In brief: Yahoo buys Oddpost

Yahoo has acquired Oddpost , a start-up that provides an innovative, Web-based e-mail service, and plans to use its technology to spruce up Yahoo Mail and other Yahoo services. Like other Web-based e-mail, Oddpost uses a standard Web browser, but its interface functions more like that of a desktop program such as Microsoft Outlook. For example, users can organize or delete messages by dragging them into folders instead of having to reload a Web page each time. The Oddpost service works using Dynamic HTML, XML and Simple Object Access Protocol. It does not use Java and requires no downloads or plug-ins. It currently works only with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, although Oddpost had been developing a version for Mozilla.

Sprint and the Swedish National Research and Education Network have reportedly set a world record for sending large amounts of data speedily across the Internet. The Sprint/SUNET team sent nearly 840G bytes of data - the equivalent of 140 DVDs - from a PC in San Jose to another PC in Lulea, Sweden, in less than 27 minutes. The bulk data traveled 10,157 miles across Sprint and SUNET's production Internet backbones at 4.23G bit/sec. The Sprint/SUNET transmission is 12% faster than the previous record held by the California Institute of Technology and CERN using a non-public advanced research network rather than a commercial network.