Ringtones are the new Napster

It seems the craze for downloading illicit ringtones for your mobile phone could be costing the music industry $1 million. While you're getting a laugh out of the latest pop tune alerting you to a mobile phone call, a poor musician is counting the lost pennies in their multi-million mansion and some record executive doesn't know where his next fat cat lunch is coming from. But seriously folks, a new study from Envisional, the UK-based Internet monitoring company, has found that while some Web sites charge for these customised tunes, very rarely do any royalties get back to the record companies that own the copyright. ...more

Linux company Mandrake remade as Mandriva

French Linux company Mandrake has changed its name following its acquisition of Conectiva - neatly side-stepping an ongoing trademark dispute. The company's new name is Mandriva, and its product line and web addresses have all been changed to reflect this. Its logo remains the same shooting star motif. ...more

Dell eyes market share for consumer notebooks

The recent launch of the Dell Inspiron XPS notebook computer highlights Dell's determination to expand its share in the world's desktop replacement notebook market, according market observers in Taiwan. The new model, designed especially for gaming, will be crucial to Dell's efforts to sell more notebooks into the consumer market this year. The Dell Inspiron XPS employs an 800MHz front-side bus (FSB) with 512MB of dual-channel DDR SDRAM and is the world's first notebook to use Intel's latest desktop-use 3. ...more

BPI rejects CD Wow's human error defence

The BPI has rejected CD Wow's claim that the 'human error' that led it to sell 33 CD titles in breach of copyright is an 'unfortunate mistake'. The UK music industry trade organisation's general counsel Roz Groome told the High Court that these errors are more than coincidence. 'We believe that the level of human errors at CD Wow can lead to no other conclusion than that CD Wow has operated in contempt of court and has undertaken very significant breaches of copyright,' Groome said. ...more

Good news for Google News - it's official

There was a time when every Google service - and there is a wide variety - was in a perpetual state of beta, but things are changing. Coinciding with the release of the Mac version, the PC release of Google Earth came out of beta this month. And following on from the portal-like Google Desktop, which came out of beta at the end of last year, the well-received news aggregation service, Google News, has now formally entered full service. ...more