Bertelsmann cools off the Internet

Media group Bertelsmann's rapid cooling off of its online enterprises might spell the end for its book-selling Bol.com and the Napster music service. Sources have told Reuters that in the wake of CEO Thomas Middelhoff's departure, the newly appointed Gunter Thielen is keen to carve back some of the $125m losses incurred in the second half of last year through its DirectGroup division, which includes the e-commerce enterprises in its ranks. ...more

Lenovo launches own-brand PCs

PC manufacturer Lenovo is to begin selling its own-brand range of PCs and notebooks. This is the first time that the company has put its own label onto its products and represents another step to be considered a world player alongside Dell and HP. The Chinese company has traditionally been an OEM for other brands although its international profile leapt after the acquisition of the IBM PC division in 2004. ...more

British Library to preserve digital collection indefinitely

IBM is developing a multi-million pound database to store the British Library's digital collections indefinitely. The announcement of the British Library Digital Library System (DLS) was made at the Frankfurt Book Fair and means that "preservation metadata" for every digital item, whether book, image or sound, will be constructed and stored so that the item will be retrievable, even if its original format becomes obsolete. Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive at the British Library, says that although today's writers often work on disk rather than paper, there is no guarantee that future equipment will be able to read it. ...more

BPI records music download boom

Music fans switching to legal music downloads are fuelling a digital sales boom, according to new figures from the UK record industry's trade association, the BPI. The digital music market has grown at a rapid rate, with 5.7 million tracks sold in 2004 compared to virtually zero in 2003 and sales continue to snowball. ...more

US Attorney probes Jobs' stock options

The US Attorney's Office in San Francisco has confirmed that it has begun a criminal investigation into stock option grants at Apple. Specifically, prosecutors are examining the 7.5 million options supposedly given to Apple CEO Steve Jobs at a special meeting October 2001. ...more