Nasdaq booms in third-ever biggest gain

Technology stocks are back in favour, it seems, as the Nasdaq index rises by its third-biggest gain. Upbeat profit reports Nokia, Microsoft and Sun have more than lifted the gloom generated by the figures from the likes of Apple and Intel and the general pricking of the dot com bubble. After a rush to sell on Wednesday, stocks have now climbed. ...more

No sign of ad upturn for AOL

AOL says it expects any increases in subscription revenues to be offset by a drop in advertising revenues by as much as 50 per cent during 2003. The drop is largely due to pre-booked ads not delivering the revenues first anticipated. This, balanced with the predicted income from new advertising will put revenues for 2003 roughly par with those of 2002, says the company. ...more

Be shows off its Aura

A new range of devices from Be Incorporated could see MP3 and streamed media moving out of the office and into the living room. The Aura specification sees a device at the heart of a home entertainment system that can encode music to MP3 and other formats from analogue and digital sources as well as downloading files from the Internet, via an in-built modem. The system also features the ability to purchase music online and organise all your files into a playlist system. ...more

Citrix acquires Net6 for VoIP potential

Infrastructure access giant Citrix has paid up $50mn (?27mn) for Secure Socket Layer specialist Net6, adding new potential such as voice to its applications and data serving appliances. Citrix sells technology that allows remote access to applications and services over the Internet using IPSec standard security. This requires client software to support the connection. ...more

Firefox hits two million downloads target

Firefox has been downloaded two million times since the preview release of version 1.0 was made available less than two weeks ago. The browser's evangelists at Spread Firefox. ...more