Contrary to widespread reports that Microsoft had hired TV show presenter and former Miss Australia Erin McNaught as an IT “poster” girl, Microsoft has stated emphatically there is no financial arrangement of any description between itself and McNaught.

The updated story can be found here:

Nicholas Negroponte, the visionary behind the One Laptop Per Child initiative (OLPC), has lashed out at Intel for trying to undermine his dream of creating a low-cost computer for poor children. And he has Intel marketing documents that he says prove his allegations.

A professor at Purdue University in the US has developed a method for extracting hydrogen from water using an aluminum alloy. He believes this method could be used to power cars, although he recognizes that there are significant hurdles that need to be overcome before this break-through becomes a commercially-viable alternative to gasoline.

Microsoft has found no evidence of any compromise of the security of Bungie.net or its LIVE network, despite recent reports of fraud and theft taking place on Xbox LIVE. 

Apple is again under fire by the European Union over the company’s Fairplay digital rights management (DRM). Fairplay only allows you to listen or view content purchased on the iTunes store on PCs and Macs loaded with iTunes or on iPods.

More than US$4 million of domain names have been sold at the recent Moniker TRAFFIC WEST Live Auction in Las Vegas; the domain name Families.com achieved a price of US$650,000, while Greeting.com went for US$350,000 and Blogster.com went for $275,000.

A recent study by market research company Compete Inc has confirmed strong consumer interest in the upcoming iPhone from Apple, although not at the planned price of US$500. The survey found that the “sweet spot” appears to be closer to US$200.

The chief executive and president of content-protection company Macrovision, Fred Amoroso, has issued a very polite, but frank, open letter to Steve Jobs and the “digital entertainment industry” setting out his views on why digital rights management (DRM) is vital to the future of electronically distributed content, and offering to assume responsibility for Apple’s FairPlay DRM system.

Steve Jobs has been savaged by the CEO of Warner Music and prominent commentators, including one from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), after he called on music companies to ditch digital rights management (DRM) last week.

It must be painful  being a Sony executive these days. Not only is the PlayStation 3 (PS3) being outsold by Nintendo’s Wii, but in the Japanese market it’s also being beaten by its elderly parent, the PlayStation 2 (PS2).

Google is shutting down its user-pays question-answer service Google Answers, where for as little as $2.50 a pop hand-picked researchers answer questions. Google will stop accepting new questions later this week, and will stop supplying answers to questions by the end of the year.

When Windows Vista is lauched, it will be internally known as Windows 6.0. With build number 6.0.5920.16384 just released, the magic RTM (release the manufacture) build is nearly here. Also updates on other Windows Vista news.

Think you’ll be able to run Windows Vista on your existing hardware? If all the visual bells and whistles are turned off, it’ll probably run just fine, and should even make your hardware run better. But Dell’s CEO thinks you’ll need more memory, with 2Gb the sweet spot. Is he right?

Security software firm eEye Digital Security have launched Blink Personal Edition free of charge, a sophisticated firewall with intrusion prevention and more, yet forgot to include an inbuilt anti-virus package. Do Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, ZoneLabs or Microsoft have anything to worry about?

But where are the Macbooks? As I and others have predicted, Apple have finally launched Core 2 Duo based MacBook Pros onto the world market. Already for sale from all major Apple websites including Australia, Apple’s greatest chance at gaining new Mac converts has arrived.

Just found some pics on the Internet of the Space Shuttle launching from the International Space Station (the ISS)!