Smashing Pumpkins snub Virgin for MP3

The Smashing Pumpkins is the latest band with a faltering career to put out an album in MP3 format. The US indie band apparently decided to distribute its latest release Machina II: The friends and Enemies of Modern Music digitally, after record company Virgin refused to support a sequel to its original Machina release. The band recorded 25 songs and then asked friends to convert the tracks to MP3 and send them out through Napster, Gnutella and other MP3 distribution channels. ...more

You sound different over the phone

If you think instant language translation is a thing of science fiction movies, then think again, thanks to a new interpretation system launched by Hitachi and Samsung. The free trial version of the automatic Japanese-to-Korean telephone interpretation system was launched on November 14 and is expected to last for two months. Users dial into the service and then speak one of 1,700 model Japanese sentences. ...more

Big Blue is going green

In this eco-friendly day and age, it comes as no surprise that Big Blue should suddenly turn a little green. IBM is launching a scheme in the US to recycle computer equipment. For $29. ...more

Intel backs down on Rambus-only P4

Intel will be bringing out a SDRAM and DDR-compatible version of the Pentium 4 chipset in the autumn, the company said on Monday. The new 845 chipset will only support SDRAM in the first instance, but a DDR version will be out in early 2002 said Intel. At the moment the Pentium 4 is only available with the 850 chipset, which uses the more expensive Rambus memory. ...more

Adobe reaps record revenues

Adobe has announced record revenues for the latest financial quarter, on the back of strong sales of Acrobat and the Creative Suite. The company made $429.5m in the three months ending 3 December 2004, a growth of 20 per cent on the same quarter last year and exceeding the projected target. ...more