Britain has most extensive broadband coverage in G7

The UK now has the most extensive broadband market in the G7 according to a government minister. Quoting a report by telecoms analysts Ovum. Mike O'Brien MP, the E-commerce Minister made his remarks at the 4th ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) conference on E-Commerce in London's Docklands. ...more

Google goes Solar

Google is to make a multimillion dollar investment in solar-powered panels to generate electricity for the Googleplex in California. The company says it will begin installation of 1.6 megawatts of solar photovoltaic panels at our Mountain View campus 'soon'. ...more

MusicMatch service hopes to be match for iTunes

Music management software company MusicMatch has launched its MusicMatch Downloads service, which it hopes will enjoy the same success in the PC market that iTunes has with Macs. Already having some 40 million users as a result of MusicMatch software being bundled with a host of digital music players, the company will be hoping that the relatively lenient licensing rules will tempt a good portion of these to sign up. Like Apple's iTunes, MusicMatch Downloads offers single song purchases for 99 cents from tracks offered by all five major and more than 30 independent record labels. ...more

Headphone styles affect your health

Two separate studies have found that the quality of headphones used with portable music players can have a significant impact on potential damage to hearing from prolonged listening. In one study, Cory Portnuff at the University of Colorado and Brian Fligor at Harvard Medical School discovered that supra-aural headphones - the kind that sit over the ear - produce slightly lower loudness than in-ear and canal headphones at the same volume setting. Their research led them to produce a table of maximum listening times, based on US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) damage-risk criteria. ...more

Novell asserts SCO owns no Unix patents or copyright

In a series of statements that will overshadow SCO's healthy quarterly results announcement today, Novell and SCO have traded stern words, with Novell challenging SCO's assertion that it owns either the copyrights or the patents to the Unix System V operating system. Novell's CEO Jack L Messman claimed in a letter to SCO CEO Darl McBride: 'We believe it unlikely that SCO can demonstrate that it has any ownership interest whatsoever in those copyrights.' He pointed out that SCO's acquisition of Unix System V from Novell in 1995 did not include the copyrights and patents among the assets. ...more