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The Bodleian Library in the UK and Folger Shakespeare Library in the US are joining forces to scan and reproduce the original quartos for all William Shakespeare’s plays.

In the absence of any surviving original manuscripts, the earliest known printed editions works of Shakespeare - the so-called quartos - are generally regarded by academics as the most reliable source for understanding Shakespeare’s original intentions and thoughts.

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Buffalo Technologies has today announced a new double/triple format optical disc drive that can read and write Blu-ray and standard DVD and also read the now defunct HD DVD format.

The BRHC-6316U2 Combo Drive boasts single and double layer Blu-ray read/write speeds of up to 6x, along with HD DVD read speeds of up to 3x; and DVD read/write speeds of up to 16x. Using the drive dual-layer Blu-ray discs can be used to store up to 50GB of data.

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Scammers, stalkers, online antagonists ready to pick a fight, folks who are just plain mean–what is it about the Web that turns people into jerks?

One expert says the anonymity of the Web makes everyone behave as if they were in Palm Beach in April. “Think about spring break, when people are feeling anonymous and acting in ways they wouldn’t in their hometown, where they run into their neighbor,” says Nicole Ellison, assistant professor of telecommunications, information studies, and media at Michigan University. “People are less inhibited, and they then will engage in things they would want to do all the time but wouldn’t normally because it would be frowned upon in their social circles.”

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World of Warcraft players are being targeted by an increasing numbers of viruses, according to research by malware experts Kaspersky Lab.

There has been a staggering 145 per cent increase in the amount of worms and Trojans that are designed specifically to invade a host computer and steal passwords for Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games.

Evolution of games

Virus analyst Sergey Golovanov from Kaspersky Lab said: “The targeting of online gamers is running in parallel with the evolution of online games.

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Microsoft hopes to beef up its security capabilities with the acquisition of Komoku, a developer of rootkit detection products, announced last week.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Microsoft plans to add Komoku’s technology into its Forefront and Windows Live OneCare products. Forefront is Microsoft’s suite of enterprise security software that includes malware protection for PCs, security tools for Exchange and SharePoint servers, and gateways that secure remote access to corporate data.

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Sony BMG’s chief exec Rolf Schmidt-Holtz has finally gone on record to state that the label is keen to launch a subscription service for music customers to download as many DRM-free tunes as they want.

There has been much talk of late as to the value of unlimited access subscription download services, so it’s great to hear the head honcho from one of the four major labels confirm that such a service is a near-future reality.

DRM-free for life

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Malware specialist McAfee has launched a handy new ‘10-step Internet Safety Plan eBook’ to educate computer users about the latest threats and potential dangers lurking in the darkest depths of the internet.

For more advanced users, the guide may well seem to state the obvious, though for the majority of computer users out there it’s full of genuinely useful and easy-to-understand “safety guidelines for kids, ‘tweens’, teens, and novices”.

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Even though Apple and Microsoft are enemies on the PC side where they compete in the OS market, it hasn’t stopped the two companies from collaborating on a number of projects, including Office, for example. And according to one report from Fortune, it may happen again.

Fortune is reporting that Microsoft has spent a significant amount of time with the iPhone SDK and has determined that it may be a suitable framework within which to develop Office and other Microsoft products. And considering the fact that Microsoft is the Mac’s largest developer outside of Apple itself, the idea doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch.

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Amazon appears to have let the cat out of the bag as regards the public launch of the long-awaited Vista SP1.

According to the online retailer the update will be included with new boxed versions of Vista in the US from Wednesday 19 March. UK customers will apparently have to wait until 4th April for a boxed copy of Vista complete with the update.

Does this mean that Vista SP1 will also be released for public download on Wednesday, or will Microsoft put itself in the rather embarrassing position of missing its own delivery date?

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Google has reiterated its opposition for any potential Yahoo/ Microsoft merger - with chief executive Eric Schmidt insisting that any such deal would be ‘bad for the internet’.

Microsoft’s huge bid for control of Yahoo would immediately create an online force that could potentially compete with industry giant Google.

Therefore the opposition of Schmidt is anything but unexpected, especially in light of both companies’ grumblings about Google’s merger with DoubleClick.

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