Artists rebel over Sony's iTMS stance

Artists signed to Sony in Japan are rebelling against their label's decision not to make their music available through iTunes Music Store. At least one contacted Apple directly in order to get their tunes onto the downloads service, which after just a few days of operating became the largest in the country, and a musicians' management agency has said it is interested in talking to Apple in defiance of the label. Among the rebels is rock musician Motoharu Sano. ...more

AOL/Time Warner in talks to buy Linux distributor

If the Red Hat fits, the world's largest media company may wear it. Media giant AOL/Time Warner is reportedly in negotiations to acquire the Linux distributor Red Hat, according to sources quoted in the Washington Post. Sources told the paper that the media giant may use the operating system to make inroads within Microsoft's desktop OS market, possibly with AOL software opening a Linux environment within Windows itself. ...more

Finns give music back to air guitarists

Students in Finland have written a computer program that can translate the hand and finger movements of an air guitarist into real music. The Virtual Air Guitar Project at the Helsinki University of Technology uses a video camera to track the movements of special gloves worn by the player. The three students, Aki Kanerva, Juha Laitinen and Teemu M?ki-Patola, created a library of guitar sounds based on the pentatonic minor scale commonly used for rock guitar solos. ...more

Mozilla issues fixes for Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey

Mozilla has released updated versions of Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey that address several critical security vulnerabilities. Firefox 1.5. ...more

David Bowie and BBC scoop Webby awards

David Bowie, the BBC and Manchester United are among the British winners at the 11th annual Webby Awards. In a sign of the internet industry's return to rude health the 100-plus awards - the so-called internet Oscars - were presented in a glittering ceremony in New York. It's a far cry from the days of the dotcom crash when the awards were dished out in a low-key virtual ceremony. ...more