Rick Power

Microsoft has begun 63 individual lawsuits

against people involved in the sale of fake software on auction sites. The legal action is against sellers in 12

nations including the UK, US, Germany and France. The majority of people targeted by Microsoft have been selling counterfeit

“Blue Edition” versions of Windows XP.

Research carried out by Microsoft discovered that 34% of fake software

sold on auction websites did not install properly and 43% contained tampered code that could expose buyers to dangers

such as identity theft or other attacks.

Microsoft stopped installing XP on new machines at the end of June 2008 as

‘Vista‘, the newest version of Windows took it’s place.

Online retail giant Amazon has launched a UK music download service. Amazon

will sell tracks from its new Amazon MP3 online store for 59p per single track and from £3 for a whole album. Amazon MP3 will store

more than 3 million songs that will work on any mp3 player, including the iPod.

This move by Amazon means that they are now a

direct competitor with Apple in the ever growing market of online music sales, which in Britain alone was worth an estimated £163m in

2007 and today stands at a far greater number.

Unlike songs downloaded from Apple’s i-tunes store, the music available from

Amazon will be free from the constraints of digital rights management.

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Retweeting @kennygoodman: @

href="http://twitter.com/manchestermob">manchestermob are working on some very exciting Twitt & iPhone apps.

RT@vincesamios: Another member of @

href="http://twitter.com/manchestermob">manchestermob team @JohnGreggory just showed

up on twitter – this man is seriously funny

A video of this nature can only be described as ‘Geeky‘. Yet

many are appearing on video sites such as YouTube and are managing to attract thousands of views. As the viewer gets wrapped up in

someone else’s excitement of opening the latest games console, mobile phone or computer, they can see as each component of the

packaging is unwrapped.

Here is a video from YouTube – An Unboxing of a Macbook

Air…

This video has been viewed almost half a million times. Keep an eye on the

Unboxing phenomenon and watch it unfold, especially around Christmas, no doubt video sharing sites

will be full with ‘unboxings‘ of the latest gadgets.