Hackers take Baidu offline

In today's podcast: Hackers take Baidu offline; music industry wants Pirate Bay founders to pay; and Microsoft releases ERP software for specialty retail chains.

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The group that took down Twitter.com last month has apparently claimed another victim: China's largest search engine Baidu.com. Baidu.com was offline late Monday, but at one point it displayed an image saying "This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army," according to a report by People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party. With more than half of China's Internet search market, Baidu is by far China's most-used search engine. The company could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Stockholm District Court should decide that two of The Pirate Bay's founders have to pay a fine since the file-sharing site is still open and they are still involved, according to a recent filing from the music industry. In October last year the court decided that file-sharing site should be closed, and if it wasn't, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg would each have to pay a fine of 500,000 Swedish kronor (or US$71,000). Now the Swedish divisions of Universal Music, EMI Music, Sony Music and Warner Music want the court to make that threat a reality, according to a motion registered by the court on Dec. 28.

Continuing its quest for more ERP market share, Microsoft on Monday announced a new application aimed at mid-sized speciality retail chains. Dynamics AX for Retail consists of core AX ERP functionality, along with technology Microsoft acquired earlier this year. Redmond's key selling point is tight integration across components, from point of sale to the supply chain and financials. It also integrates with other Microsoft products, such as Office and SharePoint.

Consumers want more retail stores to be more interactive and personalized online, a new survey from IBM has found. The company surveyed 32,000 consumers online to find out how much interactivity they want from the retail outlets they frequent. For the survey, they interviewed participants from the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, China, India and Brazil. IBM released the survey results in conjunction with the National Retail Federation conference, being held this week in New York. The survey had found an overwhelming interest in more online customization services.

...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.