Reuters gets a Second Life

Always a news agency to put its journalists in places where it cover events of historical significance, Reuters has announced it will be opening a news bureau in the virtual world of Second Life. From Wednesday, Reuters will begin reporting text, photo and video news from the outside world for Second Life members and news of Second Life for real world readers. Second Life, populated by avatars who set up homes and businesses on the virtual world, has been one of the fastest growing sites of the last year. ...more

Google launches SMS service in US

Rounding off a week of new announcements, search engine Google has announced that US mobile phone users can get Google via SMS. By texting an SMS message to Google, users can get a reply within a minute. The service is based around the kind of thing you might want on the move. ...more

Movie industry attacks high speed film swapping

The US record and movie industries have stepped up their campaign against illegal file sharers by targeting users of Internet2, the high-speed, next generation version of the Internet used largely by academic institutions. Internet2 users in US colleges developed an application called i2hub which can swap songs in less than 20 seconds, movies in five minutes. According to the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, Dan Glickman, there were around 7,000 users on Monday, one of whom was sharing 328 films. ...more

Wapping footie on the phone

All you sports fans will be whooping for joy at the news of a new football game that can be played via a mobile phone. The new game has been developed by Xilerate, SportingOdds and Xtempus and will be sponsored by Dutch beer brand Amstel Bier. The game is called PhoneGoal and can be played using SMS or WAP on most mobile networks - though if you are on One2One you won't be able to play. ...more

Skype comes clean over China censor

Skype has admitted that its partner in China has filtered text messages, but claims that compliance with local censorship laws is a necessary evil if it is to continue operating in the world's most populous country. Niklas Zennstr?m, chief executive of the Internet telephony company told the Financial Times that its Chinese partner, Tom Online, had censored messages including words and names such as Dalai Lama. 'Tom had implemented a text filter, which is what everyone else in that market is doing,' Zennstr?m said. ...more