John Lister

Adobe is taking on the likes of Microsoft and Google by making it easier to use its software online, meaning colleagues in different locations can create and work on documents together much more easily. The move coincides with the launch of Adobe ... Acrobat 9, the latest edition of their PDF software. That's a format that allows users to share documents (which can include images as well as text) without having to both use the same software. It's often used to reproduce hard-copy documents such as magazine pages. The biggest development with Acrobat 9 is that users can now include animations and ... (view more)

The Google-Microsoft-Yahoo search software love triangle seems to have finally settled down, but now it seems the players will be battling to hook up with hardware firms. Microsoft has just announced a deal with HP to make 'Live Search' the default ... search engine on the firm's computers. The agreement covers all machines sold in the US and Canada from next January on. The HP machines will now come with Live.com set as the home page on Internet Explorer, which will also include a toolbar with a Microsoft search box and links to HP's online services. Google did a similar deal with Dell, HP's ... (view more)

A company that produces legitimate and original Internet-only television shows has fallen victim to a particularly aggressive group of anti-piracy protestors. Revision3 Corporation produces shows such as Diggnation (a talk show discussing the top ... stories from Digg.com) and PixelPerfect (which gives advice for users of Adobe's imaging software). It distributes its shows through a variety of methods, including its own website as well as iTunes, torrents, and YouTube. Over Memorial Day weekend, the Revision3 site went down, along with its email systems. It turns out it had suffered a 'Denial Of ... (view more)

It's been revealed that one of Britain's leading websites spent more than $200 million of taxpayers' money last year, with commercial rivals complaining it's difficult to compete fairly. The website of the British Broadcasting Corporation ... (bbc.co.uk) is regularly among the most visited UK sites. Last December it attracted an estimated 16.5 million visitors, more than the average figures for sites such as eBay. The BBC is an independent broadcasting group which runs television and radio stations. Neither its stations nor its UK website carry any advertising and most of its funding comes from a ... (view more)

Officials in India, Brazil and South Africa have all filed official protests against an international decision backing Microsoft's controversial 'open' document format. Office Open XML (OOXML) is Microsoft's own invented format where documents (such ... as those created in word processors or spreadsheets) are designed to work on all computers regardless of what software is being used. The problem is that there's already an open format named OpenDocument which was created by an independent organisation. Critics say it's redundant to have a second open format -- by definition there only needs to be ... (view more)

Environmental campaigners have said the three leading video games consoles all contain dangerous chemicals. According to Greenpeace, the Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360 each contain substances which could affect human memory ... and reproductive development. The tests found the presence of phthalates, beryllium and bromine, all of which have been linked to health concerns. The phthalates are used in games consoles to soften cable coatings and wiring. Because of safety worries, the substance is banned in toys in Europe, with California planning a similar ban next year. ... (view more)

A criminal has successfully answered a security firm chief's challenge to steal his identity -- and it could be a particularly costly defeat. Todd Davis of Californian company LifeLock was so confident of his fraud prevention service that he ... published billboards and filmed TV adverts displaying his own social security number. (It's 457-55-5462 in case you were wondering.) At least 87 people have attempted to steal his identity; at one stage people were trying to use his social security number under the names 'Joe Blow' and 'Jabba The Hutt', while another would-be criminal listed his address ... (view more)

As technology doesn't seem to be helping Microsoft in the search engine wars, the firm is resorting to a tactic that predates computing itself: bribery. Registered users of Live.com will be paid every time they visit a dedicated 'Live Search ... cashback' site, click on a search result to a participating website and then make a purchase. The amount they'll 'earn' will be a portion of the sale price set by the retailer and, once the user has racked up $5, they'll be paid through Paypal, online bank account, or check. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) In most cases, customers will earn money for every product ... (view more)

Facebook has unveiled a new look for profile pages in an effort to avoid the clutter that some analysts say hurts rival social networking site MySpace. The main change, which will take effect next month, is that pages will be reorganised into four ... tabbed 'folders' rather than having all the information in one long and unruly list. The four folders are: Feed, which will be the page that appears by default. This contains all the updates relevant to that person such as adding new friends, changing status updates or being tagged in a photograph. Info, which has all the profile details such as ... (view more)

Cisco has denied a human rights activist group's claims that the company is helping China's government censor access to websites among its population. The claims came after the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (a group which campaigns against ... Internet censorship and produces tools for getting round government firewalls) published a leaked slide from a 2002 Cisco presentation about potential business in China. The group claims the slide, which refers to China's Internet monitoring scheme being used to combat Falun Gong (an outlawed spiritual group the slide describes as "an evil cult"), ... (view more)