Microsoft is considering buying online marketing company Claria, according to a report in the New York Times. Under its former name Gator, the company became synonymous with pop-up web advertisements and spyware. Gator provided the spyware for Kazaa, iMesh and AudioGalaxy, and the software also tracked which websites users visited.

A bustling enterprise Linux business carried Red Hat to improved first quarter results. The software maker reported revenue of $60.8m in the period - a solid 46 per cent jump over $41.8m in the same quarter one year ago. Red Had enjoyed a slight increase in services and embedded OS revenue, while subscriptions to its corporate Linux product jumped significantly. The improved overall business helped Red Hat post net income of $12.4m - a rise over the $10.9m last year.

WhenU.com has won a court battle over pop-up ads that it displayed on the web site of contact lens seller 1-800 Contacts, after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ads did not breach 1-800 Contacts’ trade marks.

Not too long ago my wife and I decided to try out a Chinese restaurant in our area we had never visited before. I was looking at the menu and my wife gasped, then laughed a bit. I looked up and she pointed out a rat crawling right under the restaurant's buffet table.

Net users in London are to be offered broadband at speeds up to 24 meg as part of ambitious plans by a new UK ISP.

Ofcom has detailed BT's misdemeanours in detailed documents published yesterday. Strip away the jargon and what's revealed are "substantial delays" to the introduction of wholesale products that would allow rivals to compete and consumers to get a better service.

ColumnOne cannot be involved in business today, much less technology, without getting bombarded with talk of location-based services and many variations of this idea—that our cell phones (or whatever mobile devices win the day) will “know” where we are and that this will generate the opportunity for marketers from Starbucks to Sears to Sun Microsystems to directly engage the consumer at the precise moment of their closest proximity.

The BBC has decided - as part of its "restructuring of the BBC's online activities" - to pull the plug on its hugely popular Cult website.

Reg Reader StudiesSecurity has always been a concern when it comes to separating user access from the core of an IT system. Put terminals outside the machine room – you must be joking? Departmental servers out in the office – you what? Commercial data over the world wild web – too dangerous! Mobile access to precious and confidential data – why risk it?

Here's a poser for you: you're trying to sell a rather uninspiring second-hand 19in CRT monitor on eBay and you want to inject a little spice into the auction. What are your options? Well, you could claim that it has a likeness of the Virgin Mary mysteriously burnt into the phosphor. Alternatively, you might suggest that the cathode ray device is possessed by Satan and has on several occasions attempted to kill you and your family. Both tried and trusted marketing techniques, and not without merit.

A UK internet company that offered cheap currency exchange but ripped off punters instead has been wound-up following an investigation by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

CommentYou may have seen that Oracle is buying TimesTen. The question is why?

An extraordinary statement by the US government has sent shockwaves around the internet world and thrown the future of the network into doubt.

Easynet is upping its investment in local loop unbundling (LLU) following BT's recent announcement that it intends to give wholesale broadband competition a chance to thrive.

Malware authors have increased both the volume and sophistication of their attacks over the last six months. In the first half of 2005 anti-virus firm Sophos detected and protected against 7,944 new viruses - up 59 per cent from the first six months of 2004. The number of keylogging Trojans has tripled in the first six months of 2005 compared to the first half of 2004.

NASA has set the date for the Shuttle's launch, despite suggestions from an independent safety panel earlier this week that all the safety requirements have not yet been met. Discovery is now slated to take to the skies on 13 July, commanded by Eileen Collins.

Holger Voss, who last month argued in court that dynamic IP addresses are irrelevant for book keeping and shouldn't be stored by ISPs, has won part of his case against German ISP T-Online.

UK kids blow more than £1bn a year on mobile phones according to research released yesterday.

A Utah woman has become the latest asset in online gambling outfit GoldenPalace.com's eBay preposterous purchase portfolio after accepting $15,000 dollars to have the casino's name permanently tattooed on her forehead.

The head of the UK’s passport agency has confirmed that a tightening up of passport standards, including the inclusion of biometric information, will not eliminate sophisticated fraud or terrorism.

ESA scientists announced yesterday that their Rosetta space craft has sent back a picture of Comet Tempel-1. The smudgy white dot might be almost indistinguishable from the rest of the stars in the sky, and it would probably be fair to describe it as one of the less impressive pictures from space we have seen in recent years, but the image does at least prove that Rosetta's cameras work.

Another day, another lawsuit from the record labels. Except this time - what's this? They're suing a different part of the music business. Yes, the BPI on Thursday announced that it is taking the MCPS (the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) to the Copyright Tribunal, complaining that the MCPS is charging too much for online downloads and subscriptions.

The Federal Trade Commission in the US has won an preliminary injunction against Trustsoft, freezing the company's assets and preventing it from making deceptive claims about its anti-spyware product. A district court judge in Texas issued the order, which the FTC is seeking to have made permanent.

The UK could be about to witness a "dramatic" explosion in local loop unbundling (LLU) despite a somewhat "painful" progress over the last year, according to the Office of the Telecoms Adjudicator (OTA).

When Microsoft released limited information on a critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer last month, reverse engineer Halvar Flake decided to dig deeper.

Film reviewWar of the Worlds is really a disaster movie in the garb of a science fiction blockbuster. Steven Spielberg's contemporary reimagining of the H.G. Wells classic puts one family's fight for survival in centre frame as the Earth is menaced by alien tripod fighting machines.

easyMobile.com - the discount mobilephoneco backed by no frills airline entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou - has ended its promo price offer and increased the cost of making calls for its punters.

ExclusiveIf you're one of IBM UK's highly skilled mainframe specialists, then you may well be out of a job. IBM has shuffled a huge chunk of its mainframe support operations off to South Africa in a bid to cut costs. As a result, some of IBM's highest profile customers will find their critical mainframe support calls traveling south to a staff who recently spent just over 30 days in the UK learning the ropes.

LettersThe US government has decided to hang on to control of the net's root servers. Not an entirely unanticipated move, but one that will, as they say, have repercussions. Lots of cross Americans immediately wrote to us to explain why we should be pleased that Uncle Sam is still in charge:

A US-led crackdown on online piracy led to raids in 11 countries this week. Operation Site Down is targeting "leading criminal organizations" that illegally distribute and trade in copyrighted software, movies, music, and games on the net. Since Wednesday 29 June, the FBI and law enforcement from 10 other countries (Canada, Israel, France, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Portugal and Australia) have conducted over 90 searches geared towards dismantling various warez networks.

Microsoft and IBM can be friends again - or at least less bitter partners/rivals after Redmond agreed to hand over an $850m antitrust apology.