Dreamcast price cuts have hurt Sega

Sega, the Japanese video game maker, has reported a 17.98bn yen ($163 million) net loss for the past half-year. Its troubles have been attributed to the cut in sales price - under pressure from Sony's PS2 - of the Dreamcast game machine. ...more

MSN Music sounds like intelligent radio

Microsoft's Web portal MSN today launched a beta version of its MSN Music site using 'Sounds Like' technology. It's being touted as competition to the MusicNet subscription venture that has also just been launched but, although undoubtedly well timed, MSN Music is nothing more than a set of intelligent radio stations. The 'Sounds Like' technology was bought last year from Mongo Music and it categorizes music stylistically, based on the user's choice of a piece of music or a preferred style, or even mood. ...more

Criminals use tsunami disaster for online scams

Criminals are cashing in on the global effort to raise funds for the tsunami disaster with bogus email and website scams. The National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) says it has received numerous reports of websites purporting to be owned by legitimate charities but which may download a virus onto vulnerable computers. Other scams appear to be variants of the 419 emails that claim to have large inheritance funds to move to the western world, seeking a bank account to which they can be sent. ...more

Mobilexpo 2001 highlight - Siemens wows crowds with SX45

The most impressive device at the Mobilexpo 2001 show was a combination mobile phone and PDA from electronics specialists Siemens. The SX45 is based on Microsoft's PocketPC operating system, is Java compatible and will be able to access the GPRS phone network. The device offers Internet access, allowing the transmission and reception of e-mail on the move and has fax functionality. ...more

AOL takes on the spammers

AOL has taken its fight against spam email to new extremes, with the launching of five separate lawsuits against companies and individuals it alleges are responsible for more than one billion junk emails. The company claims that these emails generated over eight million individual complaints from its members, via AOL 8.0's Report Spam button. ...more