dabs.com preps for relaunch

Online tech shop dabs.com has spent half a million pounds overhauling its website and developing new search facilities for a relaunch on 12 September. The UK company has brought in search experts Endeca, which powers the search of Walmart and Circuit City sites in the US among others, to offer browsers an easier route to find the most suitable products. ...more

President Bush appoints an anti-piracy tsar

President Bush has appointed an anti-piracy 'tsar' to co-ordinate efforts against global intellectual property theft. Chris Israel, a former Time Warner executive, will be Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement with responsibility for the entire gamut of piracy, from movie swapping on the Internet to counterfeit car parts, according to US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. Top of Israel's list of priorities will be China, where an estimated 90 per cent of movies and music in circulation are illegal copies, although Gutierrez acknowledged that achieving the administration's long-term aim of reducing China's piracy level to zero will not be easy. ...more

Sony blames manufacturing defect for Dell battery recall

Sony has blamed a manufacturing defect for the overheating problem that caused Dell to recall more than four million laptop batteries. The company explained that during manufacture tiny shards of metal were left in the battery cells, some of which caused a short-circuit leading to overheating. It said that shard deposits are not uncommon as they are caused when crimping the tiny rolls of metal that make up the cells. ...more

Cisco goes legal over Apple iPhone name

Apple may be claiming its iPhone is five years' ahead of its time, but it may yet have to change the name due to a trademark issue with Cisco On Tuesday, Apple announced that it was changing its name and dropping the word computer from its title, but a second name change announcement may be on the cards following news that Cisco is suing the company for infringing its iPhone trademark. The loud fanfare accompanying Apple's unveiling of its three-in-one phone marvel is likely to be muted by news that the networking giant has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, citing it did so to "prevent Apple from infringing upon and deliberately copying and using Cisco's registered iPhone trademark." Chief executive Steve Jobs talked in great detail about how its 'iPhone' was going to revolutionise the mobile phone market during his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. ...more

Vaios hit the big screen

It's not Hollywood, but Sony's PCG-GRX300 notebook series has at least one impressive feature: a 16.1in TFT screen with a native resolution of 1,600x1,200. That's UXGA, by the way. ...more