Commons Committee warns of risks to E-government

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has warned the Government that its plans to provide all its services online by 31 December 2005 is at risk. The danger is that the public will not use the services unless they 'see real benefits in doing so'. The Committee says in its latest report that the government has committed some ?10 billion on 100 major IT projects for providing services as diverse as applying for a fishing licence to filling in tax returns. ...more

Samsung puts PalmOS 5 on a handset

Samsung announces the SGH-i500, the world's first phone to use Palm's new OS 5 platform. Samsung is exhibiting the SGH-i500 phone at CeBIT in Hanover, Germany, prior to a pan-European release slated for late summer. The clamshell product includes a tri-band 900/1800/1900 GSM radio and GPRS data capabilities. ...more

Yahoo! pushes Panama search advertising into Europe

Following its debut in the States, Yahoo! has announced the UK and European launch of Panama, its new sponsored search advertising platform. According to Yahoo!, it offers advertisers improvements such as the ability to rotate different ads through the system to find the most effective ad mix, ad budgeting based on desired advertising outcomes and a way to test different keyword search terms for advertising effectiveness and geographic targeting. The search marketing software system, known by the code name Panama, has been available since October last year to existing Yahoo! customers in the US, and was expanded to new US customers in December of last year. ...more

Sober harvests child porn confession

A German child porn offender has handed himself in to the police after receiving an email sent by the Sober worm, which claimed to have been tracking the online activities of the recipient. The 20-year-old is now subject to criminal procedures after police searched his computer and found images of child porn as well as evidence that such images had been sent via email. The German Paderborn police said the effect of the Sober worm has additionally 'helped police with the clearing-up of several sexual crimes'. ...more

Thunderbird 1.5 reaches RC1

Mozilla has announced the availability of the first release candidate version of its next Thunderbird email client. Thunderbird 1.5 includes: sort address autocomplete results by how often you send e-mail to each recipient; spelling checking as you type; Search Folders that can be saved and searched across multiple accounts; a built-in phishing detector; podcasting and other RSS improvements; deleting attachments from messages; integration with server side spam filtering; reply and forward actions for message filters; Kerberos Authentication; auto save as draft for mail composition; message ageing; filters for global inbox; improvements to product usability, including redesigned options interface, and SMTP server management; and many security enhancements. ...more