IDF Fall 2006: Intel gives Microsoft the cold shoulder

Confirming that we live in interesting times, Intel President and CEO Paul Ottelini's opening IDF keynote speech featured an unusual guest. For the first time, a representative of Apple made an appearance at this, the most important event of the week. But representatives of Microsoft and its rival operating system were nowhere to be seen. ...more

AOL upgrades its search

AOL has enhanced its search engine with a several new features to make the search more relevant and easier to use. Whilst retaining Google as the basic back-end database, AOL has added a clipboard feature that enables the searchers to save pages for future reference. It has also included a more natural language search of the kind first seen with Ask Jeeves and has enhanced its human edited snapshot answers facility. ...more

No extension of copyright on sound recordings says government review [updated]

A UK government enquiry will recommend that copyright on sound recordings is not extended beyond the current 50 years' protection. According to the BBC, The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property will 'reject calls from record companies and some artists for copyright to last 95 years'. If the government agrees, then early recordings by Cliff Richard, a prominent campaigner for extending protection, will be in the public domain in 2008. ...more

Bagle-U infects thousands on day one

The mass-mailing Bagle worm twists again, with yet another variant spreading rapidly. According to email security company MessageLabs, the threat of Bagle-U is rated as 'High' - it reports intercepting 6,000 copies already, on the first day of its detection. Infected email will have a blank subject line and no body content, but will have a randomly named . ...more

Steve Case to step down from AOL Time Warner

Steve Case is step down as AOL Time Warner chairman, finally carrying the can for the failing AOL-Time Warner merger. The new company has lost 70 per cent of its value since the merger took place, back in January 2000. The change will be effective as of the company's annual shareholders meeting in May. ...more