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May 25th, 2010 by michael.frier

Daily News – 25/05

IT PRO – Nokia and Yahoo team up on mobile email, maps and IM
Nokia and Yahoo will be working together on email, instant messaging, maps and navigation.

IT PRO – Cyber criminals charge just £6 for access to a botnet
New research has shown cyber criminals are renting out botnets for under £6 per hour.

SC Magazine – Becta is set to be abolished as part of spending cuts by Chancellor George Osborne

The schools technology quango Becta is set to be abolished as part of the Chancellor’s 6.5 billion spending cuts. The British Education Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) was charged with promoting the use of technology within education, but as part of a spending cut by Chancellor George Osborne is set to be abolished.

Computer Weekly – Sun founder hires Tony Blair

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is to become a senior adviser to Silicon Valley venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, online news site TechCrunch reports. Khosla Ventures was started in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, where he served as CEO and chairman in the early 1980s before joining venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers in 1986.

Computing.co.uk – Social networking critical to employee satisfaction

Eight out of 10 employees claim that being trusted to manage their own time and the internet as they wish is more important than pay. Additionally, a fifth of employees would turn down a job if it did not allow them access to social networking sites or personal email during work time, according to a survey carried out by software specialists Clearswift

BBC – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg pledges easier privacy

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook “missed the mark” over recent privacy concerns. In a column in the Washington Post newspaper, he said the social network would soon make changes to users’ privacy options.

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April 28th, 2010 by michael.frier

Daily News – 27/04

The Register – Cops raid Gizmodo editor in pursuit of iPhone 4G ‘felony’

Gizmodo editor Jason Chen has been raided by Silicon Valley’s computer crime force in hot pursuit of the case of the missing iPhone prototype. According to a bulletin published by Gizmodo today, they broke down the front door to gain entry, and departed some hours later with a truck containing Chen’s computer equipment.

CIO – Most IT staff in financial services looking to change jobs

Over three-quarters (77 per cent) of IT staff working in the financial services sector are looking to change jobs within the next year, a new survey shows.

Information Age – UK cloud computing market ‘to double by 2012′

Analyst predicts that UK rate of spend on cloud computing to reach more than £1bn within next two years

UK spending on cloud computing services will double within the next two years to over £1.2 billion, one IT industry analyst has claimed.

IT PRO – Sony kills off the floppy disk
Sony is to bid a final farewell to the 3.5in floppy disk and will be ceasing manufacturing as of March 2011.

The Financial Times – Spotify hopes to challenge iTunes

Spotify, the fast-growing European music service, is making an ambitious challenge to Apple’s iTunes with an important upgrade to its technology.

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July 27th, 2009 by Speed Budapest (Matt)

Hot off the press 27/7

Computing – Customers set to demand better technology from banks
Analyst Gartner has warned that customers will desert banks which do not deliver highly personal and customised online services. A recent Gartner study highlighted the rising expectations consumers had of online banking services. The analyst predicted that banks which do not react now risk losing customers in the future.

The Register – Nokia snaps up unified address book vendor
Nokia is to acquire address-book-on-steroids purveyor Cellity, obviously hoping to bring some of that Palm Pre centralisation of data onto its own devices.

Silicon.com – Microsoft U-turn: Browser ‘ballot’ coming to Europe’s Windows 7
In a reversal on Friday, Microsoft said it is now open to allowing users in Europe to select competing browsers in Windows 7. Essentially, Microsoft is offering to put into Windows a way for consumers to easily install a rival to Internet Explorer.

BBC News – Spotify sets its sights on iPhone
The Swedish music streaming service Spotify is planning to launch its first mobile application within days.

FT Technology – Ebay sets out to reinvent itself by luring bigger sellers
It has been more than a year since John Donahoe took the reins at Ebay, inheriting control one of Silicon Valley’s best-known and most lucrative companies from the charismatic Meg Whitman, who shepherded it from infancy to internet powerhouse.

July 13th, 2009 by Speed Budapest (Matt)

Hot off the press 13/7

Silicon.com Datacentres moving to the cloud? Cybercrime will follow

http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39451668,00.htm

The days of tracking down software counterfeiters in other countries who are selling pirated CDs are numbered as companies increasingly distribute software and store data online via hosted computing services, Matthew Parrella, an assistant US attorney based in San Jose, California, said at Symantec’s Norton Cyber Crime Day.

Computer Weekly: Big brands use Twitter to push corporate messages
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/07/10/236851/big-brands-use-twitter-to-push-corporate-messages.htm
Big companies are using Twitter to push out messages rather than engage in conversations according to new research by a PR company.

The Guardian: Collapse in illegal sharing and boom in streaming brings music to executives’ ears
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/12/music-industry-illegal-downloading-streaming
An increasing number of users are streaming music rather than downloading files.

IT PRO: Social networking helping women turn on to tech
http://www.itpro.co.uk/612640/social-networking-helping-women-turn-on-to-tech
The IT industry is still suffering from a gender imbalance but recent high-profile leadership appointments and the growth of social networking is helping to turn things around. So claims research published by Orange Labs, a Silicon Valley research arm and part of the France Telecom Group.

Computer World UK – NHS hospitals infected by 8,000 IT viruses
http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/government-law/public-sector/news/index.cfm?RSS&newsid=15646
As the government spends £12.7 billion moving patient records, prescriptions and X-rays to IT systems, it has emerged that the IT virus prevented those systems from working in many cases.