MS targets IBM Lotus Notes users

Microsoft plans to offer a variety of analytical and data transfer tools, aimed at luring customers of IBM`s rival Lotus Notes e-mail software to its own system that allows business to collaborate on projects via the Web, reports Reuters.

Both Microsoft and IBM are vying for supremacy in the $2.8 billion corporate messaging market, which includes collaboration tools such as e-mail, Web publishing, electronic calendars and project management systems. Each company wants to play a leading role in defining how Web services will work together in the future.

To encourage customers to switch from their existing Lotus applications to Microsoft`s platform, Microsoft said it would offer a tool to allow potential customers to identify and organise its most-used shared software.

The Free Software Foundation has released the first draft of a new version of the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), reports PC Pro. This version is the first overhaul of the licence under which the GNU Linux platform has been distributed for over 15 years.

The new version is aimed at two key issues: software patents and digital rights management.

The draft includes new language designed to make the licence less dependent on US legal concepts and terms, as well as a provision relating to the use of GPL software for Web services.

Canadian researchers have found that Internet users make a decision on whether they like a Web site or not in a fraction of a second.

Reuters reports that a study has found that people make aesthetic judgements about a Web site in just one-twentieth of a second - less than half the time it takes to blink. The first impression influences the rest of their experience with the site.

"It really is just a physiological response," Gitte Lindgaard, a psychology professor at Carleton University in Canada, told Reuters. "So Web designers have to make sure they`re not offending users visually."

Clueless iPod users in the UK are forking out around lb65 per 40-minute lesson in a bid to master their iPods, reports The Scotsman.

Selfridges` department store in London is offering the classes in response to queries from customers who can`t operate their new music players.

The one-to-one "iPod Survival" sessions will cover general use of the iPod, using iTunes, installing and deleting videos, creating playlists and downloading Podcasts.