Time Warner to pay $510mn fines for AOL indiscretions

AOL accounts facTime Warner has finalised a deal with Federal authorities over fraud allegations against its AOL subsidiary. Under the terms of the deals, Time Warner will pay fines totalling some $510mn and submit to close scrutiny of its AOL accounts for two years. In return, assuming the company behaves itself, the Federal Authorities have promised not to pursue criminal charges against the media giant. ...more

Telewest abandons ADSL plans

Cable company Telewest yesterday announced that it was withdrawing from the local loop unbundling process and will not be providing ADSL services. The company claims that the process, in which they put their equipment into BT local exchanges, would be too costly and it was not prepared to invest the millions of pounds it would take to roll out the service. Analysts have projected that it would take ?800 million from Telewest to provide an ADSL service, a price the company was not prepared to pay. ...more

Dell profit warning shakes markets

Dell Computer, the world's largest manufacturer of PCs, sent technology shares into disarray at the end of last week when it announced a profit warning. The company's share price fell to a six year low when it revealed that earnings would be 30 per cent lower than expected. The former stellar performer blamed 'aggressive pricing in a slowing commercial market worldwide' as new management at HP and Chinese manufacturer Lenovo, which took over IBM's old PC business, step up the competition. ...more

Check for spyware before installing SP2 warns Microsoft

Windows users who install Service Pack 2 should first scan their systems and remove any spyware, according to a Microsoft Executive. Quoting a group product manager, Barry Goff, Associated Press is saying that some computers might lock up when SP2 is installed. It is said that certain spyware already resident on the machine might interfere with the new security features. ...more

xD card reader doubles as 512MB MP3 player

Fujifilm has added a little MP3 player to its range of digital accessories. Based on the company's xD-Picture Card memory card format the device is actually a combined USB memory card reader, pen drive and MP3 player. With xD-Picture Card capacities available from 16MB to 512MB, the device runs on a AAA battery and comes with Roxio software for managing MP3 files. ...more