Cisco Systems and Yahoo are combining efforts to combat e-mail spam and forgery in a step that's expected to help expand adoption of the technology. The move, announced Wednesday, combines two techniques that rely on cryptography to help determine whether the sender of an e-mail message is legitimate. Sending messages using a false address is a common tactic of spammers. "This is the first time that we've had something fundamental to the mail system that the vendors could get together and agree on," said Sendmail Chief Technology Officer Eric Allman, an e-mail pioneer who helped merge the technologies. "That's an amazing thing right there." The combined technology, DomainKeys Identified Mail, borrows elements from Yahoo's Domainkeys and Cisco's Internet Identified Mail system.
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Phones on the cheap: Nokia launched two new low-end handsets, the 1110 and 1600 models, aimed at first-time users in growth markets like Africa.
Both models are expected to be in shops during the third quarter of this year. The 1110 is expected to have a retail price of $80, while the 1600 will sell for around $100.
The models include basic functions as well as a speaking clock. The 1110 has an inverted black and white display while the 1600 has a color screen.
Nokia said expects the African subscriber base to reach 100 million by the end of this year and to double to 200 million by 2009.
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Where to shop: EBay said it would acquire comparison shopping and consumer review site Shopping.com for about $620 million in cash.
Executives at eBay said the purchase, expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2005, puts eBay sellers in touch with a new set of potential buyers and boosts the number of fixed-price sales listings, which are growing more popular with online shoppers.
The deal also expands the auctioneer's efforts to provide more reviews and customer feedback about products listed on the site. Shopping.com controls Epinions, a site containing more than 400,000 amateur reviews on items ranging from computer servers to mountain bikes.
According to the terms of the deal, eBay will acquire all outstanding shares of Shopping.com stock for $21 per share in cash, a premium over its $17.44 close on Nasdaq before the deal was announced.
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Word in XML: Microsoft said that it will make XML, a data format increasingly used by businesses, standard in the next version of its Office program due out next year.
XML, or extensible markup language, is used to transfer data back and forth between different programs, computers and organizations.
The upcoming Office upgrade -- codenamed Office 12 -- will have new default XML file formats for the Word wordprocessing, the Excel spreadsheet and Powerpoint presentations programs, Microsoft said.
Betsy Frost, Microsoft's a senior marketing director in the Microsoft business group that includes Office, said that the XML capabilities will mainly benefit companies and corporate workers who need to tap into a variety of different databases.
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Safe storage: Sun Microsystems, eager to expand its reach in the growing data storage market, has agreed to purchase Storage Technology for $4.1 billion in cash. Shares of StorageTek soared 17 percent, while Sun shares tumbled more than 3 percent in early trading.
The deal, approved by the boards of both companies, is the biggest move by Sun since the internet crash of 2000 decimated its sales and profits.
The two companies had combined sales of more than $13 billion over the past year, and Sun said the deal will add to its operating profit in the first 12 months after it closes.
StorageTek, which will be integrated into Sun's storage division led by Mark Canepa, currently has about 7,100 employees compared with Sun's 32,000. It was not immediately clear what impact the deal would have on the companies' work forces.
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Compiled by David Cohn. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
