Douglas Adams dies at 49

The sad news from the weekend is that author Douglas Adams died of a heart attack on Friday at his home in Santa Barbara. Famous for his Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books, which were spawned from a radio show and were later turned into a TV series and computer game, Douglas Adams was also famous for his championing of the Apple Macintosh brand of computers, owning the very first computers to be imported into the country. A new computer game version of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide is currently being developed by Pan Interactive and will be previewed at this week's E3 show in Los Angeles, with a release scheduled for the first quarter of 2002. ...more

Broadband boost sees a new connection every 10 seconds

BT is boasting of an increased broadband take-up - a new connection every ten seconds, according to BT Wholesale. The company has passed the four million mark for wholesale broadband customers. In other words, the service that ISPs resell to end-users. ...more

Europol wants your data

We ain't seen everything yet. You may be forgiven for thinking the EU's Directive on Telecommunications Privacy gave member state governments enough powers to force communications companies to keep data they may want to look at later, but now Europol has drafted a document that would force companies to do this, whether governments agreed or not. The document came to light thanks to civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Centre and Statewatch. ...more

Visual Studio .Net gets LiveSource support

Programming support that has been available for Java will now be available for Microsoft's .Net Framework. Improved design and modelling support is the promise of the 'Together Edition for Microsoft Visual Studio . ...more

Apple takes Power Mac G5 to 2.5GHz

Apple has revamped its Power Mac G5 range, with faster processors and frontside bus speeds and an 8X SuperDrive. The top-of-the-range dual 2.5GHz model is the first Mac ever to have a liquid cooling system to cope with all that extra heat and its 1. ...more