Wireless licences up for auction again

E-commerce minister Douglas Alexander has announced that the 26 remaining licences for fixed wireless broadband will be auctioned again in September. The licences will retain the reserve price originally set during last year's auction in November and the bidding will be open for a year, after which the Government will review the process. As we reported, interest may be limited to areas where other forms of broadband connection are expensive or simply don't exist, meaning that the Government could still be left with unsold licences this time next year. ...more

First dot-com success for unions?

American media are reporting what they believe to be a first: the unionisation of dot com companies. It seems that a petition to certify union representation for 36 new-technology workers has been filed with the National Labour Relations Board, with a final vote on certifying union representation expected to happen within a month. The companies involved are etown. ...more

Google kick starts Code Jam Europe

Google has opened the registration for this year's European Code Jam programming competition. According to Google, it will 'grab your interest, entice your mind and engage your skills', and there are cash prizes up for grabs. Note that the coding challenge - solving increasingly difficult algorithmic problems within set time periods - is also a thinly disguised recruitment exercise for the search giant, which is on the lookout for technical talent. ...more

Microsoft Word 2003

For a full review of all the components of the Office System see the 20-page special in this month's PC Pro (already with subscribers and on the newsstand from Thursday 23 October) Word, the most heavily used application in the Office suite, has had only a moderate makeover for this 2003 version. The cosmetic enhancements to menus and toolbars improve the overall aesthetic appeal and there are some usability improvements, but the main changes are the XML support, Smart Documents and IRM (Information Rights Management), which will only appeal to corporate IT departments. Word files can now be saved as XML, with all the formatting marked up using the WordML Schema. ...more

Lixxus lines up a pay-as-you-go broadband service

Lixxus has announced a pay-as-you-go broadband service that includes free UK landline calls. For ?9.99 you get a connection up to 2Mbps, rising to a maximum 8Mbps 'very soon', plus a 'plug and play' Internet phone connection with free calls to any UK landline with a geographical dialling code as well as to Internet phone services such as Skype. ...more