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28th April 2005 Archive

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  • Intel wants to mobilise the channel

    ISS While it platformises itself

    Intel has announced a new "Mobile Growth Initiative" in a bid to persuade its channel partners that selling mobile technology is the way forward. Anand Chandrasekher, vice president and director of Intel's sales and marketing group, unveiled the program to a crowd of around 600 distributors and resellers from across Europe, …

    PCs 28 Apr 2005, 09:14

  • Chips, Chris Barrie and land-speed records

    ISS A big day out with Intel

    Chris Barrie fans will no doubt be amused to learn that the press room at this year's Intel Solutions Summit is housed in the Brittas Suite, which in its turn, is located in the Leisure centre. A coincidence altogether too marvelous not to be remarked upon. ISS is an annual get-together for Intel's favourite and most shiny ( …

    Bootnotes 28 Apr 2005, 09:22

  • Firefox doubles market share as IE slips

    Expect more

    As Microsoft unveiled details of a "more secure" desktop operating system this week, news emerged that the company's browser is losing business users because of - among other things - security. A survey of 168,000 surfers hitting business web sites has found Internet Explorer has lost nearly two percentage points of market …

    IT Director 28 Apr 2005, 09:23

  • Microsoft's Metro takes on Adobe

    Longhorn for rich-clients

    To the list of companies who overnight find themselves competing with Microsoft, you can add one more name: Adobe. Microsoft Longhorn operating system will now include a graphics feature called Metro that allows documents to be displayed and created across platforms. Sound familiar? Only Microsoft's tool seems designed to …

    Software 28 Apr 2005, 09:47

  • Siemens to spin off loss-making phone unit

    Handset divison drags down group earnings - again

    Siemens' troubled mobile phone business once again pulled down the group's quarterly income, making it "difficult to assess" the group's anticipated FY2005 income gain, CEO Klaus Kleinfeld admitted yesterday. The upshot: the handset unit will be formed into a separate operation, the better to sell or float it off. Reporting …

    Financial News 28 Apr 2005, 10:10

  • Pipex snaps up web host outfit

    £5.9m for Donhost

    Pipex has shelled out £5.9m to acquire web host outfit Donhost Ltd as it looks to beef up its hosting operation. As part of the deal Pipex will be adding 92,000 customers and 120,000 domain names to its business - bringing the total number of domain name registrations for Pipex to more than one million. None of the eight jobs …

    Financial News 28 Apr 2005, 10:15

  • Exploding toads baffle Germans

    Updated Corpses litter Hamburg 'pond of death'

    German toad experts are baffled by an acute outbreak of exploding toad syndrome which has totalled hundreds of the amphibians since the beginning of the month. The former inhabitants of a Hamburg pond - now chillingly renamed the "pond of death" - spontaneously swelled to enormous proportions before going bang, in the process …

    Science 28 Apr 2005, 10:18

  • Empire Strikes Back is best SW film: official

    The people have spoken

    The 1980 Star Wars outing The Empire Strikes Back has been voted best of the series in a poll of 40,000 UK film buffs carried out by magazine Empire. Han Solo secured top hero spot, while - surprise, surprise - Darth Vader was the readers' fave baddie. R2D2 was crowned top droid and Chewbacca can now prouly declare himself most …

    Bootnotes 28 Apr 2005, 10:33

  • Intel snatches mobile graphics lead from ATI

    Chip giant's graphics reach widened in Q1

    Intel has overtaken ATI in the mobile graphics chip arena, and eaten into the specialist graphics chip makers' share of the market as a whole, Q1 figures from Jon Peddie Research (JPR) released this week reveal. ATI and Nvidia lost eight and nine percentage points of overall market share respectively during the first quarter, …

    System Builder 28 Apr 2005, 10:39

  • Rumsfeld demands cash for 'bunker-busting' nuke

    Study 'makes all the sense in the world'

    US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday asked Congress to agree $8.5m of funding for research into a ground-penetrating nuclear weapon which would address what Rumsfeld considers the growing problem of potential enemies burying vital installations deep underground. Last November, Congress pulled the plug on $27m earmarked …

    Science 28 Apr 2005, 10:58

  • Marconi savaged after failure to win BT 21CN deal

    Share price falls 40 per cent

    Shares in telecoms equipment outfit Marconi plummeted more than 40 per cent this morning after it confirmed it had not secured a slice of a major £10bn contract from BT. In a statement to the Stock Exchange Marconi announced it "has not been selected as preferred supplier for BT's next-generation 21st Century Network (21CN) …

    Financial News 28 Apr 2005, 11:02

  • UCLA demonstrates desktop nuclear fusion

    But don't get too excited...

    Scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles have demonstrated desktop nuclear fusion by simply heating a lithium tantalate crystal soaked in deuterium gas. However, the technique produces far too few neutrons to be practical for commercial use, so it's sadly not a matter of free-power-for-everyone next week, New …

    Science 28 Apr 2005, 11:30

  • Fight fraud not ID theft

    Crypto guru berates industry for getting it wrong

    ID theft is a misnomer which is hurting the fight against fraud, according to encryption guru Bruce Schneier. Instead of talking about ID theft it's better to talk about fraud due to impersonation, he claimed. The crime exists because identifying information about a person is easy to steal and valuable once it is stolen. …

    ID 28 Apr 2005, 12:00

  • Nintendo DS sales top 5m units

    Sony's target: 12 million PSPs

    Nintendo has shipped well over 5 million DS handheld consoles around the globe, the company has claimed. The five-million mark was actually passed mid-March, the company said, just after the console's UK launch, during which it became the fastest-selling console in UK videogaming history. After an initial two-day rush yielded …

    Consoles 28 Apr 2005, 12:02

  • Liebermann 'not a hoax', founders insist

    Controversial PC vendor posts rationale

    Colourful computer company Liebermann, which last October announced it was to close, has posted a 42-page letter (PDF) detailing its bizarre attempt to carve a niche in the high-end PC market. Six months ago, Liebermann admitted it was "no longer in a position, from a financial standpoint, to continue doing business". The …

    PCs 28 Apr 2005, 12:27

  • VXer targets Romanian gypsy music

    Manele-hating malware

    A mass-mailing virus designed to wipe Romanian gypsy music off PCs is spreading rapidly across the east European country. The virus, dubbed Antiman-A, uses a recent story about the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists - abducted by a little-known terrorist Iraqi group approximately a month ago - to trap curious punters. The …

    Malware 28 Apr 2005, 13:09

  • Wanadoo UK hits broadband high

    But overall subscriber figures down

    Wanadoo UK has seen the number of broadband subscribers in the UK rocket over the last year as more and more people switch from dial-up to high-speed access. At the end of March 2004, Wanadoo UK had 192,000 broadband users. Today, parent company France Telecom revealed that its ISP now has a whopping 717,000 broadband users. …

    Telecoms 28 Apr 2005, 13:28

  • Creative Commons prez asks for some lurv

    Paula Le Dieu pitches to uncaring world

    Creative Commons president Paula Le Dieu was in London last night to chair a panel debate on what Creative Commons licenses mean to the music industry. Judging from the views expressed by some senior music industry figures there is clearly a need for just such an explantory approach. Le Dieu explained that CC licenses aimed to …

    Music and Media 28 Apr 2005, 13:43

  • Bell Micro sounds a profit

    Record revenues

    Bell Microproducts brought in revenues of $805m in the first quarter of 2005 ended 31 March, an increase of 22 per cent on last year. Net earnings for the period were $4.4m or $0.15 per share compared to $1.7m or $0.06 per share. Bell made 42 per cent of revenue in the US, 12 per cent in Latin America and 46 per cent in Europe …

    Channel Register 28 Apr 2005, 13:47

  • Dell scores big Honeywell deal

    Three-year contract extends Euro win

    Dell has signed a three-year deal with Honeywell to for managed services across the US. It follows a similar deal for Honeywell’s systems in Europe. Dell is providing desktop support for software and custom factory integration. The agreement covers 57,000 Honeywell systems all over the US and the move to Dell is already under …

    Financial News 28 Apr 2005, 14:38

  • Nokia 7710 smart phone

    Review Phone Digital Assistant?

    More than two years after it was originally demo'd Nokia has finally got its 7710 media phone to market. Was it worth the wait? asks Ian Hughes. "Whoa, big fella!" were my exact words on opening the box (read: 'trunk') that the 7710 arrived in, swiftly followed by, "what is it?" The 7710 is a beast of a phone, but it has to be …

    Reviews 28 Apr 2005, 14:57

  • HP inks Big Brother database contract

    Support for Euro visa spooks

    HP has won the £48.5m contract to provide technolgy for SIS II, the European-wide police system, and the Visa Information System. The company will work with Steria, Mummert in Germany and Primeshare in Luxembourg. The Schengen Information System is the world’s largest border and police information system. Upgrading is a …

    Public Sector 28 Apr 2005, 15:18

  • Gigabyte GA-8N-SLi Royal nForce 4 Intel mobo

    Review Puts Intel CPUs at the forefront of gaming?

    It's finally arrived: the first retail Nvidia nForce4 SLi Intel Edition mobo. Considering this is Nvidia's first attempt at creating a chipset for Intel CPUs it's no mean feat to make it an SLi solution at the same time. Of course, Intel doesn't have a consumer-level SLi-capable chipset at the moment, though there are some …

    Reviews 28 Apr 2005, 15:34

  • PM pops in to Carphone Warehouse

    Election 2005 Gordon's there too

    PM Tony Blair and PM wannabe Gordon Brown popped in to The Carphone Warehouse today to present awards to key employees of the telecoms outfit. The visit to Carphone's West London call centre followed the launch of Labour's business manifesto in which the PM outlined plans to create and maintain the "right environment for …

    Bootnotes 28 Apr 2005, 15:51

  • Quantum crypto moves out of the lab

    Light fantastic

    Quantum cryptography - long the stuff of cyberpunk novels and hi-tech spy stories - is leaving the laboratory and making its way into commercial markets. A briefing session at the UK's Department of Trade and Industry on Wednesday featured demonstrations of working quantum key exchange systems by QinetiQ, Toshiba Cambridge and …

    Enterprise Security 28 Apr 2005, 16:25

  • HP to build EU's biometric ID, terror database

    System designed for 'future requirements'

    A consortium headed by Hewlett-Packard is to develop Europe's 'Big Brother' system for the European Commission. Along with Steria, Mummert in Germany and Primesphere in Luxembourg, HP is to produce a "high-quality technology model" for the second generation of the Schengen Information System (SIS) II and the Visa Information …

    Music and Media 28 Apr 2005, 16:26

  • New York sues Intermix over spyware

    Spitzer 'The Blitzer' on the warpath against adware

    New York Attorney General Eliot 'The Blitzer' Spitzer has launched a suit against Intermix Media, claiming the firm markets software that covertly installs "spyware" and "adware" on infected machines. The suit against Los Angeles-based Intermix is the largest to date involving programs that redirect web addresses, add toolbars …

    Malware 28 Apr 2005, 16:54

  • IRS outs paper filers as 'minority'

    Feds prefer 'strong, smooth' E-filers

    The age of the luddite tax payer has passed with more than half of US punters sending in their returns via the internet for the first time. Close to 66m of the 120m returns filed so far arrived at the IRS electronically. That total of e-filed returns marks an 11 percent increase over last year's 59m electronic returns. The IRS …

    Public Sector 28 Apr 2005, 21:18