BPI to chart online music sales

The British Music Industry BPI has announced that the UK's first Official Download Chart will launch on 1 September. The chart will include actual sales data from all the UK's most significant download retailers, including HMV, MSN, Mycokemusic and Virgin, all of which are powered by OD2, and Apple's iTunes. The much trumpeted Napster is not yet included although it is probably only a tiny fraction of the UK market at present. ...more

Google opens the Checkout

Anyone who remembers Microsoft's plans to get its massive Hotmail userbase to sign up its collective credit card details to a Passport account, enabling fast online purchases will recognise Google's latest announcement: Google Checkout. This time around it's a Google account you need. And for most users it should make buying through participating stores, which include Levi's, buy. ...more

Intel unwraps new name for wireless technologies

Chip giant Intel has unveiled the new name for its wireless mobile technologies The new name, Centrino, will be the umbrella for Intel initiatives to develop a new mobile processor microarchitecture and wireless capability as well as features to extend battery life, thinner and lighter form factors, and improved mobile performance. The technologies represented by the Centrino brand will include a microprocessor (formerly code-named "Banias"), related chipsets and 802.11 (Wi-Fi) wireless networking capability. ...more

256MB of flash memory - in a pen

One for gadget lovers - 256MB of Flash memory in pen form. The Executive Attach? is a flash drive pen with 128MB or 256MB of memory. Twisting off the top half reveals the backup storage. ...more

IBM offers free DB2

IBM is the latest blue chip IT company to offer a free version of its database manager, in this case the crown jewels of DB2. The company is releasing DB2 Express-C, a version of DB2 Universal Database Express Edition that offers much of the core functionality of the flagship product. DB2 Express-C is a hardware restricted version IBM's flagship database. ...more