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27th July 2010 Archive

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  • Citigroup says its iPhone app puts customers at risk

    Warning: contents include account details

    Citigroup is urging customers who use their iPhones for online banking to immediately upgrade to a new version of the application because a security weakness in the the old one puts them at risk. In a letter, the US banking giant said the Citi Mobile app saved user information in a hidden file that could be used by attackers …

    Security 27 Jul 00:00

  • Android's UK phone sales quadruple

    iPhone shrinkage, RIM on the up

    Sales of Android-based phones more than quadrupled in the UK during the most-recent quarter. This news comes to us in a report from GfK Retail and Technology, a self-styled "global knowledge provider" based in Nuremberg, Germany. According to GfK, Android's share of UK smartphone contract sales sales was a mere three per cent …

    Mobile 27 Jul 05:02

  • UK.gov pledges licence fee 'rethink' over heavy catch-up use

    You can't watch that for free!

    The government has pledged to 'rethink' the licence fee because so much television is watched via catch-up services on computers, which does not require the payment of the licence fee. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has ruled out introducing a licence fee for PCs but has said that his administration will need to find a way to …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 07:02

  • Withings Wi-Fi bathroom scales

    Review I tweet your weight

    Sometimes, there are problems that cry out for a technological solution. Problems like “How do I remember my weight and BMI for the time it takes to go from the bathroom to the computer.” And the WiFi bathroom scales from Withings, sold by Firebox, are the solution to just that problem. Weight and see: Withings’ Wi-Fi scales …

    reghardware 27 Jul 07:02

  • Caringo gets cash to carry on

    Storing content as objects

    The world of object storage is seeing consolidation to large vendors making life difficult for start-ups like Caringo. However, it has gained new funding. That firm is selling and developing its CAStor software to stir digital content as objects in clustered, commodity-based servers and storage. It was founded in 2005 by …

    Blocks and Files 27 Jul 08:18

  • Hitachi on purchase prowl

    Sage on shopping list

    Japanese giant Hitachi is looking to buy an IT services business to bolster its information and communications system business. Hitachi made its acquisition ambition public last month, saying it wanted to buy a European or US IT services company with a strong customer base and annual revenues of around $3bn, to help it compete …

    Virtualization 27 Jul 09:05

  • Motorola making Android 3.0 tablet

    Platform emerging?

    Motorola is the latest company to have its name associated with an upcoming - well, Q4 at the earliest - Android-based tablet computer. Like the others - from Acer, Asus, Lenovo, LG, Toshiba and co - Motorola's offering will sport a 10in display and run Android 3.0 - aka 'Gingerbread'. What little we know about comes from …

    reghardware 27 Jul 09:19

  • Broadband advertising speed gap widens

    Reality now less than half as good

    The gap between the marketing and reality of broadband speeds has grown even wider, according to figures released today by Ofcom. The average package is now sold as 11.5Mbit/s but in fact delivers just 5.2Mbit/s downstream, a 54 per cent shortfall. A year ago the average actual performance of 4.1Mbit/s was 42 per cent less …

    Telecoms 27 Jul 09:41

  • Virgin cables up Pot Noodle place via power poles

    Instant broadband

    Do you live in the Welsh village of Crumlin, Caerphilly? Then you may well be getting fast broadband next month, delivered via the town's many power poles. Virgin Media today said it had selected the settlement - population 5724, welcomes careful drivers - to play host to its trial of the technology, which will see fibre-optic …

    reghardware 27 Jul 09:42

  • Minister calls for more cyber security experts

    'Holistic national response' needed

    The minister for security has said the government has to do something about a shortage of emerging cyber security professionals. Baroness Neville-Jones said the problem Britain faces is that it has "a talented, but small pool of highly skilled public and private sector cyber security individuals". Speaking at the Cyber …

    Enterprise Security 27 Jul 09:44

  • Battle joined for future of open source IPS

    Analysis Snort bares teeth at DHS-backed project

    The battle to develop the next generation of open source intrusion prevention systems (IPS) technology is intensifying between incumbent Snort and a US government-backed project, the Open Information Security Foundation (OISF). Disagreements over technical issues such as the relative importance of developing IPS systems that …

    Enterprise Security 27 Jul 09:50

  • Nvidia Tegra 2 tablet to debut at IFA show

    Interpad inbound

    German company Interpad will be showing off an interesting tablet at the upcoming IFA show in Berlin: a 10in boy running Android 2.1 on an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. Said system-on-a-chip operates at 1GHz and has 1GB of DDR 2 memory to play with. Tegra-based tablets have been few and far between since Nvidia announced the …

    reghardware 27 Jul 10:09

  • Yahoo! Japan! turns! wing! against! Bing! in! Google! deal!

    Microsoft cold-shouldered

    Yahoo Japan has inked a deal to use Google's search engine in an apparent snub to Microsoft's Bing. All Things Digital reported on Monday that a deal between the two firms looked imminent. Google Japan then confirmed the partnership in a blog post yesterday. Mountain View's Asia Pacific ops veep Daniel Alegre said Yahoo Japan …

    Applications 27 Jul 10:13

  • Bigger than iTunes? Mobile operators lay out their app stall

    WAC takes the warehouse approach

    Operator consortium the Wireless Application Community has laid out its stall as an iTunes alternative, modelling itself as a clearing warehouse and leaving the retailing to network operators. The WAC was announced in February, and since then has been busy assimilating the useful bits of the OMTP. It will now be swallowing the …

    Mobile 27 Jul 10:25

  • Serpent imprisons rattled Yorkshire family

    Confined to conservatory by toad-murdering adder

    An East Yorkshire couple are awaiting the intervention of trained operatives to banish a toad-eating serpent which has confined them to their Withernsea home, according to this chilling report. Steven Leathley, his wife Christine and son Shaun dare not venture into their garden lest they are set upon by an adder which prowls …

    Bootnotes 27 Jul 10:26

  • Apple Store shut to add updated desktops

    Back soon, apparently

    The Apple Store is offline ahead of - it now seems reasonable to assume - new desktop Macs. Recent rumours have implied that Apple's iMac and Mac Pro lines will be refreshed in the near future. What with the Apple Store website currently presenting nothing but a "We'll be back soon" notice, and the fact that Apple UK is …

    reghardware 27 Jul 10:47

  • Brigitte Bardot demands flying donkey action

    Kremlin cops an earful over airborne ass

    A furious Brigitte Bardot has demanded that those responsible for the Sea of Azov flying donkey outrage be brought to book, the Sun reports. Police apparently quizzed one Vasily Gorobets over the parasailing stunt in Golubitskaya, during which 17-year-old Anapka was sent heavenwards to promote a private beach. Despite an …

    Bootnotes 27 Jul 10:48

  • Opening UK cyber-security challenge cracked

    Prelude puzzle unpicked

    Enthusiasts claim to have already solved the first test in the Cyber Security Challenge UK hunt for would-be cyber-security experts. The challenge, consisting of a series of online and face-to-face competitions, was launched by UK security minister Baroness Neville-Jones on Monday. It is intended to inspire talented …

    Security 27 Jul 11:24

  • Foxconn India closes factory as 250 workers fall ill

    28 still in hospital

    Foxconn has been forced to shut down a factory in India after 250 workers were hospitalised after what appears to have been an overzealous bout of pesticide spraying. According to AFP the firm - famous for building the iPhone as well as a myriad of other gadgets - suspended operations at its Chennai plant yesterday after the …

    Mobile 27 Jul 11:41

  • The Camel: Nokia unveils user designed phone

    What you get when you design by committee

    Nokia's Designed By Community project has reached the sketch stage, with three designs being put to the public vote to decide what the perfect Nokia handset should look like. Nokia's project - inviting the general public to vote and debate what constitutes the perfect mobile phone - has created a specification with all the …

    Mobile 27 Jul 11:41

  • Toshiba notebook drive spins level with Samsung

    Hits 7,200rpm

    Toshiba has caught up with Samsung and launched its own 640GB notebook drive spinning at 7,200rpm. Samsung announced its SpinPoint MP4 in April. General notebook SATA drives spin at 5,400rpm, whereas the MP4 rotates at 7,200rpm, delivering faster disk I/O for high-end notebooks and gaming applications. It used the 3Gbit/s SATA …

    Storage 27 Jul 11:56

  • Motorola Milestone XT720

    Review First xenon flash Android camphone

    Motorola's original Milestone, along with the Dext last year, proved to the world that Motorola was back, back, back after a period in the wilderness when it was struggling to keep up with the innovations of other manufacturers. Building on those phones' success, this Android 2.1 device has a distinctive new look and includes an …

    reghardware 27 Jul 12:02

  • SAP Q2 sales up 12% despite gloomy Euro market

    Tucks Sybase up in bed

    German business software maker SAP AG reported US second quarter sales growth that offset a licence revenues slump in the European market. Total sales grew 12 per cent to nearly €2.9bn from €2.6bn in the same period a year earlier. Overall software and software-related services revenues for the period climbed 16 per cent to € …

    Financial News 27 Jul 12:17

  • Zeus bot latches onto Windows shortcut security hole

    bLNKing hell

    Miscreants behind the Zeus cybercrime toolkit and other strains of malware have begun taking advantage of an unpatched shortcut handling flaws in Windows. It was first used by a sophisticated worm to target SCADA-based industrial control and power plant systems. Isolated strains of mainstream malware that took advantage of how …

    Malware 27 Jul 12:21

  • Limbo

    Left in the shade

    Left, right, jump, push, pull. As far as mechanics go, they are some of gaming's oldest conventions. In its 2D salad days little else was needed to captivate players the world over. But then 2D almost did a Dodo around the mid-1990s, as developers migrated from the plane to the shiny new third co-ordinate. Rock and Roll 2D …

    reghardware 27 Jul 12:54

  • O2 extends iPhone 4 return-for-refund window

    But not for long

    O2 has - temporarily - extended its returns policy for the iPhone Flaw. Usually, the operator offers a 14-day 'change your mind and get your money back' deal, but for the latest iPhone, its customers now have until close of play on 6 August to return the device. After that date, O2 will revert to the 14-day return window, it …

    reghardware 27 Jul 12:54

  • NatWest sets lawyers on student site

    Don't speak of us without our permission

    A student finance website which offers summaries of bank accounts available for the feckless unwashed masses has been hit with a copyright infringement claim by NatWest. The bank's hungry lawyers claim this page which summarises NatWest's student offer is infringement of its copyright. The letter claims that 118student.co.uk …

    Small Biz 27 Jul 12:56

  • Valve unbans 12,000 Steam 'cheaters'

    False Positive

    Valve "erroneously" banned 12,000 gamers for cheating playing Modern Warfare 2 on Steam. In an email today, Gabe Newell, President of Valve, apologised to the banned and confirmed that their accounts were restored. To make amends, the company has given all affected two free copies of Left 4 Dead 2, one to own and one to give …

    reghardware 27 Jul 13:06

  • Apple releases multi-touch 'magic' trackpad

    Eco battery packs too

    Apple has introduced the much-rumoured and Federal Communications Commission-approved Magic Trackpad, a wireless touchpad for all you fanboys who hate mice. The £59 Bluetooth gadget a multi-touch unit designed to bring to desktops the same tap-and-drag, pinch-to-zoom, page-flipping, two-finger scrolling actions that Apple's …

    reghardware 27 Jul 13:13

  • Apple brings iMac line up to date

    Better CPUs, more Ram, ATI graphics, SDXC card support

    Apple has indeed updated its iMac line, as anticipated, beefing up the line's speeds'n'feeds and adding support for the new SDXC memory card format. The new models sport a selection of Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors and come with 4GB of 1333MHz DDR 3 as standard. And Apple has dropped Nvidia graphics in favour of a …

    reghardware 27 Jul 13:27

  • UAE sees security threat in BlackBerrys

    Gulf of confusion

    The United Arab Emirates has decided that BlackBerry handsets constitute a threat to national security, and is considering an outright ban. The UAE regulator has made explicit its fears, in a statement to local media picked up by the Associated Press, that users might "abuse" the BlackBerry service to place their communication …

    Mobile 27 Jul 13:37

  • Dodeca-core Apple Mac Pro coming next month

    32nm CPUs at last

    Apple hasn't - contrary to expectations - updated the Mac Pro, but it did today promise to do so soon. The new version will sport one or two CPUs for a total of four, six, eight or 12 cores, all Intel 32nm Xeon workstation and - on the dual-processor rigs - server chips. Since they have HyperThreading on board, that makes for …

    reghardware 27 Jul 13:50

  • Police chief: Yes, my plods sometimes forget photo laws

    9am morning judgment not ubiquitous

    The Metropolitan Police Force cannot be guaranteed to abide by the law when it comes to allowing the public their right to take photographs. That was the startling admission made last week by Met Police Commissioner John Stephenson under sharp questioning from Liberal Democrat London Assembly Member Dee Doocey during a Police …

    Policing 27 Jul 14:01

  • Mainframes drive strong Q2 for Unisys

    Dark horse pulls through

    Suddenly, it is feeling a bit like the post-recessional early 1990s, at least in MainframeLand. Mainframe maker Unisys reported its financial results for the second quarter this morning, before the market opened on Wall Street. Thanks to booming sales of its profitable ClearPath mainframes, the company booked $59.4m in net …

    Servers 27 Jul 14:09

  • Aussie hacker pleads guilty to banking Trojan scam

    3,000 computers infected? Strewth

    An Australian hacker has pleaded guilty to infecting 3,000 computers with an information-stealing Trojan. Anthony Scott Harrison, 21, from the Black Forest area near Adelaide, pleaded guilty on Monday to seven computer hacking offences over the attempted cybercrime scam, UPI reports. He used an unnamed strain of malware to …

    Malware 27 Jul 14:24

  • Emmerdale shoves jam rags in innocent kiddies' faces

    Traumatised mums recount ITV soap outrage

    The Daily Mail has worked itself up into a right tizz over last Friday's episode of ITV1 soap Emmerdale, in which a chalked shopping list was seen to contain the items "jam rags" and "pile cream". PA explains that the outrage was "visible during Friday's episode as a drunk Shadrach Dingle stumbled into his nephew Marlon's …

    Bootnotes 27 Jul 15:00

  • Police force more suspects to give up crypto keys

    Password powers practised

    Police have expanded their use of powers to force suspects to decrypt files by 50 per cent in the last year, figures released today reveal. In the 12 months to March 31 this year, government officials approved 38 notices under Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, compared to 26 in the previous year. The …

    Policing 27 Jul 15:37

  • Oracle unleashes robo-tapeswapping monster

    StreamLine gets more slots and LTO-5

    Oracle has upgraded its StorageTek StreamLine 8500 tape library with more slots, LT05 support and redundant robotics and electronics for increased reliability. The 8500's maximum capacity has risen to 100,000 slots from 70,000, by linking ten 10,000 slot libraries together, and managing them as a single entity. Support has …

    Storage 27 Jul 15:42

  • iPad alert: Are you a selfish elite or an independent geek?

    Apple fondle slab wars are go!

    Thus spoke a 'selfish elite' earlier today: "I think I'm kinder than the survey suggests. Tough love, largely." Apple iPad owners tick all the obvious boxes when it comes to the kind of crowd Cupertino has happily been wooing with its fondle slab since launch in March this year. They're six times more likely to be "wealthy, …

    PCs & Chips 27 Jul 15:45

  • Novell opens Linux appliance gallery

    Not quite the Apple App Store

    Novell has opened an online gallery for SUSE software appliances. It has been a year since Novell launched its SUSE Appliance Program, which offers a set of online tools, dubbed SUSE Studio, for spinning up software appliances based on its SUSE Linux distro. The appliance tools were aimed at software developers who wanted to …

    Software 27 Jul 15:54

  • Location-based Web2.0rhea not an epidemic

    Most US adults unaware of Foursquare and friends

    People who feel compelled to constantly apprise you of their location on via the web are a tiny minority of the population. They're also mostly men. Just four per cent of US adults have ever used location-based Foursquare, Gowalla, or Loopt, with only one per cent updating the service once a week, according to a Forrester …

    Mobile 27 Jul 18:18

  • Ask.com embraces its inner Jeeves

    Q&A butler reborn as web 'community'

    Ask.com has gone back to the future, unveiling a public beta version of a major redesign that returns the site to its days as a butler that answered your questions. But this being the age of "social media," the IAC-owned company has added a new twist to its old question-and-answer setup. In addition to using automated …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 18:19

  • Proprietary software puts pacemaker users at risk

    Open source group wants mandatory code review

    More than one-fourth of defective implantable medical devices discovered this year were probably the result of bugs in the software used to control them, a group advocating open source software claimed in a report that argues against the use of proprietary code in the life-saving products. Although the pacemakers, implantable …

    Software 27 Jul 18:46

  • Wireless network security weakness to demo at DEFCON

    Et tu, WPA2?

    Security researchers have discovered security shortcomings in the WPA2 protocol that threaten the security of wireless networks, even if they are running up-to-date security software. The hack involves generating arbitrary broadcast packets from a spoofed node that trick legitimate nodes in a targeted network into responding …

    Security 27 Jul 18:51

  • HP spreads wings with 'butterfly' data centers

    Modules take flight

    There may be a glut in the housing market in many of the Western economies, but when it comes to data centers, there's pent-up demand for more modern facilities. So business should be booming then, right? Wrong. As the cost of compute, storage, and networking capacity has dropped, allowing companies to – in theory – get a lot …

    Servers 27 Jul 19:22

  • Google patents search that tracks your mouse moves

    Hover-over-but-don't-click-through rate

    Google has patented a system that displays search results and ads based on where you move your mouse. Mountain View first filed for the patent — dubbed a "system and method for modulating search relevancy using pointer activity monitoring" — in February 2005, and the US patent office rubber-stamped the application earlier this …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 21:05

  • Intel debuts hella-zippy optical future

    45 million tweets per second!

    Intel has announced the development of an integrated, end-to-end, silicon-based optical system that it says may drive down the cost of high-speed, error-free interconnects to under a dollar per port — and it leaves Chipzilla's Light Peak interconnect in the dust. "Optical as a technology is coming, and its coming very fast," …

    Physics 27 Jul 21:10

  • Apple sued over hot iPad shutdowns

    Cold blooded tablet

    Apple's iPad can shut down if it gets too hot, and Jacob Baltazar, Claudia Keller, and John Browning are as mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. Those unhappy iPadders have filed suit against Apple — and they're asking the court to elevate their claim to class-action status. Their lawsuit, filed in the US District …

    Music and Media 27 Jul 23:13

  • Mozy users caught in repeat backup hell

    Insatiable appetite

    Users are complaining that EMC's Mozy backup service is mistakenly backing up complete data sets over and over again. According to posts in five-page Mozy Forum thread, the problem has been present since mid-June, and users say they've received inadequate support. The problem occurs with Mozy for Windows. According to users, …

    Storage 27 Jul 23:13

  • Canonical fluffs one-click Ubuntu cloud stack

    Linux, NoSQL, Hadoop – check

    Canonical is accelerating Ubuntu's push into the cloud, delivering an integrated stack of cloud platforms ready for download. Canonical has revealed that it's working with open-source project Hadoop and NoSQL database providers to deepen the level of integration between these big-data technologies and the Linux distro's next …

    Software 27 Jul 23:34