Yahoo! buys into the music downloads business

Yahoo! has become the latest big beast of the internet to make a play for the legal music download business with the acquisition of Musicmatch.com. The internet portal paid $160 million in cash for the service. ...more

Microsoft claims 'breakthrough' in eleventh-hour talks to soothe EU

Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith emerged from EU talks with what he decribes as a 'blueprint' for compliance as the company holds emergency talks to stave off daily multi-million Euro fines Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith emerged from two days of closed-door discussions with the EU over its alleged failure to fully meet the terms of the antitrust ruling claiming a 'breakthrough' had been reached. The world's biggest software company faces fines of up to €2mn a day for its failure to fully meet provisions that it make data available to rival companies that wish to build products that can interoperate with Microsoft programs. Last month an independent, Microsoft-approved monitoring trustee appointed by the EU described Microsoft's efforts in this respect as 'incomplete, inaccurate and unusable'. ...more

Toshiba settles over the case of defective laptops

The US Justice Department takes on a technology giant. And this time it's not Microsoft. Reuters reports that Toshiba has agreed to pay $23m to the US Government to resolve an allegation that it sold defective laptops to government agencies. ...more

Mozilla welcomes prospect of XP-only IE 7

The Mozilla Foundation is anticipating that Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 release will convince a great many businesses to switch to Firefox. The reason, according to the foundation's Asa Dotzler is that while IE7 will require at least Windows XP, many organisations are happily running Windows 2000 with no reason to change. 'We're excited about Microsoft launching IE 7,' he said, 'it will remind a lot of people that if they want better features they have to spend hundreds of dollars upgrading'. ...more

Virtual Windows on your Mac

Connectix has released Virtual PC 4, the latest version of its PC emulation software for Macs. The new version features improved performance, an enhanced interface and the ability to run multiple operating systems. Virtual PC allows Mac users to run PC applications, access Windows networks and share files with Windows users. ...more