Wikipedia eager to lift China ban

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales plans to talk to Chinese government officials about lifting the country's blanket ban on the online encyclopaedia, reports TV NZ.

The popular Web site, which allows anyone to write or edit entries on almost any topic, has had a patchy history in the world's most populous nation, where it has been blocked and unblocked several times since being launched six years ago.

Wales, speaking to reporters in Adelaide on Monday during his first visit to Australia, said he hoped to talk to a senior official from the Chinese government about the current ban on the site.

Internet retailer Amazon.com wants to launch an online music store next month to challenge Apple, and is working on plans to sell music with reduced protection against copyright infringement, reports Business Times.

The Internet giant has approached all the music majors and said it wanted to sell unprotected MP3 songs in May as it tries to follow Apple in shaking up the music industry.

However, it remains unclear if Amazon will meet its deadline. The Internet retailer has been trying, unsuccessfully, for over 18 months to break into the market dominated by Apple iTunes, which has a share of about 80%.

Search engine giant Google will add video conferencing software to its acquisition arsenal, reports China View.

Google will acquire the video conferencing software and take on Marratech's technical team, it said on Saturday.

The deal "will enable from-the-desktop participation for Googlers in video conference meetings, wherever there's an Internet connection," Douglas Merrill, VP of engineering, wrote in a Google blog posting. "It will be used in combination with our current video conferencing equipment."

Dell has bowed to pressure from customers and dumped its Vista-only policy for consumer PCs by adding Windows XP as an operating option on half-a-dozen machines, reports ARNnet.

The company's US stores will now offer Windows XP Home and Windows XP Professional on two Dimension desktops - the E520 and E521 - and four Inspiron laptops, the 1405, 1705, 1505 and 1501.

"We heard you loud and clear on bringing the Windows XP option back to our Dell consumer PC offerings," Dell said on its Ideas in Action page, a companion to its IdeaStorm site.