Yahoo! launches music downloads service

The rapidly expanding Internet portal Yahoo! is set to take on iTunes and Napster with its own music subscription service. The company has announced a beta version of the Yahoo! Music Unlimited service from today. As part of the launch, US subscribers are offered a week's free subscription to the service that claims to have more than one million tracks encoded at 192Kbs available to download and play. ...more

ODF guardedly welcomes Microsoft's Office XML move

ODF supporters have guardedly welcomed Microsoft's move to participate in an open-source project to make Microsoft's Office Open XML compatible with the ODF format. Sun Microsystems' Chief Open Source Officer Simon Phipps said he was 'delighted' but ultimately thought Microsoft should bite the bullet and 'engage with the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee, which they have long been free and able to do'. But he was sceptical over Microsoft's efforts and intentions. ...more

Michelin Red Guide for your PDA

The famous hotel- and restaurant-rating Michelin Red Guide is now available for all the major PDA devices. Up to date for 2001, the Red Guide for France contains more than 13,500 hotels and restaurants, and the Europe Guide contains more than 10,000 addresses in 110 different major European cities in over 20 countries. Establishments are rated on a scale of up to three stars, with special notation included to indicate "local delights" or good value for money. ...more

Vista's OS X similarities could encourage switching - analysts

Microsoft Vista's 'uncanny' resemblance to OS X could backfire on Microsoft by making the switch from PC to Mac comparable to upgrading from Windows XP, according to analysts at JMP Securities. 'We believe that the fact that Vista is designed to be much like Apple's OS X will, in the consumer's mind, make the transition from using XP to Vista very comparable to making the transition from XP to Tiger,' the investment banker said. And the effect could be exaggerated once Apple replaces Tiger, the current version of OS X, with Leopard in the spring of 2007. ...more

Freeloader.com faces closure

A favourite gaming site, Freeloader.com, is to face closure after Pure Entertainment Games revealed that it could not find enough international advertisers. The Web site, for those of you who haven't paid a visit to Freeloader. ...more