Microsoft to wage massive advertising campaign for Windows XP

Microsoft has launched one of its biggest ever advertising campaigns for Windows XP. Billed as the 'Start Something' campaign, the promotion of Microsoft's three-year-old PC operating system will run for 15 months - taking it into July 2006 - across the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and India. This would appear to put any launch date for XP's successor Longhorn well into the back end of that year. ...more

UK games chart: Brian Lara tops the batting charts

Brian Lara and his International Cricket 2005 tops this week's ELSPA UK games chart. In its second week in the top twenty, Codemaster's cricket game for the PC, PS2 and Xbox knocks Madagascar back a place. The multi-format movie spin-off slips down to number two, while another Activision movie spin-off, Fantastic 4 - the multi-format comic book hero game - stays put at number three. ...more

Yahoo! buys Konfabulator

Yahoo! has bought Konfabulator, the software that brought widgets to the Mac and latterly to Windows. Apple has since developed its own widget environment, Dashboard, and integrated it into the latest version of OS X. It was assumed that Konfabulator would quietly die; instead the developers brought out a Windows version good enough to attract the attention of the Internet search giant. ...more

BT and BSkyB grab Premiership rights

BT has announced it has won rights to show Premiership matches throughout the 2007-8, 2008-9 and 2009-10 seasons. In a joint bid with BSkyB, the companies will have access to 242 matches each season with the rights to broadcast them on 'near-live'. Matches will be available on-demand from 10pm on the day of a given match and for another 50 hours on a pay per view basis. ...more

Mozilla suite gets security overhaul

Mozilla has released the latest, security-focused update to its namesake Internet software suite and its standalone email client. Mozilla 1.7. ...more