Privacy watchdog's powers grow

The UK privacy watchdog will be given power to spot check government departments by the end of the year, according to information commissioner Richard Thomas, reports Computing.co.uk.

Currently, the information commissioner's office (ICO) can only examine the government's data sharing and data protection policies with a department's consent.

But Gordon Brown has given consent that the ICO will be able to carry out checks on government departments and will increase the office's funding, said Thomas.

Nintendo's Wii gaming console introduced sedentary gamers to the idea of moving off the couch. Now Nintendo is coming out with the Wii Fit, an add-on to the gaming system designed to appeal to women looking to lose weight, says The Wall Street Journal.

The $90 "Balance Board" attachment expands the range of games that can be played on the Wii to include activities such as yoga and push-ups.

The Balance Board - which resembles bathroom scales - also tracks a user's weight and body-mass index.

The CEO of Corel plans to resign, two weeks after an investment firm that owns a majority stake in the Ottawa-based graphics and desktop applications software vendor offered to acquire all of the remaining shares and take the company private for the second time in five years, reports ITWorld.

David Dobson, who has been Corel's CEO for the past three years, is expected to leave by the end of June, according to a press release issued by the company on Monday. Corel said Dobson is leaving to take a senior management job at a Fortune 500 company in the US and that it has begun searching for a successor.

Corel's majority shareholder, San Francisco-based Vector Capital, proposed late last month that it buy out the 31% of the company's shares that are publicly traded, for about $84 million.

Yahoo posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit yesterday but failed to do well enough to convince many on Wall Street that Microsoft needs to raise its takeover bid, says eWeek.

The company left its revenue outlook for the year unchanged, and its shares ticked down half a percent in extended trading.

"Microsoft is breathing a sigh of relief," said Jim Friedland, analyst at Cowen & Co. "Even though these are solid results, given long- and short-term challenges, there's been no overall shift in Yahoo's business."