Comment: Big brother's little secrets

Government monitoring through technology gets a lot of flack, but should it be dismissed out of hand? The problem with big brothers is that when they get involved, they're bullies. When they take a back seat, they're aloof and superior. Whether you're getting told not to play near the road, being 'grassed up' to mum or simply walked to school, you end up wishing they'd back off - at least until you need them to help you out in a playground punch-up. ...more

Apple and EMI announce DRM-free iTunes downloads

EMI has announced that it is both removing copy protection from its entire music catalogue, and selling higher-quality editions of every song to which it owns the rights. The first outlet through which the DRM-free, higher-quality tracks will be sold is Apple's iTunes Store. They will appear in May. ...more

Open source web authoring tool released

Nvu, an open source, cross-platform website authoring tool has been released, with the aim of providing the tools to create standards-based websites in a WYSIWYG environment, without resorting to code. Pronounced N-view, the software draws on three Mozilla technologies - its Composer HTML layout tool, Gecko rendering and extensible XUL architecture - but is greater than the sum of its parts, with integrated CSS, a comprehensive colour picker, forms, table and cell resizing rulers, a spelling checker and customisable toolbars The standalone application was built primarily for Linux, though Mac and Windows test variants are available. For more information go to www. ...more

SoftDVD MAX 6 gives you DVD for ?20

MGI has released the latest version of its software DVD player, with SoftDVD MAX 6, featuring a number of neat extras. MGI Navigator lets you zoom and pan in and around your movie and bookmark favourite sections for later playback. You can also take movie stills as screengrabs and watch a film in either wide-screen or letterbox dimensions. ...more

AMD breathes on its processor roadmap

AMD has updated its public roadmap for processors, and as we always say: those already overloaded with processor codenames should look away now... ...more