Analysts see no threat to iTunes from Napster's new subscription service

Napster is claiming its Napster To Go service 'will change the music industry forever,' according to Chris Gorge, Napster chairman and CEO. =However, research group Forrester expects the service to herald a more prosaic shift. Paul Jackson, principle analyst at Forrester said that he expects, 'subscription services will make a slight comeback', but added the caveat that 'they won't replace per-track services. ...more

Sony fixes up Vaios with DVD/CD-RW drives

The notebook wars are hotting up now that Sony has added a DVD-Rom/CD-RW drive to its Vaio range. Four new models will come with the drives: the PCG-FX190, PCG-FX190K, PCG-FX170 and PCG-FX170K. The FX190 models will have an 850MHz Speedstep PIII processor and 30Gb hard drive while the FX170 models will have a 800MHz PIII with a 20Gb hard drive. ...more

Wave bye-bye to small ISPs

There's no longer any room for the small-fry in the UK Internet access market, according to analyst Forrester Research. In its report, entitled UK Virtual ISPs: RIP, Forrester predicts that a handful of large telecommunications companies will dominate the Internet service provider market within a few years. Its research points to the demise of the Virtual ISP (VISP) model employed by the majority of UK service providers, and is based in part on recent aggressive moves by the likes of BT and ntl. ...more

French National Library head rails against Google

The President of the National Library of France is a worried man. Jean-Christmas Jeanneney,the President of the National Library of France (BNF), recently wrote an article in Le Monde alerting France and Europe to the dangers of the Google Print project. Jeanneney says that by concentrating on making overwhelmingly English-language books available through the Google Print project, the Internet's culture would be skewed towards an Anglo-Saxon cultural view of the world. ...more

Google snaps up photo geotagging website

Google has bought a Spanish community photos website that links photographs to the precise geographical location that they were taken - a process known as geotagging. Google Earth already displays images from the Panoramio - its photos have been a default layer in Google Earth since the beginning of the year - using location data entered by the site's users. The site also provides an API that enables web developers to embed its functionality into their own websites. ...more