IT managers are bracing themselves for a flood of web defacement attacks this weekend as vandals take part in this year's run of The Defacers' Challenge.

Sanyo Electric will start selling key components for DVD recorders to outside companies, by the end of the year.

Hitachi Maxell announced a series of Blue Ray discs based on blue REIDISUKURIRAITA format Ver.1.0. The new discs offer an 23GB capacity which means that they can hold up to 2-hours of high definition video. Availability in the market is expected by 25th of August, at an estimated street price of 25 EUR.

Investors are scrambling to buy Taiwan's loss-making computer compact disk makers amid signs of a turnaround in the US$2 billion industry after last year's deep slump.

Intersil introduced a new family of dual laser diode drivers (LDDs) optimized for low power, slim CD and DVD recordable disk drives used in laptop PCs. Intersil’s new Elantec® EL683X family is comprised of dual output four-channel LDDs that offer the performance, flexibility and power efficiency needed in portable drives supporting all popular disk drive formats, including DVD+R/W, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, CD-R/W, CD-R and CD-ROM.

Prices for DVD-Dual drives have continued to drop amid intensified competition as a number of manufacturers have recently launched the products and more are expected to follow suit in the second half of the year.

LSI Logic Corporation today announced it has co-developed next-generation DVD players with Philips Electronics based on the high-performance ZiVA(TM)-5 DVD system processor and Philips' user-friendly interface.

Apple iTunes has received all the media attention in the online music distribution field, but also the Spanish pioneering company Listen.com can put some impressive figures on the table.

DVD-ROM drive sales will grow significantly in the second half of this year and eat into CD-ROM drive sales, as the devices see a more rapid price decline, Taiwanese distributors project.

mm02 paraded a clutch of plans today to improve data revenues. The mobile network operator is setting up a public wireless LAN (PWLAN) network in the UK, introducing ICQ instant messaging to its German operation, committing to an updated version of its XDA voice/data handset, out in time for Christmas.

Connie, the annoyingly prim face of AOL UK for the last five years, has been told her (virtual) services will no longer be required by the company.

PC manufacturer Gateway has launched several non-PC products during the last couple of months, trying desperately to turn the company profitable again. The company's latest consumer electronics product is a stand-alone DVD player that includes 802.11b compatible WLAN access.

Australian lawmakers could make spam illegal by the end of the year, reports state. The move could make Australia the first country in the world to outlaw what Bill Gates calls this "pollution of the email ecosystem".

321 Studios has released a new version of DVD X Copy XPRESS.

The software company this month quietly launched a new search program called MSNBot, which scours the Web to build an index of HTML links and documents. The homegrown system--which performs robot functions previously left to Inktomi and other partners--may pose a significant threat to Google if Microsoft fulfills its promise to make the program a cornerstone of its overall PC and services strategies.

Livephish is a Pay-Per-Download service that offers live show recordings. Livephish has now adopted their premium service downloads to use the lossless open source FLAC audio format. This means that the downloadable files are of 44.1kHz/16bit CD audio quality.

Microsoft Corp. is assembling a team of experts charged with battling the accelerating spread of spam as unsolicited e-mail clogs in-boxes worldwide, including that of Bill Gates, founder and chairman of the world's largest software maker.

Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. has made a strategic decision to partially withdraw from the CD-R and DVD-R manufacturing arena. Computer Support Italcard s.r.l. (CSI) of Italy, has agreed to acquire the majority stake in Mitsui Advanced Media, Inc.

They call him the Goblin. He is the new toast of Russia's massive pirate video industry, his films sought all over Moscow. The trick of his silver screen success is that the Goblin redubs Hollywood movies, using his own 'better' Russian alternative to the script.

Following last week's triumphant announcement by Nintendo that it had won a victory over Hong Kong based mail order retailer Lik-Sang, one of the company's founders, Alex Kampl, has spoken publicly about the ruling.