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15th March 2011 Archive

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  • Apple handcuffs 'open' web apps on iPhone home screen

    Exclusive Three bugs? Or three-headed App Store conspiracy?

    Apple's iOS mobile operating system runs web applications at significantly slower speeds when they're launched from the iPhone or iPad home screen in "full-screen mode" as opposed to in the Apple Safari browser, and at the same time, the operating system hampers the performance of these apps in other ways, according to tests …

    Developer 15 Mar 01:26

  • HP promises App Store and Microsoft love in webOS world

    'Our software is a thing of magic'

    Hewlett-Packard has unveiled an imaginative cloud strategy apparently founded on the imaginative powers of its marketing people. The computing and services company said on Monday that it plans an Amazon-like public cloud and Apple-like app store that serves apps to consumers and business users on smart devices. HP CEO Leo …

    Applications 15 Mar 01:57

  • Data-mining technique outs authors of anonymous email

    Unmasking trolls, one 'write-print' at a time

    Engineers and computer scientists say they have devised a novel method for identifying authors of anonymous emails that's reliable enough to be used in courts of law. In a series of papers published over the past few years, the researchers from Concordia University in Montreal have described what they say is the first ever data …

    ID 15 Mar 04:00

  • Microsoft releases IE9 for chip happy Windows world

    Windows XP not included

    Microsoft made IE9 available for download on Monday evening at corporate hippie fest South By South West in Austin, Texas, where it boasted that IE9 relies on Windows more than any other browser out there. Rivals like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari – which spread their bets by working on different operating systems – are …

    Applications 15 Mar 06:40

  • Catch Notes

    Android App of the Week Your thoughts on all your devices

    Trying to keep your spur-of-the-moment scribbles and jottings synchronised twixt phone and computer can be hard enough, and with third-device tablets hoving into view the problem is only going to get worse.    Catch Notes: speak your brains This is where Catch Notes comes in. It’s a relatively simple note-taking app that …

    reghardware 15 Mar 07:00

  • Black Ops is the best selling videogame EVER

    Battlefield devs bitch-slap Activision

    This week, Call of Duty: Black Ops became the best-selling game of all time - in the US at least - selling 13.7m units across all platforms in the five months since release. The game smashed the one-day sales figures when launched in 2010 and went on to make more than $1bn in revenue before the year was up. Smashing records …

    reghardware 15 Mar 08:37

  • TorrentFreak seeking copyright report’s mysterious author

    Update: Sphere Analysis report now published

    A report that pump-primes the idea that Australia is a nation of inveterate pirates is starting to unravel, with a report on TorrentFreak questioning the bona fides of the report’s author. The study, which alleged the usual extreme extent of Internet piracy – a billion-dollar burden on the economy destroying thousands of jobs …

    Music and Media 15 Mar 08:48

  • Renault security boss arrested as spying claims fall apart

    J'accuse. Pas

    Renault has apologised to the three senior executives from its electric vehicle division who were sacked and accused of spying for China. The carmaker's security boss was arrested as he boarded a plane for West Africa. He is under judicial investigation for alleged organised fraud. Paranoid bosses at Renault have now pledged …

    Bootnotes 15 Mar 09:55

  • At the sharp end

    Workshop How far should CRM customisation go?

    Deploying a software application can be a balancing act between making the system work for the business and changing the business to fit the system. This was certainly the experience of Cutting Edge Services when it implemented a customer relationship management (CRM) package. With 100 staff, Cutting Edge is a supplier of …

    Doing Better Business 15 Mar 10:23

  • Avon and Somerset police launch online crime tracker

    Site allows victims of crime to follow the progress of investigations

    The Avon and Somerset police service has launched an online crime tracker to provide the public with access to information extracted from its systems. The force hopes that the website, named TrackMyCrime, will help cut the time people spend waiting for police officers to call them back about their enquiries, as they will be …

    Policing 15 Mar 10:27

  • BT Openreach's founding father quits job

    Steve Robertson out as Olivia Garfield takes on CEO role

    BT Openreach's boss Steve Robertson is leaving, after six years heading up BT's network access business. "His achievements at the helm of Openreach have been tremendous," said BT chief Ian Livingston. "He decided a while ago that, after six years running Openreach, it was time to pass over to someone else to take the business …

    Telecoms 15 Mar 10:29

  • Bogus BBC Fukushima radiation texts panic the Philippines

    Thanks for that

    Hoax BBC text messages are claiming that radiation from the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant has begun spreading in the Philippines. Authorities in Manila were obliged to issue an official denial over the SMS messages, which are entirely bogus. The put-up messages (extract below) advise recipients to stay indoors, and to …

    Spam 15 Mar 10:34

  • Ofcom stamps out mobile termination fees

    Down to a ha'penny by 2014

    Ofcom has confirmed its plan to cut mobile termination rates, though not as quickly as some would like. The final statement from Ofcom will see termination rates – the amount paid by the caller's network to the recipient's network – rapidly cut in half, and then steadily reduced until 2014 when it hits a shade more than half a …

    Mobile 15 Mar 11:30

  • Microsoft calls time on Zune media player hardware

    Even Nokia wouldn't want it

    Microsoft is to pull the plug on its Zune line of media players, it has been claimed. The software giant won't be introducing any new models, insists an insider. If the unnamed mole cited by Bloomberg proves to be correct, we won't be surprised. The media player market is now in decline, and Zune was never a major part of it …

    reghardware 15 Mar 11:35

  • European parliament loves the Tobin tax

    But if it becomes law, it's us plebs who'll be paying

    Sometimes it seems the Gods themselves are trying to screw us over. At other times it is our own politicians who attempt to to fubar the world all on their lonesome. This seems to be the case with the European Parliament's recent decision to try and impose the Tobin Tax upon us all. The logic behind the decision seems …

    Small Biz 15 Mar 11:51

  • Can telephony and IT work together?

    Broadcast West Yorkshire Fire Service says 'yes

    Over the years, fragmentation has crept upon organisations leaving communications across the company out of tune with the requirements of the business. Half your employees use email, half use the phone, a few use IM, and a bunch of others install their own apps. You don't know who said what, to who, and when they said it. You …

    Tech Panel 15 Mar 12:03

  • Asus Eee Pad Slider

    Hands On Tablet meets netbook - becomes smartbook

    The smartbook is the great 'might have been' of mobile computing. Something thin and light, with solid-state storage, a keyboard, a day-long battery life and the ARM CPU that makes such a quality possible, and a price in keeping with the Small, Cheap Computer ethic. Killed by the iPad? Killed the absence of the right chips and …

    reghardware 15 Mar 12:24

  • Fukushima update: No chance cooling fuel can breach vessels

    Still nothing to get in a flap about

    The story of the three quake- and tsunami-hit reactors at Japan's Fukushima plant continues, with indications that one of the three worst-hit reactors has sustained further damage. A fire also broke out at another reactor, shut down at the time of the quake and not previously thought to be a problem, but this has now been put …

    Physics 15 Mar 12:25

  • Facebook preps Groupon-like service

    Let the coupon clone wars begin

    Facebook plans to test a Groupon-like service on its social network to link its users up to local discounts. The privately held company said it would initially roll out the service to Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, San Francisco and San Diego. Such a move will plump up Facebook's current Deals offering via its creepy Places service …

    Applications 15 Mar 12:41

  • DWP ditches Fujitsu and reappoints HP

    U-turns on multi-million pound desktop deal

    The Department for Work and Pensions has ripped up its multi-million pound desktop support contract with Fujitsu before the company even started work. HP lost the contract, one of the UK's biggest, when it was handed to Fujitsu in January last year. But last Friday Fujitsu had its contract torn up and HP was asked to continue …

    Channel Register 15 Mar 12:48

  • Russian republic in sex bomb alert

    Petrozavodsk plastic pecker palaver

    Police in the Russian republic of Karelia were obliged to evacuate and cordon off a post office in the capital Petrozavodsk yesterday after staff reported a "suspicious parcel". Bomb squad operatives moved in to check the package emitting "a sound resembling a ticking clock". The earth failed to move, however, when they opened …

    Bootnotes 15 Mar 13:04

  • The 64-bit question

    Desktop Strategy Maybe the future of the desktop, but should you care yet?

    There's no question: 64-bit computing is here to stay - and it seems set to be the future of computing. But is it an essential element of your next desktop refresh cycle? Chances are it will be. The struggle to reach a stable 32-bit platform may have escaped you but it took many years before we were finally rid of slow 16- …

    Desktop Strategy 15 Mar 13:10

  • WTF is... cloud gaming?

    Look, ma, no console!

    It's 3am, you can't sleep so you switch on the television. Amid the inevitable reruns and chatline ads, an advert comes on for the latest videogame. Inspired to try it out, you switch over, grab a control pad and immediately start to play. No download, no trips to Blockbuster, no waiting for the postman to arrive with a game …

    reghardware 15 Mar 13:11

  • Facebook poaches Google exec to go on M&A hunt

    Engineer that, Mountain View!

    Google's corporate development director has reportedly been scooped up by Facebook, in a move to help the social network beef up its mergers and acquisitions portfolio. Amin Zoufonoun worked at Google since 2003, but according to Reuters he's taken a job with Facebook and will be sitting behind his new office desk next week. …

    Financial News 15 Mar 13:15

  • Disney torpedoes Yellow Submarine

    Robert Zemekis 3D remake of 1968 classic canned

    Disney Studios has torpedoed Robert Zemekis's planned 3D remake of Yellow Submarine, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The Back to the Future and Forrest Gump helmsman planned to deploy 16 Beatles tracks and "cutting-edge motion-capture technology" in the re-imagining of the 1968 animation. Budget issues and a canned …

    Entertainment 15 Mar 13:21

  • HP will grow future on clouds and analytics

    Comment Apotheker ain't gonna buy legacy software

    Let's talk about the money first because if the corporate strategy laid out yesterday by Hewlett-Packard's new president and chief executive officer, Leo Apotheker, doesn't pan out, neither will the ever-increasing dividends that are supposed to get Wall Street all fired up. In conjunction with its HP Summit for analysts and …

    Cloud 15 Mar 13:48

  • Network mapping: you know it makes sense

    Workshop Diagramming tools to the rescue

    Keeping track of your network infrastructure is crucial to maintaining control, because you can’t expect to manage it without an understanding of what you have And since a picture is worth a thousand words, keeping a live map of the network makes it easier to see what’s going on when faults are detected or when change planning …

    Data Visualisation 15 Mar 13:57

  • The stick, the carrot and the desktop virt project

    Winning hearts and minds

    The world would be a better place if it weren’t for all the users. Even the best laid technological plans can go awry when computer-hugging individuals decide that they don’t want to abandon their conventional systems or ways of working. Nowhere is this more true than in the nascent world of desktop virtualisation. Many users …

    Desktop Virtualisation 15 Mar 14:07

  • EU copyright database could help reform the laws on orphan works

    Steely Neelie wants pan-European searchable legal copyright database

    A project designed to identify the copyright status of European works will be extended to cover multimedia material and could become a vital tool in the reform of the law surrounding orphan works, European commissioner Neelie Kroes has said. The ARROW project was established in 2008 to co-ordinate the activities of libraries …

    Government 15 Mar 14:11

  • Defence talks to forge EU cyberwar strategy

    What are we defending against exactly?

    European defence ministers met last week to develop NATO's future cyber defence strategy, defence minister Nick Harvey told Parliament on Monday. Defence Secretary Liam Fox met his counterparts across Europe to help formulate future cyber defence policy, Harvey said in response to questions in the House from former defence …

    Enterprise Security 15 Mar 14:14

  • Ten scatological jokes about storage

    InfoSmack Time!

    And so today we kick off with Infosmack Episode 90, the world's best podcast about enterprise tech bar none. In this week's broadcast - Infosmack's second outing on The Reg we learn that co-hosts Greg Knieriemen and Marc Farley have potty mouths. Who knew that big storage offered so many opportunities for scatological …

    Infosmack 15 Mar 14:36

  • Measuring loyalty 101: know what your customers bought

    Workshop What, when, how much

    Predicting customer behaviour is an essential part of answering the vital question: will the business grow or shrink, swim or sink? Marketers like to measure customer behaviour using “RFM” – recency, frequency and money, meaning value. These three dimensions should provide an accurate picture of past purchasing patterns and an …

    Doing Better Business 15 Mar 14:49

  • Amazon tweaks virtual private clouds

    Public and private subnets

    Amazon Web Services has cut the encrypted cord on its Virtual Private Cloud. When the VPC variant of Amazon's EC2 service was launched way back in August 2009, Amazon allowed customers to carve out a chunk of the Elastic Compute Cloud and isolate those server nodes from other EC2 nodes, creating a virtual private network. The …

    Cloud 15 Mar 15:05

  • Ubisoft reveals rock game with REAL guitars

    Plucking brilliant

    Ubisoft has announced a guitar-based game that uses a real six-string rather than a button-bashing imitation. Avid axemen groaned when Rock Band type games first surfaced. "It doesn't teach you how to play guitar," we moaned. "It's nothing like the real thing!" Ubisoft's upcoming title Rocksmith seeks to change all that. " …

    reghardware 15 Mar 15:13

  • Seagate extends enterprise disk and SSD lines

    Three in one: Pulsar, Savvio and Constellation

    Seagate has extended its enterprise disk and solid state storage products in a comprehensive announcement following hard on the heels of Western Digital buying Hitachi GST. Second generation Pulsar solid state drives (SSD) have been announced with a 2-bit, multi-level cell Pulsar.2 and a higher-performance single level cell …

    Storage 15 Mar 15:14

  • Avere extends FXT box for virtual stuffing

    Virtualises filers, adds global name space

    Avere has extended is its FXT multi-tiered filer accelerator box to aggregate filers together inside a single global name space. The FXT has many tiers of storage, from DRAM, though NV-RAM, SSD to SAS disk drives on which it caches file reads and writes to/from back-end filers, and provides substantial I/O acceleration. An FXT …

    Virtualization 15 Mar 15:29

  • Three ponders big squeeze: City, duopoly, Ofcom have little sympathy

    And then there were ... 3

    UK punters face higher prices from an oligopoly of three mobile providers unless Ofcom rethinks its spectrum policy, Three UK's CEO Kevin Russell said at a policy debate in London today. As it stands, Ofcom will hand all of the prime 900Mhz spectrum currently used by Vodafone and O2 for 2G back to them to use again for 3G. …

    Mobile 15 Mar 15:39

  • Google wires up for wireless payments

    NFC hits NY & SF in alphabet soup

    Google is planning to hand shopkeepers thousands of NFC-capable terminals in New York and San Francisco, to encourage proximity payments using their Nexus S handset. Bloomberg has been chatting to some of the merchants who've been offered the terminals, though it appears to suggest that Google is planning its own payment …

    Mobile 15 Mar 15:53

  • Buy two tablets, stop a laptop from being shipped

    Big biz to go ape for fondleslabs

    Consumers are keen on tablets, but big business is positively bonkers for them, if market watcher Canalys is to be believed. It reckons corporates will buy 1.12m iPads and other such gadgets this year, up from 20,410 they acquired in 2010. That's a growth rate of over 5397 per cent, Canalys said today. Tablet sales to …

    reghardware 15 Mar 15:54

  • F-Secure Mac security scanner bug bins benign files

    Whoops! Hope that wasn't a system file

    F-Secure has apologised about a bug in its consumer-focused Mac security software that left surfers fighting against their own browsers as clean files were wrongly classified as malign. A faulty definition in the beta version of F-Secure Mac Protection meant that the software had been wrongly identifying some benign files as …

    Malware 15 Mar 15:58

  • London's Olympic clock claps out

    Marathon countdown ends after less than a day

    The London Olympics countdown clock has clapped out after less than a day, the BBC reports. The precision timepiece was triumphantly unveiled in Trafalgar Square yesterday, but failed to clear the first 24-hour hurdle and is now stuck on 500 days and 7:06:56. A red-faced spokesman for the Swatch Group said: "We are obviously …

    Bootnotes 15 Mar 16:19

  • MS flicks the LightSwitch for Silverlight on Azure

    VisualStudio expansion gets second beta

    Microsoft is inviting partners to jump on the second beta of a Visual Studio developer tool that lets you deploy your Silverlight applications to Microsoft's Azure cloud. The company today delivers the latest beta of its planned Visual Studio LightSwitch environment - due for release later this year - which developers can now …

    Cloud 15 Mar 16:47

  • Google splits Google Apps suite in two

    Get new stuff now. Or get it when you're good and ready

    Google has separated its Google Apps suite into two separate "release tracks": one that provides access to the latest tools as soon as they're ready, and a second that releases new tools on a regular weekly schedule. "We’re always excited to bring you the newest features as soon as they’re ready, but we’ve heard from some …

    Cloud 15 Mar 17:28

  • EA coughs to Dragon Age II user ban 'mistake'

    Restoration comedy

    EA has responded to the Bioware forum user banned from installing Dragon Age II - by apologising for the "mistake" and reinstating the account. After asking on the forum if BioWare has "sold their souls to the EA devil", user 'Vware' was promptly banned, albeit only on a temporary basis. However, this affected the install of …

    reghardware 15 Mar 17:49

  • Assange ambushes Australian Prime Minister on live TV

    Asks if she should be tried for treason

    Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard denied supplying information about WikiLeaks staff to the US government after founder Julian Assange confronted her on live television and suggested she be tried for treason. The ambush happened during an interview with the Australian leader aired live on that country's public network ABC …

    Government 15 Mar 18:41

  • iPad 2, A5 chip, and Smart Cover strip-searched

    Samsung processor and 31 magnets

    Apple's iPad 2, launched last Friday, has already been subjected to teardowns by the intrepid vivisectionists at iFixit, UBM TechInsights, and Chipworks, who have discovered details of its A5 processor and other chips, a trio of "massive" battery cells, and a total of 31 magnets providing the sticktuitiveness of the tablet's …

    Music and Media 15 Mar 19:44

  • Google teaches Microsoft's IE9 to love open video codec

    WebM for Internet Explorer

    Updated: This story has been updated to show that the software offered by Google is not a browser plugin per se – though Google originally called it a plugin on its download page. It's software that installs on Windows and it can be used by other Windows applications. You can find an update here. Google has released software …

    Applications 15 Mar 19:48

  • First Facebook Hacker Cup lifted by ... Google genius

    That's the way the colored ball bounces

    Facebook's inaugural Hacker Cup was won by a Googler. And when he lifted the (rather large) trophy on Saturday at Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters, he was apparently wearing his Google ID badge. Considering the epic rivalry that has sprung up between the two web giants in recent months, this is at least worth a chuckle. " …

    Developer 15 Mar 20:49

  • ISP proposes independent body to police copyright

    iiNet's modest proposal

    Having survived legal action brought by content owners, ISP iiNet has proposed an independent body be established to help police illegal access to and distribution of copyright material on the Internet. In its white paper, entitled Encouraging legitimate use of Online Content, the company says the independent body could act as …

    Law 15 Mar 22:04

  • Aussie TV production house takes on Apple

    Lend me your ears, I’ll sing you a lawsuit

    Australia’s most notorious career-and-media criminal, the earless Mark "Chopper" Read, has unwittingly sparked a David and Goliath legal wrangle between independent Australian production company Jigsaw Entertainment and Apple. The "Chopper Soundboard" app released by a 14-year-old developer surfaced last year on iTunes. It …

    Law 15 Mar 22:15

  • Fukushima reactor shell ruptured?

    'What the hell is going on?' fumes Japanese PM

    The head of the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) says that the concrete shell enclosing the troubled No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi complex is "no longer sealed," and that the disaster should now be ugraded to Level 6 on the seven-level International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), placing it one step …

    Physics 15 Mar 22:30

  • Twitter ad play chokes third-party devs

    Open...and Shut Money rules. Not freedom

    For years people have talked up Twitter as the future of journalism, described it as a freedom-fighting platform and used other such bold phrases. As it turns out, Twitter is just an app. And not always a very good one, thanks to its increasing efforts to monetize the interface. I suppose it was bound to happen. Twitter, for …

    Developer 15 Mar 22:44

  • Intel: 'We ate McAfee to slip security into silicon'

    Down below the kernel where it belongs

    Chip maker and now software player Intel tried on Tuesday to explain the finer points of its $7.7bn acquisition of security software maker McAfee, which closed at the end of February after jumping some European Commission regulatory hurdles. In a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Renée James, an Intel senior vice …

    Security 15 Mar 23:30