UK internet firm Pipex has sold its broadband and phone business to Italian competitor Tiscali for £210m ($426.6m).

The sale of the division follows a four-month strategic review of Pipex by investment bank UBS.

The purchase of Pipex’s broadband unit - which was listed for sale in March - is expected to lift Tiscali’s UK broadband customer base to around 1.9 million.

Tiscali also unveiled a first-half core profit of 60m euros (£40.7m; $82.7m), up 45% on last year.

Pipex is one of the last big independent broadband providers still to be operating in the UK, following a number of recent deals such as the purchase of PlusNet by British Telecom.

The prospect of a sale has therefore been closely watched by rivals such as BT, BSkyB and Virgin Media.

Pipex itself has expanded through a number of acquisitions in the past few years.

In March 2006 it bought the Homecall voice and line rental business from Phones4U for £44m. It has also acquired Toucan from IDT Telecom and Bulldog’s broadband customers from Cable & Wireless, Pipex also purchased my previous ISP Freedom to Surf.

The company also used Baywatch star David Hasselhoff in a recent advertising campaign to attract customers.

In addition to its Pipex brand, the company also sells internet services under the Nildram, Bulldog and Freedom2Surf names - each itself formerly an independent internet service provider.

Posted on July 17th, 2007 by admin
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Following in the footsteps of Google suggest, Yahoo Search (.com) now has built-in search suggestions, which could save you some typing. – or help elaborate on your search.

The suggestions starts after you have typed three characters. Typing loa, for example, produces a drop-down list that starts with the most popular search – in this case loans and suggests possible, more descript searches. You can turn it off if you don’t like it.

Of course, Google Suggest has been part of the Google Toolbar for years, and it’s already in the Yahoo! Toolbar for Firefox. Yahoo has also been testing the idea as Livesearch at AllTheWeb. But if you haven’t tried it before, it’s worth a go.

Posted on July 12th, 2007 by admin
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Mobile phone operator O2 is reported to have won the much sought-after deal to sell Apple’s iPhone in the UK.

Reports suggest that O2 is set to sign an exclusive contract shortly and should have the new phones on sale in time for Christmas the period.

However a spokesman for O2’s owner, Spain’s Telefonica, denied that a deal had been signed.

More than 500,000 iPhones were sold in the first weekend in the US by AT&T, which has exclusive rights there.

Vodafone, which had previously been tipped as the likely winner of the contract, saw its shares fall 2.4%.

The agreement with O2 is reported to include Apple receiving a continuing share of the revenue generated for the network operator.

The handsets are expected to be sold for around £300 and O2 will be hoping that the lure of the sought after phone is enough to win customers from rival networks.

Posted on July 10th, 2007 by admin
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Microsoft has said that it is facing a bill in excess of $1bn after extending all warranty’s on their xbox360 consoles from 1 year to 3.

The company conceded that it had been forced to make “an unacceptable number of repairs” to the consoles after key hardware failed.

Customers who suffer the problems will now be given a free three-year warranty, the company said.

The failures are indicated by three red flashing lights on the console. Dubbed the ‘rings of doom’.

Microsoft has not revealed how many of its machines have suffered the problem, but said the number was “bigger than we are comfortable with.”. Some sources have touted that number to be in the 30% region.

It added that the move - which will also see some people reimbursed for postage and repairs on consoles which were out of warranty - was aimed at keeping the loyalty of its customers.

“The majority of Xbox 360 owners are having a great experience with their console and have from day one,” said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division.

“But this problem has caused frustration for some of our customers and for that, we sincerely apologise.”

It added its Xbox division was still expected to make a profit during the financial year beginning 1 July 2007.

Separately the company has announced an October launch of its advanced version of the Xbox - the Xbox 360 Elite - in Japan, where it lags behind Nintendo and Sony in the console market.

And the company has also unveiled plans to open a software development centre in Canada which it said was a way of hiring talented people from abroad who would struggle to obtain a US working visa.

The Vancouver location would “allow the company to continue to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by the immigration issues in the US”, Microsoft said.

Posted on July 6th, 2007 by admin
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Controversial Russian music download site allofmp3.com has gone down.

The service, which sold songs at a fraction of the cost of other sites, claimed to be the second biggest seller of music downloads after Apples iTunes store.

It was the subject of countless lawsuits from British and American record labels that claimed it violated copyright law.

The site’s owners, MediaServices, maintained the site was legal under Russian law and has subsequently set up a new service called mp3Sparks.com.

The closure of the original site has been welcomed by those in the record industry.

“Allofmp3.com violated copyright law in Russia and internationally by ripping off artists and creators, taking music that it had no right to reproduce and selling it worldwide,” said John Kennedy, president of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI).

“If this is the end of allofmp3.com, this is good news.”

The Russian government has come under severe criticism over its apparent lack of action against allofmp3.com.

During talks on Russian membership of the World Trade Organisation in 2006, Susan Schwab, the US Trade Representative, said that the site must be closed before entry.

Numerous lawsuits were also started against MediaServices, the site’s owners.

In 2006, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Arista Records, Warner Bros, Capitol and UMG recordings.

The record labels said the company was selling songs without permission of the copyright holders.

Allofmp3.com maintained it paid royalties to a Russian licensing body and said that it made clear on its website that users should check copyright laws in their own country before using the site.

Similar suits had also been filed by the British Phonographic Industry, on behalf of UK record labels.

Under increasing pressure, Moscow finally signed an agreement in October last year to shut down the site.

It is not clear whether its closure is the result of action by Russian authorities.

Users of the site have been unable to log on for the last week, although the Russian version, allofmp3.ru, loads but “is undergoing maintenance”. MediaServices has also launched a new website that seems to offer a very similar service.

Like allofmp3.com, mp3sparks.com warns customers to obey their own government’s laws on downloading. It also claims that it is authorised to distribute music and pays license fees.

Mark Mulligan, an analyst at JupiterResearch, wrote on his blog: “The fact that closing down allofmp3.com simply resulted in the opening of a copy cat site by the same company shows that this requires some more fundamental action by the Russian authorities.

“However, it could also be interpreted as cosmetic action by a government that is intent on satisfying WTO accession requirements but less keen on changing Russian new media copyright practices.”

Posted on July 5th, 2007 by admin
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Nintendo’s revolutionary Wii console outsold Sony’s PlayStation 3 in it’s Japanese’s homeland by six to one last month, says research.

Nintendo sold 270,974 Wii consoles last month while Sony sold 41,628 PS3s, according to Enterbrain, a Japanese publisher that tracks sales of games consoles.

Nintendo has sold approximatley 2.76m Wii consoles in Japan since the launch last December, while Sony has sold 970,270 PS3s since it’s debut in November.

About 17,616 Xbox 360 consoles were sold in June.

Last week, Phil Harrison, PlayStation’s head of worldwide studios, told US Game Informer magazine that pundits should not judge the success of the console based on the launch software line-up.

He said: “You only have to go back to the games that launched PlayStation 1 and Playstation 2.

“If you took those few dozen titles and analysed them, you would never have imagined that either of those formats would have on to sell over 100m units each.”
Globally, amid stiffer competition from Microsoft and a resurgent Nintendo, Sony has struggled to replicate the success it had with the first two PlayStation consoles.

The machine has also suffered from a lack of “killer” exclusive titles which showcase the power of the machine.

PlayStation fans are still awaiting some of the biggest franchises on the machine to emerge, such as Metal Gear Solid, Killzone 2 and Gran Turismo.

Posted on July 3rd, 2007 by admin
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The japanese firm has released a game making tool called WiiWare that gives budding game makers the data they need to use the console and its innovative controller.

Wii owners will be able to access the games through net channels accessible via the console.

Nintendo said the first games would be available for download in the first quarter of 2008.

Anyone wanting to use the WiiWare tool will need a basic knowledge of programming, said Nintendo. It lets people start creating their game on a PC but it must be fine-tuned and finished on the console itself.

The company said it expected game makers to use the Wii’s motion sensitive controller to create “fresh takes on established genres”.

“Independent developers armed with small budgets and big ideas will be able to get their original games into the marketplace to see if we can find the next smash hit,” said Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America president in a statement.

Once quality tested by Nintendo, games created via the WiiWare service will be put on the Wii Shop channel so owners can download them.

Wii owners must spend points to get the games, much like the downloadable content xbox users can gain via xbox live. Owners buy Wii points by credit card or by purchasing cards in stores.

The move by Nintendo follows a similar initiative by Microsoft. It has made an express version of its XNA game making tools available for students and hobbyists so they can craft titles for the Xbox.

Posted on June 29th, 2007 by admin
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Apparently, Google looks set to roll out its CPA model within the next fortnight across Europe. Dubbed a quote, simple-to-use but basic cost-per-acquisition model, unquote

Now when I first started in PPC almost 18 months ago I wondered why Google didn’t have such a system already in use, I guess something of sorts was already in the pipeline. The revenue stream could potentially be massive (for them that is). With the ability to cut out the affiliate middle men, and work directly with the clients the 20% or so acquisition costs creamed by the affiliates/agencies would be on it’s way to Google, whilst the end customer will be getting better value for money.

Of course this system isn’t new, and has already been implemented by a company called turn. It will be interesting to see how Google fares with this model, A version is availible for trial but it is currently only on offer to users of Adwords in the US.

Posted on June 27th, 2007 by admin
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A Briton has been imprisoned for 51 months after pleading guilty to software piracy charges in the US.

From his Australia home Hew Griffiths led the DrinkOrDie piracy group which specialised in cracking protection codes on computer software, music and movies.

In the US, the Department of Justice estimated that DrinkOrDie created and spread more than $50m (£25m) of pirated goods.

DrinkOrDie was broken up in 2001 in the wake of a series of raids co-ordinated by the DoJ.

Although arrested several years ago, Mr Griffiths has spent the last three years in an Australian jail fighting extradition to America to face charges. The extradition was one of the first for an intellectual property crime.

“Whether committed with a gun or a keyboard - theft is theft,” said US Attorney Chuck Rosenberg in a statement.

Sentenced to 51 months on a charge of “conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement”, Mr Griffiths is likely only to serve a further 15 months in jail because of the time he has already spent incarcerated in Australia.

DrinkOrDie is thought to have been founded in Russia in the early 90s and offered people cracked versions of programs from Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, Symantec, Novell and many others software vendors.

Under the banner of Operation Buccaneer, 70 raids were carried out to dismantle the group. Most raids took place in the US but law enforcement authorities in United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Australia also played a part.

More than 30 people are known to have been jailed as a result of arrests made during the operation.

Posted on June 26th, 2007 by admin
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A hacker has successfully penetrated one of the Pentagon’s e-mail systems, leading officials to take up to 1,500 accounts offline.

The e-mail system did not contain any classified information relating to sensitive military operations, a spokesman said.

The Pentagon says it repulses 100s of attempted attacks on its computer systems each day.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said that a “variety of precautionary measures” were being taken.

“Elements of the… unclassified email system were taken offline yesterday afternoon due to a detected penetration,” Mr Gates said.
He said it was expected that the system would be online again very soon.

Few details were available about the exact nature of the attack.

A Pentagon spokesman said attacks could come from a variety of sources including: “recreational hackers, self-styled cyber-vigilantes, various groups with nationalistic and ideological agendas, trans-national actors and nation-states.”

Officials would not say whether the hacker was able to read e-mails sent on the system.

Asked if his own e-mail account was affected, Mr Gates said: “I don’t do e-mail. I’m a low-tech person.”

Posted on June 23rd, 2007 by admin
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