Yahoo! shares plunge on news of Panama delay

The Yahoo! share price has taken a knock following news that its new 'Panama' ad system slated for release in the third quarter will not appear until Q4 at the earliest. The delay was formally announced by Yahoo! chairman and CEO Terry Semel in a conference call with analysts to discuss the latest financial results. 'We think this is the right decision for ensuring the most successful commercial launch possible', he said adding that advertisers should pencil in the new system for the beginning of 2007. ...more

Call centres pinpointed for ID theft

Employees at Indian call centres routinely sell personal financial information that is being used to conduct fraudulent Internet transactions, according to a report by Australia's national broadcaster. An investigation by ABC Television's Four Corners programme saw reporters offered PINs, passport numbers and credit card details. It also found that people were asked for information - notably passport numbers - that they were not required to provide. ...more

Apple v Apple: Jobs wanted to buy the name Apple Records, claims Apple Corps

Steve Jobs offered to pay $1m for the rights to the name Apple Records, according to Neil Aspinall, boss of The Beatles's record company Apple Corps. Aspinall claimed that the Apple CEO made the offer two years ago, shortly before he announced the opening of the iTunes Music Store. He suggested that Jobs made the offer in order to avoid another legal dispute over use of the Apple name. ...more

IBM lets Google Gadgets into its WebSphere business portal

IBM has reached a deal with Google to bring the consumer Internet into the office by giving a green light to YouTube and thousands of other Web programs on the IBM software used by millions of office workers. The pact brings together Google, one of the world's most popular consumer Web technology companies, and IBM, the biggest supplier of employee portal software which big businesses use to offer a kind of personalized home page for office workers. In coming months, millions of users of IBM WebSphere will be able to choose from 4,000 existing Google Gadgets services - mini-Web applications that users can add with the click of a button onto public sites or internal office intranets. ...more

Freeserve increases losses and confidence

Now that Freeserve has successfully shifted from Dixons to Wanadoo, the UK's largest ISP has announced a huge increase in losses for the quarter up to 11 November. Although the quarter was actually four weeks shorter than the previous one, to allow the company to inform shareholders of the imminent takeover and trading conditions, losses grew from ?13.4m to ?18. ...more