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For any feedback on our newsletter, or to discuss how we can help you with your technology PR, marketing, copywriting or surveys, please email me at hbutters@prompt-communications.com. We are always delighted to hear from you.

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Hazel Butters
Prompt Communications

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Technology Update

By Sean McManus and Lance Concannon

Viacom and YouTube heading for legal showdown

In what promises to be one of Web 2.0's watershed legal tussles, media giant Viacom is suing Google's YouTube business for $1 billion. Viacom, which owns many popular TV channels and the Paramount movie studio, claims that YouTube's entire business model is based around selling advertising on the back of pirated material, much of it legally owned by Viacom.

Viacom claims that nearly 160,000 clips of its copyrighted material have been viewed over one and a half billion times, and that new clips are being uploaded constantly. Google, for its part, says that it is confident that YouTube is operating within the limits of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and that it intends to aggressively defend itself in court.

Microsoft to evict cybersquatters?

Microsoft has declared war on cybersquatters. The company is trying to acquire control of five domain names registered in the UK which it believes are confusingly similar to its own trademarks. According to the BBC, Microsoft won a judgement last year against the UK-based Dyslexic Domain Company, in which Microsoft was granted control of a domain name plus profits that had been raised through its exploitation.

Microsoft claims 2000 domain names that embed its trademarks are registered daily. We found that one mistyping of the domain name for Windows Live Messenger cheekily leads to a site stuffed with Google ads, including those paid for by Microsoft. As a result, Microsoft could end up paying twice for traffic having already paid by marketing the domain name the user tried to enter. It seems doubtful that users are confused into thinking the spam sites are official Microsoft sites, though, as Microsoft claims.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Released

At the CeBIT show in Hannover this week Red Hat announced the launch of the newest version of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux open source operating system. Originally planned for release in 2006, version five has been delayed due to the process of including virtualisation support which enables a single processor to run multiple operating systems. Two versions of the software are available, the standard edition for SMEs and the advanced edition for high end enterprise computing applications.

Sly Fox takes Digg to MySpace

Wired News has republished leaked sales documents proving that Fox is planning to introduce a news portal similar to Digg. On Digg, users vote for technology news stories, so that the more popular stories rise to the front page. Fox is planning to emulate the idea on MySpace, according to screenshots and a presentation republished by Wired. The story could shake up how news is accessed, at least for MySpace's vast community, and could help Fox to bring young readers in to its news sites.

Since acquiring MySpace, Fox has been looking for a way to make it pay. Selling news sponsorships for $150,000 per month, with category sponsorships ranging from $25,000 to $100,000, might just do the trick. While it's an interesting story, republishing the sales documents in full, a clear breach of copyright law with no obvious public interest defence, seems a very odd stance for another publishing business to take. Wired News is owned by magazine publisher Conde Nast.

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Consumer Technology Update

By Dave Wilby

Commodore makes triumphant return to gaming arena

Feast your eyes on a site to make every thirty-something geek in Blighty run for their wallets. Commodore, a true legend of eighties home computing, famous for its Vic 20 and Commodore 64 platforms, chose this week's Cebit show to launch a whole new business dedicated to PC gaming. It will start selling a line of PCs that cater for modern-day high-end gamers next month. Each PC comes cram-packed with top-of-the-line consumer gadgetry, and a choice of paint jobs beyond this ageing nostalgia-freak's wildest dreams.

You can pick from nearly 100 superb artwork designs, including this superb 8-bit makeover. Bala Keilman, chief executive of Commodore Gaming told the BBC: "It feels like the right time to bring back the Commodore brand." The first four PCs in the Commodore range sport Intel Core Duo or Quad processors, have up to 4GB of RAM, two video cards, hundreds of gigabytes of hard drive storage and expected to cost between £1,000-£5,000 ($1,900-$9,500).

Spore finally unleashed on unsuspecting worlds

Why be a small cog, when you can be the ghost in the machine? The £10 million ($20 million) sequel to The Sims was launched this week, and this time instead of manipulating a little fella in a pretend house, players get to control the whole universe and everything in it. Will Wright, the brains behind The Sims, and publisher Electronic Arts, unveiled Spore at the South by South West Interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

Some people had thought Wright's vision for the title was a tad ambitious last year, but he seems to have pulled it off again: "Spore is about the entire history of life and where life goes in the future," he told a baying audience before the official demo. He also admitted that it would take players "76 years without sleep" to explore all of Spore's different planets. TimesOnline explains that the game begins with a drop of water emerging as a single-cell organism, and players must then develop this cell to build a civilisation and ultimately take over the universe. The Sims remains the biggest-selling game series of all time, shifting 70 million copies and generating $1.6 billion (£827 million).

...and finally

Have you checked out progress over at NASA's Mars Exploration programme recently? Great strides have been made, with both terrain rovers Spirit and Opportunity taking some fantastic images of the planet's surface, while the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been taking some surreal aerial shots and shorts which really bring the world to life.

The greatest surprises this week however, were the posting of two superb 'hang-glide' simulations of the land explored by the rovers created using pictures shot by the MRO HiRise cameras over numerous orbits. These clips of the geology of the Columbia Hills where Spirit is based, and Victoria Crater where Opportunity trundles, are not to be missed.

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US Media Report

By Kay Wilson

The sap must be rising if the media traffic this week is any indication. The news networks are definitely having a spring clean with moves such as anchor Rita Cosby and president Rick Kaplan moving on from MSNBC. Kaplan moves to CBS Evening News with Katie Couric whereas Cosby seems to be jobless. Roland S Martin is joining CNN Network(www.cnn.com ) as a contributor and Trish Regan has moved to CNBC as a reporter and stand-in anchor for Business Day.

The media shuffles within the Los Angeles Times and New York Times are too numerous to mention all but include Chris Gaither being promoted to technology editor in LA and Jennifer Kingson becoming the NY Times deputy media editor.

In high-tech media Sindre Lia has been promoted to editor-in-chief and Phillip Berne to reviews editor in InfoSync World and Andrew Conry-Murray becomes new products editor for Network Computing.

After huge job cuts at Time Magazine over the last few months, the recent changes appear to be much more positive ones with managing editor Rick Stengel giving the magazine more visual overhauls. Adding to the already updated cover; different layouts, text and photographs will hopefully bring new light to this hard hit publication.

Conrad Black, former media publisher, has started his trial for fraud in Chicago and it is rumoured could face up to 101 years in jail. He is charged with many monetary scams against Hollinger International Inc shareholders, Black's own media company, such as charging the company for exotic holidays and extravagant parties for his wife.

Black has an almost Hollywood past, including being publisher for the Daily Telegraph in the UK, the Jerusalem Post and the Chicago Sun-Times. However, on a par with the shallowness of Tinsel Town, his downfall may be the prosecution consisting of his so-called "friends" and co-workers.

UK Media Report

By Annie Kasmai

Christian Hall has been appointed as deputy editor on PC Answers. Hall has been with Future Publishing for two and a half years now and has worked on Internet Works and most recently on .net magazine. Hall's new role means he is responsible for news and reviews on the PC magazine.

Tony Jackson is replacing John Plender as the writer of the Financial Times' Monday column, Inside Companies and Markets. Jackson will start in this new role from 2nd April and Plender will continue to write for the FT.

Steve Lodge has started as personal finance reporter on the FT money team.

Best of the 'Net

By Lance Concannon

Assignment Zero

Assignment Zero is best described as Journalism 2.0. The project, which officially launched this week, aims to approach news coverage in an entirely new way. The basic idea is that the site will bring together a network of professional journalists together with members of the public who can help cover stories.

By combining the skills of trained and experienced journalists with the ability of 'citizen journalists' to get closer to the stories, Assignment Zero hopes to bring an entirely new kind of news coverage to the web. It all sounds like rather a lot of wishy-washy Web 2.0 blue sky thinking, but we'll certainly be interested to see if they can make it work.