Shareholder urges Palm to sell out

One of Palm's major investors has reportedly urged the company to put itself up for sale. Mark Nelson, who reportedly owns about eight per cent of the company is said to have written to the board of Palm urging it to 'begin exploring strategic alternatives, including a sale of the company, while Palm is in the ascendant'. Palm, which has moved away from the PDA market in which it made its name and has sold off the Palm OS division, now makes the majority of its revenues through smart phones such as the Treo which now runs on Windows Mobile. ...more

Get a grip, man!

In this age of 128-bit console and games that require more buttons than a shirt factory, it's about time there was a universal controller that can do just about anything. If you are yearning for such a device then your prayers may just be answered in the form of the AlphaGrip - a gadget that can take control of just about anything, from your console to your TV to your PDA. The unit features a multitude of buttons, a standard D-pad, a thumb trackball and a weird kind of touch-typing keyboard on the underside of the controller. ...more

Google sets date for global Developer Day

Open-source luminary Chris DiBona will be taking the stage in London for Google's Developer Day on the last day of May. DiBona is Google's open source programs manager - an important role in the world's biggest search company whose services run on Linux systems. However, the theme for the Developer Day will be Building Blocks for Better Web Applications, with sessions on AJAX, Google Gadgets and Google APIs as well as the latest developments on Google acquisitions, such as Google Earth and SketchUp. ...more

Quark announces CopyDesk

Quark has announced the release of CopyDesk SE, its copy editing accompaniment to XPress. Currently available only in the US, the software will only be released on this side of the Atlantic in "a few more months," once it has been "adapted and reengineered for the European market," according to a Quark spokesperson. CopyDesk features the same text processing tools as XPress, enabling copy fitting and typographic editing to be carried out without the encumbrance of the larger program's graphic features. ...more

Mass-mailing worm Mimail-A all set to burrow across Atlantic

Sophos has issued a full emergency alert regarding a Mimail-A worm. The mass mailing worm has already been detected in the States, as of Friday 1 August, and the concern is that it will spread rapidly in the UK from the beginning of this working week. 'The Mimail worm is getting a second lease of life as UK businesses log on to start a new working week,' said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos Anti-Virus. ...more