EU regs force Apple to pull products

Apple will stop European sales of several products at the end of this week in order to comply with the EU's Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS) directive, AppleInsider reports. The website says that the iSight, AirPort Base Station With Modem, AirPort Base Station Power Over Ethernet and Antenna, iPod shuffle External Battery Pack and the eMac will be discontinued. All are said to contain banned substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and brominated flame retardants. ...more

Lasers point way to high-speed links

A 30 year old technology could be the next big thing in high volume data transfer technologies, with the emergence of commercially viable Free Space Optics. Free Space Optics (FSO) uses lasers to transfer data at speeds as high as 2.5Gb/sec. ...more

BlackBerry talks to the PABX

Research in Motion's (RIM) new BlackBerry Mobile Voice System will connect its business handhelds to a PABX. This is designed to give mobile users full access to PABX features through a straightforward interface, on a device that already has their address book. For users, RIM Co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis sees the simplicity as very appealing, but for businesses the security is equally important. ...more

Oracle stock takes a knock

Oracle's surprise announcement on Friday that it would miss expectations for its financial first quarter hit the company's stock value. The heavy trading that resulted from the announcement saw Oracle shares fall 20 per cent. It was recorded as the third most actively traded stock ever on the NASDAQ share index. ...more

Hip directors lead BMW Net film project

BMW has fully embraced the world of multimedia, with a series of films on its site featuring British actor Clive Owen. The Croupier star gets to play a BMW driver in five films, each lasting around five minutes. BMW has managed to procure the talents of hip directors Guy Ritchie, Ang Lee, John Frankenheimer, Wong Kar-Wai and Alejandro Gonz?lez I??rritu for the project. ...more