Yuletide technophobia

Dr David Lewis, a psychologist and author of the book Information Overload, has identified a new syndrome that could be affecting technophobes this yuletide. FAT syndrome (Festive Anxiety due to Technology) might just sweep the nation with Boxing Day being the most dangerous time, with people pressurised into trying to understand the new gadgetry that's been given out as presents. A survey commissioned by Comet backs up Dr Lewis' idea with its findings stating that nine out of ten adults believe that children understand technology better than they do. ...more

Microsoft suffers setback in overturning EU antitrust ruling

Microsoft suffered a setback yesterday in its attempts to overturn the EU antitrust ruling against it. On the first day of the appeal hearing at the Court of First Instance, James Flynn, a lawyer representing the anti-Microsoft trade group ECIS, produced internal Microsoft memos that suggested the company had deliberately set out to eliminate RealNetworks from the streaming video market. Reuters reports that the memo suggested to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates that the strategy that had successfully been deployed to 'crush' the Netscape Web browser could also be applied to tackle Real's then dominant position in streaming media. ...more

Googling websites to get slice of ad revenues

Google has combined its 'adsense' contextual ads to its 'Websearch' programme. Web sites who choose to add Google's webwide search to their site will now get a cut of the revenues from the contextual ads shown alongside the search results. Google already had a similar scheme available to its biggest partners including AOL and Amazon, but this is the first time that it has been opened up to everyone. ...more

Orange steals number two spot from BT Cellnet

Orange could well be the UK number two mobile phone operator after adding 830,000 customers in the second quarter. The French-owned company has probably edged ahead of BT Cellnet to become second only to Vodafone, with 11.9 million UK customers. ...more

Universal gives Napster a second look

Universal has suggested it might be willing to talk to Napster on the same day Napster began rolling out its filtering system to catch exchanges of copyright material. The French Vivendi-owned music giant had previously made noises about subscription-based Net-access to its catalogue. At a conference in London, chairman jean-Marie Messier, said that Universal would start licencing music to subscription services being developed by French ISP Wanadoo, Microsoft Network and Napster. ...more