Google launches Docs & Spreadsheets

Google is combining its Writely online word processing tool with its Spreadsheets offering to form a new service, the rather prosaically titled Google Docs & Spreadsheets. This latest graduate of the prolific Google Labs is intended to help users share and store documents across the Web. Working with DOC, XLS, ODF, ODS, RTF and CSV formats, there is the familiar button-driven toolbar interface, and collaborators can be invited to access shared data on the basis of email addresses. ...more

Persistence pays for Klez worm

With 13 months of infecting systems, the Klez worm is a tribute to the sheer number of computer users that don't update their antivirus software annually, let alone by the hour. Klez-H, the latest of the Klez stable of Internet worms, heads Sophos's top ten virus list for February, with Klez-E also featuring at number seven. The spate of Lovegate variants, which received much media coverage as the new viruses to avoid, hardly made it into the list at all. ...more

Music industry revenues fall despite anti-file sharing campaigns

The value of global music market declined by about two per cent last year despite high-profile anti-file sharing campaigns and a threefold increase in digital sales. John Kennedy, chairman of the IFPI, the music industry's leading international body, announced the fall at an industry get-together in Cannes, noting that the decline resumes the trend of the past five or so years, after 2004 had seen revenues level out. That the fall came despite the industry claiming that it is winning the war against file sharing 'piracy' had record company bosses accepting that there may be other reasons for people not spending their hard-earned on CDs 'Piracy in all its forms has been the major factor in this reversal but not the only factor,' said Eric Nicoli, chairman of EMI. ...more

Skype signs up for Warner Brothers music

VoIP pioneer Skype has signed a deal with Warner Brothers to offer ringtones featuring the company's roster of best selling artists. The artists include some of the world's biggest names including Madonna who will be leading the charge onto a phone near you with tracks from her latest album 'Confessions on the Dancefloor' Each 30 second sound clip will cost $1.50 and follows similar deals that the music arm of Warner Brothers has made with the mobile phone industry. ...more

Pay per view feature film hits the Net

Miramax Films is to distribute its film, Guinevere, over the Internet as a pay-per-view download on 22 January. The movie, released in theatres in September 1999, will cost $3.49 for a 24-hour 'rental' from Miramax, guineverethemovie. ...more