Internet cements friendships

The Internet is a useful means for cultivating social networks, and also putting them into action at times of needs - this is the main conclusion of a new sociological study carried out by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Not a startling conclusion in itself, but its findings help balance the notions of social isolation that are often used to characterise computer users, people staring alone at computer screens rather than engaging with 'real life' in the world outside. In its latest report, Family, Friends & Community, Pew maintains that the Internet, and email in particular, expand and strengthen the social ties that people maintain in the 'offline' world - that technology strengthens rather than replaces the communications people have with others in their network. ...more

IBM unveils 2.5GHz Power PC

IBM has unveiled a prototype of its next-generation Blade server, running on a Power PC chip at between 1.8 and 2.5GHz. ...more

UK games chart: Rival football franchises fight it out

It's tight at the top of the league with EA Sports's FIFA 2005 and Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer 4 swapping positions, according to this week's ELSPA UK games chart. Only Activision's Tony Hawk's Underground 2 remains steady, at number three. To complete the top five, Star Wars: Battlefront finds more force to climb back up to number four, followed by the next-generation Sims. ...more

Extended DVI with ex*tend*it hub

Macs with DVD video output can now connect to more than one digital monitor or projector via the Gefen ex*tend*it DVI hub. The hub connects to the DVI port on the Mac and duplicates the signal to its two output ports. It also boosts the signal strength enabling DVI devices to be located up to 15m (50 ft) away from the computer. ...more

Cahoot takes credit card prize

Abbey National's Cahoot has been voted the best online credit card by research firm Gomez. Credit card services were judged on overall cost, ease of use, customer confidence, on-site resources and relationship services. The Co-op Bank's Smile got the next highest score while Egg, Marbles, Intelligent Finance and Barclaycard did well. ...more