11th May 2010 Archive

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Fujitsu demos next-gen color e-paper

iPad lite

Fujitsu has announced its next-generation color e-paper, ushering in the possibility of lightweight color ebooks with long battery life and fast - well, tolerable - page-refresh rates. The announcement by Fujitsu Laboratories claims that the company's new e-paper has improved the display's color quality, plus tripled its …

Music and Media 11 May 05:11
Ex-Microsoft power pair puff Ruby cloud

Heroku the new Windows?

Ruby cloud behemoth Heroku has sucked in some heavyweight power courtesy of two influential ex-Microsofties. On Monday, Heroku announced that it's been given $10m in VC funding, and the round is led by Ignition partners, home to Brad Silverberg - who established many of the Microsoft products you now take for granted - and …

Financial News 11 May 05:18
EMC launches navel gazing initiative

Comment Luminaries to probe cloudy belly button

EMC has set up a Technical Advisory Board to provide independent review and perspective of its technologies as it heads toward the private cloud, and to report to the company's senior leadership team. But of six of its ten members work for EMC or VMware in senior positions - EMC appears to be gazing into its own navel. The …

Storage 11 May 06:02
Bill Gates chucks cash at climate cooling cloud creator

$7bn nautical chill pills

Boffins want to curb climate change by building a $7bn fleet of 1,900 ships to crisscross the oceans as each sucks up ten tons of seawater per second and blasts it a kilometer into the sky to create clouds to absorb sunlight and cool the earth. And Bill Gates is funding them. No, really. The Times Online reports that a San …

Environment 11 May 06:02
Android tops iPhone in US (no thanks to the Nexus One)

Googlephone munches more crow

Google continues to eat crow over the Nexus One. On Monday, Sprint - America's third largest wireless carrier - told Gizmodo it had changed its mind about joining Mountain View's online handset store and offering service in tandem with the Googlephone. As recently as March, the carrier said that it would partner with Google on …

Mobile 11 May 06:53
Mobile Broadband

Group Test Modem vs modem, telco vs telco

Mobile broadband is a grand concept. The idea of being able to grab your notebook and modem, hop in the car and surf the web while sitting amid the Wordsworthian splendour of Ullswater, or on the 10:15 from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston, is beguiling. Of course, you may get a rude awakening when you struggle to get a …

reghardware 11 May 07:02
Review T-Mobile

A less-than-stellar installation experience with the first Windows connection resulting in a myriad of "Cannot Find Driver" messages. Thankfully, a quick remove-and-shove-back-in manoeuvre fired up the installation software and got me connected. Two monthly tariffs are on offer from T-Mobile: Plus, an 18 month/£10-per-month …

reghardware 11 May 07:02
Group Test Mobile Broadband Best Buys

So how did each of the major mobile broadband providers perform? The charts below show you the average upload and download speeds I measured at each location. To recap, I used Speedtest.net, turned off the computer's firewall and performed three tests in succession, averaging the result. Test Results Test Site A Bandwidth in …

reghardware 11 May 07:02
Review 3

3 has an advantage in that it only offers a 3G service and it has a smaller user base than its rivals, so competition for its bandwidth should be less than it is for the others. The Windows-based connection manager is basic but does the job and more importantly it fired up from the dongle with no fuss or bother. 3's entry- …

reghardware 11 May 07:02
Review O2

Loading the connection software required me to change the account authorization settings on my Windows machine which was both unnecessary and inelegant, but once installed worked just fine. Like Virgin Media, O2 keep its tariffs simple, with two 18-month deals on offer. For £10 per month, you get 1GB of data and a free dongle …

reghardware 11 May 07:02
Review Orange

Testing the Orange network and dongle didn't get off to a great start because the connection software refused to launch. A quick visit to the Orange website got me an updates connection manager, but that solution presupposes you have internet access by another means. Orange's mobile broadband offerings are called Racoon, …

reghardware 11 May 07:02
Review Virgin Mobile

Virgin offers two simple contract tariffs: one for £10 per month which gives you 1GB of data, and another for £15 which gives you 3GB. Go over that and you will be charged 1.46p per megabyte. Both contracts last for 18 months and both come with a free dongle. Virgin also does one-month contracts, again priced at £10 for 1GB …

reghardware 11 May 07:02
Review Vodafone

For my money, Vodafone offers the nicest looking modem of the lot and the only one with a USB cap tethered to the dongle body to prevent accidental loss. As with the O2 and Virgin dongles, the Sim slots in above the USB connector. Not having a Micro SD card bay means the Vodafone dongle is the only one without other slots, ports …

reghardware 11 May 07:02
Using systems management tools in IT security

Workshop Chisel or sharpened screwdriver?

Every IT professional recognises the importance of securing the IT systems that are now at the heart of many business processes. This recognition goes beyond simple deployment of security technologies. As Register readers have told us, drivers such as compliance with regulatory pressures, minimising financial risks, securing …

Security that Fits 11 May 07:33
Lack of government won't slow gov IT spending

Steady as she goes

The City may be jittery but the hung parliament is likely to have little short-term effect on government IT projects, according to industry experts. Clive Longbottom, service director at industry analysts Quocirca, and Stuart Okin, former chief security officer at Microsoft UK who now works as managing director of security …

Government 11 May 08:22
Win a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Smartphone!

Big Screen comeback

reghardware is trying to get a regular gig going with competitions and prize draws. Early days yet, but here's a nice one we have for you, the chance to win a media-tastic Sony Xperia X10 Smartphone. This is Sony's first outing with Android: the X10 sports an enormous touchscreen, Wi-Fi and A-GPS, and an eight megapixel …

reghardware 11 May 08:49
Apple locks resellers out of iPad sales

Only available direct from Apple

Apple's iPad is available for pre-ordering, but only via Apple's own stores, not its retail partners. Even Apple's approved resellers are not allowed to take deposits or pre-orders from customers keen to try and lay hands on the genius-tablet. We were contacted by irritated Apple dealers, and passed on their questions to …

Channel Register 11 May 09:02
Capita faces strike, gov uncertainty

Focuses on cost cutting

Local government outsourcing specialist Capita has told investors it has had a decent year and is optimistic about future orders - despite the current clowning at Westminster and the danger of strike action at one of its divisions. Capita said it expects modest turnover growth thanks to quieter sales in the second half of 2009 …

Channel Register 11 May 09:03
Archives director calls for simplified data

Tables and graphs are meaningless

The director of information policy and services at the National Archives has said the public sector needs to make information more easily accessible to people to achieve efficiency. Carol Tullo said organisations could deliver more for less if they "provide access to information and enable others to use it". "If we empower …

Government 11 May 09:18
Isaac Newton's apple tree off to spaaaace

ISS trip for wooden piece of history

A fragment of the apple tree said to have inspired Isaac Newton's theory of gravity will this week fly on space shuttle Atlantis's STS-132 mission to the International Space Station. The Royal Society in London has entrusted the 10-cm chunk, along with a picture of Newton, to Brit-born astronaut Piers Sellers, as part of the …

Space 11 May 09:57
Caringo: Keep taking the CAStor oil

It helps the objects go down...

Caringo's CAStor object storage software product has had a major upgrade to make it more energy-efficient, easier to integrate with applications, better at preserving data immutably for the lawyers and cheaper to manage. CAStor comes from the content-addressable storage area but is called object-storage, and is competing with …

Storage 11 May 10:15
Tiger Woods succumbs to 'bulging d*ck'

Nasty case of priapic neck, says TV reporter

Poor old Tiger Woods was obliged to withdraw from last weekend's Players Championship in Florida due to a problem with his neck, which has apparently been bothering him for about a month. The Golf Channel's Win McMurry was on hand to offer this delightful and highly plausible explanation of the exact nature of the complaint …

Bootnotes 11 May 10:18
Sony to ship micro four-thirds rival next month

Alpha Nex performance compacts

In February Sony declared it was developing a compact camera line with interchangeable lenses, and now the company has revealed it will go on sale next month as the Alpha Nex. The Nex-3 and Nex-5 sport DSLR-quality 23.4 x 15.6mm, 14.2Mp APS image sensors. But the cameras lack a mirror system, so they're rather smaller than …

reghardware 11 May 10:29
NASA appoints new CTO of IT under CIO

That's Chris C Kemp - not the crossdressing burglar

NASA has appointed the CIO of California's Ames research centre as a new agency-wide CTO in charge of "leading IT innovation" across the space bureau. Chris C Kemp will be NASA's first Chief Technology Officer for Information Technology. According to a NASA statement: Kemp will be responsible for the agency's Enterprise …

IT Director 11 May 10:49
Sony shows interchangeable-lens camcorder concept

Prototype now, real thing in the autumn

Having introduced the Nex-3 and Nex-5 compact cameras as concept models back in February then announcing them today, Sony is taking the same approach with a new interchangeable-lens camcorder. So, today we get the mock-up, and an indication that the real thing will arrive some time in the autumn. The connection with the …

reghardware 11 May 10:55
Win 7 compatibility checker punts Trojan

Malware matcher

Miscreants have disguised Trojan horse malware under the guise of a Windows 7 compatibility checker. The malware comes as a zip-based attachment to email messages supposed offering "help" on upgrading Windows boxes. But this "Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Setup" assistant offers only a Trojan, instead of the promised compatibility …

Malware 11 May 10:56
Quantum refreshes ROBO dedupe

Branch office DXi

Quantum has refreshed its remote office/branch office (ROBO) DXi deduplication products with two new models Deduplication comes in two flavours generally: post-process which runs after backup data has landed on the device; and inline which works as data arrives on the device. Quantum's DXi software can do either, switching …

Storage 11 May 11:29
Natal out in October - Microsoft exec

Pre-Xmas launch for Wii-esque control rig

Microsoft's Project Natal - the Wii-plus motion control system for the Xbox 360 - will launch in October. So said Syed Bilal Tariq, the head of Microsoft's marketing activities in Saudi Arabia, in an interview presented by Gamertag radio. Microsoft has already indicated a pre-Christmas debut. and will announce formally the …

reghardware 11 May 11:34
Twenty somethings shocker for UK music sales

Despite that, annual BPI survey is surprisingly perky

The UK music industry’s annual statistical bible has been published by the BPI, and it shows how much work it needs to do with music fans. In a nutshell, the business depends on real punters - people who like music enough to actually buy it regularly, and while there were more of them last year, they’re spending less. There are …

Music and Media 11 May 12:00
City Police still using Terror Act to bother photographers

Just when you thought it was safe to go snapping...

Just when you thought it was safe to go snapping... City of London Police prove they still haven't got the memo. Yesterday, it was the turn of Grant Smith to feel the heavy hand of the law. Smith is a professional photographer. On Monday he was looking for a location on London Wall appropriate to a portrait of one of the …

Policing 11 May 12:09
PlayStation site hacker avoids jail

Teenage kicks

A teenage hacker who took the official PlayStation site offline after he was banned from playing for cheating has avoided a jail sentence. The unnamed 17-year-old from Latrobe, Pennsylvania received 250 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine at a sentencing hearing. The miscreant was also sentenced to 12 months' …

Crime 11 May 12:23
Canon intros 'luxury' compact

240f/s slo-mo mode higlighted

Canon has taken the wraps off its latest "luxury" compact, the Ixus 300 HS, set to go on sale later this month. The 10Mp Ixus sports a 28mm wide-angle lens with 3.8x optical zoom and optical image stabilisation. The sensor feeds a 3in, 16:9 LCD on the back. Canon's Ixus 300 HS: designer compact Canon touted the 300 HS' …

reghardware 11 May 12:31
Data Domain gives itself DD Boost

Storage with extra cleavage

EMC's Data Domain has got itself DD Boost software which pre-processes backup data on a media server to increase deduplication speed by up to 50 per cent. The software is installed on a media server and is integrated with either Symantec NetBackup or Backup Exec. It is a library and is used to identify segments in incoming …

Storage 11 May 12:48
Google screws Scroogle

Scraped offline by interface change

Scroogle, the privacy-friendly Google scraper, has been crippled by changes to one of the dominant search engine's interface pages. The unheralded alterations to google.com/ie yesterday could mean Scroogle has to be "permanently retired", its operator Daniel Brandt wrote. "Over the next few days we will attempt to contact …

Applications 11 May 13:04
BBC nicely summarises Gordon Brown's legacy

This story deliberately left blank

As Blighty staggers today towards a possible LabLibDem alliance, or maybe an unholy ConservoDemocrat pact, the BBC has been busy putting together an in-depth analysis of Gordon Brown's legacy, as he prepares to to the right thing take the long walk into political oblivion. We have to say, it's one of the Beeb's better pieces …

Bootnotes 11 May 13:05
Waterstone's whips out its pendulous dugs

LogoWatch Logo makeover goes ~~titsup~~ titsdown

Bookseller Waterstone's has decided that its brand frontage paradigm needed a bit of a 21st-century makeover, and has managed to come up with a happening, mamtastic alternative to its dusty old logo. Yes indeedy, after paying an unspecified amount of hard cash to whalesong and joss-stick botherers Venture Three, Waterstone's …

Bootnotes 11 May 13:42
EMC delivers sub-volume tiering to mid-range

CLARiiON and Celerra get FAST 2

CLARRiiON and Celerra arrays have the ability to automatically move chunks of data inside logical volumes from slow to fast access storage tiers and back again. FAST (Fully-Automated Storage Tiering) currently moves entire logical volumes (LUNs) from, say, high-capacity but slow SATA disk drives to faster drives when the LUN …

Storage 11 May 13:46
L'Orange and T'Mobile: Together at last

Everything, Everywhere? Who says?

Orange and T-Mobile have rejected both T-Orange and L'Mobile for their new, combined branding. Instead the new group will be known as "Everything, Everywhere". There's no website yet, but marketeers for the new group said the groundbreaking new brand was "a shared platform of strength, with each brand owning clear emotional …

Mobile 11 May 13:55
Working remotely: What are the solutions?

Workshop Be here now

It’s funny how far mobile computing has come in the last ten years. It enables a flexibility of working that only a decade ago could have been considered by some to be in the realm of Star Trek. Notebooks and smartphones are well understood, while new waves of ultraportable computers such as netbooks and tablets (where are …

Desktop Management 11 May 14:12
Restructuring puts Hitachi back in black

Sayonara fiscal 2009, growth in 2010

Japanese conglomerate Hitachi, which has a fairly substantial IT and electronics business, is saying sayonara today to the economic meltdown as it moves back into the black at the close of its fiscal 2009 year. The latest quarterly figures show restructuring maneuvers at the company last year more than paid off. A recovery in …

Channel Register 11 May 14:35
Playboy flashes 3D centerfold

Like Avatar, but with twin Pandoras

The June issue of Playboy will feature added substance in the form of 3D centerfold Hope Dworaczyk - a first for the men's mag, which is trying to cash in on the success of Avatar and the like. The magazine's founder Hugh Hefner reportedly asked: "What would people most like to see in 3D?" "Probably a naked lady," came his own …

Bootnotes 11 May 14:37
Miracle mono-molecule material could quench hot chips

Laptop thigh-fry a thing of the past?

Boffins working in California say that in five years' time chips and elctronics may be designed with special heat-extracting layers composed of an unusual form of carbon, so reducing the hot-thighs syndrome becoming more and more prevalent among modern laptop users. The material in question is graphene, a sheet of carbon just …

PCs & Chips 11 May 14:47
EA imposes used games tax

Gamesmanship

Well this is nice: a "reward" for owners of EA Sports games in the form of "online services, features and bonus content". To access this you need a registration code that comes with each unit sold new at retail. Secondhand buyers get a seven-day trial and then must pay $10 to get their own Online Pass. That's for Americans. …

reghardware 11 May 15:34
Asus R101 netbook quietly flies in

Will hopefully avoid the French landscape...

Asus is gearing up to release its latest Eee PC netbook, and we hope it fares rather better than its namesake. Details posted online by a German retailer reveal that the Eee PC R101 is based on Intel's 1.66GHz N450 Atom processor, comes with 1GB of 800MHz DDR 2 memory and a 250GB hard drive, and has the customary 10in, 1024 x …

reghardware 11 May 15:42
Google hits back on privacy record

Tells regulators to buzz buzz a diddle it

Google has responded to complaints by international privacy regulators about its Buzz social networking app. Regulators, led by Jennifer Stoddart in Canada and supported by privacy bosses in France, Germany, New Zealand, Spain and the UK, accused Google of rushing products and services to market without making sure privacy and …

Government 11 May 15:43
Google searches divine future unemployment rate

We seek what we lack

Google may or may not be great at helping you find a job, but it seems to be as good as some economic models at projecting whether or not you will have a job. Two researchers affiliated with the Bank of Italy - Juri Marcucci and Francesco D'Amuri, who is also at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University …

Applications 11 May 15:48
US patent office gives i4i Word up in Microsoft snub

Redmond suffers another XML setback on eve of Office 2010 launch

Microsoft's request to have the patent claim it brought against Canadian software maker i4i examined has been thrown out by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). i4i said it was pleased that all the claims of US patent number 5,787,449 that belong to the company came out unscathed following a re-examination called for by …

Applications 11 May 15:54
'Phantom Ray' robot stealth jet rolls out

Will offer the 'spectre of security'. Really?

US arms'n'aerospace goliath Boeing yesterday held a public unveiling of its "Phantom Ray" jet-fighter sized robot stealth plane. The firm has no customer for the Phantom Ray, which is intended to fly by the end of the year, but evidently Boeing executives consider that it would be fatal to be left behind in the military robojet …

Science 11 May 16:03
Man sold EverythingEverywhere domain for 'nominal sum'

Previous owner kicks self after sale to T'Orange

Everything Everywhere, Britain's newest and biggest phone company, snapped up its new domain name for “a nominal sum”, according to its previous owner. T-Mobile and Orange said today they have merged their UK businesses to create a new telecoms giant that will operate under the brand Everything Everywhere. The company will …

Mobile 11 May 16:09
Apocalyptic infection purged from PHP-Nuke.org

Better late than never

The official website for content management system PHP-Nuke was purged of a nasty infection on Tuesday that for four days attempted to install malware on visitors' machines. The website, which used an out-of-date version of PHP, was compromised as long ago as Friday, according to reports from Websense and Panda Labs. The …

Malware 11 May 17:41
80% of devs chafe at Apple's App Store cash split

Thank you, Steve. May I have another?

Eighty per cent of North American developers believe that the iPhone App Store's revenue split is unfair, according to a new study from research outfit Evans Data. The Evans Data Spring North American Developer Survey polled more than 400 developers across the continent, and about 320 of them said they should receive more than …

Applications 11 May 19:20
UK hot-swaps leaders - Brown out, Cameron in

Gordon gets his cards. The rest of us won't...

David Cameron took the keys of Downing Street this evening, ending uncertainty over the country's leadership and ushering in what promises to be a period of austerity for the UK's public sector and its IT suppliers. Gordon Brown stepped down as Prime Minister at around 7.30pm, having submitted his resignation to the Queen at …

Government 11 May 20:09
Nokia veteran leads MeeGo and Symbian fight

Reorg to combat Apple and Google

A 19-year Nokia veteran will lead the mobile giant's open-source smartphone fight against Apple and Google. Marketing chief Anssi Vanjoki will head Nokia's newly created mobile solutions group beginning in July, Nokia said on Tuesday. The new group's remit is to research, develop, and build devices using the joint MeeGo mobile …

Mobile 11 May 20:13
Mozilla detects insecure plugins for IE, Chrome, Safari

Updated Protection beyond Firefox

Mozilla has introduced a service that checks plugins for the Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera, and Safari browsers to make sure they don't contain known bugs or security vulnerabilities. The page builds off a feature rolled out last year that checked only for out-of-date plugins for Firefox. At the moment, the service offers …

Security 11 May 20:41
Intel chief commits to doubled profit, revenue growth

Chipzilla is dead. Long live 'The Continuum'

Intel will double its revenue and earnings growth rates over the next few years, and ship a billion microprocessors per year within the next five. These were just a pair of the bullish forecasts that Intel CEO Paul Otellini unloaded on a group of reporters and moneymen on Tuesday morning at the company's annual Investor …

Financial News 11 May 20:59
Apple promises fanbois iPad WiFi fix

Software update due whenever

Apple has promised an iPad software fix for fanbois complaining of WiFi problems on the Jobsian handheld. That also means the company has actually acknowledged the problems exist, but it says that only a few fanbois are affected. Apple is already providing workarounds for certain WiFi ills, but these don't solve larger …

Mobile 11 May 21:55