December 7th, 2009 by
Lisa Francis
Computing.co.uk – Northern Ireland to see £48 million broadband boost
Northern Ireland’s communications infrastructure will be boosted to the tune of £48m, following financial commitments from BT and the EAFRD, according to Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster.
BBC – Troubled £12bn NHS IT system to be scaled back
The government is to scale back its £12bn NHS IT system in what the Tories are calling a “massive U-turn”.
The Guardian – Forget the iPod: the iPhone orchestra really makes music mobile
A group of students will be performing in a concert next week using musical iPhone applications, programmed by students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
IT PRO – Retailers geared up for ‘Mega Monday’
Online retailers face major traffic volumes on Monday 7 December, what e-retail body IMRG says will be the busiest online shopping day of the year for the UK. Retailers like Amazon, Play.com, Tesco and Argos will be expected to deal with hoards of online shoppers looking to buy gifts for Christmas, with a prediction that £350 million will be spent on Monday alone.
The Register – Mozilla lights fire under Thunderbird
Mozilla will step up the pace of on its Thunderbird mail and communications platform next year, to re-invigorate a “stagnant” email client scene.
The Financial Times – Apple buys internet music site Lala.com
Apple bought internet music site Lala.com late on Friday for an undisclosed amount, a development that could lead to the addition of streaming songs and new payment systems at Apple’s iTunes, the world’s biggest music retailer.
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Thunderbird 1 Comment »
October 29th, 2009 by
Chris Measures
So the Toy Retailers Association reckons that this will be an austerity Christmas, with the 12 most popular toys all costing less than £50.
Ignoring the idea that £50 is seen as cheap for a single item, what are little Jonny and Karen asking for? Apparently it’ll be a mix of character-themed tie-ins, updated versions of Monopoly and Lego, plus technology in the form of digital multimedia cameras. To be honest I’m not sure this bears out the claim of a nostalgic trend (surely its too soon to be nostalgic over Transformers?) and looks more like retailers trying to make us buy what they have most stocks of.
Still this year’s selection beats 1997’s ‘must have’ toy – the Furby………..
We launched our first Christmas Quiz last month and the response was overwhelming, so we’ve brought it back as a weekly feature. Follow @speedcomms and every Friday at midday we’ll tweet a question. To take part simply send an @ reply with your answer. The winner will be randomly chosen at the end of the day and will be announced on the Speed Blogs and on Twitter on the following Monday morning. When we say randomly chosen, we don’t mean this is a fix. All’s fair.
