Microsoft takes on iPod market

Microsoft has unveiled its answer to Apple's iPod in the US after spending hundreds of millions of dollars on development, reports the UK's Telegraph.

Due to debut in Britain after Christmas, the Zune portable music and video player is designed to capture a share of the lucrative portable digital music market pioneered by Apple.

However, the critics are divided on its merits and the launch seems to have passed most New Yorkers by. "We've had a few calls," a shop assistant at Best Buy in Manhattan said. "But I don't think many people know about it."

Faulty signature updates resulted in Microsoft's Live OneCare anti-virus service falsely reporting Gmail's Web site was infected with a computer virus, reports The Register.

The false alert, which arose for a signature update issued late last week, meant OneCare users visiting Gmail were warned that the site was contaminated by a virus called BAT/BWG-A.

Microsoft rectified the situation with a revised signature update late on Sunday, but not before the issue had hit a significant number of users, as posts to OneCare and Gmail forums show.

US researchers have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players wirelessly, reports BBC News.

The concept exploits century-old physics and could work over distances of many metres, the researchers said. Although the team has not built and tested a system, computer models and mathematics suggest it would work.

"There are so many autonomous devices such as cellphones and laptops that have emerged in the last few years," said assistant professor Marin Soljacic from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the researchers behind the work.