Microsoft takes Advantage

Microsoft has taken its Windows Genuine Advantage programme out of beta and launched it as version 1.0. The programme, which 'offers' updates and other free software to those customers who register their operating system is now rolled out worldwide. ...more

Piracy of audio CDs rises by 25 per cent

Forget the threat of Napster, it seems that the real threat to the music industry still comes from the professional pirates who duplicate CDs. According to the Music Piracy Report 2001 from the IFPI, the sale of pirate discs rose from 510 million units in 1999 to an estimated 640 million units in 2000. It's believed that the growing number of illegal CD-R copying plants has been behind the proliferation of cheap copies. ...more

Publishers find technology agreement with search engines

A coalition of international media associations has announced a new initiative designed to avoid future clashes between Internet search engines and newspaper, periodical, magazine and book publishers that make their content available online. The World Association of Newspapers, European Publishers Council, International Publishers Association and European Newspaper Publishers' Association are backing ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol), an automated system that allows online publishers to provide information about access to and use of their content. The information is provided in a form that can be recognised and interpreted by search engine crawlers and details the terms under which content can be used. ...more

New Mozilla beta released

The latest version version of the Mozilla open source Web browser is now available. Mozilla 1.4b incorporates just a few changes from its predecessor, including: the ability to specify 'blank page', 'home page' or 'last page visited' for each of first window, new window and new tab; the ability to specify default font, size and colour for HTML mail compose; and more flexible image blocking and disabling with 'view image' option to see blocked or not loaded images. ...more

THUS pulls plug on 118 service

ISP Thus plc is to close its 118 directory of enquiries service. The company says this is in response to a poor report by Oftel that claimed that only 61 per cent of calls to the Thus 118 service were answered correctly on business number enquiries and only 33 per cent of home numbers. Thus, which didn't take part in the advertising spree which accompanied the launch of 118 services this summer, says it handled around 25,000 calls a month. ...more