Poland puts a spanner in the EU adoption of software patents

A decision about the adoption of software patents as EU legislation was put on hold today with an eleventh hour dash from Poland. A draft proposal that could quite easily have allowed the broad patenting of software was due to be rubber stamped today when the Agricultural Council met today. However, Poland's minister of Information Society and Technology, Wlodzimierz Marcinski, turned up personally to the meeting to request that the proposed Directive be withdrawn from the agenda. ...more

Surge in notebook demand puts pressure on manufacturers

A number of China-based notebook PC plants belonging to Taiwan makers are currently operating 24 hours per day, in order to cope with a surge of orders from leading vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer, according to sources at the makers. An additional factor in meeting demand is a national holiday in China, which this year will see many factories closed between 1-7 October. However, Taiwan notebook makers are paying workers triple-time wages to continue working, the sources said. ...more

Amstrad updates the e-m@iler into a videophone

Consumer electronics company Amstrad is having another crack at making basic email a mass market with the introduction of the E3 version of the e-m@iler. The new version is claimed to be Britain's first videophone with a built in webcam and the ability to swap pictures with camera phones. Whilst the e-m@iler has failed to take the country by storm in the way that its home computers did in the 1980s, Amstrad thinks it is now ahead of the game by incorporating video and tapping into the booming market in camera phones. ...more

Bowie bank backers forced into line

The US Internet bank USABancShares - the backers behind David Bowie's Web bank -has agreed to measures drawn up by the US Federal Reserve to secure its finances. The Federal Reserve has released details of the agreement with the USABancShares, stating "their common goal to restore and maintain the financial soundness" of the bank. According to Reuters, the company will not be able to pay any dividends or incur futher debt without the Reserve's approval. ...more

Sun moves to simplify Java access

Sun has tried to simplify the life of Java developers. Specifically, there is new Web-based programme to ease the development effort involved in updating and upgrading existing Java applications. The website - java. ...more