Amazon loses popularity contest

Everyone's favourite e-tailer, Amazon, has been knocked off the top spot by the online auctioneer site eBay. The latest Nielsen/Net ratings report reveals that a rise in Net traffic to the eBay Web site totalled 4 million visits in March, giving them a total number of visitors of 22.1 million. ...more

Phone some art today

You can't dial a Dali or ring a Renoir, but a new exhibition at London's Design Museum will let you interact with its exhibit in a telephonic manner. The Digital Aquarium at the Design Museum Tank, on the museums river-front terrace, contains 150 mobile phones suspended within a glass tank. Viewers can dial one of the mobile numbers posted on the aquarium to stimulate the exhibition into life. ...more

DFI claims readiness for X38 chipset and AM2+

DFI claims that it will now be able to have boards available at the launch of both the forthcoming Intel X38 chipset (board pictured), which is expected in August, and AMD's Socket AM2+ , which has no ETA as yet. DFI admits this year hasn't been great for the company, despite winning the much-coveted PC Pro Best Motherboard Manufacturer award. Product Marketing Manger Andrew Ou Yang, however, was quick to explain the troubles of the last year. ...more

Game controls for the Palm

If you enjoy playing games on your Palm but are sick of trying to blast the aliens using those tiny keys, Worldwide Widget Works will give you a hand. The company has developed a new device that clips onto the HotSync connector at the bottom of the Palm and sports a control assembly very similar to that of the Nintendo Gameboy. The new casing has a D-controller, two fire buttons and two controller buttons. ...more

IBM issues blueprint for managing complex computing environments

IBM has outlined, with software to follow, a blueprint for building autonomic systems - environments that can better manage themselves, automatically. IBM describes it as the industry's 'first blueprint for managing complex computing environments'. The four technologies address what IBM believes to be core capabilities required for Autonomic Computing. ...more