Google snaps up photo geotagging website

Google has bought a Spanish community photos website that links photographs to the precise geographical location that they were taken - a process known as geotagging. Google Earth already displays images from the Panoramio - its photos have been a default layer in Google Earth since the beginning of the year - using location data entered by the site's users. The site also provides an API that enables web developers to embed its functionality into their own websites. ...more

Microsoft buckles under EU pressure

In its stand-off with the European Union, Microsoft seems to have blinked first. Following threats of fines of up to €2 million a day for non compliance, Microsoft is to license all the Windows Server source code for the technologies covered by the European Commission's Decision of March 2004. Under that ruling, the European Union had decreed that Microsoft had kept certain aspects of Windows Server code to its own programmers so that, for example, Microsoft Office applications performed better than those of rival vendors. ...more

Intel forms Apple transition team

Intel has formed a team to handle Apple's transition to its processors next year. The group comprises engineers and sales staff and parallels similar teams that deal with Intel's other major clients. The company would not give details. ...more

Swedes top IT infrastructure league

Sweden emerges top of the table for the latest survey of IT-aware countries. The Information Society Index study - carried out last week by the analysts International Data Corporation (IDC) - ranks countries by their infrastructure for information technology. Sweden was top in last year's survey, also, and only the presence of the US in fourth place interrupts the grouping of our Scandinavian cousins. ...more

PC markets to grow 25 per cent over six years

Established PC markets will grow just 25 per cent over the next six years, according to Forrester Research. The current global figure for the number of personal computers is pegged at around 575mn, and established markets such as the US and Europe will not add more than 150mn to that figure by the end of the decade. Emerging markets however are set to explode and more than make up for the stagnant waters of established territories. ...more