Apple fires back at French iTunes revolution

Apple has fired back at the decision of France's National Assembly to open up access to its iTunes catalogue to other players than the market dominant iPod. The draft law approved yesterday has yet to be approved by France's upper house, the Senate, but the decision by the French legislators has caused shock waves across the industry. 'The French implementation of the EU Copyright Directive will result in state-sponsored piracy,' said Apple in a statement. ...more

IPod accessory gets flush

It's soft, strong and made for iPod. The iCarta allows you to 'Enhance your Experience' in the 'rest-room': it's a toilet-roll holder with built in speakers and iPod dock. With two tweeters and woofers for a full audio spectrum, the speakers are described as 'moisture free'. ...more

Microsoft claims Mac Office success shows it does not rely on Windows' dominance

Microsoft did not need to rely on its dominance of the operating system market to deliver successful applications, a company attorney said yesterday as he continued his opening statement to the Iowa court hearing a private class-action lawsuit against the company. David Tulchin told jurors that it was the company's decision to 'bet on the graphical user interface (GUI)' when other software developers continued to develop character-based operating systems and applications, that has underpinned its success. Indeed, it was Microsoft's enthusiastic support of the GUI that led it to develop word processing, spreadsheet and other applications software for the Mac long before many other software developers, he said. ...more

EasyEverything plans to float Internet cafes

The owner of budget airline EasyJet, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, plans to float his EasyEverything chain of Internet cafes. EasyEverything is valued at around ?100m, and has received an injection of ?20m from Hewlett Packard and venture capital firm Apax Partners. The company currently has five cafes in London and a number of outlets across Europe, and will open a cafe with 850 Internet terminals in New York's Time Square in November. ...more

Google steams ahead

Google continues to be the king of search. The runaway success of the company has seen more stellar growth over the past year with revenues rising by three quarters compared with the equivalent quarter last year. In contrast, the main rivals in search and contextual advertising are being left behind with Yahoo!'s share price hit by so-so results and the delay in its new ad software and Microsoft is struggling to keep up with its release schedule. ...more