UK games chart: Hitman shoots its way to top of charts

Hitman: Blood Money (for PC, PS2, X360, Xb) has shot to number one in this week's ELSPA games chart. A new entry from Eidos, the action-shooter game once again features the hired-gun Agent 47, travelling through New Orleans, Los Angeles and Mississippi, and the dirty work of the ICA, which is definitely not the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The long-running previous number one, EA Sports' FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 (PC, PS2, Xbox and Xb360), drops down to two. ...more

News Corp 'displeased' by Google-YouTube deal - WSJ

It seems that News Corp is not best pleased with the way Google snapped up YouTube. According to the Wall Street Journal the company has complained that the search engine did not give the Murdoch organisation an 'opportunity to participate in the sale process' before going ahead. News Corp was already concerned that MySpace was bleeding too much traffic to YouTube and not enough was going to MySpace Video. ...more

DRM sucks up to a quarter of battery life

Digital rights management systems can significantly shorten the battery life of portable music players such as iPods, according to recent tests. The tests found that playing tracks protected by DRM on an iPod reduced battery life by eight per cent. The impact on other players was more marked: an 18 per cent decline on an The Archos Gmini 402 for example and 16 per cent on an iRiver U10 (although that does have a maximum 32-hour battery life when playing MP3s). ...more

EMI boss dispels Net music myths

EMI chief Tony Wadsworth has defended the UK music industry against its seemingly increasing number of critics by attempting to dispel his 'Top 10 myths and misunderstandings'. Writing in the Guardian, Wadsworth says that record companies are not anti-downloading or anti file sharing technologies. He insists that unauthorised file sharing does not promote sales, denies that the slow response to new technologies let in the pirates and defends music pricing. ...more

OSDL comes to Europe

The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has begun a fresh assault on Europe with the appointment of Claude Buellens as director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Buellens arrives at OSDL EMEA with decades of experience in product, engineering and sales and marketing management at the likes of AMC, Apollo Computer, Hewlett-Packard and MC2. Europe already enjoys a strong Open-Source lineage, as the birth place of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and home to mature distributions such as SUSE and Mandriva (aka Mandrake), so the opening of a European office might seem a long time coming. ...more