COMMENT: Happy birthday iMac

RIP Easy PC. Yesterday Apple celebrated the third birthday of its revolutionary iMac computer. Three years ago it was hailed as radical because it combined a 15in monitor with the guts of a 233MHz G3. ...more

US makes legal strike on AllofMP3.com

The US music industry has launched legal action against Russian download site AllofMP3.com. The suit, filed in New York for Arista Records, Warner Bros, Capitol and UMG recordings, alleges the music service's owners Moscow-based Mediaservices sell songs without permission. ...more

Microsoft joins race for world digital library

Microsoft is the latest company to venture into the online book search arena, claiming it will not endure the same legal troubles that rival Google has faced. The software giant has joined an alliance called the Open Content Alliance (OCA), along with Yahoo!, Hewlett-Packard and Adobe, which aims to digitise books, academic materials and other publications for online publication reports Reuters. Microsoft has said that it will avoid copyright issues for now by focusing on literature that is already in the public domain. ...more

ACS launches two new MP3 players

Japanese multimedia specialist ACS Innovations launched two new CD-R-based MP3 players at the recent World PC Expo 2000. The Compro MPCD-455 looks very much like a standard portable CD player, but it can read CD-Rs comprising MP3 files as well as standard audio CDs. The unit comes with AA NiCad batteries and has a handy recharging function. ...more

MSN makes spaces for blogging

Microsoft's MSN service has stepped up its battle with Google with the introduction of a beta version of its own free blogging service in competition to Google's Blogger.com. The new service to be called spaces. ...more