EasyEverything plans to float Internet cafes

The owner of budget airline EasyJet, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, plans to float his EasyEverything chain of Internet cafes. EasyEverything is valued at around ?100m, and has received an injection of ?20m from Hewlett Packard and venture capital firm Apax Partners. The company currently has five cafes in London and a number of outlets across Europe, and will open a cafe with 850 Internet terminals in New York's Time Square in November. ...more

Apple retracts legal bid to reveal leak

Apple has decided not to persist with its attempt to force a handful of Mac 'rumor' websites to reveal the name of an Apple employee who leaked information about unreleased products. The company will not appeal against May's court ruling that the sites - PowerPage and AppleInsider - were protected under Californian law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has backed the sites' commitment to protecting their sources, confirmed in court documents that Apple had decided not to pursue the case. ...more

HP beholds the Zinfandel

That's its new range of Pavilion notebooks, by the way. We reported our first nuggets of info on these just a month ago, but HP have since kindly popped in to show off the latest models. The entry level offering, the zt1121s weighs in at a not too wallet-worrying ?999 including VAT. ...more

May's Microsoft Security Bulletin notifies only one new vulnerability

The May Microsoft Security bulletin contains only one new alert and updates on old ones. The new vulnerability, deemed 'important' on the severity meter, relates to the way versions of Windows XP and Windows Server handle the validation of the Help and Support Center URL. An attacker who exploited the vulnerability could execute code remotely on the target machine and hence take over its operation. ...more

Google branded top by 'branding professional'

Internet firm Google has again pipped Apple to the top spot in a global brand ranking that also sees YouTube and Wikipedia debut in the top five, a survey showed on Friday. The annual survey by online branding magazine brandchannel.com often throws up controversial results, such as in 2004, when Arabic TV station Al Jazeera was named the world's fifth most influential brand. ...more