eBay launches Express marketplace

Auction site eBay has officially thrown open the doors to its fixed price marketplace to be known as eBay Express. Although eBay has featured the 'Buy It Now' button on its lists of items for sale for some years now, eBay Express puts all of the fixed price non-auction items in one place to make it easier for customers to shop immediately rather than wait to see if their bid has been successful. Because eBay is now putting all of its merchants in one place, the site can, for the first time provide a shopping trolley for customers to browse around and purchase altogether at the check out. ...more

Analysis: Apple's musical income pleases analysts

One significant statistic was largely missed when Apple announced its financial results last week: income from its music and iPod business now makes up almost half of the company's total revenue. Despite what some described as disappointing iPod sales of 8.1 million - disappointing enough to reflect a 32 per cent year-on-year increase - sales of the portable music players, added to income from the iTunes Music Store and from sales of iPod accessories totalled almost $2bn, 45 per cent of the quarterly turnover. ...more

Google launches competition for British doodle

What does it mean to be British? It is a question asked by many, including most recently Jeremy Paxman and Gordon Brown, but now Google wants to know, too. The graphics that adorn the Google homepage have become a familiar landmark on the Web, and now UK school children are being invited to submit a 'homepage doodle' conveying what it means to be British. A Google panel will pick the top thirty entries, which will then be voted on by UK Google users in October to select three finalists. ...more

HP launches Itanium blade server

HP is offering a double first with its new Integrity BL60p blade server. The new server is not only the first HP blade to run Unix, but also the first to run on the Intel Itanium 2 processor. Running HP-UX 11i, HP's own version of Unix, the BL60p is said to promise seamless integration with those organisations whose infrastructure is Unix based. ...more

Subscription software?

IBM's Global Services unit has launched its Linux Virtual Services to the world. This is its managed hosting facilities where customers can pay for capacity on-demand to run their Linux applications. For the equivalent of $300 per month for each 'service unit', IBM plans to sell the services on the strength that customers only pay for what they need, rather than shelling out for hardware, software and management services capable of coping with any peak condition imaginable. ...more