6th December 2002 Archive

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Viewsonic explains Pocket PC's missing memory

Oops

Viewsonic tells us that it will revise its marketing literature after users discovered that its new budget PocketPC has less memory than advertised. Users of the budget ViewSonic V35 Pocket PC have bought the machine in the expectation that it has 64MB of memory. The company claims it has a "whopping" of 32MB ROM and 64MB of …

Personal 6 Dec 2002, 00:55
Bush signs Webcast Act

Another deadline looms

The third version of the notorious HR.5469 bill, the "Small Webcasters Settlement Act" has passed into law: after President Bush last night crayoned his distinctive 'X' onto the legislation. The first version was intended to be a two-paragraph delay to the crippling CARP publishing royalties set by the Library of Congress. The …

Music and Media 6 Dec 2002, 09:10
Telenor claims CIX email sorted next week

Promises, promises

Telenor Business Solutions - the ISP behind CIX, one of the UK's oldest ISPs - claims that its email service should be back to normal next week. According to some rather irate users the service hasn't been up to scratch for some weeks now with one describing the service as "crumbling". Users complain that they have been unable …

Music and Media 6 Dec 2002, 10:16
IBM, Intel, AT&T unveil US Wi-Fi JV

20k hot spots

Three tech giants, backed by two venture capital firms, yesterday announced the launch of a joint venture, Cometa Networks Inc, which intends to pepper the US with 20,000 Wi-Fi hot spots starting next year. Cometa will be a wholesale-only wireless internet access provider, serving carriers, ISPs and enterprises. The New …

Mobile 6 Dec 2002, 10:35
France Telecom fights ‘financial noose’

Orange delays 3G

New France Telecom SA chief Thierry Breton has vowed to "loosen the financial noose" that hangs round the neck of the world's most debt-ridden company with an ambitious program of reforms designed to improve its financial performance. Breton said the expansion undertaken by his predecessor was an "acquisition frenzy" that …

Mobile 6 Dec 2002, 10:36
Telewest rings up 250k broadband punters

Two cheers

Not to be outdone by BT's recent announcement that it now has notched up 500,000 ADSL connections, Telewest has announced it's now connected its 250,000th cable broadband punter. Not that it's bragging, of course, but the cableco points out that one in ten of those punters has opted for its 1 Mb/s service which was launched …

Telecoms 6 Dec 2002, 10:40
Job cuts loom at AOL – report

Merry Xmas

Workers at AOL Time Warner's Internet division are bracing themselves for a fresh round of job cuts. AOL is looking to trim around a $100m from its operation and, according to the Wall Street Journal, that means hundreds of job cuts. It seems the brunt of the cutbacks could be centred on AOL's HQ in the US although all …

Business 6 Dec 2002, 10:45
Get yer Hacker mugs at Cash'n'Carrion

Buy now for pre-Xmas delivery

A perceptible frisson of excitement swept through Santa's little helpers down at our Cash'n'Carrion warehouse this morning with the arrival the splendid all-new Hacker mug. Yes, if you've bought the shirt and the cap, it would be madness not to complete the set with this top-quality bone china offering. Featuring a …

Site News 6 Dec 2002, 10:46
Nortel marries GPRS and Wi-Fi

Seamless service, single billing

Nortel Networks is to offer mobile operators a new technology that will seamlessly link their wide-area wireless networks with fast emerging Wi-Fi systems. The idea behind Nortel's new technology is that mobile operators can offer consumers and enterprises a single 'sign on' and seamless service between 2G/3G networks and Wi-Fi …

Mobile 6 Dec 2002, 11:13
Nominet explains role in ebay.co.uk detagging slip

Uh, huh...go on...mmmm...I see

Remember the ebay.co.uk detagging fiasco earlier this week when the popular auction site was disrupted due to some administrative error? Two days ago we ran a statement from NetNames, eBay's UK Tag holder, explaining what went wrong. To close the circle, here's Nominet UK's take on the whole incident. Nominet UK would like to …

Music and Media 6 Dec 2002, 11:45
Open Source in the EU – how one agency introduced it

Still Unix for mission critical, but Linux makes an entry

Not a lot of people know that Europe has an equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration; but it has, it's based in London's docklands, and it's taking the Unix/Linux route to fulfil some pretty special and exacting networking requirements. The European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) is one of the …

Software 6 Dec 2002, 13:47
Interview Scott McNealy on: Sun's secret weapon and its biggest mistake (not you, Apple)

Hard to imagine, in all the time we've been here the most we've gotten out of Scott is smalltalk about haircuts and parking. The following should help to put that right. On Monday we had an hour at Sun's HQ in Menlo Park, where the CEO and his executive team have relocated, Sun says, to be closer to their customer center. They …

Business 6 Dec 2002, 14:09
Orange plans SPV bugfixes, and developer info for Q1

But it's positioning itself as app-signer and publisher in chief...

In response to prodding from would-be smartphone developers Orange has issued a statement outlining its policy as regards application signing and bugfixes for the Orange SPV. The statement, published in full at MoDaCo.com, is guardedly vague in parts, and Register sources tell us there's more where that came from - but there's …

Mobile 6 Dec 2002, 15:20
UK is a broadband slowcoach – Oftel

Oh, really?

The UK is still miles behind other countries when it comes to the take-up of broadband and that's despite all the work carried out by regulator Oftel to promote competition for broadband. So says an official report from the telecoms regulator, which found that just over one per cent of the UK's population had broadband at the …

Music and Media 6 Dec 2002, 15:22
Symbian to make Psion's OPL dev language open source

Relief column breaks through for beleaguered EPOC developers...

You've quite possibly never heard of OPL, but once upon a time this wouldn't have been the case. Back before Palm was thought of, OPL was the easy to use development language for Psion EPOC devices, and until events (and indeed Palm) largely overwhelmed Psion, there was quite a thriving community of small developers and …

Software 6 Dec 2002, 16:06
Online suicide poster resurrected

Whitey back from the grave with some explaining to do

Online anyone can be Jesus. Posters to the Counter Strike forum at Blueyonder were not in awe however when it became clear that a former colleague had come back from the dead. Whitey - currently running under the name Ice Wind - caused some commotion last week when he disingenuously revealed that far from having committed …

Music and Media 6 Dec 2002, 19:02
Apple's ‘BluePod’ – promiscuous exchanges with strangers

Letters Or a file-swapping Molotov?

An iPod that can play your music to strangers and create impromptu public concerts is the stuff of dreams. Frankly it’s the only product out of the four we floated last week that you think has much merit. But my - how you're keen. A "BluePod" we suggested, would be an iPod with built-in Bluetooth and Rendezvous. Think social …

Mac Channel 6 Dec 2002, 22:06