Misc. software news

A survey finds that Web surfers who download music from song-swap sites are more likely to buy music online, as well as offline at retailers. Ahhh, I've been saying this for so long!

Michael Robertson of the Lindows team has told customers that future plans for LindowsOS include dropping Netscape 7.0 in future versions, to be replaced with an unnamed "browser suite".

Brian Shuster, a long-time figure in the Internet pornography world, recently received a patent for the popup ad format and is now looking to make some money off the sites that use it.
Now you know who to blame though I've been hearing that those rectangles ads (like that MS' Tablet PC ad showing around TS) are doing quite better plus are less intrusive thankfully.

EA is considering a fee-based business model for online gaming services, from board games at its Pogo.com website to other popular sports games such as Madden football game. Hopefully they will find enough resistance for scratching out that idea.