Dell’s latest launch has really taken off. Unfortunately for Dell’s crumbling profitability, it’s a website called IdeaStorm, not a new PC. IdeaStorm is designed to get ideas and feedback from Dell users, and the mechanism is much the same as Digg: people make suggestions and everybody votes for the ones they like best.
The scene is a Starbucks in Regent Street, London. Two 23-year-old women from Trinity College, Dublin, are doing a five-minute pitch from a laptop to a couple of serious venture capitalists. It is the cappuccino version of TV programmes such as <i>Dragons’ Den</i> and it is telling us a lot about the vitality of the new internet start-up boom in the United Kingdom.
For years, video-game watchers have complained that there is no mainstream channel for independently produced games. Xbox Live Arcade and now the PlayStation 3’s E-Distribution Initiative have shifted the industry mindset, with Microsoft and Sony actively courting the indie development scene.
Zimbabwean opposition chief Morgan Tsvangirai and 49 other opposition activists were released from hospital into their lawyers’ custody late on Tuesday, one of the lawyers said. Tsvangirai was detained on Sunday, along with dozens of other activists, after a police crackdown on an opposition rally.
Under-strength Zimbabwe and debutants Ireland may look like a lightweight contest in a World Cup group which also includes mighty West Indies and Pakistan. But both need a win on Thursday if they are to have any hope of progressing in the tournament.
Asian stocks plunged on Wednesday after Wall Street chalked its second-biggest drop in four years and rattled already nervous markets worldwide. The tumble extended a couple weeks of international trading turmoil rooted in concerns about overheated global markets and slower growth in the American economy.
Retirement-fund tax is gone. It has not merely been reduced, it has been abolished. Retired. At a time when only a tiny minority of people can afford to retire without a plunge in living standards, Finance Minister’s Trevor Manuel’s ending of a decade of taxation of retirement savings should be celebrated by those far-sighted enough to plan for retirement.
Syria is hailing its return from international isolation with a landmark visit on Wednesday by the European Union’s foreign policy chief as diplomacy in the Middle East intensifies ahead of a key Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia at the end of this month.
Gay rights groups on Tuesday criticised the head of the United States joint chiefs of staff, General Peter Pace, over an interview in which he described homosexuals as ”immoral”. Aides to Pace insisted he was not planning to apologise. But he later put out a statement that he described as a clarification.
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Australian paceman Glenn McGrath claimed on Wednesday that World Cup Group A rivals South Africa can’t handle pressure. The two sides meet in Basseterre, St Kitts, on March 24 in what will be a highly-charged game with the winner taking crucial extra points with them into the second round Super Eights.