Pipex buys Bulldog's broadband customer base

Pipex has announced that it is to pay Cable & Wireless ?12m for Bulldog's 110,000 residential and small business broadband customers. C&W announced in June that it was pulling out of the retail broadband business to focus on its LLU-based wholesale business. In a deal separate to the customer acquisition, Pipex has signed up to add this network of 800 exchanges to its own LLU installations. ...more

Zafi.b virus is the most virulent in August

Antivirus vendors have released their figures for virus activity last month showing new viruses but a quiet month for outbreaks. Kaspersky Labs said that the normally danger-fraught August - which last year saw PC users running the perils of SoBig, Blaster and Mimail - turned out to be an unusually quiet month. Sophos put the Zafi. ...more

a-Services to launch ASP in UK

a-Services, a new joint venture between Cable & Wireless, Microsoft and Compaq will roll out its ASP product in the UK in next month. The service, set to debut at the Network+Interop tradeshow in Houston, next Tuesday, is aimed at SMEs employing between ten and 1,000 people. It will offer a variety of hosted applications, such as Microsoft Office, training services, sales force automation, e-commerce facilities and secure off-site file storage. ...more

Apple founder backs 'revolutionary' PDA

One of Silicon Valley's 'legendary' figures is backing the new HipTop PDA to 'revolutionise the world' when it debuts this spring. Steve Wozniak, who with Steve Jobs built the first Apple computers, has given his much-sought-after endorsement to the wireless PDA and phone that provides Internet access, instant messaging, email with attachments, personal information management (PIM), such as a calendar and address book, and an optional digital camera add-on. The device measures 116 x 65 x 28mm - 'about the size of a small pager' - and weighs a mere 150g, in which you get a 240 x 160 pixel screen. ...more

Adobe releases Reader 7.0

Adobe has released the new version of its software for reading PDF documents. Reader 7 has better overall performance than its predecessor, for faster launch times and real-time zooming and panning. New features and enhancements include: an improved search - search for words in annotations, bookmarks, form fields, or metadata, and search within open PDF files or any PDF file residing on local machines; the ability to fill out and submit forms; the ability to view and organise digital editions (formerly eBooks) and view them in landscape or portrait mode; rapid selection of text and images using a unified selection tool; and the ability to save a wide range of files attached to PDF documents, such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, and multimedia files Adobe Rader 7 is a free download for multiple platforms including Mac OS, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian, Unix and Windows from www. ...more