3G will be a success, Motorola claims

Third-generation wireless services will not suffer from the failure of WAP, says Motorola. Speaking about the company's strategy in Amsterdam, senior vice-president and general manager Rick Darnaby said that mobile providers would have no problem making money out of ultra-fast mobile services. "I know analysts take WAP as an example of the possible risk to earning back the investments companies make in UMTS networks," he said. ...more

Mozilla seeks Firefox and Thunderbird testers

Mozilla is seeking volunteers to test one of the key components of the forthcoming 1.5 versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. The Software Update feature will enable inline updating of both the applications themselves and any extensions that are installed, Testing involves running a series of test cases and posting feedback as necessary. ...more

Apple considers next steps against iPod shuffle look-alike

Apple's lawyers are said to be 'weighing their options' after a company refused to remove its iPod shuffle lookalike from its stall at the CeBit technology show in Germany. Luxpro temporarily took the portable music player from its stand on Friday only to bring it back out on Saturday, leading to what has been described as a heated exchange of words with a distraught Apple representative. Luxpro's Super Shuffle is a near identical copy of the iPod shuffle, although its feature set differs slightly, with an FM tuner, voice recorder and support for WMA rather than AAC files. ...more

Sony stops selling lipstick and French food

Sony is to sell off some of its more unlikely assets in order to generate cash for its core consumer electronics businesses. Having already announced the closure of its QRIO and AIBO robot programme and Qualia, its high-end electronics experiment, Reuters reports that the Japanese firm will now dispose of Sony Plaza, an import-export business, B&C cosmetics, the French restaurant chain Maxim and a mail order business, all of which were bought by former CEO Akio Morita. Sony declined to comment, but according to Reuters' source it plans to sell more than 50 per cent of the four businesses. ...more

iMac goes widescreen

Apple has unveiled a new top-of-the-range iMac, with a 17 inch widescreen LCD display. The 1440x900 pixel display has the same viewing area as a 19 inch CRT monitor and is powered, for the first time in an iMac, by an nVidia GeForce 4 MX graphics card. The new model is powered by an 800MHz G4 processor and includes a SuperDrive (capable of reading and writing both DVDs and CDs), an 80Gb hard disk and 256Mb RAM. ...more