Google index tops six billion

Google's index of the Web now includes more than six billion items, the world's largest collection of online information, the company announced last night. Having grown largely by word of mouth from nothing to account for around a third of all Internet searches, Google has now indexed 4.28 billion Web pages, 880 million images, 845 million Usenet messages plus a growing collection of book-related information pages. ...more

Telephone numbers become your domain

Telcordia Technologies and VeriSign Global Registry Services are working on the first large-scale test of an emerging technology called ENUM that integrates telephone numbers with Internet domain names. They will jointly develop an ENUM directory and carry out an open system trial based on the proposed ENUM standard (it is currently being considered as a standard by the Internet Engineering Task Force). ENUM lets an end user type a telephone number into his Web browser and pull up the corresponding email address, URL or IP address. ...more

Judge denies Novell's attempt to dismiss SCO suit

The case revolves around SCO's claims that it owns the Unix operating system, which previous owner Novell publicly disputed, resulting in SCO slapping a 'Slander of Title' lawsuit upon the company. Novell argued that legal privileges allowed it to make such statements, in the interest of the Linux community that was being targeted by SCO, which is looking to charge royalty payments for use of what it considered its wrongfully included intellectual property. It seems that there are only two conditions by which SCO can successfully argue that Novell doesn't have such privileges. ...more

ISP offers 24Mbps broadband

A fledgling ISP is aiming to be the first in the UK to offer broadband speeds of up to 24Mbps. Be will begin its local loop unbundling (LLU) implementation in London before expanding its operations to the rest of the UK. Utilising ADSL2+ technology, its own purpose-built, Ethernet-based network, the ISP claims that it will be able to keep costs 'remarkably low'. ...more

Sony on a chip

Joint venture to produce system-on-a-chip processors tailored to Sony's application requirements. IBM has signed multi-year agreements to license out its semiconductor technologies to Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment and Toshiba to develop high performance, low-power chips. IBM's expertise with process technologies, including silicon-on-insulator transistors and copper wires, will push the scale down to 50nanometres, less than half that used by Intel, which recently moved to a 0. ...more