Yahoo! Music has started to unofficially offer an MP3 version of the new Jessica Simpson song "A Public Affair" without DRM constrains, for $1.99 (£1.08).

ComicBase, the leading comic book collection management software, is the first commercial PC product available in the new Blu-ray format.

SanDisk has introduced the Extreme IV CompactFlash digital film card for professional photographers. The company claims it is the highest performance card in the world, with 40 MB per second minimum read and write speeds (266X).

Health officials in sunny Queensland are prosecuting the Sensual Pleasures adult shop for selling a substance said to enhance sexual climax under the rather unraunchy label of DVD cleaner.

Fed up with continued piracy of DVDs and software, a Chinese city is offering retailers the chance to swap fake discs for real ones.

Sky is the latest company to get on the convergence wagon by offering broadband internet access alongside other comms services.

Sony has released its BWU-100A Blu-ray disc burner, a multi-format disc drive that supports recording to Blu-ray, DVD-R, DVD+R and CD-R/RW discs.

With the retail big boys clearing out their inventory, prices for 16x DVD burners have recently dropped 7-10%, and they are now little more expensive than DVD-ROMs.

Late last month, San Diego-based DFC Intelligence raised more than a few eyebrows when it said that Sony could very well end up last in the next-gen gaming race, behind competitors Microsoft and Nintendo. Today, the research firm released an industry briefing, and its song remains largely the same.

Datawrite are sponsoring a competition to design a t-shirt and claim up to £15,000 worth of prize money. To have a look at some of the designs submitted so far have a look here.

If you fancy your chances as an artist and want to have a crack at the £15,000 prize money check out dshirt.co.uk.

They are also offering everyone the chance to get one of the winning design t-shirts free of charge. To be eligible to claim you’re free t-shirt you need to display a banner on your website - check out this page for full details of how to claim you’re t-shirt, or dshirt as Datawrite call it.

Lite-On IT, given the fact that several global leading brands will follow Japan-based Plextor and unveil 18x DVD burner models this quarter or early next quarter, is preparing to offer 20x DVD burners in the fourth quarter to enhance its competitiveness, according to industry sources.

A purportedly leaked Intel memo explains why Intel has decided to lend its weight to the HD-DVD standard.

Ritek has begun OEM production of LabelFlash CD-R and DVD+R/-R discs for Fujifilm, with an initial small shipment volume of several million discs a month, according to industry sources. LabelFlash technology allows users to directly burn a label onto an optical disc.

Movielink LLC has licensed technology that allows the online movie service's customers to transfer downloaded films to DVDs for playback on standard DVD players.

Korean firm LG will release its first 18x DVD burner - named GSA-H22N - in Europe later this month.

Retail prices for 16x DVD Dual burners manufactured in Taiwan are expected to be slashed from NT$1,299 (£22) to less than NT$1,000 (£17) before the end of the third quarter.

A UK law banning gadgets that let Mp3 player users listen to their music over FM radio is to be overturned, it has been revealed.

A Los Angeles video news service is suing YouTube for allowing its users to upload copyrighted video footage onto the popular Web site.

In December 2004, Datawrite launched a competition to help young British art students get their 'foot in the door' of the art world and gain unprecedented exposure for their creative talents. They were asked to produce funky, original designs to be printed onto premium quality blank media and sold throughout the UK and Europe. The response was phenomenal! Datawrite received thousands of entries of the highest calibre. Ten winning designs were chosen and are set to take the optical media world by storm!! This resulted in the award winning Scribbles range of products.

www.discs.co.uk.

Datawrite have decided to run a similar competition for 2006 only this time the designs are to be published on t-shirts’. They are offering a total of £15000 in prize money. All you have to do is publish a design which is suitable for publishing on a t shirt.

For more information visit: www.dshirt.co.uk.

Japanese firm Hitachi has combined NAND flash and DRAM memory to produce a fast replacement for optomechanical hard drives.