28th April 2004 Archive
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Happy Birthday, Orange
Ten years ago today...
Nelson Mandela was on the verge of winning South Africa's first free election. Kylie was on the cover of Australian Vogue and Elle. The very first international conference on the World Wide Web was about to be held in CERN, Switzerland. And Orange launched its mobile service in the UK. Ten years ago today, on the 28 April 1994 …
Mobile 28 Apr 2004, 00:47
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PalmOne updates consumer PDAs
Zire 31 and 72 unveiled
PalmOne has updated its consumer-oriented Zire range of PDAs, bringing colour to the budget end of the line and beefing up the specifications of its top-end model. The changes had been widely anticipated and the source of much online rumour-mongering. As anticipated, the Zire 72 provides a higher resolution integrated digicam …
Mobile 28 Apr 2004, 08:17
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Why shrink wrap software won't die
Tangible assets
Remember how the 'weightless digital economy' was supposed to make shrink wrap retail software as extinct as the dodo? Only a bozo would want to pay a premium for manual and a box. But shrink wrap isn't dead. Software publisher Avanquest, the new umbrella name for US-based publisher Elibrium, which owns major publishers in …
Applications 28 Apr 2004, 08:25
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TSMC income booms on flat sales
High demand + low supply = high chip prices
TSMC, the world's largest chip foundry, saw its income rocket during its first quarter despite flat sequential sales. The company reported net income totalling NT$18.79bn ($568.38m), up 17.6 per cent on the previous quarter and 349.5 per cent up on Q1 2003's NT$4.18bn ($126.44m). However, Q1's sales, which reached NT$57.51bn …
Financial News 28 Apr 2004, 08:42
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Nvidia GeForce 6800 specs emerge
Out from the Ultra version's shadow
When Nvidia unveiled the mainstream-oriented GeForce 6800 and its more powerful sibling, the GeForce 6800 Ultra, earlier this month, it was keener to discuss the latter than the former. While the Ultra's specs are well known - 400MHz core, 1.1GHz GDDR 3 memory clock frequency - the vanilla version's numbers have yet to be made …
Channel 28 Apr 2004, 09:07
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Dixons shutters 106 stores
Ouch...
Dixons Stores Group (DSG) is closing more than 100 High Street stores after poor trading. In an update released before the London stock market opened this morning the retail chain revealed slightly improved group trading, but said Dixons had performed particularly badly. As a result the chain will shut 106 shops within the next …
Channel 28 Apr 2004, 09:11
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Norway: home of the SMS tax return
Europe in Brief Doing their e-duty
More than 395,000 Norwegians have filed their tax return by SMS, phone or the Internet this year, according to Norwegian television. Of these, an estimated 36,000 used their mobile phones to do their fiscal duty. The SMS option is available only to taxpayers who have no changes to make to the documents they receive in the post …
Mobile 28 Apr 2004, 09:13
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PlusNet cuts price of entry-level DSL
Competition
Sheffield-based ISP PlusNet has reduced the price of some of its DSL products as competition in the entry-level market hots-up. The price of its 150k, 200k and 250k dslConnect products have all dropped by a £1 a month. It means the 150k service costs £14.99 a month, while the 200k service is £15.99 a month and 250k is £16.99 a …
Telecoms 28 Apr 2004, 09:15
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New Yahoo! Messenger piles on the pounds
Review Bloatware
Yahoo! has revamped its popular instant-messaging software, calling it "The All New Yahoo! Messenger". The interface is definitely more refined, but the overall impression is one of feature-bloated software. The upgrade (Windows only) is one of the software's most dramatic makeovers to date. The new look and feel focuses more …
Music and Media 28 Apr 2004, 09:33
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UMC sales soar on surging chip demand
Income inflation
Taiwanese chip foundry UMC bucked the traditional Q4-to-Q1 sales downturn with a sequential sales gain leading to booming income figures, the company reported today. For the three months to 31 March, UMC's sales totalled NT$25.33bn ($765.30m), up 6.8 per cent on the previous quarter and 41.5 per cent on the same period last …
Financial News 28 Apr 2004, 09:33
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Hackers cost UK.biz billions
Infosecurity Europe 2004 Misplaced confidence
A shortage of skills and a lack of investment in IT security is leaving British companies open to security breaches. But many UK businesses have a misplaced sense of confidence about their defences. The average cost of an organisation's most serious security incident was around £10,000 (or £120,000 for large companies), the …
Enterprise Security 28 Apr 2004, 09:50
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AMD 'Emma' SoC revives Net Appliance concept
Targets developing world
AMD is developing a system-on-a-chip product with the idea of pitching the part at Internet appliance developers within the next six months. According to CEO Hector Ruiz, whose Monday after-dinner comments were written up by the Austin American-Statesman, the chip maker has a vision of a Net access device no bigger than a pack …
Mobile 28 Apr 2004, 10:10
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EC tells Europe and ICANN to make peace
Better the devil you know
The ever-present issue of who gets to run the Internet is coming to a head and the European Commission has made it clear it wants the arguments sorted out sooner rather than later. Erkki Liikanen, the EC member responsible for the Internet, among other things, gave a recent speech titled "Internet governance: The way ahead" …
Financial News 28 Apr 2004, 10:27
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PeopleSoft: the real ale analogy
Opinion Full-bodied flavour, consumer choice
Thirty years ago, Britain's pubs were dominated by a handful of major breweries. For some reason that escapes me, these companies seemed to believe that what British drinkers wanted to drink was bland beer that was fizzy and tasteless. From the brewer's perspective this had the distinct advantage that you could not tell one …
Applications 28 Apr 2004, 10:56
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Ofcom confirms BT break-up review
'Old chestnut' resurfaces
Ofcom is to dust off an "old chestnut" and investigate if BT should be broken up as part of its strategic review into the UK's telecoms sector. Publishing the first phase of its consultation into the year-long review, the communications regulator poses five fundamental questions. The one that is certain to grab the headlines …
Telecoms 28 Apr 2004, 11:03
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World PDA shipments plunge
Q1 sales down everywhere but Europe
PDA shipments may be rising in Europe, but around the world as a whole they continued to decline during the first three months of the year, market watcher IDC reports. Some 2.2 million handheld devices shipped globally during Q1, down 11.7 per cent on Q1 2003 and 33.1 per cent fewer than Q4 2003's total. By contrast, over 852, …
Mobile 28 Apr 2004, 11:13
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Russian 'legal' music site offers songs for 5¢
Pay per megabyte
A Russian online service may well have figured out how to do digital music downloads right: make tracks cheap and available in any format customers care to select. The site, allofmp3.com, was discovered by Sydney Morning Herald reporter Charles Wright who claims to have to have downloaded a DVD's worth of tracks - 968 of them, …
Music and Media 28 Apr 2004, 12:08
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Marillion: appetite for resurrection
Old timers take fight to music biz
Venerable British rock outfit Marillion this week made it into the UK Top Ten for the first time in more than 17 years. But while this is sweet, sweet music to the ears of the band’s loyal fan base, the major music companies - EMI, Sony, Bertelsmann, AOL-Time Warner and Vivendi - will hear nothing but the ringing of alarm bells …
Financial News 28 Apr 2004, 13:03
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Visa trials RF credit cards
Security implications unclear
Consumers in Malaysia will soon be able to pay for their shopping with contactless, EMV standard smart cards, as Visa does away with the need for a signature with the launch of its new system, Visa Wave. The company is running a four-month trial with 2000 Visa customers and over 150 merchants. The idea behind it (apart from …
ID 28 Apr 2004, 13:10
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MS rethinks security patch test scheme
Infosecurity Europe 2004 About turn
Microsoft is having second thoughts about the idea of testing security patches with select users prior to their release. At last year's Infosecurity Europe conference, the software giant said it was considering introducing an external testing programme to improve the quality of its security patches. Craig Fiebig, general …
Enterprise Security 28 Apr 2004, 13:16
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Apple posts major iTunes upgrade
QuickTime updated too
Apple has updated its iTunes jukebox software and the QuickTime media code that underpins it. The new iTunes release, version 4.5, adds a raft of new features. As an alternative to the uncompressed AIFF and WAV formats the software already supports, iTunes now includes the Apple Lossless Encoder, which compresses tracks to …
Mac Channel 28 Apr 2004, 13:49
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Apple misses iTunes sales target by 30%
DRM rules adjusted
Apple undershot its first-year iTunes Music Store download target by 30 million songs, the company said today, 12 months after the digital music business was launched. CEO Steve Jobs had forecast sales of 100 million songs, but in the end ITMS users acquired only 70 million - still sufficient to put the store at the top of the …
Music and Media 28 Apr 2004, 14:08
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Global Crossing to restate results
Dark days not over yet
Just when it seemed that Global Crossing's darkest days were over, the company announced that its 2003 results might have been flawed. The global telecoms firm, one of the casualties of the telecoms meltdown, said on Tuesday that it was reviewing its 2003 and 2002 financial statements in search of accounting flaws. The company …
Financial News 28 Apr 2004, 14:12
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Ofcom hints at LLU cost cuts
Elephant in the corner of the room
The UK may see greater competition in the telecoms sector after Ofcom hinted that the cost of Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) could fall in line with other European countries. LLU gives rival telecoms operators access to BT's network so they can provide services direct to homes and businesses. It was once hailed as a revolutionary …
Telecoms 28 Apr 2004, 14:26
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Clueless user: ditch the victim mentality
Opinion Get with the security programme
Writing these columns gets tough sometimes. It can be quite a challenge to keep content current while trying to add value by driving home the basic concepts of security without sounding like a broken record. But it is clear to me that even today, with products like XP and Windows 2003, many people still live in a world of …
Enterprise Security 28 Apr 2004, 14:27
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Beware the domain slammers - UK gov
Warning to Small.biz
The UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is warning small businesses to look out for dodgy domain name registration services, after receiving several complaints from companies. The dotcom cowboys contact a business saying that a third party is just about to buy a domain name that would suit them, but that if they get in quickly, …
Small Biz 28 Apr 2004, 15:02
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BT trims broadband costs
Good, but not good enough say rivals
BT has slashed the wholesale migration costs of its DSL services following a complaint by rivals Thus and Tiscali. That complaint - which was investigated by regulator Ofcom - centred on the cost of migrating punters between BT IPStream and BT DataStream. However, the UK's dominant fixed line telco has gone one step further and …
Telecoms 28 Apr 2004, 15:43
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IT security to go offshore. Maybe
Infosecurity Europe 2004 Nothing is sacred
IT security - once the most closely-guarded IT function - could become the next candidate for offshoring. As the security market has evolved, more companies have outsourced functions like security monitoring and response. Tight corporate budgets and a skills shortage of suitably qualified security professionals have accelerated …
Enterprise Security 28 Apr 2004, 15:45
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Siemens SX1 smart phone
Reg review Designed to make Nokia tremble?
Siemens comes relatively late to the smart phone market. Its first handset of that type, the SX1, finally began shipping in the UK in March, despite being pitched by Siemens as the next big thing more than a year ago. Back in 2003 when Siemens chiefs were telling Symbian developers what a difference the SX1 would be, it was …
Reviews 28 Apr 2004, 16:21
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Surveys are tosh, and so's your reporting
Letters Sigh
We like to open a letters page with a thought provoking communique, if possible. (And goodness knows it isn't always...) We thought you might like the following response to the article about the launch of VisaWave in the Asia Pacific region: A friend of mine recently went to Japan and commented on the fact that no one ( …
Letters 28 Apr 2004, 16:27
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Nortel re-restates results, fires CEO
Incredible shrinking earnings
Nortel Networks today sacked its CEO, CFO and controller and said it would restate financial results for the second time in five months. Earnings for 2003 will only be half of what was previously stated, said Nortel, which will delay future earnings results and keep plugging away with an internal investigation into accounting …
Financial News 28 Apr 2004, 18:54
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RIAA tax could add millions to education fees
Revenue opportunity
The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is once again using lawsuits to ramp up its plan to foist music subscription services on universities - a move that could cost colleges millions, leading to higher tuition fees. The music-label lobby group today dropped 477 new lawsuits into an already massive litigation pile …
Music and Media 28 Apr 2004, 22:07
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Bush presses for electronic medical records
IT outfits begin salivating
US President George W. Bush has been on a technology tour lately, promising wonderful things to potential voters and campaign contributors. In addition to his recent broadband promotion scheme, Junior is also promising to unleash the healing power of the database to improve the health of every lucky American who can afford …
Public Sector 28 Apr 2004, 22:29
