Iomart sells Madasafish

Scottish ISP Iomart has bailed from the consumer market by selling Madasafish for ?3m. The firm will now concentrate on providing business services. The identity of the investors who bought Madasafish remains unclear, but according to Iomart's financial director David Harrison, they are buying a "viable business". ...more

Skype signs music deal for ringtones

Internet phone company Skype has signed a deal with some of the world's biggest music publishers for the rights to use their original music for ringtones on its telephony service. The company says the agreement means that it can potentially offer hundreds of thousands of tunes to its customer base with prices starting at around one Euro. The agreements are with three major music publishing companies - EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, and Warner/Chappell Music as well as the UK's collecting society for author/publisher rights, the MCPS-PRS Alliance. ...more

Overture adds local sponsored search

Online advertising specialist Overture has added local sponsored search to its range of products. Searchers using parent company Yahoo! as well as MSN, Dogpile, Excite and other web portals in the US will receive local products listings. The company claims that the new services Local Match allows advertisers to target customers right down to a specific neighbourhood. ...more

W3C brings voice-command for the Internet a step closer

The World Wide Web Consortium has published Speech Synthesis Markup Language 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. A fundamental specification in the W3C Speech Interface Framework, SSML 1. ...more

Steve Jobs unlikely to face charges over stock option backdating

The likelihood of Steve Jobs finding himself in the dock over stock options backdating looks slim, after an investigation by the San Jose Mercury News. 'Despite Apple's disclosure that Jobs approved widespread backdating at Apple, there is no evidence he directed the backdating of his own grant or covered it up afterward,' said the paper. The paper says that such close examination reveals not malice, but 'a good-faith, although clumsy, attempt by Apple's board of directors to reward its star chief executive for resurrecting a moribund company. ...more