2nd August 2011 Archive

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iCloud.com goes live

Cloud storage prices also outed

Ahead of its official launch, Apple has lifted the lid on the beta of its iCloud service, with the www.iCloud.com website going live. The site gives us an idea of the look-and-feel of the coming iCloud service – pretty much a rerun of the near-end-of-life MobileMe and Me.com services – and a look at the likely inclusions. …

Cloud 2 Aug 00:29
Good news: A meltdown would kill fewer than we thought

So this is it, we’re ~~all~~ not all going to die

Even if the worst happens, the death and destruction from a nuclear power station meltdown won’t be as bad as previously modeled, according to America’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In a draft report given to the New York Times, the NRC has decided that a meltdown would release far less caesium 137 than previously …

Science 2 Aug 01:00
IRISnotes Executive 1.0 digital pen

Review Knows your writes

Composed of standard looking battery-powered pen and rechargeable receiver module, the IRISNotes Executive aims to relieve some of the tedium of transcribing handwritten notes by converting your scribblings into useable text and drawings. Pen pal: IRISnotes Executive 1.0 Designed to work independently of your PC or Mac, you …

reghardware 2 Aug 06:00
Isolated human genes can be patented, US court rules

Good for DNA research, but could lead to overpriced diagnostics

Isolating genes from human DNA structures is patentable, the US Court of Appeals has ruled. The Court ruled that the process of isolating genes from human DNA strands left the resultant individual genes with "markedly different chemical structure" from DNA in the human body. US patent law says that material related to laws of …

Biology 2 Aug 08:45
Here come the ex-Sunners at CumuLogic

All things must PaaS

A startup called CumuLogic, founded by a number of Java and cloud experts at the former Sun Microsystems, is fluffing up yet another platform as a service (PaaS) cloud, joining the ranks of VMware with Cloud Foundry, Red Hat with OpenShift, Microsoft with Azure, and others. CumuLogic was founded relatively recently, in January …

Platform 2 Aug 08:56
HTC sues Apple in the UK

Warring smartphone vendors take fight to High Court

Smartphone maker HTC is taking rival Apple to court in the UK just weeks after losing a preliminary ruling over two patent violations in the US. The latest case was filed at the High Court on 29 July according to reports on Bloomberg, but the exact nature of the litigation in HTC Europe Co v Apple Inc was not specified. …

Mobile 2 Aug 09:16
Tablets will overtake consumer PCs, says Fujitsu CTO

Customers want to consume content, not produce it...

Content consumption rules for consumers and tablet sales will overtake consumer PC and notebook sales. That's the view of Dr Joseph Reger, Fujitsu's chief technology officer. Reger thinks tablet sales are going to cannibalise consumer desktop and notebook sales, because consumers want to consume content more than they want to …

PCs & Chips 2 Aug 09:27
Govt rubber-stamps Google Review, drops web-blocking

Quango plays legislator

Vince Cable is expected to announce that the government will endorse all the recommendations of the Hargreaves Review into intellectual property, the "Google Review" – tomorrow. The FT adds that Cable will also announce that regulator Ofcom has said Clauses 17 and 18 of the Digital Economy Act, dealing with website blocking, are …

Government 2 Aug 09:52
HCL discloses 'email deletion' requests from News International

Home Affairs Committee told: nothing to see here

News International asked a leading Indian IT management outfit about the deletion of emails on nine separate occasions between April 2010 and July 2011. HCL Technologies disclosed the information in a letter from its solicitors to MP Keith Vaz, who is chair of the Home Affairs Committee, yesterday. The company stressed that …

Infrastructure 2 Aug 10:08
Bytes swallows Security Partnerships

Microsoft LAR buys its way into security cloud

Surrey-based Bytes Technology Group has swallowed Security Partnerships (SP) in a bid to start reducing its software division's reliance on Microsoft licensing. Bytes has forked out for a couple of Xerox concessionaires in the past half decade, buying Xclusive in 2006 and Planflow Systems two years later, but has been …

Channel Register 2 Aug 10:12
Scareware scammers now phishing for punters

Blocked credit card spam scam

Scareware scammers are targeting credit card users with a new run of spam emails falsely warning recipients that their plastic has been blocked. The fraudulent emails, which resemble those more commonly seen in phishing or banking Trojan attacks, are fairly detailed and attempt to trick prospective marks into opening an …

Malware 2 Aug 10:15
Dual File Manager XT

Android App of the Week Get organised

The Android Market is awash with good file managers, so a newcomer really has to cut the mustard to be worthy of recommendation. In this instance, I think the new Dual XT app slices the Coleman’s to perfection. List view on left side and thumbnail view on right What separates it from the rest of the file manager herd is …

reghardware 2 Aug 10:22
Skype arrives on fondleslab

Shout into this

Skype has finally arrived on the iPad – after one false alarm. Now anybody can talk into a gigantic, oversized iPhone. Skype's VoIP service has several advantages over Apple's newborn video-conferencing service FaceTime: it works over 3G, it is "presence aware", it works with non-Apple gear, and best of all, it can call any …

VoIP 2 Aug 10:28
Skype calls on iPad, briefly

Premature application

Skype's official iPad app finally made its way to the App store last night before the company pulled it down saying it "went live prematurely". The app was already a month or so late when it went up. Those rushing to download the app this morning only to find it had been removed, were told they'd have to wait through a company …

reghardware 2 Aug 10:29
TV goes home, even when mobile

Take one screen into the living room?

Mobile video consumption is far from mobile, if the latest US survey is to be believed, with three-quarters of video consumption taking place within the home. The survey comes from Nielsen, and was commissioned by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) to see if portable video is driving viewers away …

Mobile 2 Aug 10:38
'Work from home' spam scam floods Twitter

Be Your Own ~~Boss~~ Dupe

Cybercrooks are using compromised Twitter accounts to spamvertise work-at-home scams. The bogus messages appear as both direct messages and regular Twitter updates that attempt to induce users into visiting fraudulent websites punting supposed opportunities to make thousands for little or no effort. The dodgy messages link to …

Spam 2 Aug 11:16
eBay backs Flash new boy for storage

Nimbus = smaller, cheaper, cooler

Out of nowhere, Nimbus, an all-flash array supplier, has beaten incumbents NetApp and 3PAR at eBay, with 12 arrays and 100TB of flash installed to accelerate eBay's server virtualisation work. Nimbus CEO Thomas Isakovich said: "It's one of the largest single deployments of flash anywhere... This is a seven-figure account for …

Storage 2 Aug 11:30
London plods raid Wikipedia in counter-anarchist operation

Know your malodorous enemy, Project Griffin style

It's half an hour on the naughty step today for London's Metropolitan and City Police's Project Griffin team for resorting to Wikipedia in the struggle to contain the anarchist menace. In case you're wondering, Project Griffin is a collaborative effort "to familiarise managers, security officers and employees of large public …

Bootnotes 2 Aug 11:31
Capita coughs up £29m for financial services house

Offshorer looks offshore to dodge UK public sector turmoil

Capita has splurged £29m on AIB International Financial Services, (AIBFS) as it continues to broaden its commercial base outside of the UK. The deal – subject to regulatory approval in Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – will give the company entry into Switzerland and Hungary as well as adding a chunk of revenues to its …

Channel Register 2 Aug 11:37
Serial Web2.0 investor pumps Twitter valuation to $8bn

$57m per character

Twitter closed a "significant round of funding" yesterday, with lots of help from the Russian venture outfit that has already pumped large sums of cash into Facebook, Groupon et al. The micro-blogging site said that serial Web2.0 investor Digital Sky Technologies Global (DST Global) led the Twitter funding round, but didn't …

Financial News 2 Aug 11:52
PCTV NanoStick T2 USB TV tuner

Review Freeview HD telly on the move

Ten years ago, investing in a PC TV tuner seemed a neat way of watching while you work – integrating the gogglebox with laptop or desktop duties. Today, the idea is more questionable given access to on-line video streaming and download services from the likes of YouTube and the BBC iPlayer respectively. PCTV's Nanostick T2: …

reghardware 2 Aug 12:16
Sun compo entrants' privates exposed in public

Hacker posts Pastebin pasting

Security lapses at News International have exposed the email addresses and other personal information of readers who entered competitions in The Sun, the UK's biggest selling daily newspaper. The names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth of thousands of people were also exposed by the hack, reckoned to have probably …

ID 2 Aug 12:28
RFID drives the self-service pub

An application for wireless we can all appreciate

The Cheeky bar, in Georgia USA, now has a self-service bar known as the "wall of beer" where patrons can help themselves to a drink with the wave of a card. The card is simply an RFID tag which identifies the buyer, but the system measures the amount of alcohol poured as well as requiring each drinker to prove their sobriety …

Wireless 2 Aug 13:02
Cops arrest man over phone-hacking, police corruption claims

71-year-old cuffed this morning

Scotland Yard officers investigating phone-hacking and police corruption claims at News International arrested a 71-year-old man this morning. "At 10:50hrs on Tuesday, 2 August, officers from Operation Weeting together with officers from Operation Elveden arrested a man on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, …

Crime 2 Aug 13:15
Nokia ditches letters for all-number names

All over again...

In what must be the most significant announcement since it unveiled its new corporate font, Nokia has announced an all-new naming strategy. After exhaustive blue-sky brainstorming sessions in the saunas of the frozen North, Nokia has decided that product names are going to be numbers, just as they were for most of the company's …

Mobile 2 Aug 13:18
Toshiba launches thinner spinner

1TB standard notebook format drive

Seagate's failure to capitalise on its start-of-year areal density advantages is being laid bare: Toshiba has followed Samsung and Western Digital by adding a 1TB, standard format notebook drive to its roster, leaving Seagate out in the cold. Toshiba's MQ01ABD is an advance on its 3-platter, 1TB notebook drive, the MK1059GSM, …

Storage 2 Aug 13:23
Sony Ericsson toying with tabletphone

3D handset in sight, apparently

Sony Ericsson is developing a glasses-free 3D handset, rumoured to integrate the tablet and smartphone into a 4.7in hybrid. The whispers come by way of Androidandme, that claims Sony Ericsson's secret smartphone will go toe-to-toe with the LG Optimus 3D and HTC Evo 3D. The forthcoming device will apparently handle a 1280x720p …

reghardware 2 Aug 13:36
Virgin mulls handing out free Wi-Fi

You can have too much bandwidth

Virgin Media is talking to local authorities about providing free metro Wi-Fi, using bandwidth that's lying fallow while all its domestic customers are at work. The idea was alluded to during the investor's call last week, and responding to questions the company's CEO Neil Berkett confirmed that Virgin Media was in "advanced …

Wireless 2 Aug 14:04
Nokia unveils budget Symbian smartie

1GHz handset?

While Nokia has been playing the numbers game with its naming protocol, unveiling a new labelling system today, it has also found time to bring out a new smartphone to sit smack bang in the middle of it all. The Nokia 500 packs a 1GHz ARM11 chip, which according to IntoMobile, is basically the equivalent of 400MHz on something …

reghardware 2 Aug 14:15
Guardian blames gov ad-spend cuts for revenue droop

Keep Calm and Carry On office didn't splash its usual £500m this year...

The Guardian Media Group has blamed government advertising cuts for falling newspaper revenues. Income for the Guardian Media Group – which includes joint ventures in Autotrader and Emap – fell to £466.1m from £476.2m. Those two JVs saw operating profits of almost £200m. The Guardian newspaper operation itself saw revenue £22.8m …

Government 2 Aug 14:17
Moaning moose cows provoke punch-ups among bulls

Alaskan wilderness just like Newcastle on a Friday night

Researchers from Idaho State University have proved that moose mating rituals follow a similar pattern to that displayed among humans in Newcastle pubs on a Friday night – that females moaning about sexual advances by inadequate males increases the chance of bloke-on-bloke violence. Scientists already knew that a female moose …

Biology 2 Aug 14:19
Evil Android Trojan records your calls

Spy on the wire

Criminals have increased the functionality of Android Trojans with a new strain that is capable of recording, and not just logging, conversations on compromised smartphones. Previous mobile malware strains for Google's mobile platform had the ability to log the duration and numbers of incoming and outgoing calls. The new …

Enterprise Security 2 Aug 14:33
Murdoch's PIE BOY jailed for six weeks

'Jonnie Marbles' sentenced for attacking world's most powerful octogenarian

A protester who attacked Rupert Murdoch last month at a parliamentary hearing into the phone-hacking scandal engulfing News Corp's sister company News International has been handed a six-week jail term this afternoon. The self-styled "activist, comedian, father figure and all-round nonsense", who has a Twitter handle of Jonnie …

Crime 2 Aug 14:52
PC chip sales up, shipments flat in Q2

AMD climbs as Intel slips

Shipments of microprocessors for netbook, notebook, desktop PCs and related x64-based servers and workstations flatlined in the second quarter as the economy stumbled a bit in the United States and Europe. Consumers held back on PC purchases while also spending some of their hard-earned cash on tablets. The good news is that …

PCs & Chips 2 Aug 14:59
IT governance: a help or a hindrance for your projects?

How to balance freedom and control

Facebook has become a source of pithy quotes. One is doing the round in friends’ status windows right now is: “Follow your heart, but take your brain along with you.” In relation to IT, another way to put it might be: “No action without control.” Embarking on projects and service delivery without proper governance leads to …

Service Assurance 2 Aug 15:09
Apple iCloud pricing revealed

Brits set to pay 14 per cent more than the Yanks

Apple has lifted the covers from its UK and US pricing model for the iCloud with a bunch of options for fanbois to suck up additional storage space. And there were no surprises as our friends across the Atlantic are once again getting a better deal. A beta version of the web-based service went live today, giving users 5GB of …

Platform 2 Aug 15:15
Dawn eyes Vesta's full-frontal charms

Revealing snap of Clangers' asteroid homeworld

NASA has released the first "full-frame" image of asteroid Vesta, an impressive view of the Clanger homeworld captured by the Dawn spacecraft on 24 July at a distance of roughly 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometres). Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer, enthused: "Now that we are in orbit around one of the last unexplored worlds in …

Space 2 Aug 15:48
Malware attack spreads to 5 million pages (and counting)

Unpatched sites turn on visitors

An attack that targets a popular online commerce application has infected almost 5 million webpages with scripts that attempt to install malware on their visitors' computers. The mass attack, which compromises websites running unpatched versions of the osCommerce store-management web application, has spread virally over the …

Malware 2 Aug 18:07
Apple vanishes MySQL from Mac OS X Lion Server

Postgres fills Ellisonian black hole

Apple has removed MySQL from the latest version of Mac OS X server, replacing it with PostgreSQL. The previous version of the OS – Snow Leopard Server – offered access to MySQL from both the GUI and the command line, but the open source database has disappeared entirely from Mac OS X Lion Server, released last week. Postgres …

Software 2 Aug 18:17
Swede cuffed for cooking nuclear reactor on kitchen stovetop

Add radioactive smoke detector innards. Stir

A Swedish man was arrested and briefly detained for attempting to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen. "I've always been interested in nuclear physics and particle physics," the unnamed 31-year-old told the Helsingborgs Dagblad (Google Translate). "I have read many books about it and wanted to see if it worked. I just …

Physics 2 Aug 18:35
Zero day bug threatens many WordPress sites

TimThumb developer pwned by own creation

Attackers are exploiting a widely used extension for the WordPress publishing platform to take control of vulnerable websites, one of the victims has warned. The vulnerability affects virtually all websites that have an image-resizing utility called TimThumb running with WordPress, Mark Maunder, CEO of Seattle-based Feedjit, …

Security 2 Aug 18:44
Chrome 13: Google uncloaks search click prediction engine

'We know what you want before you do'

Google has released a new stable version of its Chrome browser, adding an "Instant Pages" service that attempts to accelerate your Google searches by rendering pages before you actually click on them. Chrome 13 – available here for Mac, Windows, and Linux – also a offers a print preview tool just for Windows and Linux users, …

Applications 2 Aug 19:53
Boffins shine 800Mbps wireless network from flashlight

LEDs torch LAN record

German researchers have discovered how to fill a room with 800 megabits per second of wireless data using an inexpensive LED setup. "Using red-blue-green-white light LEDs, we were able to transmit 800Mbit/s in the lab," said researcher Klaus-Dieter Langer. "That is a world record for the [visible light communication] method …

Wireless 2 Aug 20:14
Oracle rides AAPT into the cloud

Solaris-as-a-service for Australia

AAPT has reportedly signed a deal with Oracle to launch an infrastructure-as-a-service offering based on the Solaris operating system. The carrier, owned by New Zealand Telecom, has previously concentrated on voice-based services for its hosted offerings, most notably in the hosted IP-PABX, IP centrex and SIP trunking markets …

Business 2 Aug 22:30
How to lose 375k customers the Vodafone Hutchinson way

When two companies don't make it right

In what comes as no shock to industry or consumers, Vodafone has managed to hemorrhage 375,000 Australian customers in the first six months of the year. Ongoing network coverage issues, poor customer service and a class action from disgruntled customers have pummeled the mobile carrier’s consumer reputation causing the mass …

Business 2 Aug 22:30
EMF notches up another health-scare

Correlation in causation SHOCK!

Armed with one small study and a wire-service media release, a group from the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research has frightened the living daylights out of half the western world with the claim that exposing pregnant women to “everyday household items” can lead to an increased risk of their children developing asthma. The …

Science 2 Aug 23:00
Google dangles needle over Web Bubble 2.0

Open...and Shut And no one notices

Back in the bad ol' days of Microsoft's dominance, many a venture capitalist was scared off from an investment because of the looming possibility that Microsoft might enter the startup's market. But as the startup landscape shifted to web-oriented technology, startups and the VCs who love them appear to have forgotten to …

Music and Media 2 Aug 23:02
GOP darling Newt Gingrich accused of Twitter fraud

'We're clean,' says head Newtonian spinmeister

Fading US presidential candidate and conservative darling Newton "Newt" Leroy Gingrich denies that a high percentage of his 1.3 million Twitter followers are bought-and-paid-for fakes, despite reports – and alleged evidence – to the contrary. "We've never utilized firms, agencies, or outside organizations to inflate Newt's …

Music and Media 2 Aug 23:12
Servers pump up Super Micro

Intel's Xeon E5 chips set for 'in Q4'

Server and system component maker Super Micro continued to grow in its fiscal fourth quarter ended in June – despite the impending launch of new Xeon and Opteron processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. The appetite that data centers built up for upgrading machines after the forced diet of the Great Recession has not …

Servers 2 Aug 23:19