Apple Universal deal unlikely

The prospect of Apple buying the Universal Music Group appears to be unlikely, according to reports by both the New York Times and Reuters. News that Apple had held talks with Universal's owner, Vivendi, emerged last week, so unimpressed Wall Street that Apple's share price dropped to a five-year low. The New York Times quotes Michael Nathanson, a music analyst with Sanford Bernstein & Company, who said this suggests, 'that media investors did not take it seriously, because they are so aware of how bad the fundamentals of the music business are. ...more

Matsushita insulates fire-free laptop batteries

Matsushita has begun production of a new lithium-ion battery using a process that it says is free from the problems that forced Sony to recall almost 12 million batteries this year. The company, which better known by the Panasonic name it uses to brand its products, began manufacturing the batteries in test quantities in April; it expects to begin shipping five million per month by the end of the year. Sony's recall was caused by small shards of metal that got trapped in the battery cells during manufacturer could create a short circuit leading to the battery overheating. ...more

VeriSign signs Yahoo!, eBay to identity protection initiative

Security firm VeriSign is introducing a new hardware-based strong authentication system that it hopes will become a universal standard for user identification and prevent identity theft both on an offline. The VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) Network has already signed up as partners some of the biggest online e-commerce organisations including eBay, and its online banking subsidiary PayPal, and Yahoo! The authentication technology is built around the 'Oath' strong authentication system. Memory stick specialist ScanDisk has been recruited to build USB mass-storage and trusted flash devices with the Oath One Time Passwords (OTP) technology built in at no extra cost. ...more

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

Nokia namechecks winning Symbian apps

Nokia announces the winners of the Nokia Mobile Challenge for Symbian Applications... ...more