Handspring bucks PDA trend

Handspring was the only major PDA manufacturer to increase its sales in the last fiscal quarter, as worldwide shipments of handhelds fell by nearly 10 per cent over the three-month period. Handspring shipments grew by more than 17 per cent, while market-leader Palm's fell by just over 14 per cent. Both platforms run Palm's PalmOS software. ...more

Sony settles over dodgy DRM fallout

Sony BMG has agreed to settle a New York state lawsuit arising from its controversial deployment of digital rights management technologies on CDs released in the US. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, which will have to be approved by a judge, the record company will compensate anyone who purchased a CD that included either XCP or MediaMax DRM and will provide tools for removing the software from PCs. It will also recall all XCP CDs, having already recalled MediaMax discs, and has committed to limiting its use of copy protection measures in the future. ...more

Dixons brings out The TechGuys

The Dixons Group is launching a commercial IT support service today, with the creation of some 2,000 new jobs. Dixons reckons that 'The TechGuys' is perfectly placed to tap into a market worth ?1bn a year, with 3,000 experts offering round the clock support, one of the largest technical databases in Europe and 2m spare parts. The division will offer home visits or customers can to visit service locations. ...more

Web services for all, promises IBM

A single development environment for delivering Web services is IBM's promise for WebSphere Studio Version 5. The idea is to make it easier to create Web services from existing software, covering multiple platforms as well as legacy applications involving older programming languages. That's Linux as well as Windows, and using Java too. ...more

Dot-com share dealers to escape criminal charges

We return once again to the question of 'Where did the dot-com money go?'... ...more