UPDATED: Bulldog to launch 20Mbps broadband in the UK

Broadband supplier Bulldog Communications is planning to introduce a 20Mbps ADSL service in the third quarter of this year, CEO Richard Greco revealed to us today. It won't be the only 'broadband first' for Bulldog in 2004, as it is currently testing an 8Mbps service. The company is currently the only 6Mbps provider in the UK. ...more

Sony confirms US online music launch

Sony has confirmed what has long been expected: it will launch a music downloads service this year, which like all its major rivals will be confined to the US. Like Apple's iTunes Music Store, the Sony service will charge $1 per song and have a library of around 500,000 songs. It will also be designed to integrate with Sony's portable players, possibly including those using the new 1GB MiniDisc format. ...more

Monsoon runs out of puff

Clothes retailer Monsoon is to close its e-commerce operations due to lack of demand. The high-street name sells a limited amount of its stock online but admits sales aren't even approaching the level needed to cover operating costs. Monsoon said it is costing ?400,000 a year to run the site and would need ?800,000 a year in sales to justify it. ...more

VIA unveils First IGP Chipset for AMD Athlon 64

Chip developer, VIA Technologies has released the VIA K8M800 chipset, which claims to be the world's first silicon to include an Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) for the AMD Athlon 64 and Opteron processors. The company has included the new S3 Graphics UniChrome Pro to support high definition graphics and video with the aim of enabling a new generation of high performance gaming machines and workstations. The VIA K8M800 is based on the earlier K8T800 chipset. ...more

Microsoft and Google fight heats up

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is alleged to have thrown a chair across the room when he heard that a key Windows engineer was going to work with Google. The engineer, Mark Lucovsky, made the claim in a sworn statement to the court that is investigating whether another former Microsoft employee, Kai-Fu Lee, can take up a post at the search engine firm. Currently an injunction prevents Lee from moving to Google. ...more