European Court strikes down passenger information deal

Airlines may find themselves caught in a data sharing dispute that has blown up between the US and EU authorities. The European Court of Justice has ruled that an agreement between the EU and the US to hand over personal data of airline passengers en route to the US is illegal. The deal is part of the global war on terrorism and was demanded by the United States as part of a general tightening of security following the aircraft attacks in the US on September 11th 2001. ...more

LG unveils multi-format players

LG Electronics has announced a new portable music player that is compatible with a number of popular digital music formats. The new device can play tracks that have been encoded in Advanced Music Coding (AAC), Windows Media Audio (WMA) and MP3. AAC is an emerging format first proposed by the MPEG group in 1997, which offers a compression rate 30 per cent higher than MP3. ...more

Microsoft promises legal indemnity for more end-users

Microsoft has taken another jab at Linux, announcing an extension of its IP protection from select corporate customers to end-users. The new agreement will legally indemnify customers using a wide range of its software: Windows Server System (including Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange Server), Microsoft Office System and the Windows client software. Indemnification in software intellectual property has become somewhat synonymous with the storm whipped up by SCO attempting to charge Linux users hundreds of dollars for use of code binaries it claims form part of its intellectual property. ...more

Microsoft and Google fight heats up

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is alleged to have thrown a chair across the room when he heard that a key Windows engineer was going to work with Google. The engineer, Mark Lucovsky, made the claim in a sworn statement to the court that is investigating whether another former Microsoft employee, Kai-Fu Lee, can take up a post at the search engine firm. Currently an injunction prevents Lee from moving to Google. ...more

3G operators 'could miss out on the business market'

3G operators need to start pushing the technology to businesses before WiFi phones get a foothold, according to research group Canalys. In its latest report on the mobile phone market, Canalys says that shipments of 3G phones int eh EMEA region are up 39 per cent in the third quarter to 1.8mn, with a bigger rise expected in the run up to Christmas. ...more