Hamburg - Sometimes there's nothing worse than having a song stuck in your head. It's particularly frustrating if you picked up a melody somewhere, but don't even know the artist or title. The internet may ease your pain. Specialized online services are helping identify those nameless favourites.

There are a variety of ways to name that tune. The Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology records the user singing the tune and tries to identify it against a database of melodies, an approach known as "Query by Humming." The technology was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute in Ilmenau.

Kiel, Germany - Windows Vista is the safest Microsoft operating system available, according to an online test conducted by the Association of German Network Security.

The test covered 225,000 PCs in Germany. Around 5.5 per cent of f computers using the Vista system had security problems. People using computers with the Windows XP operating system reported problem rates of 12 per cent. Even more problems were reported with computers using Windows 98, ME, and Windows 2000 - around 20 per cent.

Kirchheim-Heimstetten, Germany - Sun Microsystems intends offering a beta version of its StarOffice 9 office suite as a free download.

Dresden, Germany  - Japanese school-children won the most prizes at a competition for pupils who are learning to speak German in their homelands, the Goethe Institute said Saturday.

The visiting pupils, aged 16 to 19, formed groups of five to produce their own films or do self-authored stage shows in the German city of Dresden, comparing the cultures of their homelands with the German-speaking world.

The Olympics style event lasted 10 days and attracted 119 entrants from more than 40 nations where German is not normally spoken.

Berlin  - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier phoned his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi Friday to call for restrictions on foreign journalists covering the Beijing Olympics to be lifted.

In particular, Steinmeier raised the issue of restrictions on internet access for journalists, asking Yang for clarification.

The German foreign minister urged the Chinese government to reconsider the measures, according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry in Berlin.

Yang had responded that China intended to hold the games in the spirit of the Olympic movement, the statement said.

Munich - Siemens announced Friday it was selling most of phone maker SHC to investment company Arques, ending its traditional link with phone production.

Siemens provided no financial details of the sale of 80.2 per cent of SHC (Siemens Home and Office Communications Devices), which is, like the parent company, based in Munich.

Apart from phones, SHC also makes accessories for rapid internet access and internet telephony and receivers for digital television.

Arques chief Michael Schumann said the investment company, which buys companies with the aim of restructuring them and selling them on, aimed to boost SHC's key brands.