iPod joins fashion

Apple's iPod may already be the smartest portable music player around, but its place amongst the elite of the fashion world has been cemented by Christian Dior and its designer Hedi Slimane. Style.com reports that Slimane was driven to design the case as he had nowhere suitable to keep his own iPod - which, to his credit, is packed with tunes from The Smiths, Blondie and The Clash. ...more

IBM,HP, Sun, Intel to promote grid computing

Several of the world's largest server manufacturers are joining together to develop better technologies to build grid networks. Formed out of the Globus Alliance, the Globus Consortium will seek to apply the principles of grid computng to the commercial world. The companies so far named as part of the Consortium are IBM, Sun, Hewlett Packard and Intel. ...more

nVidia Go-es mobile

nVidia has announced availability of its power-saving GeForce 4 460 Go graphics chip for notebooks. The power-saving technology comes in the form of the Scrooge-like PowerMizer - able to dynamically switch voltage and frequency to optimise power consumption and takes into account the work share across the GPU and the main CPU of the notebook. Other features include high performance 3D engine, dedicated video processing engine and efficient memory architecture. ...more

Skype upgrades service; Vonage launches in the UK

Skype has announced version 1.1 of its Internet telephony service, adding new cosmetic flourishes and improved instant messaging features to put it better placed compared with other messaging rivals. While Skype had always touted its voice service as its key feature, critics pointed to its rather spartan instant messaging functions compared with rivals. ...more

British government backs software patents

A government Minister yesterday maintained that technology patents must extend to software to protect the industry. At the public debate, Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science and Innovation answered critics over a proposed European Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. He told the audience how it would effect patent law in the UK, and what that would mean to software developers and the open source movement. ...more