Netscape updated

Netscape has updated its eponymous Web browser. The apparently minor update has four new features: control over pop-up windows, tab grouping, AOL Mail and improved security Pop-up window controls let you suppress pop-up ads. The home page group feature lets you automatically open several of your favorite pages as tabs when starting Netscape. ...more

Amazon the Napster of publishing?

The US Authors Guild takes against online second-hand sales. Remember the woeful tales of Napster being the conduit for the swapping of pre-enjoyed tunes and the fraught antics of music publishers trying to scrape back those royalties? Well something similar may be about to take place over Amazon's practice of selling used copies of books from the same page as it sells them new. A US trade group, the Authors Guild, has emailed its 8,200 members, advising them to cut any links to the bookseller's site from their own Web sites. ...more

Which? falls foul of credit card Web fiasco

Cancel your cards now, if you've bought TaxCalc online. The Consumers' Association is warning customers to cancel their credit cards if they have bought Which? TaxCalc from its Web site. The advice follows revelations that 2,700 customers' credit card details were inadvertently published online. ...more

Apple secures patent on music and video downloading

Apple could reap revenues from every song and video downloaded over the Internet after securing a 1996 patent. The company has reached an out of court settlement with the patent's original holder, an unnamed Vermont 'inventor' of a system comprising desktop computer holding multiple songs with an interface allowing a hotel guest to select three songs and play them on an electric grand piano. The inventor's lawyer, Michael Starkweather, claims that he spotted the potential in the patent and extended and redefined it to cover music and video downloading on a much larger scale. ...more

Spring IDF 2006: Wireless to go global

Intel has launched seamless networking at its spring developers' forum, which it hopes will make it easier for wireless users to roam between different wireless networks. Using the open International Roaming Access Protocols (IRAP), seamless roaming will use a single billing account and let users move from mobile to Wi-Fi networks (and WiMax when it's available) without having to re-authenticate with different usernames and passwords. 'For mere mortal users we have to make access to wireless easier,' said Kevin Kahn, director of Intel's communications labs. ...more