Apple unveils iPhone 3GS

In today's podcast: iPhone 3GS; spam volumes drop; and Dell to ship open source software to SMBs.

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Apple has unveiled a new version of the iPhone: the iPhone 3GS, which it says will launch applications and run software faster than the previous model. The new phone sells for 199 dollars for the 16GB version and 299 dollars for a 32GB model. Apple is cutting the price on the current iPhone 3G to 99 dollars for the 8GB phone. The phone will go on sale in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland on June 19, with six more countries to follow a week later. The new phone's camera captures video, and has auto or manual focus, while the battery life has been extended, offering up to 12 hours of talk time on second-generation networks

Spam volumes dropped by around 15 percent last week, after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ordered the disconnection of Pricewert, an Internet service provider thought to be a safe haven for spammers. Pricewert, also known as 3FN, was home to a host of illegal activity including the distribution of viruses, phishing, spyware and child pornography, according to the FTC. The ISP has said that the alleged criminal activity on its network was the result of bad customers and not its fault. Last November, spam levels dropped close to 50 percent after another notorious ISP, McColo, was taken off-line by its upstream providers. It took months for spam levels to rebound to the same volume.

Dell is planning to include open-source software in bundles of hardware for small and medium-size businesses. The company sees a definite shift in use from proprietary to open source software among small businesses as they try to cut costs. Dell now plans to offer pre-configured software and hardware bundles containing open source software to help customers who are not advanced enough to deploy open source on their own. It has already introduced such a bundle for U.S. retail customers, and will roll it out in Asia later this year

T-Mobile confirmed on Tuesday that internal information posted on the Internet by hackers was stolen from its systems. However, it said it does not appear that customer data is in jeopardy. Hackers posted a message on Saturday on the Full Disclosure vulnerability message board claiming they'd pilfered confidential documents as well as financial and database information from T-Mobile's servers. T-Mobile disputes the value of the data, and says it will contact customers if it becomes evident personal information was compromised

And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Peter Sayer in Paris. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.