Gates is world`s most spammed man

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates receives four million e-mails daily, most of them spam, and is probably the most "spammed" person in the world, reports AFP.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a Microsoft-sponsored Asia Leadership Forum in Singapore that the software mogul has an entire department to filter unsolicited e-mails and only a few of them actually got through to his inbox.

"There are two people who probably are the number one spam recipients in the world," Ballmer said, referring to Gates and himself. "Bill Gates [is number one] because he is Bill Gates. Bill literally receives four million pieces of e-mail per day, most of it spam."

SBC Communications has signed a deal to use a Microsoft software system to transmit television over high-speed Internet connections, reports AP.

The deal is valued at about $400 million over 10 years and gives Microsoft a foothold in the television technology market.

SBC will offer IP-based TV and faster Internet access to around 18 million customers by 2007, after it has replaced the local arteries of its copper telephone network with fibre optic cables, at a cost of around $4 billion.

Creative Technology has declared an MP3 marketing war, reports MacCentral.

Creative Technology CEO Sim Wong Hoo told reporters in Singapore that his company planned to spend US$100 million next year in a marketing war aimed squarely at Apple Computer`s iPod.

"The MP3 war has started and I am the one who has declared war," Sim said.