W3C advances audiovisual presentation standard

W3C has announced the advancement of the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.1) to Candidate Recommendation. SMIL (pronounced smile) enables simple authoring of interactive audiovisual presentations. ...more

Judge finds DVD X Copy breaches DMCA

A Californian court has sided with the movie industry in a ruling involving 321 Studios, the maker of DVD backup software. The federal court found in favour of MGM STUDIOS, which is leading the case, that 321's software put it in breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The court ignored a claim for the 'fair use' of the software in making backups. ...more

Ofcom finds 118 numbers getting cheaper and more accurate

The deregulation of the directory inquiries service and the replacement of the old BT 192 service with 118 numbers is working, according to OfCom. In a survey of 118 numbers, the watchdog claims that 87 per cent of requests for numbers were accurate and that half the providers charge less than 40p to provide a single number. Researchers made mystery shopping calls to the top 30 directory enquiries providers who now account for 95 per cent of the market. ...more

Off the top and bottom, for Intel and AMD cuts

Intel has announced processor price cuts across the top end of its processor range by as much as ?110. For the record, the 2Ghz P4 drops 29 per cent from $562 to $401, the 1.9Ghz model drops 27 per cent form $375 to $273 and the 1. ...more

Seagate delivers Momentus encrypted laptop disk drives

Seagate is shipping its fully-encrypted 2.5-inch hard drive, two years after its original announcement. The disks, available in 80, 120 and 160GB capacities, are fully encrypted, using hardware-based AES encryption. ...more