus on portable music players. The Singapore-based company, which is a distant second to Apple in terms of worldwide MP3 players sales, is seeking damages for what it says is 'willful infringement' of the patent and wants an injunction to stop Apple selling iPods. The patent describes a method for [see picture] organising music tracks in a hierarchical structure of categories and an interface that can be used to change the hierarchy, view track names, and select tracks for playback or other operations. ...more

BT launches Digital Vault

You back up all your personal files at regular intervals don't you? I thought not. Well, help may be at hand as BT launches what it is calling a 'Digital Vault', which allows customers to store up to 20GB of data online. As PC users create more and more content such as videos, photos and music files on their hard disk, the greater the danger of losing their entire collection if the hard disk crashes. ...more