Ofcom says ultrawideband is ready for the limelight

Ultrawideband (UWB) could be worth billions of pounds to the UK economy over the next 15 years according to a report published today by Ofcom. The report recommends that in order to achieve these benefits, the restrictions on UWB need to be the minimum necessary to avoid interference with other devices and says that Ofcom needs to work with the EU to establish Europe-wide standards. Developers of UWB devices see initial applications as being like Bluetooth on steroids being able to transmit large amounts of data around the home, for example, high-definition video transmitted wirelessly from a broadband connection to TVs around the house. ...more

Microsoft completes Sybari acquisition

Microsoft has axed Sybari's support for its Unix and Linux products upon completion of its acquisition. Upon announcing the takeover in February, Microsoft had said that this was its intention and says it will continue to support customers of the Linux and Unix versions of Sybari's Antigen, although it will no longer sell them. 'Customers have told us they want powerful security solutions for the enterprise to help protect their messaging and collaboration servers from viruses, worms and spam,' said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of the Security Business & Technology Unit. ...more

Windows XP unveiled

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates showed off the new XP operating system yesterday at an event held in the Experience Music Project in Seattle. He described it as "The most important Windows release since Windows 95." Gates and Windows exec Jim Allchin previewed some of the new features of the OS, which has cost some $1bn to develop. ...more

Internet expansion planned

The organisation which governs Internet address names has decided to expand the number of top level domains (TLDS). TLDs are the last part of typical Web address. Up to two years ago we made do with the three universal TLDs - . ...more

Music bloggers turn to video

By now the practice has become old hat: an eagerly anticipated album gets distributed and devoured by MP3 bloggers before it ever hits stores. But when Columbia Records released Beyonce's 'B'Day Anthology Video Album' on 3 April, it marked a rare instance of a similar phenomenon happening with a music DVD. A new breed of music bloggers, focused as much on downloadable music videos as on audio files, had obtained clips ripped from an advance version of the video 'album' and were posting them in the iPod-friendly MPEG-4 format. ...more