Microsoft edges ahead in deal with AOL

A deal between one of the big search engines and AOL looks like materialising in the coming weeks according to the Wall Street Journal. According to anonymous sources, the Time Warner board is leaning towards a deal with Microsoft although this might be misinformation leaked in order to get a better deal from Google. The deal seems to be somewhat short of the proposed merger or acquisition that was on the cards a few weeks ago. ...more

Blair launches government portal

Labour is attempting to make government sites more accessible with a new portal called UKOnline. The site, at www.ukonline. ...more

New Mozilla, iCab versions released

The Mozilla Organisation has released a minor update to Mozilla 1.4, despite the fact that two release candidate versions of 1.5 have already been made available. ...more

BBC writes back to the competition

In an open letter, the BBC has defended itself against rival networks and others that have accused it of being anti-competitive in its plans to advertise on its BBC Online service. The Corporation has said that only sites for users overseas would carry advertising, ensuring that "UK licence payers are not subsidising the rest of the world's Internet users attracted by the quality and integrity [of BBC Online]." However, it did not rule out the possibility of advertising on UK sites. ...more

Xingtones undercuts ringtone personalisation

Ringtones are cool, right? You pay ?4 for a bit of tune that makes a personal statement about you every time it goes off: 'I'm a mug'. You can pay 79p for a whole song from the majority of online music services that you can listen to when you want to, not each time you get a call. So, Xingtones has developed a little application that you can use to cut your favourite section of your favourite song and use it as a ringtone for ?1. ...more