John Lister

Google is to introduce one-click links to buy products associated with video clips on its YouTube site. The move will be the first step towards recouping the $1.65 billion it spent acquiring the company two years ago. The new links allow viewers to ... automatically buy songs through iTunes or the Amazon digital download service. The links will appear next to videos of the relevant songs. There will also be appropriate links to buy the popular video game "Spore." At the moment the music links are restricted to songs produced by EMI or Universal, two of the four major record labels. However, given ... (view more)

eBay is cutting 1,600 jobs, representing around 10% of its work force. The announcement shortly after the company announced it would spend more than a billion dollars purchasing an online payment service and several overseas classifieds sites. The ... job cuts, the biggest in the firm's history, should save around $150 million a year. The layoffs, covering 1,000 permanent employees and 600 temps, will be spread across the company and will include staff at PayPal (which eBay owns). Chief Executive John Donahoe says the savings will fund greater investment in the firm's services, which may include ... (view more)

Apple shares briefly dropped in value by more than 5% in the wake of a false rumour claiming the company's chief had suffered a heart attack. The bogus report has sparked debate about the dangers of so-called 'citizen journalism'. The report claimed ... Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack and been taken to hospital. It gained some credibility by appearing on CNN's website, though it appeared in the iReport section dedicated to 'citizen journalism'. Anyone who wants can post a report and CNN disclaims any responsibility for the accuracy of stories posted there. Apple only took 12 minutes to ... (view more)

Apple has threatened that if royalty rates for digital downloads increase, as is likely to happen this week, it might shut down the iTunes store. But analysts say the firm is highly unlikely to follow through on the threat. Apple first made the ... stern warning at least 18 months ago in a written submission to the Copyright Royalty Board but has only just emerged. iTunes vice president Eddy Cue wrote that if the store " were forced to absorb any increase in the mechanical royalty rates, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss -- ... (view more)

Real Network's 'legal' DVD ripping software has already prompted legal action from the movie industry. And to confuse matters, Real has somehow filed what's effectively a pre-emptive countersuit. As we reported recently , Real claimed its new ... product, RealDVD, did not breach copyright laws because it allowed users to copy an entire disc, including the copy protection system which most ripping software removes. The Motion Picture Association of America has now launched a lawsuit to coincide with the software's official release, accusing the firm of breaching copyright laws. In an unusual legal ... (view more)

SanDisk has teamed up with the four major record labels to offer legal music sales in a new format: memory cards. The scheme, dubbed SlotMusic, uses the MicroSD format, meaning many buyers will be able to listen to the music directly through their ... cell phones. There'll also be a USB adaptor for plugging the card into a computer. The main selling point of the system is that the music files will have no digital rights management (the copy protection system which heavily restricts usage of many downloadable albums) and that it will be encoded at 320 kilobytes per second. That's a better quality ... (view more)

The Large Hadron Collider, the machine tipped to revolutionize our understanding of physics, could be out of action for the rest of the year. Scientists had planned to use the machine to create a near light-speed collision between particles so they ... could answer fundamental questions like "what makes up black holes?" and "why is gravity so weak compared with other forces?" However, after an earlier delay with a power failure, the project is on hold thanks to a suspected melted electrical connection between two of the giant magnets which steer the protons (a type of particle ... (view more)

For those of you who hated the Seinfeld Microsoft adverts -- and your responses tell us there are quite a few of you -- there's good news. The tales of Jerry and Bill are done for now, replaced by a relatively direct response to Apple's ... long-standing campaign, "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC." According to Microsoft, this was the plan all along: a spokesman says the two Gates and Seinfeld ads were simply a teaser and the firm hasn't cut the series short. That makes the ads -- short on either plot or message -- even more baffling, as well as making Seinfeld's $10 million payoff seem even more ... (view more)

Electronics Arts is facing an angry backlash from gamers for putting DRM restrictions on its popular game 'Spore'. The game, based on evolution, has been generally well-reviewed and early sales were strong. It doesn't allow online game-play as such, ... but there are many official online features, including the ability to upload clips of your character in action directly to YouTube. Hoping to crack down on piracy, EA set up a system where the game has to be authorised over the Internet, both the first time it is used and the first time a player uses the online features. The firm allowed players ... (view more)

Although Microsoft is trying to keep Windows 7 under wraps, around three-dozen screenshots have leaked on to the Internet. It appears the operating system has had some usability tweaks but doesn't have any fundamental changes. The shots appeared on ... the ThinkNext blog and almost certainly come from one of the people testing the software. Windows 7 is currently in its third (and likely) final 'in-progress' edition. The first beta edition (a complete version of the system ready for testing) is expected out before the end of the year. The biggest functional changes appear to be to the User ... (view more)