War to boost online spending

Forrester Research predicts consumer fears will mean shopping from the safety of a computer. The effect of war for the Internet is the subject of the latest research from Forrester. It predicts consumers will spend more time and money online as they clamour for immediate coverage of the war's progress while fear of terrorist retaliation will see them desert shopping centres for the safety of shopping online. ...more

Mobile industry should learn from Apple, says EMI boss

The mobile phone industry should take a leaf out of Apple's book if it wants to exploit the huge potential for mobile music sales, the chief executive of EMI told the CTIA wireless trade show yesterday. Eric Nicoli said that Apple's iPhone has shown what can be done by putting the customer first. 'Apple makes stuff that people love to own,' he said. ...more

Airplane online prices made plain

Following on from last week's news that Lufthansa was to begin its rollout of in-flight broadband access, Boeing has announced the details of charges for its onboard Connexion system that provides the broadband Internet service, and which will apply to all carriers using the system. As well as Lufthansa, Japanese carriers and the Scandinavian SAS are also pursuing the service. As we reported, Lufthansa will be officially beginning its Connexion-based service in April, with two credit card-based payment options. ...more

Intel names price for gamers' Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor

Intel has official released its souped-up version of the Pentium 4 processor, aimed specifically at gamers. Costing $925, the snappily-titled 'Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading technology Extreme Edition' (P4 HT EE), clocks in at 3.2GHz and features extra on-die cache. ...more

Truant texting gets government backing

The government is giving a helping hand to schools with a bad truancy problem. It plans to give them cash to implement a system that will text, e-mail or call parents automatically if their child doesn't turn up. Around 400 of the worst affected will be given funding for the new text alert system, which links into class registers to monitor unauthorised absences and reacts accordingly. ...more