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26th August 2011 Archive

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  • Telstra adds Red Hat to cloud offering

    Also signals local hosting of Office 365

    Telstra has become a Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider, readying the carrier to offer the Linux specialist’s enterprise solutions as a guest operating system. Australia’s incumbent telco has been ramping up its cloud offerings throughout 2011, devoting $AU800 million to the push. While the carrier has claimed 80 percent growth …

    Cloud Business 26 Aug 00:30

  • Cloud now top of Mac Tel’s list

    Bit-pipe no more

    Macquarie Telecom is increasingly positioning itself as a cloud provider first, telco second, noting in its annual results released yesterday that it has an ongoing program to redeploying telco resources to support growth in its hosting business. Announcing that its hosting revenue was more than $AU53 million yesterday on …

    Financial News 26 Aug 01:30

  • Java arrives on Heroku code cloud

    J2EE containers snuffed

    Heroku – the multi-language "platform cloud" owned by Saleforce.com – is now running Java applications. Akin to Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, or VMware's Cloud Foundry, Heroku is an online service for building, deploying, and readily scaling applications. It was originally designed for Ruby on Rails apps, but has since …

    Platform 26 Aug 06:49

  • Gov outlines Criminal Records Bureau successor

    Here comes the Protecting Your Freedom Bureau. Outsourced

    The Home Office has begun to look for a replacement for the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), with a tender for a company to run outsourced disclosure and barring services. The new service will bring the CRB and ISA together, and is aimed at supporting the implementation of the …

    Public Sector 26 Aug 07:58

  • Vogel's RingO iPad mounting system

    Accessory of the Week Fix your fondleslab to the wall, to the car

    Desktop stands for iPads and other tablets there are a-plenty, but wall-mounting systems are rare. Vogel's, a Dutch specialist in such kit, is one of only two I've tried. Attach your tablet to the wall RingO, as it's called, is the pricier of the two, but not by so very much. The £80 starter-pack includes both wall-mount …

    reghardware 26 Aug 08:00

  • IDLENESS sees Brits haemorrhage cash to mobe firms

    Refuse to switch, wander into shops like mooncalves

    Almost 20 million Brits are losing money by sticking with their existing mobile phone operators because it's convenient, according to a survey by Which? Mobile. Which? found that 44 per cent of participants had never changed provider and 31 per cent hadn't done so in the last two years, often because they thought it would be a …

    Mobile 26 Aug 08:29

  • Nikon reheats Coolpix range

    See no EVIL

    Nikon has refreshed its range of Coolpix cameras bringing a swathe of new features to its compact models. A year on from the Nikon P7000 debut – the company’s well-overdue answer to the Canon G-series Powershot – the Coolpix P7100 is here. Apart from the front dial and articulating 3in LCD panel on the back, the P7100 form …

    reghardware 26 Aug 08:47

  • HP's UK PC boss: We're going nowhere

    TouchPad's on fire since we cancelled it!

    HP's UK Personal Systems Group head Paul Hunter has sent round an open letter urging calm on recent news that the ink giant is rethinking its PC strategy. This was widely reported as "HP gets out of PCs" – not hugely surprising given IBM's similar strategy. But Hunter said: "Let me be absolutely clear in saying that at no …

    PCs & Chips 26 Aug 09:01

  • World telly shipments stall

    Q2 not good for set makers

    It wouldn't be fair to say World+Dog isn't buying new tellies at the moment, but numbers from market watcher DisplaySearch show it's still a depressing businesses to be in. Some 55.5m TVs shipped in Q2 2011, down - albeit by just a single percentage point - on Q2 2010's total. Sales of all types of TV were down with one …

    reghardware 26 Aug 09:43

  • Cyber cops arrest man, 61, for menacing chick-lit MP

    Perhaps not an Anonymous/LulzSec kiddy after all

    The Metropolitan Police have arrested a man suspected of sending threatening emails and Twitter messages to Tory MP and Murdoch-botherer Louise Mensch. The Met said: Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service's (MPS) Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) working with officers from the Palace of Westminster have today, …

    Policing 26 Aug 09:47

  • Google slides Slide into the bin after spending $228m

    Levchin refuses to mourn as he drives off in gold car

    Google has ditched social network tech outfit Slide just one year after the company spent $182m on it, plus a further $46m in staff retention bonuses, in August 2010. As we wrote at the time, the takeover appeared to signal Google's plans to have yet another stab at creating a social network that its users might actually like …

    Applications 26 Aug 10:16

  • Samsung to show Galaxy Tab revamp next week

    The mysterious 'Galaxy Note' too

    Samsung will be unveiling the next incarnation of its 7in Galaxy Tab fondleslab at the IFA show next week. So reveals a teaser app for the European consumer electronics shindig. The app, posted by Samsung to the Android Market, contains images - unearthed by website ThisIsMyNext - which refer to the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and …

    reghardware 26 Aug 10:26

  • After Jobs: Apple and the Cult of Disruption

    There'll be another one along in a minute

    I have a list of some words that really should be banned in polite conversation. The only reason not to ban them is that they're useful indicators, an unambiguous warning that the speakers are going to be a serious waste of our time. The use of any of these words is like wearing a giant invisible hat that says: "I have no …

    Business 26 Aug 10:41

  • Post-Jobs Apple: New research shows Cook will do fine

    Performance as CEO all a matter of how wide your head is

    Forget about your Ivy League/Oxbridge/Harvard business school education, your connections or how many millions in personal funds you can plough into the business: the one thing you really need as a CEO is a big face, at least according to a new study to be published in journal Psychological Science. Elaine M Wong of the …

    Bootnotes 26 Aug 11:02

  • A Farewell to Oates: Adios, El Reg

    <Gets his coat>

    A quick note to say goodbye. Today is my last day at the Reg having written almost 5,000 stories, and edited thousands more. I started in 2004 as one of three reporters in a small, grubby office in Brixton, south London. I leave a multi-tentacled organ with offices on Leicester Square, in San Francisco, New York and Sydney - …

    Site News 26 Aug 11:24

  • Community Radio: On the wavelength of hopeless dreams

    New players crowd in to set up hobbyist stations

    Community radio stations are having a tough time. They are restricted in their advertising and dependent on rapidly diminishing grants, but that's not stopped another 30 from applying for licences. All of the applications are in for round three of the Community Radio licences, from groups which reckon they can make a go of …

    Music and Media 26 Aug 11:43

  • Game denies Steam threat claims

    Allegations that retailer pressured publishers are just hot air

    Retailer Game has unequivocally rejected allegations that it demanded publishers delay the release of PC games on the UK version of the Steam download service - or face having their titles taken off its High Street stores' shelves. Earlier this week, Facepunch forum poster Teddi Orange named Game as the retailer responsible …

    reghardware 26 Aug 11:52

  • Network switching is having a light bulb moment

    Adapting to server density

    As server farms grow and their workload changes, the design and structure of the networks that serve them must also change. End-of-row switching is increasingly giving way to top-of-rack switching, and tiered networks may need to be replaced – or perhaps augmented – by more mesh-like Ethernet fabrics. The increasing density of …

    Network Fabric 26 Aug 12:00

  • Samsung SH100 14Mp Wi-Fi compact camera

    Review Call the shots from your smartphone

    The ST1000 was Samsung’s first Wi-Fi enabled camera that not only allowed users to e-mail pics from a hotspot, but had GPS thrown in just to prove you were really there. With the SH100 wireless compact, the company goes beyond snap and share by offering tight integration with its top tier Android products enabling tethering with …

    reghardware 26 Aug 12:00

  • Ferocious Asian mindshare assault preserves Asus

    Hopes that aggressively penetrated China will go Eee

    Leading netbook maker Asustek has posted a year-on-year rise in Q2 profits of 8 per cent to T$3.595bn ($123.8m). Despite waning consumer appetite for netbooks and a generally bleak outlook in the PC market, Asus expects to ship more of its iconic Eee PCs in the third quarter this year, up to 1.1 million units from a million in …

    Business 26 Aug 12:28

  • BlackBerry handsets will be able to run Android apps

    Hope to make the RIM job trivially easy for devs

    RIM is planning to put its "app player" engine into the next generation of handsets, providing Android compatibility to its phones as well as tablets. Bloomberg has been talking to people who asked not to be identified but confirmed that RIM's QNX-based handsets, scheduled for next year, will get the Android compatibility …

    Developer 26 Aug 12:58

  • Android bakes bitter 20th birthday cake for Linux

    The fork's tines are forking: This is a tree, not cutlery

    As Linux celebrates its 20th birthday, its biggest success – mobile – is turning into its worst headache. Thanks to Google's Android, and in turn thanks to the success of Steve Jobs' iPhone and iPad, Linux has found a fresh lease of life. Smartphones running the Android version of Linux account for 39 per cent of the market; …

    Operating Systems 26 Aug 13:05

  • Silence ≠ 'yes', watchdog tells lustful ad-biz bakers

    You can't just force cookies down people

    An independent EU advisory body is worried about what it describes as an "illusory" method employed by online behavioural advertising (OBA) when seeking consent to track individual users on the interwebs. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party outlined its concerns in a letter to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and …

    Law 26 Aug 13:45

  • eBay biz millionaires proliferate as high street suffers

    Only infested rugs and defective lava lamps can save us

    The number of eBay UK millionaires could rise to over 150 this year, while high street shops battle increasing retail gloom. The online tat bazaar said million-pound businesses were set to rise by 25 per cent in 2011, with most of them (98 per cent) boosting their sales through exports. "New figures project that 11 of this …

    Business 26 Aug 13:49

  • Stephen on Steve: The most important man on Earth

    'He completely changed the way that human beings live'

    Legendary tech opinion-former Stephen Pie is currently in Mongolia filming for the dramatised bio-documentary of the life of J R R Tolkien, Not Another Fucking Elf – expected to be one of the mega-hits of 2012 – in which he plays the great writer's imaginary pygmy butler confidante, Boggy. However he found time to send us his …

    Bootnotes 26 Aug 14:38

  • Nokia dishes out $10m in developer prizes

    Finns' sparkly balls come top

    Nokia is celebrating the fact that its Calling All Innovators competition finally brought in a majority of US developers, even if the grand winners were both from Finland. Those two winning entries were: a game involving sparking orbs, called Sparkle, and a picture-filtering application called ShutterPro. These entries each …

    Developer 26 Aug 15:37

  • Acer to announce ultrabook at IFA

    Skinny laptop inbound

    Acer has let slip that it will announce a super-skinny notebook of the type chip giant Intel is calling an "ultrabook" at the IFA consumer electronics show. Emailed invites to the IFA press conference don't mention the U-word, but the text of the message itself does. As you can see from the snap below, Acer promises the …

    reghardware 26 Aug 15:39

  • Google dumps TV flop on UK

    US users spat out the Chocolate box

    Be still, beating hearts! The expensive flop that embodies Google's difficulties in working with the media industries is coming to the UK. Eric Schmidt is expected to make the announcement at the annual Edinburgh TV festival that a consumer product will launch within the next six months. In the United States, where free-to-air …

    Music and Media 26 Aug 15:55

  • Google+ offers new 'Ignore' feature

    Talk to the hand option

    Mountain View has added an "Ignore" option to its gestating Google+, just at the point when interest in the company's social network seemed to be on the wane. Google+ certainly isn't getting the kind of love from tech pundits that it experienced in the first few weeks of its creation. Our special undercover correspondent …

    Networks 26 Aug 16:02

  • Mac Lion blindly accepts any LDAP password

    'Huge hole' threatens enterprise networks

    Apple's latest version of Mac OS X is creating serious security risks for businesses that use it to interact with a popular form of centralized networks. People logging in to Macs running OS X 10.7, aka Lion, can access restricted resources using any password they want when the machines use a popular technology known as LDAP …

    Enterprise Security 26 Aug 16:43

  • Mozilla WebAPI: Champion of open source freedom

    Open...and Shut Google? Not so much – but who cares?

    As a group, open-source developers tend to be a freedom-loving bunch. If only their fans were the same. Even as open source has become a mainstream way to build software, many of its biggest beneficiaries opt to contribute little to nothing back. Or, worse, they use open source to build fortresses of closed software, closed …

    Developer 26 Aug 18:54

  • Phishing email used in serious RSA attack surfaces

    13 words upend the world's security

    The theft of secret data related to RSA's SecurID tokens used by 40 million employees to access sensitive networks likely started with a 13-word email, evidence uncovered through a researcher's dogged sleuthing suggests. “I forward this file to you for review,” the unsigned email, sent to four employees of RSA's parent company …

    Enterprise Security 26 Aug 21:04

  • Supercomputer and superboffins spot rare baby supernova

    Dark matter secrets probed

    A newborn, nearby supernova with the potential to significantly improve our knowledge of the universe has been discovered by a supercomputer, two telescopes on opposite sides of the world, a sharp-eyed astronomer, and his helpful Oxford colleague. The Reg spoke with Peter Nugent, the California astronomer who first spotted the …

    Space 26 Aug 23:16