LONDON (Reuters) – A quiet Internet revolution begins on Thursday. Organizations can begin applying to name and run their own domains instead of entrusting them to the operators of .com, .org, .gov and others.

Up to 2,000 applications are expected to be made to ICANN, the body that oversees the Internet’s naming system for so-called “top-level” international domains. The window to grab some virtual real estate will close in three months’ time, probably for years.

LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – U.S. online DVD rental
company Netflix (NFLX.O: Quote, Profile, Research) launched in Britain and Ireland on
Monday, taking on BSkyB’s (BSY.L: Quote, Profile, Research) premium drama and movies
offerings and prompting Amazon-owned (AMZN.O: Quote, Profile, Research) rival Lovefilm to
offer a new cut-price service.

In its first expansion outside the Americas, which the
company has said will push it into a loss this year, Netflix
said its prices and instant access to a broad range of online
entertainment would attract new customers.

LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – U.S. online video and DVD
rental company Netflix launched in the UK and Ireland
on Monday, taking on Amazon-owned rival Lovefilm with a
promise of a huge range of instant entertainment.

The company, which describes itself as the leading global
internet subscription service for films and TV programmes, said
it would offer unlimited access to a broad range of
entertainment for 5.99 pounds ($9.23) in Britain and 6.99 euros
in Ireland.

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) – The Daily News of New York has hired former News of the World editor Colin Myler as its editor in chief, an appointment that is certain to add spice to the newspaper’s long and heated rivalry with Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

Myler, who replaces Kevin Convey, had long been a close lieutenant of Murdoch, serving as managing editor of the New York Post before he was brought to London in 2007 to clean up the scandal-plagued News of the World.

LONDON, Dec 20 (Reuters) – Talk show host Piers Morgan
told a British judicial inquiry on Tuesday that he had never
approved phone hacking during his time as a tabloid newspaper
editor, and that his published boasts had merely been repeating
rumours about journalistic “dark arts”.

Morgan, now a high-profile CNN talk-show host in the United
States, edited the Rupert Murdoch tabloid at the heart of the
hacking scandal, the News of the World, from 1994 to 1995 before
going on to edit the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004.

LONDON, Dec 20 (Reuters) – Talk show host Piers Morgan
told a British judicial inquiry on Tuesday he had never
sanctioned phone hacking during his time as a tabloid editor, as
he faced tough questions over his inolvement in the “dark arts”
of journalism.

Morgan, now a high-profile CNN talk-show host in the United
States, edited the Rupert Murdoch tabloid at the heart of the
hacking scandal, the News of the World, from 1994 to 1995 before
going on to edit the Daily Mirror newspaper from 1995 to 2004.

LONDON, Dec 16 (Reuters) – The methodical dissection
in courtrooms across London this week of events at Rupert
Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid has finally
destroyed the company’s long-held defence about phone-hacking
and left son James more isolated than ever.

The 39-year-old, until recently seen as the Murdoch child
most likely to replace Rupert at the top of News Corp,
has until now hung on to his job by blaming those around him for
the hacking scandal that has caused public outrage.

LONDON, Dec 8 (Reuters) – Britain’s biggest mobile
operator Everything Everywhere announced plans on Thursday to
invest over 1.5 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) in the next three
years to improve its coverage and prepare for the launch of a
new generation network.

The group, a joint venture between France Telecom
and Deutsche Telekom which runs the Orange and
T-Mobile brands, said it planned double-digit growth in its 2012
network investment compared with 2011.

LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) – Employees in fast-growing
economies have more freedom over the technology they use for
work than their counterparts in developed countries, and are
more likely to see corporate provision of devices as a perk,
according to a study.

The so-called consumerisation of IT — the migration into
the workplace of technology that employees use at home — is a
global phenomenon but far more pronounced in China and Brazil
than in Britain, France and the United States, the study found.

By Jim Finkle and Georgina Prodhan

(Reuters) – SAP AG’s purchase of Web-based software company SuccessFactors Inc could be the catalyst the old-school German technology giant needs to try to catch up to rivals in the fast-growing cloud computing market.

SAP has struggled for more than five years to create business applications that are hosted on the cloud, or Web, and the company lags behind pioneer Salesforce.com Inc and larger rival Oracle Corp in the so-called software as a service (SaaS) market, analysts say.