EasyCruise auctions dock at eBay

easyCruise and eBay are linking up to encourage online bidders to choose a cruise. The deal between the two brands will allow customers to start bidding at just ?1 or hit the 'buy it now' price from ?30 per person for a two-night trip. 'Our primary business has always come via our internet site, easyCruise. ...more

Yahoo! releases new Messenger

Yahoo! is to formally unveil the latest version of its instant messenger communications applet today. The latest version of of Yahoo Messenger which the company released as a beta a month ago features 'audibles' - kind of audio equivalents of emoticons, which are bound to annoy offices everywhere - and avatars. The service also offers such things as Launchcast radio, photo sharing and address book. ...more

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

HP Goes beyond the Superdome

Hewlett-Packard has launched its most powerful server, aimed at helping businesses cope with the heavy demand of e-commerce. HP claims that the new, refrigerator-sized HP 9000 Superdome server offers up to four times the performance of competing systems from IBM and Compaq, and runs at twice the speed of HP's current fastest offering - the V-Class server. The Superdome is designed to cope with heavy-duty tasks such as running business websites and corporate databases. ...more

Apple, Dell, HP and Lenovo to talk lithium-ion battery standards

Four of the leading laptop makers are to meet to discuss the formation of manufacturing standards for lithium-ion batteries. Apple, Dell, HP and Lenovo hope to have agreed a standard by July 2007 that will prevent the kind of problems that recently led to Dell having to recall more than four million Sony-made batteries. Apple has also had to replace batteries in the past, having recalled 128,000 in 2005. ...more