PeopleSoft revives refund offer

Business software company PeopleSoft has revived its promise to refund customers if its products are spoiled by Oracle`s hostile takeover bid. The sales incentives offer two to five times the sales amount back if a new owner makes dramatic changes to products or software services within the next two years.

The guarantees are similar to those PeopleSoft made to attract more customers in the second quarter. While the original programme ended in July, PeopleSoft management decided to renew the refund promises because of ongoing questions about PeopleSoft`s future. Oracle doesn`t believe a takeover would trigger a need for refunds, with Oracle executives saying PeopleSoft`s products would still be supported for at least a decade after the takeover.

eWeek reports that IBM has started work on a research and development project that promises to extend the reach of its DB2 Information Integrator software, until it can dig out data from every corner of an enterprise - whether inside or out of data warehouses. The technology is codenamed Marsala, says eWeek.

The news site says IBM is working on this next stage of information integration in order to answer the pleas of customers who say that, after they deploy information integration infrastructures, they still need to drag in data that lies beyond traditional data repositories, including e-mail or .PDF repositories.

IDG news service reports that Toshiba has announced a new hard drive-based digital music player that is smaller and lighter than both its previous model and the rival iPod player from Apple Computer. Toshiba says the new Gigabeat MEG200J (G20) contains a 20GB hard drive, which is four times the capacity of that in the previous model.

This, it says, is enough space to store up to 332 hours of music, encoded at 128kbps, or around 5 000 songs. Formats supported are Windows Media Audio, MP3, or WAV.

Fuji Photo Film says it is to launch a new 3-megapixel class digital still camera, the FinePix S3000, later this year. The camera has almost the same specifications and styling as one of the company`s current offerings, the FinePix 3800, with some improvements and a lower price.

The new model offers lower power consumption, choice between NTSC and PAL video, and more display languages. Both cameras have a 3.2-megapixel class image sensor and can record images at up to 2 048 pixel by 1 536 pixel resolution in the JPEG format.

AFP reports that the phenomenal growth of Asia`s mobile phone download industry has spawned widespread music piracy. KT Ang, regional director of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, said most of its Asia-Pacific chapters are suffering losses as a result of unlicensed sales of ringtones derived from hit songs.

Japan and Korea make the best efforts to ensure ringtone vendors tow the line, followed by Singapore and Malaysia, Ang said. "As for countries like Thailand and Philippines, they are almost entirely not licensed," he said.