Sun gets set for serving multi-player networked gaming

Ahead of the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Sun and Nokia have announced the release of SNAP Mobile, an application server designed for the needs of networked gaming. Based on Nokia's Scalable Network Application Package (SNAP) middleware and Sun's implementation of Java for mobile devices, it runs on Sun's Solaris operating system. It is specially designed to support the demands of multi-player mobile gaming. ...more

Budgens gives up on Net shopping

UK supermarket chain Budgens will shut down its online service on Monday. The retailer, which has stores throughout the South and Midlands, found that there wasn’t sufficient customer interest to justify a Net service. Budgens will instead concentrate on serving the local community through its own stores and through supplying goods to local retailers who will trade under the name Budgens Local. ...more

iTunes Music Store passes 250 million downloads

Downloads from the iTunes Music Store have passed 250 million, with the daily rate reaching 1.25 million songs. 'When we launched the iTunes Music Store we were hoping to sell a million songs in the first six months - now we're selling over a million songs every day, and we've sold over a quarter billion songs in total,' said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. ...more

IBM offers on-demand super computing to Europe

Montpelier, France is the location of a new IBM Deep Computing Capacity on Demand centre. Only the second such in the world - the other is in Poughkeepsie, New York - the centre is intended to provide supercomputing power on tap. Markets targeted include petroleum and life-science industries, digital animation and financial services. ...more

And also today (9-May-2001), for the record...

Here, in brief, are some of the day's other stories. The war is over Chinese hackers have called off their cyber war against American sites, having defaced - so they claim - 1,000 of their targets. Reuters reports that the group - known as the Honker Union of China - boasted on the Chinese portal Chinabyte that their goal had been now been reached. ...more