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"Google to launch free phone calls
By Ed Harris, Evening Standard
24 January 2005
Google, the company which revolutionised the internet, is planning to launch a free telephone service.
The service will link users via a broadband internet connection using a headset and a home computer.
The technology that will allow Google to move into the telecommunications market is not new. Software from London-based Skype has been downloaded nearly 54 million times around the world, but it has not been properly exploited.
BT, which connects seven out of ten British households, has developed its own internet telephone service, but has been reluctant to promote it heavily. Julian Hewitt, senior partner at Ovum, a telecoms consultancy, said: 'There is a big appeal in the fact that Google is a search operation - and of course the Google brand is a huge draw.'
A Google telephone service could be made to link with the Google search engine. A surfer looking for a clothing retailer could find the website and click on the screen to speak to the shop.
It costs almost nothing to make calls across the internet; the cost lies in the software. "
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2005
Apple Set to Launch $500 Mac: "Apple Set to Launch $500 Mac
By Ian Betteridge, ExtremeiPod
January 3, 2005
In a bid to take advantage of the success of the iPod music player, Apple Computer Inc. is set to release a Mac retailing at under $500. ADVERTISEMENT A report on Mac news site Think Secret claimed that the product, code-named Q88, is expected to be announced on January 11 during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote speech at Macworld Expo in San Francisco. The new Mac will utilize a 1.25GHz G4 processor and will come in a small, flat enclosure similar to that of the popular LC series of Macs from the 1990s. Although the product will be priced at under $500, this will not include a monitor or DVD-R drive, and hard drive capacity will be between 40GB and 80GB"