ntl:Telewest businesses untouched by Virgin rebrand

There will be no quadruple play for ntl:Telewest business customers as the company rolls out its Virgin Media consumer rebrand. Although the NTL and Telewest brand names are destined to be consigned to the scrapheap of cable history for consumers, it has emerged that business users will not be migrated to the new operation. Instead, business users will continue to be served by an unchanged ntl:Telewest business division, at least for the moment. ...more

Microsoft meets EU deadline for server documentation

Microsoft has met today's deadline for the submission of revised documentation on server interoperability, the European Commission has confirmed. Potential licensees of the server technology detailed will now evaluate whether the latest documentation contains the necessary information to allow the development of work group server operating system products that are fully interoperable with Microsoft software. The independent Monitoring Trustee, Professor Neil Barrett will also test the documentation in order to verify its accuracy and the commission will decide in due course whether or not Microsoft is in compliance with the requirements of the EU's March 2004 Decision: : that it provides complete and accurate technical documentation on server interface information and make that information available to licensees at a reasonable and non-discriminatory price. ...more

Sun to rent CPU time on server farm

Sun's COO Jonathan Schwartz has outlined a new direction for his company in the form of a cycle farm. Such a farm would rent out CPU time by the hour for a nominal charge - 99 cents for the use of a dual CPU 'node' - meaning that companies with complex computing tasks which only need to be done a few times a year can send that job to the cycle farm, rather than having to lay out for a rarely used server farm of their own. And any spare capacity left over once the job is complete can be sold back to the farm. ...more

Adobe, HP and Kodak endorse new image format

Adobe, Hewlett-Packard and Kodak have announced their endorsement for the new Exif file format for digital images. Currently digital cameras capture images as compressed JPEG files. Exif (Exchangeable Image File Format) adds a series of tags to the standard JPEG header that encodes information such as exposure time, contrast, white balance and colour saturation. ...more

Fujitsu to shed thousands of jobs

The hi-tech downsizing continues with news that Fujitsu is to cut 10 per cent of its workforce. Sixteen thousand jobs are to be shed by the Japanese technology giant as part of a restructuring process, with two thirds of these expected to be outside Japan. The Japanese economy is struggling with a long-standing recession, of course, and the global PC and chip markets are still not providing any relief. ...more