EMI adding over 400,000 new tunes to We7's free streaming library

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We7, the free-to-use ad-funded music site that’s famously the brainchild of musical wildcard Peter Gabriel will, finally, soon feature the Peter Gabriel back catalogue in its listings.

This is thanks to music goliath EMI announcing a deal to stick 400,000 of its songs up on the streaming service before the end of the year, a move which will significantly boost the amount of content on the rapidly-growing free music site. Sony BMG…

Nokia hopes old Java game will help kickstart N-Gage gaming – Dogz available for download

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We don’t want to go and start unnecessarily “hating on” Nokia’s N-Gage gaming plans, but Dogz? A game that’s clearly a homage (homage is less likely to offend people than saying RIP OFF) to the numerous other pet games out there? Is this really what mobile gamers want?

Not to mention the fact that Dogz has been available in Java form for quite some time, since 2006 in fact. And that sequel Dogz 2 is already available for other Java handsets. It is at least marginally updated…

Atari and Codemasters join video game piracy legal fight – £300 fines on the way to 25,000 game-sharers

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It would appear that yesterday’s shaming of poor Isabella Barwinska was no one-off – some of the largest players in gaming are joining up to (try to) eliminate online piracy.

Atari and Codemasters, who make half the stuff you’ve played during your lifetime, have joined Topware and another couple of companies in targeting P2P-using game pirates, and will, according to The Times, start sending out automatic £300 fines…

BBC's iPlayer upgraded to H.264 codec – download speed and picture quality boosted

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The BBC has been blowing your license fee on further developing its iPlayer service, announcing today that it’s starting to use the open source H.264 codec for its streaming telly service.

This has allowed the Beeb to boost the encoding bitrate of streamed shows from 500kbps to 800kbps, so it should all look a little sharper and cleaner when you catch up with such classics…

Grand Theft Auto IV PC version confirmed – will be here on November 21

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For some odd reason, everyone at Take 2 and Rockstar Games has been busy pretending that GTA IV on PC was a big secret, even though it was always obviously going to happen.

Well, it’s happening, and it’s official now, so we can all stop pretending to wonder if it’s going to happen – GTA IV will hit PC on November 21. The Americans will get it two days earlier, on November 18. By November 22…

Google launches ad-funded music search service in China, to battle local piracy

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Google is trying to succeed where all have failed, by stemming the impact of piracy in China.

Its latest venture, an ad-funded music search service, hopes to go some way toward making a bit of money out of flogging music in China, a country where it’s believed 99% of all music distributed has been obtained illegally somewhere along the line.

Google’s music search service will lets users browse “tens of thousands” of songs…

Sky and Universal Music partner to launch subscription music streaming and download service

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Sky has partnered with Universal Music to launch a subscription-based music service offering both streaming music and “keep forever” download tracks.

The venture has just been announced, and the service doesn’t appear to have a name yet — at least, not a public one. Claiming the model is a world first (a claim I’m sceptical about), Universal Music will give it a flying start by making its entire catalogue of music (including U2, Kanye West, Amy Winehouse, Mika, the Killers, Snow Patrol, Luciano Pavarotti, ABBA, Rihanna, Eminem, Andrea Bocelli, Elton John, and Duffy) available, while Sky continues to negotiate with both major and independent music companies…

Google says Android development is proceeding as was foreseen – 2008 release IS ON

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It seems like – and actually was – just yesterday that the internet, even this bit of it, was thrown into chaos by a boring old business report suggesting that Google’s much-wanted Android mobile OS stood between ZERO and F-ALL chance of coming out in 2008.

Well. It is. It really is. Google itself issued a statement on the web-sweeping Android delay rumours last night, a statement we’re only too happy to copy & paste into this here web browser for your information.

“We are on schedule and we’re very excited to see the momentum continuing to build behind the Android platform among carriers, manufacturers, developers and consumers…