The millions of missing mobiles

Daddy, where have all the missing mobile phones gone? Well son, 0.6 million fell into the loo.. ...more

Nokia to take control of Symbian smart phone technology

Nokia is to acquire Psion's stake in Symbian, the mobile phone software licensing company. Already a major shareholder in the firm that produces the platforms for smart phones, Nokia is now to have a controlling stake. The deal, which begins with a cash payment of ?93. ...more

MusicNet ensnares major labels

They said it couldn't be done. But three of the Big 5 major record labels have signed a deal to make their catalogues available over the Internet. AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann and EMI have reached an agreement with RealNetworks to launch MusicNet, a joint venture that will offer music over the Internet on a subscription basis, using technology from real Networks. ...more

Red Hat gears up for patent fights on two fronts

Red Hat is looking to Europe to set a precedent to overhaul the US patent system. At the Red Hat Summit in New Orleans today, Mark Webbink, Deputy General Counsel at Red Hat, said that the open-source company is putting its weight both behind reform of the formative European patent directive and overhauling the US system. In a separate interview, he told us that negotiations with the European Parliament were going 'quite well,' and that Red Hat was 'tickled to death' to share a common ground with the likes of Sun and Oracle on ensuring that European patent legislation around software was as watertight as possible. ...more

IBM unveils ThinkPad T41 line, with new Active Protection System

The successor to the ThinkPad T40 line of IBM notebooks has been unveiled. And some of the T41 models feature what IBM describes as the world's first automatic hard-drive protection technology. It seems that the Active Protection System is similar in principle to the use of airbags in cars. ...more