Windows Media 9 garners European support

Reality checks in for entertainment over IP. At this year's International Broadcasting Convention held in Amsterdam, Microsoft's Windows Media 9 Series technologies made a big splash. A number of broadcast companies showed their support for WM9, which claims to offer broadcast quality video streaming over IP using half the bit-rate of MPEG-4, and one third that of MPEG-2 codecs. ...more

Handspring Visor flips its lid

Handheld organisers are great and most of them come with a hard cover to protect them from knocks and scratches. Unfortunately, the fantastic Handspring Visor is the vulnerable exception. But that's all changed with the Tactilis range of covers for the Visor. ...more

EU turns its attention to music copyright

Undeterred by the defeat of the EU software patents directive, Europe is stepping back into the murky world of copyright enforcement - this time covering music, films and other digitised content. The European Commission has published a study on the workings of European copyright. It says there is a need to harmonise the various copyright mechanisms throughout Europe so that new services do not need to clear copyright hurdles in every one of the 25 member states. ...more

AMD slashes Athlon XP prices

Along with the launch of the Opteron 64-bit processor AMD has rejigged its processor pricing. The desktop Athlon XP range has seen the largest price cuts, but mobile processors and the MP server offerings are also reduced. Leading the way is a 44 per cent cut for the top-of-the-range Athlon XP 3000+, down from $588 to $325. ...more

Next Mozilla incarnation speeds browsing

The Mozilla organisation has announced the availability of version 0.1 of its Phoenix browser, which is claimed to start up in half the time of the current Mozilla 1.1 browser and Netscape. ...more