OD2 hooks the cost of music into mobile bills

The company underpinning UK music services from the likes of Virgin, Freeserve and Microsoft's MSN, is to enable downloads to be billed to a mobile phone. The scheme, which will be introduced next week, is aimed at the youth market, according to Reuters. 'This payment option opens up our services to a much wider demographic. ...more

Sun and Microsoft slug it out over ODF

Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz has predicted that the Open Document Format will become the default document format of the future. In his blog, Schwartz outlined the importance of an open standards-based document format where its life span is not tied to that of the software used to access it. 'Information always outlives technology,' he wrote. ...more

CoreMedia interview: Multimedia and DRM - Part 1

With digital downloads remaining a big issues and Sony's DRM implementation in particular making headlines for the wrong reason, we have a timely interview with Dr. Willms Buhse, director products & marketing for CoreMedia, a company specialising in DRM systems. In part one of two, the topics of discussion are music, Vodafone Live! and Microsoft, with 3G and wider DRM issues to follow. ...more

AMD trumpets Torrenza partners

Sun, Cray, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, Dell and IBM have lined up behind AMD's Torrenza Initiative, which allows third-parties to share silicon with AMD server processors. Described by AMD as a 'game-changing approach to server design', it allows such OEMs to plug-in co-processors into the AMD64 ecosystem using HyperTransport technology. They will standardize designs on the 'Torrenza Innovation Socket'. ...more

BT inks deals for 21CN

Following on from a ?12bn investment in February, BT has announced further progress with its '21st Century Network' (21CN), which it describes as its 'next generation network transformation programme'. BT has concluded negotiations and signed contracts with the remaining four preferred suppliers for the 21CN. Contracts have been signed with Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson and Fujitsu, following on from Ciena, Huawei, Lucent and Siemens, with whom contracts were signed at the end of last year. ...more