Apple climbs the brand value ladder

Apple has moved up just two places in the annual list of the world's most valuable brand, despite a 16 per cent growth in its value. The company now lies in 41st place in the top 100, compiled by Interbrand, nine places higher than its 2003 position, such is the impact that the iPod has had in the past couple of years. Conversely, Sony - which is arguably the company that has lost most as a result - lost 16 per cent in the past year to drop eight places in the table to 28th. ...more

Orange 'prepping bid for AOL UK'

Orange, the French owned mobile telephone operator, is said to be preparing to bid for AOL's UK operation according to the Daily Telegraph. The ISP, which is owned by the Time Warner media empire, was put up for sale by the company as it seeks to reposition itself away from commodity Internet provision towards a more products and services oriented operation. AOL UK currently has 1. ...more

Apple takes Xserve RAID to 5.6TB

Apple has expanded the capacity of its three Xserve RAID storage configurations, cutting prices in the process. It has also expanded support for heterogeneous environments with certification from Cisco and SUSE Linux and optimised the system to work with its Xsan Storage Area Network file system. Philip Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. ...more

European Parliament approves controversial copyright laws

MEPs yesterday voted to pass a controversial new directive into national law that would lump casual and unintentional copyright infringers in with organised crime. Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said: 'Today the European Parliament has taken an important step forward in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy while keeping the emphasis on catching "the big fish" rather than the "tiddlers" who commit relatively harmless acts like downloading a couple of tracks off the Internet for their own use. Counterfeiting and piracy is on the rise. ...more

There is gold in that there Net

Defying the technology trend of doom, gloom and profit-warnings, the Web portal Yahoo has reported a third-quarter profit. What's more, the figures slightly exceeded analyst expectations. Revenue surpassed $295m, which represents a nine per cent gain from the second quarter. ...more