30th September 2009 Archive

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Alleged Romanian phishers (finally) hauled into US courts

Better late than never

Two Romanian men accused of internet scams that defrauded customers of PayPal, Citibank and other financial institutions have been extradited to the United States to face charges. Petru Bogdan Belbita, 25, of Craiova, Romania, was arrested in Montreal, Canada in January and formally extradited to the US late last week, …

Crime 30 Sep 00:33
Yahoo! opens homepage to external apps

Invites developer YAPing

Yahoo! is opening its new Web 2.0-spangled homepage to a rabble of external apps and services. The born-again(-and-again) web firm is rolling app integration into its main site as part of the company's recent "Y!ou" brand refresh. Previously, custom apps built with the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP) were delegated to the …

Developer 30 Sep 06:02
Unisys takes services to the desktop

Virtual helpdesk, Windows slices

Unisys hasn't been a PC maker for decades, but the company thinks it can take some of the tools it has created to manage systems, rejigger them, and make some dough selling services to manage PCs and providing PC images on its homegrown cloud. Today, Unisys unveiled a bunch of services that have been collected together under a …

IT Director 30 Sep 06:02
Nationwide Freeview tune-up takes place today

Check your channels

You’ve probably been ignoring that ‘retune now’ message on your TV for weeks, but if you don’t do it today then you risk losing endless Top Gear repeats, the Hollyoaks omnibus on Channel 4+1 and all those home shopping channels. Freeview has designated today National Retune Day, sort of. Essentially, the Freeview service is …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 07:02
Bank snafu Gmail missive never opened

And never will be

The confidential email at the heart of a roundabout US lawsuit against Google was never opened, according to the bank that accidentally sent the missive to the wrong Gmail account. This summer, according to court documents, an unnamed employee with the Wyoming-based Rocky Mountain Bank was asked by a customer to send some loan …

ID 30 Sep 07:02
Wisconsin Tourism Federation wisely rebrands

LogoWatch Penny finally drops

The Wisconsin Tourism Federation will henceforth be known as the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin - a wise piece of rebranding prompted by its exposure to public ridicule on the interwebs. The "lobbying coalition of trade and promotional associations" has now purged all reference to WTF from its website, and has revamped its …

Bootnotes 30 Sep 08:02
iPhone app grabs your mobile number

There's an app for that, and it knows where you live

Customers of ID Mobile's MogoRoad iPhone application are complaining that they're getting sales calls from the company, a process which turns out to be technically a piece of cake. The proof of concept was put together by Mac4Ever who created an iPhone app which displays the handset's phone number. Passing that back to a …

Mobile 30 Sep 08:02
Oki MB290

Review Versatile all-in-one for the cost conscious

First a confession: we have always been troubled by the concept of black-and-white multifunctional devices (MFDs). Being able to scan in colour but print only in mono seems rather like being given a punnet of strawberries that you are only allowed to smell. However, Oki clearly feels there continues to be demand for this level …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 08:02
Fujitsu develops motion-sensing golf phone app

You swing, it analyses

If you need help perfecting your golf swing, then there’s an app for that – according to Fujitsu, which has created a mobile phone application to help you become the next Tiger Woods Tadashi Ezure. The Japanese golfer – currently ranked 39th in the world – has been signed up as the virtual coach for Fujitsu’s ETGA Swing Lesson …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 08:54
Adaptec tears strips off Steel Partners

Abusive acquirer seeking to steal control

Adaptec's board is telling shareholders that investor Steel Partners is an abusive acquirer, that has reduced shareholder value and wants control of Adaptec for scary purposes. Steel Parters is a hedge fund that invested in Adaptec in 2007, then started a fight for board influence, resulting in three seats on Adaptec's board …

Storage 30 Sep 09:03
HP pencils in radical restructure

PCs and printers, together at last

HP is considering restructuring its business to more closely ally printers and PCs. The move sounds very like what Carly Fiorina did in 2005. Although then it was the printer unit which was seen as the stronger partner. At the time there was much talk that HP might split itself into at least three divisions, or even separate …

Channel Register 30 Sep 09:09
Virgin Media network goes down down south

Firm's own website suffers too

Virgin Media's network is suffering major problems this morning, with cable subscribers in south London and the South East cut off, and the firm's own website - including webmail - down. A spokeswoman for the cable company had no further details. According to Reg readers the problems started at about 11pm last night and …

Telecoms 30 Sep 09:11
Clown blasts off for ISS

Red noses all round for orbiting outpost

The billionaire founder of the Cirque du Soleil this morning blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a mission to deliver a bit of levity to the International Space Station. Guy Laliberté, 50, plus flight engineers Jeffrey Williams and Maxim Suraev flew aloft at 07:14 GMT aboard a Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft. …

Space 30 Sep 09:16
OMG! US science quangocrats surf porn at work!

Also: Defecating bears roam forests uncontrolled

In a shock revelation, US media have revealed that federal quangocrats at the National Science Foundation (NSF) have been browsing outrageous amounts of porn at work. In an "exclusive" culled largely from publicly-available documents and congressional testimony, the The Washington Times (the paper perhaps most famous for being …

Bootnotes 30 Sep 09:48
Researchers unmask two faces of zombie networks

Dr Consumer spam, meet Mr corporate hacking

Botnets are responsible for sending 87.9 per cent of all junk mail messages, according to the latest monthly stats from email security outfit MessageLabs. A newer botnet, Maazben, first seen in late May, increase junk mail output to account for 1.4 per cent of all spam messages in September, compared to 0.5 per cent of spam in …

Crime 30 Sep 10:00
MS dual-screen tablet to arrive next year?

Mole reveals Courier launch details

The past week has been filled with speculation about Microsoft’s dual-screen e-book reader-cum-tablet PC, and it has since emerged that the device could available sooner than you may have thought. When images of Courier first appeared, moles described it as a “late prototype”. This led many pundits to believe that it could be …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 10:11
Judge tosses out patent infringement verdict against Microsoft

Uniloc's $388m damages turn to dust

Microsoft has won an appeal against a $388m patent infringement jury verdict meted out to the company in April, following a lawsuit brought by anti-piracy software maker Uniloc. The long-running legal spat was originally brought by Uniloc USA and its Singapore-based parent company in 2003, with the firm alleging Microsoft had …

Law 30 Sep 10:37
Intel to push dual-core CULVs in Q4

Don't rush in a buy a single-core model in Q3

Expect so-called "consumer ultra-low voltage" processor-based laptops to get rather faster in Q4 as Intel migrates the single-core CULV CPUs it's currently offering to dual-core alternatives. The chip giant's current CULV line-up includes the single-core Core SU3xxx, Pentium SU2xxx and Celeron 7xx chips. Come Q4, these will …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 10:40
Kraft cans Vegemite iSnack2.0

LogoWatch New name 'fails to resonate' with outraged Aussies

Kraft has announced that it's dropping the name Vegemite iSnack2.0 for its cream-cheese-impregnated Vegemite following a severe shoeing from outraged Aussies. Just a few days after the company trumpeted that 27-year-old web designer Dean Robbins had beaten off over 48,000 rival suggestions from fellow Australians to brand the …

Bootnotes 30 Sep 10:46
Windows Home Server upgrade recedes into the distance

Microsoft wants users to beat a path to Beta code

Fans of Microsoft Home Server will have to wait a while longer for the next update of the much neglected OS. An update - Power Pack 3 - was expected to hit ahead of the release of Windows 7. A blog posting "on behalf of [digital supremo] Dave Berkowitz" notes that Microsoft was "proud to show off the Beta code of Power Pack 3 …

Channel Register 30 Sep 10:58
Apple admits third of iPhone calls in New York are dropped

Start spreading the news

A New-York iPhone user who complained that his handset was dropping 22 per cent of calls was told he should be grateful it wasn't worse, and that it's AT&T's fault. One of Gizmodo's readers took his iPhone into an Apple store and presented it at the "Genius Bar", complaining that it was dropping calls. The Apple-monikered …

Mobile 30 Sep 11:06
Intel 'Light Peak': not an Apple idea after all

Why hasn't Steve taken credit?

Intel's newly announced 'Light Peak' optical interconnect wasn't developed at Apple's instigation as has been claimed. So says a mole cited by Cnet, and we're not at all surprised, for a number of reasons. Intel has been working on various technologies relating to the integration of optical data streams into computer systems …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 11:12
France Telecom blamed for another worker suicide

Time for boss to go?

French politicians are calling on ex-monopoly France Telecoms to do more to stop a rash of suicides and attempted suicides among its staff. The latest was call centre worker Jean-Paul Rouannet, who jumped off a road bridge in the Alps on Monday, bringing total deaths amongst the telco's workforce to 24 in two years. The man …

Telecoms 30 Sep 11:27
Google Wave: Testers line up for the love-in

100,000 sea dogs get early splash around

Google is inviting 100,000 testers to preview its hippie-on-stilts communications platform - Wave - from today. Mountain View has extended its testing pool in preparation for pushing Wave out to many more users at some point soon. For now, though, Google isn’t revealing when the platform will be pumped out to the mainstream. …

Applications 30 Sep 11:53
LG unveils 'full touchscreen' phone

Well, 'full' minus the bezel, earpiece, Home button etc.

LG has launched what it has claimed is the world’s most compact 3in full touchscreen phone, the only problem is – it isn’t. LG claimed its GD510 handset has a 3in touchscreen that extends “almost to the edges... with a narrow, 4.8mm bezel giving the illusion of an uninterrupted sheet of glass”. Except, as the pic below shows …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 12:01
GE tries to refocus image of holographic storage

Comment Another potential dust-biter

General Electric has been talking up its holographic storage technology again, reckoning it can succeed where Plasmon and others have failed, because of backward Blu-ray and DVD compatibility. Currently holographic storage products inhabit a graveyard or deep freeze. InPhase is currently seemingly in hibernation - not dead but …

Storage 30 Sep 12:02
Apple iPod Shuffle 3G

Review The outspoken music player

Apple’s decision not to add a camera to the latest version of the iPod Touch disappointed a lot of people, but at least the 32GB and 64GB models received a new processor that gives the device more potential as a games machine. The iPod Shuffle didn’t even get that. However, Apple did announce some minor changes to the Shuffle …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 12:02
Theatre draws veil over naked Anna Friel

Mobiles banned from Breakfast at Tiffany's

Staff at the Theatre Royal Haymarket have been placed on Defcon 1 and ordered to prevent perving audience members grabbing a quick mobe snap of Anna Friel in her birthday suit, in the West End outing of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Operatives are instructed to confiscate any mobile which may present a threat to 33-year-old Friel's …

Entertainment 30 Sep 12:06
Coda wafts accounting software onto Salesforce.com's cloud

Putting bottom line online

Veteran accounting software outfit Coda has made a jump into the cloud by pooling its online offering with Salesforce.com. The companies become joint owners of Financialforce.com. This will have headquarters in Silicon Valley and Yorkshire, and will encompass the existing Coda 2go operation, running on Salesforce.com's force. …

Small Biz 30 Sep 12:37
Microsoft Security Essentials shakes up consumer antivirus

Analysis First impressions

Early tests with the full version of Microsoft's new free malware scanner software reveals a no-frills security package that does what it says on the tin. Microsoft Security Essentials offers a significant opportunity to improve internet hygiene in much the same way Windows firewall brought a then endemic worm problem to heel …

Malware 30 Sep 13:01
Wi-Fi body to highlight 802.11n aerial counts

'Draft' no more

The Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) has celebrated the recent ratification - at long, long last - of the 802.11n standard by updating its logo for certified wireless networking kit. But it's not simply removing the 'Draft' text from its existing logo - it is to add an indication of the number of spatial streams a given product can handle …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 13:02
Spotify adds PayPal in bid for profitability

Targeting teens

Spotify today encouraged more of its users to pay for premium services by integrating PayPal. Previously Spotify only accepted Visa and Mastercard. Adding PayPal will open subscription to many more users, particularly under-18s who aren't eligible for a credit card. PayPal payments can be directly linked to bank accounts. …

Music and Media 30 Sep 13:09
Yahoo! spruces open source Exchange rival

Zimbra 6.0 shrugs off sale talk

Amidst rumors that Yahoo! is looking to sell the company, Zimbra has released a new version of its Exchange-battling open source email and collaboration platform. Available beginning today, version 6.0 of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite adds several administrator and mobile tools as well as countless tweaks to the client …

Applications 30 Sep 13:10
VAT Directive to change to end carousel fraud

Laws evolve, but they don't revolve

The European Commission wants to amend the VAT Directive to help eradicate a kind of international VAT fraud that is estimated to have cost the UK exchequer up to £2 billion a year. Carousel fraud is a form of what is known as Missing Trader Intra-Community (MTIC) fraud, though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. …

Channel Register 30 Sep 13:29
Cinema PS3s to enable gaming on the big screen?

Sony plugs high-end digital projectors

A Sony executive’s recent comments about an upcoming installation of PlayStation 3s in cinemas across North America have fuelled speculation that the firm’s considering a wider rollout of PS3-equpped cinemas. From next week, four US cinemas – including one in San Francisco and another in Washington – will allow, albeit for …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 14:25
Man on trial over £600k NatWest phishing scam

Mule in the middle attack

Fraudsters used a sophisticated Trojan to steal online bank login credentials from the compromised PCs of their victims, London's Southwark Crown Court heard on Tuesday. The malware redirected surfers to a counterfeit NatWest bank website that attempted to trick prospective marks into handing over telephone numbers, passwords …

Crime 30 Sep 14:34
The tools of the trade: Cutting edge or a bit embarrassing?

Workshop Get your skills on

Do the phrases ‘cutting edge’ and ‘your IT shop’ constitute a contradiction in terms, or do you work in a sleek and streamlined vision of sci-fi IT? When we asked you about this last year we got the impression that for most organisations it was more the former than the latter. That’s not to say you told us things were falling …

Service Management 30 Sep 14:39
Home Office declines to detail DNA-for-foreigns trial

Recognised forensic techniques... that we just made up in our heads

Home Office experiments with various DNA and isotope tests to try and "prove" an individual's nationality are a bogus use of bogus science, scientists have said. Several scientists, including DNA fingerprinting boffin Alec Jeffreys, have told the Home Office that its trial of mitochondrial DNA tests on asylum seekers is " …

Government 30 Sep 14:43
Gov demand for Governator to terminate PunterNet

Website is 'TripAdvisor for pimps', howls Harriet Harman

Equalities minister Harriet Harman was in a fighting mood today as she demanded Arnold Schwarzenegger terminate PunterNet - a rate-a-strumpet website she described as "TripAdvisor for pimps". PunterNet is designed to "to facilitate the exchange of information on prostitution in the UK", but is actually based in California. …

Bootnotes 30 Sep 15:05
Microsoft offers stickers to boost Windows 7 64-bit take-up

Logo program hopes to avoid sticky situations

Microsoft announced its Windows 7 logo program today, which comes with an interesting caveat: vendors wishing to claim compatibility status with the upcoming OS need to prove their product will run under the 64-bit version of the platform. The move paves the way for Microsoft to encourage as many hardware and software partners …

Channel Register 30 Sep 15:50
US cedes control of net governance

Mostly

After a long diplomatic wrangle, ICANN today won independence from the US government. The expected announcement ends an era of US dominance of the DNS system. ICANN - a non-profit organisation - will now become "independent and not controlled by any one entity". Ties to the Department of Commerce won't be completely severed …

Telecoms 30 Sep 15:54
Kindle slated by Princetonians

Amazon given lecture on e-book tech

Amazon’s Kindle e-book viewer has been slammed by students at Princeton, the prestigious North American university. Fifty students were equipped with Kindles as part of the establishment’s exercise in paper conservation. Students were selected from a range of courses, and each Kindle was equipped with a semester’s worth of …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 16:02
US wireless carriers demand more spectrum

Three times more! ASAP!

The US wireless industry lobby has written to the FCC, asking for another 800MHz of spectrum to offset "looming crisis" for American businesses. The submission to the FCC again claims that the American mobile networks desperately need more spectrum allocated to them, while drawing irreverent comparisons with Europe and …

Wireless 30 Sep 16:41
US govt cash to fund Tesla minivan?

Leccy Tech Utility vehicles to expand firm's e-car line-up

Tesla will use some of the millions of dollars lent by the US government to develop an electric minivan, a company executive has hinted. The Californian firm secured itself a $465m (£285m/€333m) low interest loan from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program (ATVMP) back in June. ATVMP is available to car firms …

Reg Hardware 30 Sep 17:02
Windows 7 OEM prices revealed

Call yourself an OEM, get 50% off

Online retailer NewEgg has coughed up OEM pricing details for Windows 7 this week, revealing deep discounts from the full retail version. If you want Microsoft's latest OS on the cheap and missed out on earlier promotions, it's certainly not a bad way to go. Strictly speaking, OEM copies are intended for computer builders, but …

Channel Register 30 Sep 18:32
Malware ecosystem thrives thanks to pay-per-install fees

Booming economy

A report published Wednesday exposes a growing ecosystem that combines the talents of software developers, web marketers, and ordinary grunts to infect millions of end users' machines. Similar to the Amway, Shaklee, and other direct marketing businesses of yesteryear, the PPI, or pay-per-install, model relies on average joes …

Malware 30 Sep 19:15
Apple tablet will 'redefine print,' says rumor mill

Book redundancy pegged for mid-2010

Apple's oft-rumored tablet will appear in mid-2010, have a 10.7-inch display, run the iPhone OS, and "redefine print". That is, if recent reports by Gizmodo and iLounge are to be believed. Gizmodo cites a number of sources from the publishing industry who claim they have been in talks with Apple to provide content for a "new …

Music and Media 30 Sep 19:37
Ex-MySQL chief joins entrepreneur foster home

Advise while you devise

Former MySQL boss Marten Mickos, who left the free-database outfit just over a year after its acquisition by Sun Microsystems, has enrolled in a venture capital foster home for between-job entrepreneurs. Mickos has been hired by the Silicon Valley VC firm, Benchmark Capital, as an "Entrepreneur in Residence." Benchmark …

Business 30 Sep 20:55
Facebook turns users into web translation engine

A great way to nab your data

Looking to translate your website into another language? You can now seek help from the social-networking-obsessed masses - and juice Facebook's advertising schemes in the process. Today, at a web app conference in London, Facebook introduced a free service dubbed Translations for Facebook Connect, a translation engine driven …

Music and Media 30 Sep 20:58