Ebits

Sweet notes

Steve Jobs has about 250,000 new reasons to be happy. That's the number of songs purchased and downloaded - at 99USc a pop - on the first day of operation of Apple's online music store, according to record industry sources.

Jobs last week launched Apple's online music service, which is integrated into its iTunes music software program and, for now, is available only on its Macintosh computers. It boasted more than 200,000 tracks last week and is growing daily, Apple said.

Jobs, known for his powers of persuasion and marketing savvy, clinched licensing deals with the five biggest record labels.

Apple's offering will compete against not only free file-sharing systems such as Kazaa and Morpheus, but also industry-backed services such as PressPlay, MusicNet and Rhapsody, which work with Windows computers.

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War on spam

Members of the US Congress are proposing ways to fight unwanted e-mail.

One senator is suggesting a national "do-not-spam" registry similar to a service about to start that blocks unwanted telemarketing calls.

Another proposal would require spam to have valid return addresses. And there also are calls for federal legislation offering rewards for people who help track down spammers.

Most of the panellists at a Federal Trade Commission forum last week said a strong federal anti-spam law is needed and would be better than the mix of local laws in 29 states.

But the chairman of the industry-supported Global Internet Project warned that any US law would do little to stop spam from other countries and the only solution is blocking it with new technology.

Junk e-mails are a rapidly growing problem. The anti-spam company Brightmail recorded 6.7 million instances of multiple unsolicited messages being sent out in March, a 78 per cent increase on a year ago.

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Broadband deal

Counties Power broadband network Wired has signed its second partner agreement, with local internet provider The Packing Shed, which has provided internet access to the Franklin region since 1996 and has about 1000 business and residential customers.

The Wired Country service will allow The Packing Shed to offer high speed internet of between 128Kbps and 100Mbps. The other internet provider offering services on Wire Country is Iconz.

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Quicksilver

Internet provider Quicksilver is offering a dial-up service it says is three times faster than conventional dial-up.

The technology behind the service, from Slipstream Data, a private Canadian firm, compresses, optimises and streamlines web content when it leaves the server, enabling surfing speeds up to three times that of normal dial-up speeds.

The service costs between $33 and $45 a month, depending on the plan.

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Microsoft drops prices

Microsoft New Zealand has lowered its prices for business application software, operating systems, server software and development tools by about 10 per cent.

The cuts arise from the strengthening of NZ currency against the US dollar.