Freedom2 Surf launches business SDSL services

Freedom2Surf is the latest ISP has begin reselling BT Wholesale's SDSL products to businesses. Prices start at ?225 per month for a 1Mbps bandwidth service and ?292 per month for the 2Mbps service. Both packages have contention ratio options of 1:1 and 5:1, a one-off activation fee of ?499, and a 12 month minimum contract. ...more

Microsoft teams up for virtualisation with XenSource

Microsoft is teaming up with virtualisation open-source company XenSource to develop interoperability between their respective hypervisor products. The collaboration will result in Xen-enabled Linux platforms being run on Microsoft's virtualisation technology in the upcoming version of Windows Server, code-named Longhorn. Microsoft will also offer technical support for Xen-enabled Linux guest operating systems through its standard channels. ...more

Cleaner 5 gets hardware acceleration

Media 100 has announced a PCI card designed to accelerate MPEG-2 encoding with Cleaner 5 by up to 10 times. The Cleaner MPEG SuperCharger provides MPEG encoding customisation, includes preset MPEG encoding and allows for direct export from other video editors. Cleaner 5 is a cross platform application that allows users to capture, author, encode and publish streaming video onto Web sites. ...more

China tests US software to block Skype calls

China has begun testing software from a US company that blocks Skype Internet-based phone calls. In September we reported that China Telecom was looking to block eBay-owned Skype's VoIP service, worried about the threat to its own landline business. Atlanta-based Verso Technologies' NetSpective M-Class software is capable of filtering out both VoIP calls and peer-to-peer traffic, in addition to providing bandwidth and content management tools. ...more

Net-connected schools reach 99 per cent

The National Statistics office releases the latest figures for computer usage in schools. Did you know the average IT spend on secondary schools is ?76,900? That 99 per cent of primary schools are connected to the Net? And that an average of six pupils have to share access to a computer in secondary schools? The National Statistics office has released the latest figures for computer usage in schools. The 'Survey of Information and Communications Technology in Schools 2002' is a statistical bulletin describing the technological state of play in schools as of March 2002. ...more