iGoogle for personalised homepage

Google has taken a leaf out of Apple's marketing handbook and renamed its Personalised Homepage service as iGoogle. The new moniker had been the company's internal handle for the service, which lets you create a custom Web page comprising search, a calendar, email, news, weather and more. The name 'connotes interactivity, the Internet, and personalisation all at once', according to Sophia Brueckner, an iGoogle software engineer. ...more

Sun and Microsoft slug it out over ODF

Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz has predicted that the Open Document Format will become the default document format of the future. In his blog, Schwartz outlined the importance of an open standards-based document format where its life span is not tied to that of the software used to access it. 'Information always outlives technology,' he wrote. ...more

Intel promises cheap WiFi chips with CMOS system

Intel has developed has developed a new wireless processor that promises cheaper Wi-Fi enabled devices by building a flexible, multimode radio into a chip. The CMOS chip is not unique in supporting the three current wireless standards (802.11a, b and g), but is the first to do so without requiring additional hardware such as power amplifiers and antennae. ...more

Microsoft looks at Windows dominance to give its search engine an edge

A source at Microsoft let slip yesterday that Redmond's work on a home-grown search engine is focussed on using Windows to give it the edge. While stalwarts such as Google and Yahoo! continue to add new services to their search engines, both are keeping a close eye on what Microsoft is brewing up in this arena. It may be difficult to see where Microsoft can take search: after all, as deep as its pockets are, there are only so many pages out there to index, and once you've done that, added in a sponsored links feature and so on you're going to end up with something difficult to distinguish from anything else out there. ...more

AOL targets AIM add-on

An Open Source project to support instant messaging is the target of a legal attack from AOL. phpAIM is a php-based interface to AOL's Instant Messaging service. It's a project hosted by SourceForge. ...more