MS to buy Musiwave

Microsoft said Monday it has entered exclusive negotiations to acquire Musiwave, a provider of portable music services to mobile network operators and media companies, reports InformationWeek.

"Bringing Musiwave on board would provide an opportunity for Microsoft to explore new areas in the mobile space previously untapped," said Pieter Knook, senior VP of mobile communications business at Microsoft.

Among other things, Musiwave offers software that lets mobile operators offer a number of paid products and services to their subscribers, including ringtones, music-on-demand, and customised play-lists.

Mobile phone company O2 claims to have sold "tens of thousands" of iPhones over the weekend, despite little evidence of a repeat of the long queues seen outside stores when the device launched in the US, says Guardian Unlimited.

CE Peter Erskine, announcing third-quarter results today, also predicted that the UK pre-pay mobile phone market will decline this year for the first time in the history of the industry, as the mobile phone companies focus on acquiring users willing to sign a contract.

Customers buying an iPhone, for instance, have to sign up for 18 months.

VMware on Monday released an upgrade of its virtualisation software for Intel-based Macs, which includes support for Leopard, the latest version of the Mac OS X operating system.

VMware Fusion 1.1 enables the running of Mac OS X and Windows applications simultaneously, according to InformationWeek.

Virtualisation on the Mac has made the migration from Windows to Apple computers easier for consumers who were unwilling to toss their favourite Windows apps to move to the Mac. The latest version of Fusion includes more than 25 improvements, according to VMware.

US control over how Internet addresses are assigned - and thus how people around the world access e-mail and Web sites - dominated discussions as a major UN conference on the Internet opened Monday, says Associated Press.

Although few participants at the Internet Governance Forum attacked the US directly, most were well aware of the role Americans play over domain name policies, including whether and how to assign suffixes in languages besides English.

"The Internet is transnational. It can`t be under the authority of one country or even some countries," said Brazil`s culture minister Gilberto Gil, who is also a major pop star here, setting the conference`s tone at the opening ceremony. "The Internet should be the territory of everyone."