iTunes falls short of sales target

Apple Computer`s online music store has sold more than 70 million songs in its first year, and although that`s 30 million short of its target, Reuters reports that iTunes has beaten its competitors.

The report quotes Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder and chairman, as saying Apple is very excited about the results from the first year.

More than three million Apple iPod MP3 players have been sold since the product was launched in October 2001.

A California advisory panel says electronic voting systems should not be used in November`s presidential election unless they produce a paper trail as a safeguard against vote tampering.

Reuters reports the panel also urged California officials to require manufacturers of the systems to upgrade security measures to prevent hackers from tampering with votes. The motion specifically recommends new electronic voting machines be required to print paper-based vote records that voters could use to verify that their ballots had been cast as intended.

The report says the motion comes amid a national debate about the use of electronic voting machines, which had been put forward as a way to avoid the kinds of punch-card irregularities that marred the last presidential vote in Florida.

US authorities have charged four people in Detroit with e-mailing fraudulent adverts for weight-loss products, which Associated Press reports are the first criminal prosecutions under the government`s new "can spam" legislation.

The report says the four were accused of disguising their identities in hundreds of thousands of sales pitches and delivering e-mails by bouncing messages through unprotected relay computers on the Internet.

Officials at the Federal Trade Commission say they received more than 10 000 complaints about unwanted e-mails sent by the bogus weight-loss company.

The report says the "can spam" legislation, which went into effect at the beginning of January, requires unsolicited e-mails to include an unsubscribe mechanism.

Associated Press reports that from the 21^st of next month, new digital kiosks offering tiny drives will be installed at Maxwell`s, a small indie-rock club in Hoboken, New York, to sell recordings of the latest live performance for $10 and the reusable, keychain drives for $20.

The report says the drive will allow fans to take home and share independent music from small live venues around the country.

The tool was created by eMusic Live, which says the idea is to let fans have a legal copy of a live show, which gives smaller artists and their labels creative control over the quality of the recording and a commercial stake in its distribution.

Talking rubbish bins are being installed in a number of public areas in Berlin, Germany, according to a report by SA Computer Magazine.

The report says when litter is deposited, the bins make a comment such as "Thank you", "Welcome to Berlin", or even "Goal!". The bins are multilingual, uttering their phrases in German, English, French and Japanese.

Berlin authorities hope this will encourage people to keep the streets of their city clean, and that they can expand this enterprise into other cities.