March 5th, 2010 by
Richard Morgan
BBC – YouTube adds video captions for deaf
YouTube is making the tens of millions of videos it hosts more accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing by putting automatic captions on them.
IT PRO – Mobile surfing now more popular than reading
Europeans spend more time accessing the internet from their mobile phones while they’re out and about than reading newspapers or magazines.
The Guardian – Plans to fight cyberwar are a ‘recipe for disaster’
Senior security experts have criticised the west’s approach to online threats, suggesting that not enough is being done to stem the growing tide of cyberattacks.
The Register – Google says desktop PC is three years from ‘irrelevance’
Google’s European sales chief says that desktop PCs will be “irrelevant” in three years. This week, as reported by Silicon Republic, Google Europe boss John Herlihy told a “baffled” conference audience that very soon the smartphone will completely eclipse the desktop. “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant,” he said. “In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”
ComputerWorldUK – BBC order pulls plug on iPhone iPlayer app
A promising and potentially useful iPhone application that would have allowed users to browse, view and even download content from the BBC has been blocked by the corporation.
ComputerWorldUK – European IT managers have cloud aversion
Barely one in five of European IT managers think that cloud computing represents a game-changing change in methodology for enterprises, roughly the same proportion that believes that cloud computing is a fad.
March 3rd, 2010 by
Richard Morgan
IT PRO – Twitter to launch search-based advertising model
Twitter is to introduce an advertising model that will serve third-party advertisements in on-site search results, broadly emulating Google’s approach to the wider web.
IT PRO – Orange and T-Mobile merger given EU green light
Mobile heavyweights Orange and T-Mobile have been cleared by European regulators to go ahead with their proposed merger – one that will result in a combined UK customer base of just short of 30 million users.
The Guardian – Microsoft has started rolling out its browser ballot
It’s probably not a “phishing attack”: Microsoft Windows users in Europe are now starting to get a screen that offers them a choice of web browsers, as a result of an anti-trust settlement with the European Commission
The Guardian – BBC’s iPlayer verification blocks open source software
The BBC seems to have started using a Flash player verification service that stops the iPlayer from streaming for more than a minute or two to unauthorised media players, hitting users of the open source XBMC
February 22nd, 2010 by
Richard Morgan
BBC – Google books deal heads to New York court
Google is preparing to dace opponents in a New York court over long-delayed plans to create the world’s biggest digital library.
The Times – Google forced into Buzz revamp over privacy row
Google has been forced into a hasty revamp of Buzz, its new social networking service, after users claimed that it breached their privacy.
The Register – FriendsReunited sale cleared (Dennis the Menace not a competition concern)
The Competition Commission has cleared ITV’s sale of FriendsReunited to Brightsolid – a subsidiary of DC Thomson the publisher of the Beano.
IT PRO – UK broadcasters unveil SeeSaw online TV platform
Online TV service SeeSaw launched yesterday, offering 3,000 hours of content from Channel 4, Five and older BBC programs in a bid to grab a slice of the internet TV market from broadcasters and Google’s YouTube.
February 3rd, 2010 by
Richard Morgan
The Guardian – Conservatives would end BT monopoly to deliver superfast broadband
The Conservatives today claimed they were willing to loosen BT’s grip on the local telephone network and use parts of the BBC licence fee to deliver “superfast” broadband to the majority of Britain’s homes by 2017.
CRN – Symantec launches “points for pounds” partner scheme
Security vendor Symantec has introduced a new partner incentives programme to reward members for making use of its Symplus website.
Computerworld UK – Obama to kill off NASA manned moon mission
Reports surfacing this week say that the White House plans to put a stop to NASA’s plans to return to the moon.
The Daily Telegraph – Children spend 7 hours 38 mins a day online
Children as young as eight are spending more than seven hours a day absorbed in an ‘electronic life’, a report claimed. By using more than one device at a time – such as iPods, mobile phones and computer games – some youngsters are consuming up to 10 hours of electronic content a day.
Computer Weekly – Tories promise 100Mbps broadband to two-thirds of UK homes by 2017
The Conservative Party has promised to give most UK homes 100Mbps broadband network access by 2017 as part of a revamp of Britain’s communications regulations.
January 7th, 2010 by
Louise Mackintosh
…Who needs him? What with all the New Year reminders that fat is evil.
Take the hilarious story about a health club in Bristol which took it upon themselves to point out in an ad that
“Wh
en the aliens come, they will eat the fatties first”
Needless to say, the locals were far from impressed.
And earlier in the week, a story so bad that I am in two minds as to whether it was born from mind-blowing stupidity or mind-blowing genius: dating site BeautifulPeople.com – which only allows new members to join if existing members deem them to be good looking enough – has axed 5,000 members for having posted photos of themselves showing weight gain.
And the official company quote?
“As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld,” said site founder Robert Hintze. “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”
Yes, you did read that right. “Letting fatties roam free”. Somebody approved that.
I don’t know whether to be appalled or impressed, I really don’t.
October 29th, 2009 by
Gerry Grewal
In case you didn’t know it’s just 56 days until Christmas. At a time when most people probably need a drink to help them forget about the recession, the fact that money is tight and that MJ is no longer with us, we find that the office party has been culled. The BBC, for example, has pulled the plug on Christmas parties “in light of the economic climate”. Meanwhile, Lloyds Bank is reported to be spending £2 million on entertainment in the run up to the holiday season. Ahem.
At Speed, we’re having a relatively modest affair, but are taking the team out for dinner and to throw some shapes at Floridita in Soho. I, for one, think it’s really important that companies show their appreciation to staff for all their hard work over the year. There’s nothing better for staff morale and bonding. We all let go for once, forget about work, have rambling, slurry conversations which provide some titillating gossip for the next few weeks, and end the evening by doing the moonwalk across the dancefloor. I’m looking forward to it already.
Bring back the Christmas party.
September 2nd, 2009 by
Nick Bishop
For the second day running, the newsagent at Hertford North train station hasn’t opened, meaning no Guardian and no FT to read on my way to work. With no book packed and a very limited mobile phone signal, I’ve had little choice but to read Metro. I am poorer for this experience.
The deliberately mediocre, appeal-to-all, Metro is no substitute for a paid-for newspaper. Neither is the free-to-all BBC. With a few exceptions, the brilliant World Tonight on Radio 4 for example, BBC News, certainly the flagship television news programmes, lacks depth and originality. It’s because it’s so bland that, unlike my colleague Stephen Waddington, I don’t think we should be worried about the BBC distorting the shape of media industry. The US media industry over the past twelve months has proved itself very capable of folding without the intervention of a state-funded news organisation.
News with analysis and opinion is a product worth paying for, whether in print or online. The big change for the newspaper industry will, I believe, come when Apple launches its tablet computer (heavily rumoured). I’m not an early adopter of technology but I’ll be among the first to buy this. And no longer will I have to put up with my newsagent mysteriously shutting up shop.
August 20th, 2009 by
Matthew Watson
BBC News – Autonomous tech ‘requires debate’
The coming age of lorries that drive themselves or robots that perform surgery is fraught with legal and ethical issues, says a new report. The Royal Academy of Engineering says that automated freight transport could be on the roads in as few as 10 years.
Silicon.com – Could new internet routing chop 40 per cent off Google’s electricity bill?
Researchers have come up with a new way to route internet traffic that could save big internet companies like Google millions on their electricity bills, according to an article published by MIT’s Technology Review.
IT PRO – British retailers can learn lessons from US identity hack
A senior security executive has said that British retailers can learn lessons from the ‘biggest identity hack case ever’ – where 130 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen. Chris Young, vice president for products at RSA, told IT PRO that retailers should not simply plug holes that they’ve seen in previous attacks, but rather get in front of the problems by identifying risk and putting policies in place.
Total Telecom – Orange launches social network aggregator
Mobile operator introduces application that pulls social networking activity together; reports claim Vodafone gearing up to launch similar product. Orange on Wednesday launched a new application that aggregates activity from a number of social networks into one central place.
CBR Online – Report highlights changing face of ‘misunderstood’ virtualization
“Virtualisation is the most misunderstood term in the IT industry – it’s a fantastic tool. All the products and platforms are good,” he told CBR. “But companies should be looking at much more virtualisation. Desktop virtualisation has the potential to save significant amounts of money in terms of provisioning. But it’s still a new technology and has a way to go.”
August 18th, 2009 by
Matthew Watson
Total Telecom – BSkyB tells BBC of concerns over Project Canvas consultation
Satellite broadcaster concerned about timeframe, lack of regulator for on-demand content service. British Sky Broadcasting PLC has written to the British Broadcasting Corp. expressing concern over a consultation process for a proposed new online on-demand service, the BBC reports on its Web site Monday.
ITVT – BBC Unveils its Red-Button Interactive TV Schedule for the Coming Weeks
The BBC announced Friday the line-up of content that will be available through its red-button interactive TV service for the next two weeks (and beyond).
IT PRO -Brits are a nation of mobile addicts
Three-quarters of British people have addictive tendencies when it comes to technology, putting gadgets and gizmos ahead of many other things in their lives.
FT.com – IT outsourcers face cloud computing challenge
Cloud computing is threatening the business model of the Indian IT outsourcing industry as the global recession pushes business to cut costs, according to the chief executive of Infosys. But Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the leading figures in the Indian IT industry, also said he saw opportunities to expand Infosys’s customer base as cloud computing would allow it to tap into mid-sized companies.
Computing – Tesco global IT services arm overhauls security
Tesco’s Bangalore-based Hindustan Service Centre (HSC), which hosts and protects much of the retailer’s corporate data, is implementing a managed security solution from Fortinet. Tesco HSC provides offshore IT services for the firm’s worldwide operations and provides business information services to more than 3,200 Tesco stores in 12 countries. “The complexity of managing these multiple point products created a strain on IT resources and a risk to the security of our worldwide corporate data
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