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Apple previewed the next generation of its iPhone software, which will add over 100 new features, including the long-awaited multitasking, to the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the company’s Cupertino, Calif. headquarters to announce a developer preview and SDK for iPhone OS 4.0. iPhone and iPod Touch users will see the iPhone 4.0 first — this summer, said Jobs without naming a date — but iPad users won’t get it until this fall.
Not all iPhone owners will be able to access all the iPhone 4.0 features. Only the iPhone 3GS and the 32GB and 64GB models of the latest iPod Touch will get multitasking.
For the second time in two weeks, bad networking information spreading from China has disrupted the Internet.
On Thursday morning, bad routing data from a small Chinese ISP called IDC China Telecommunication was re-transmitted by China’s state-owned China Telecommunications, and then spread around the Internet, affecting Internet service providers such as AT&T, Level3, Deutsche Telekom, Qwest Communications and Telefonica.
The incident started just before 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday and lasted about 20 minutes. During that time IDC China Telecommunication transmitted bad routing information for between 32,000 and 37,000 networks, redirecting them to IDC China Telecommunication instead of their rightful owners.
More people outside of the U.S. have registered for Twitter accounts than people in the U.S., the company said on Thursday. More than 60 percent of registered accounts come from outside the U.S., Matt Sanford, a lead engineer in Twitter’s international team, wrote in a blog post. According to a graph included in the post, the balance of Twitter accounts shifted to international users in about September last year. Twitter is available in French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.
Nokia has launched a version of its Comes With Music download service without digital rights management (DRM) for the Chinese market, the phone manufacturer said on Thursday. Nokia’s Comes With Music includes a year of access to music with the price of the phone. Currently, the service is available in about 30 countries, but in those countries the music, unlike in China, is copy-protected. Nokia declined to comment on whether that will change in the future.
…And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I’m Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.