Music industry bangs DRM drum

Following the high-profile PR disaster for Sony, and for digital rights management (DRM) in general, towards the end of last year, the music industry has begun a campaign to convince music buyers that DRM is in the best interests of everyone. In an article setting out the record company's case, Dr Richard Gooch, deputy director of Technology for the IFPI, the industry's main international body, argues that while it has an unlovable title and an even more unlovable acronym, digital rights management is the most pressing issue in the digital music scene, and vital to its future. 'DRM is driving new flexible music services for consumers in the digital market,' he writes. ...more

Intel sharpens knife for Dothan price cuts

Intel is expected to cut prices for its Dothan-based Pentium M processors this weekend, the chips that power Centrino-branded notebooks. Four Pentium M models are involved in the cut, according to sources at Taiwan notebook builders: the 755 (2.0GHz), 745 (1. ...more

Maplin sneaks out a digital pen camera for spies

Camera technology gets smaller and smaller, and now there's a webcam that fits in a pen. Dubbed the world's most discreet digital camera, Maplin Electronics has produced a Digital Pen Camera. Not only can this miniature webcam write letters and notes with ink, it also features a PixArt CMOS image sensor, automatic white balance and exposure control, and an RS232-based transmission rate of 115Kbit/sec. ...more

Microsoft takes on Flash with Silverlight

Microsoft has announced the release of Silverlight, its new cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for interactive media and applications on the Internet. Previously called Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E), Silverlight is effectively Microsoft's attempt to tackle the hegemony of Adobe's Flash player, which is installed on more than 90 per cent of the worlds' computers and used by a number of the Net's most popular sites, notably MySpace and YouTube. Silverlight uses Windows Media Video (WMV), Microsoft's implementation of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) VC-1 video standard, to provide immediate compatibility with the millions of hours of content already available on the Web, and adds support for interactive video for a multitude of environments, scaling from mobile devices to full-screen HD. ...more

Good news for Google News - it's official

There was a time when every Google service - and there is a wide variety - was in a perpetual state of beta, but things are changing. Coinciding with the release of the Mac version, the PC release of Google Earth came out of beta this month. And following on from the portal-like Google Desktop, which came out of beta at the end of last year, the well-received news aggregation service, Google News, has now formally entered full service. ...more