ISPs to top up revenues on disaster relief schemes

A recent Forrester report on the impact of the war on the Internet predicts ISPs will top up revenues by 'exploiting' disaster relief initiatives. The report suggests that ISPs will get a 'much-needed cash injection' by 'exploiting the billing relationship with subscribers.' This is based on evidence from fund-raising initiatives in the aftermath of 11 September when 'ISPs like AOL helped raise ?150m through online fundraising, of which they took a small cut,' reads the report. ...more

Sun previews its 'Project Mad Hatter' open source system

Sun has been previewing its new forthcoming desktop environment at the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco. Based on open source software, it is described as a low-cost alternative to Solaris and Linux. Dubbed as Project Mad Hatter (do I detect a dig at Red Hat? - Ed), Sun describes it as 'a fully integrated open source-based desktop environment'. ...more

Kodak to herald digital cinemas

Kodak is to unveil a new digital movie projection system at the ShoWest convention in the US. While digital cinema has been talked about for some time, only a handful of theatres in the US have stumped up the $150,000 charge to have a digital projection system. The arrival of Kodak as a major player in the market marks a sea change in the bytes versus celluloid battle. ...more

AOL takes an OpenRide

As part of its long term goal of moving from being an ISP to a web services provider, AOL has introduced a new client which provides access to a range of AOL services while enabling users to go beyond the 'walled garden' approach that has characterised the company's offerings up until now. The new AOL clientnamed OpenRide brings together four major components - the AOL Explorer browser, an IM client, email client and a media centre providing access to radio, videos and other content. Each can be viewed as a separate pane within the main OpenRide client. ...more

Scams on the increase

Don't be taken in by rising scams, warns the DTI Consumer Affairs Minister Melanie Johnson has warned consumers of the growing numbers of scams using text messaging, email and fax. Speaking at the launch of National Consumer Week, she said people should be wary of any offers that seem to good to be true, particularly if you have to dial a premium rate number to avail of the offer. One such mobile phone text message scam, dealt with by telephone regulator ICSTIS (Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services), told the recipient 'I Fancy You', and invited them to ring a premium rate number to find out who the sender was. ...more