Monday, February 11, 2002		Latest in IT world

Cat2121, Iwant2talk2u, DhakDhak3 were some of the chat IDs used by Jamaluddin Nasir and his associates to plot the January 22 attack on the American Center in Kolkata, the Telegraph reports. Sources in the Special Investigation Team (SIT) told the daily that there was enough evidence to suggest that Nasir, Fayaz Hussain and brother Aayaz had spent hours at cyber cafes planning the strike. They were reportedly accomplices of Dubai-based don Aftab Ansari and the gang had multiple e-mail accounts at Hotmail, Yahoo! Excite and Sawaal. The police also seized two computers from Kolkata and three from Hazaribagh, the report said.

Mobile picture mail

The humble text message is about to undergo a 21st century make-over, The Sunday Times reported. In the next few months, mobile-phone handsets with colour screens and built-in digital cameras will enable users to send rough-and-ready snapshots to one another. Using "picture mail" will be quick and easy, and will build on the reputation of text messaging as the medium of choice for flirtatious teenagers. The picture mail service is already big in Japan, a country generally regarded as a window on the future of the mobile-phone industry. And don't think photos will be limited to indiscernible inch-square images. Many of the next generation of mobile devices will have screens the size and style of Palm Pilots, making picture quality perfectly acceptable.

File-sharing service Aimster has been renamed Madster following an order to relinquish its Internet domain names to America Online Inc. A National Arbitration Forum panel had ruled last year that "aimster.com" and several other domain names registered by Aimster violated the trademark for AOL's popular instant messaging system, AIM. Aimster appealed in court but later gave up the name under a settlement with AOL, Aimster founder Johnny Deep said last week, according to AP. Albany-based Madster, like Aimster, is a free service that allows users to trade music and other types of files over the Internet. The site also offers a $4.95-a-month Club Madster subscription service that offers better connectivity and file recommendations made by other members. Madster is still engaged in a legal fight with record and movie companies over whether the service violates copyright law. The cases have been consolidated for pre-trial proceedings in Chicago.

A Singapore Internet advisory body has launched two voluntary industry codes to protect the privacy of consumers and regulate online content with the hope of offering consumers greater peace of mind when online. The National Internet Advisory Committee (NIAC), an independent body appointed by the Ministry of Information and the Arts, launched the Model Data Protection Code (private sector) and the Industry Content Code last week, according to Reuters. "The two codes are in line with the NIAC's call that there should be greater industry self-regulation and any such regulation should be voluntary," NIAC Chairman Bernard Tan told a news conference. The data protection code aims to control what kinds of consumer information can be shared between organisations. The content code aims to nurture responsible Web content in Singapore and protect the young from undesirable online material, he said.