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3rd January 2012 Archive

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  • Apple to conquer connected TVs? Steady on, lad

    Analysis Report of telly kit success misses the mark

    A very inward-looking report by Strategy Analytics, published last month, seems to ignore the entire Over the Top video market - and makes Apple an out-and-out winner with its $99 Apple TV device by taking 32 per cent of the Connected Home Device market in 2011. Let's just look at that. So Apple will win 32 per cent of the …

    Entertainment 3 Jan 08:02

  • Dagenham council: Only language our tenants understand is SMS

    yr rent S n arrears weer gunA thrO u ot

    Barking and Dagenham council has launched a free text message service which allows housing tenants and leaseholders to get information about their council related affairs more easily, without having to use the local authority's contact centre. Residents can send a message to the council and they will receive a reply with their …

    Government 3 Jan 08:57

  • Apple accused of starving French reseller of hot stock

    iPhone maker hauled into court over throttled supplies

    Apple squeezed supplies to a top reseller and used its own retail stores to gain an unfair competitive advantage, claims a French shop chain that is taking Apple to court in Paris. eBizcuss, the largest reseller in France, said that Apple favoured its own stores over theirs when it shipped out new and hotly demanded trendy …

    Channel Register 3 Jan 09:26

  • DRAM it: Elpida, Toshiba may hook up

    Anybody seen a white knight?

    Loss-making Japanese DRAM fab fabricator Elpida is reportedly in dire straights and being pushed into an alliance with disk drive and flash-maker Toshiba by the Japanese government, sources say. That's according to tipsters who spoke to Digitimes, saying that Elpida's public debt is in danger of not being repaid, effectively …

    Storage 3 Jan 10:09

  • That Brit-built £22 computer: Yours for just £1,900 or more

    RaspberryPi beta boards sell like hot cakes at auction

    The British-designed credit card-sized RaspberryPi computer, eagerly awaited due to its £22 price tag, can be yours this week for a mere £1,900 or more. The tiny GNU/Linux ARM-powered machine, which is priced less than a textbook, is due to go on general sale by the first half of February, several weeks later than expected …

    Developer 3 Jan 10:40

  • NASA's twin GRAILs reunite in lunar orbit

    Formation-flying probes reach the Moon

    NASA's GRAIL spacecraft duo are back together again and circling the Moon in preparation for their lunar study mission. The second Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory flyer, GRAIL-B, got into lunar orbit at 10.43pm GMT on New Year's Day, after completing its planned main engine burn. GRAIL-A was already circling the Moon …

    Space 3 Jan 11:06

  • LG to show 55in, 4mm-thick OLED TV at CES

    Four-colour pixel tech on display

    LG will be showing off its largest OLED TV at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next week having taken the telly tech to 55 inches. Once heralded as the successor to the LCD panel, OLED has struggled to achieve the screen sizes other display technologies can manage. For a long time it seem OLED TVs wouldn't get any bigger …

    reghardware 3 Jan 11:18

  • Area 51 to host sci-fi knocking shop

    'Alien Cathouse' will cater to 'all flavors of geek fantasy'

    An enterprising Nevada brothel owner has decided to cash in on the fame of Area 51 and offer alien-hungry tourists the chance to get their rocks off in a sci-fi themed knocking shop. Bordello vet Dennis Hof has acquired a "disgusting, terrible" house of ill-repute some 90 miles (145km) northwest of Las Vegas which, with the …

    Odds and Sods 3 Jan 11:34

  • Asus primed for 7in tablet outing

    No more wait for late slate?

    The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kicks off in Las Vegas next week, and the rumour-mill is awash with whispers of what to expect. The latest: a 7in Android tablet from Asus. The company might have a Christmas hangover from its spat with Hasbro over use of the name 'Transformer', but word has it that the Taiwanese outfit is …

    reghardware 3 Jan 11:42

  • Nokia rests Symbian's future on a bunch of muppets

    Sesame Street pals star in eBooks for handsets

    Nokia has released two interactive books documenting the happy-go-lucky lives of Sesame Street's residents, while apparently failing to notice that it has no tablet computers and has given up on Symbian. The free titles, 100th Day of School and Big Block Party, are in the Ovi* store, but only for Symbian^3 handsets. Most of …

    Mobile 3 Jan 12:04

  • HP teases next Ultrabook launch

    Spectre wafts out

    Intel hopes 2012 will be dubbed 'the year of the Ultrabook', and its old pal HP has wasted no time in pitching its own überslim laptop offering. The company is preparing to launch the Envy Spectre, its second model to join the Ultrabook line-up, after the Folio 13 was revealed last November. While details on the forthcoming …

    reghardware 3 Jan 12:06

  • BlackBerry PlayBook in US price plummet

    Everything must go - for $299 each

    RIM's frenzied attempts to offload bags of its unpopular PlayBook tablets continues, with prices on all models in the US slashed to $299. Lucky Americans can now buy a 16GB, 32GB or 64GB version of the fondleslab from the US BlackBerry shop website at the reduced price (obviously there's no point opting for less memory when …

    Telecoms 3 Jan 12:37

  • Samsung Series 9 900X3A laptop

    Review The almost Ultrabook

    Samsung’s Series 9 is the Korean giant’s thin and light flagship, and one of several recent models to come to market that borrow engineering and design principles from Apple’s Air range. Which means decent performance, decent components, but minimal expansion. Slim and stylish: Samsung's Series 9 This machine has a price …

    reghardware 3 Jan 12:41

  • Asus drops GPS from tablet spec after issues emerge

    Sleeping satellite?

    Asus has dropped the word 'GPS' from its Eee Pad Transformer Prime spec sheet after early adopters of the 10in Android tablet found the gadget's satnav tech doesn't work too well. Forum postings between Christmas and the New Year show a number of Prime owners peeved by the tablet's apparently poor ability to pick up a GPS …

    reghardware 3 Jan 12:42

  • Japan tasks Fujitsu with creating search-and-destroy cyber-weapon

    Zombie boss hunter developed in lab

    Fujitsu has been commissioned to develop ‘seek and destroy’ malware, reportedly designed to track and disable the sources of cyber-attacks. The fledgling cyber-weapon is the result of a three-year $2.3 million project that also involved developing tools capable of monitoring and analysing the sources of hacking attacks, The …

    Security 3 Jan 13:05

  • Steve Jobs action figure set for shop shelves

    GI Jobs

    The popularity of collectable figurines may have declined from the golden years of Star Wars statues and Hulk Hogan toys, but when it comes to Apple fanboys, replica models of the late Steve Jobs are sure to be a hot property. While Apple has been a stickler in the past over the production of such models, Chinese company …

    reghardware 3 Jan 13:18

  • Rupert Murdoch and 'unverified' missus in Twitter tangle

    Updated Media mogul's account is real, Wendi_Deng is not

    Despite his former disdain for the internet, media mogul Rupert Murdoch has joined the Twitterati, apparently with his wife in tow. The verified Twitter account of Murdoch started issuing opinions on New Year's Eve – addressing such diverse topics as American politics, the latest book he read, and what he thought of Steve Jobs …

    Music and Media 3 Jan 13:39

  • Samsung parades dual-display camera with Wi-Fi

    Frontal vision

    Many of us will have seen double at some stage over the festive break, but Samsung has continued the trend into the new year with the launch of a compact camera complete with two LCD screens and Wi-Fi connectivity. The Samsung DV300F slots into the company's "2View" range, packing an additional 1.5in LCD display on the front …

    reghardware 3 Jan 13:55

  • Iron digi-curtain: Belarus nationalises internet

    Massive fines to control foreign access

    Europe's last Stalinist state could fine citizens half their salary for visiting foreign websites in a domestic clamp-down on the internet. The Republic of Belarus will this week introduce a law that imposes restrictions on visiting and/or using foreign websites by Belarus citizens and residents. Violation is punishable by …

    Hosting 3 Jan 14:05

  • Boffins unimpressed by LOHAN's sizzling thruster

    Vulture 2 designers suggest mightier hybrid motor

    The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team has just about shaken off the effects of excessive Yule cheer, and is back at the workbench further pondering a potential powerplant for the Vulture 2 spaceplane. Our first instinct was to go for an off-the-shelf unit, and the AeroTech RC 32/60-100NS looked a likely …

    SPB 3 Jan 14:31

  • Asus asked to decrypt Eee tablet bootloader

    Let us hack our firmware, petitioners demand

    Asus' decision to encrypt the bootloader built into its Eee Pad Transformer Prime has prompted prospective punters to petition for the practice to end. Users recently discovered that the Hasbro hated Prime's bootloader is sealed from prying eyes with 128-bit AES encryption - a move that, intentionally or not, prevents owners …

    reghardware 3 Jan 14:37

  • Stratfor so very, very sorry in wake of mega-hack

    Private spook biz still reeling from credit card data raid

    The website of global intelligence-analysing firm Stratfor remains offline - a week after hacktivists broke into its poorly secured systems and extracted passwords and credit card details. Members of Anonymous claimed to have broken into the website and slurped 200GB of sensitive information on Christmas Eve. The hackers claim …

    Security 3 Jan 15:01

  • China's new year's resolution: Build a flash fab

    Blocks and Files It wants to own all the chips at the table

    China has no hard disk drive, DRAM and flash memory production facilities of its own – but that could change. The Asian nation digs up the rare earths used to make components in the world's HDDs, and firms including Huawei and UIT make servers and storage arrays that use disk drives, DRAM and flash memory. However China has no …

    Storage 3 Jan 15:34

  • How Apple won the West (and lost the world)

    Open ... and Shut Android, even RIM and Java, taste victory

    The spread of high-end smart phones throughout the rich, developed world is largely made possible by expensive data plans. Such plans enable carriers to subsidise expensive iPhones and Android devices, to the point that even a big swath of teenagers in the Western world can realistically plan to buy iPhones and iPads. Small …

    Developer 3 Jan 16:02

  • Darth Vader dies peacefully in hospital

    Bob Anderson - the man who made lightsaber work of Obi-Wan

    Master swordsman Bob Anderson, the Hollywood fencing coach who wielded Darth Vader's lightsaber, died peacefully in a West Sussex hospital on Sunday, aged 89. Described as "truly one of our greatest fencing masters and a world-class film fight director and choreographer" in a tribute on the British Academy of Fencing's website …

    Music and Media 3 Jan 16:28

  • Oracle VM whips rowdy virtual machines into submission

    Control freak hypervisor and VirtualBox updates unwrapped

    Just in time for the holidays and giving techies an excuse to stay out of the kitchen and be helpful, Oracle unwrapped updates to its Oracle VM implementation of the Xen hypervisor for x86 servers and the alternative VirtualBox hypervisor for x86-based PCs and servers. Both of the updates were dot releases, but will no doubt …

    Virtualization 3 Jan 17:02

  • Sprint grants LightSquared last-minute stay of execution

    30 days to get FCC approval or wireless broadband dream is over

    Sprint Nextel has given wireless broadband biz LightSquared until the end of January to get FCC approval for its network, putting a hard deadline on the viability of its revolutionary plan. LightSquared needs the regulator's thumbs-up to build its pan-US LTE network in bands formerly reserved for satellite comms, but it also …

    Wireless 3 Jan 17:34

  • Riverbed could snap up failed WAN optimiser for $10m

    Picking up assets cheap

    Riverbed is reportedly looking to pick up failed WAN optimiser Expand Networks for $10m, a pittance. Expand went into receivership in Israel in October 2011. It had been operating for 13 years and had benefitted from $100m funding, developing products that speeded up access from remote sites to a data centre's servers. In 2010 …

    Business 3 Jan 18:04

  • Microsoft celebrates the death of IE6

    We come to bury IE, not to praise it

    Microsoft is celebrating the news that Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) use in the US has officially dropped below one per cent of internet visits. In March, Microsoft assembled a team to push for the destruction of IE6, and have succeeded in reducing the market footprint of the browser. Currently 7.7 per cent of worldwide internet …

    Applications 3 Jan 20:13

  • SoundCloud gets US$50m for sonic growth

    Mary Meeker joins board

    Berlin based social media audio sharing site SoundCloud has raised up to as rumoured US$50 million in funding led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The site, which is gaining ground in music production industry and artist circles, confirmed the closing of the funding round but would not …

    Financial News 3 Jan 21:37

  • Rhino horn price spike drives record poaching

    More than 400 taken to feed crime and superstition

    Growing demand for quack cures derived from rhinoceros horn have driven horn street value to around $US65,000 per kilo, leading to a one-third increase in poaching from 2010 to 2011. While Reuters reports the South African wild population of rhino still stands at about 20,000, with 443 rhinos poached last year it’s worth …

    Environment 3 Jan 22:00

  • Big cloud Internap eats little cloud Voxel

    $30m (or more) to net smaller fish

    The appetite for cloudy infrastructure expertise continues apace in 2012. Managed-hosting and colocation services provider Internap has bolstered its position in the cloudy infrastructure peddling market by acquiring sometime-competitor Voxel for $30m. Internap was founded in 1996 in Seattle, Washington, but now calls Atlanta …

    Cloud Business 3 Jan 22:08

  • Mobile software devs to link arms at CES

    Lobby group for the appocrats

    A new cabal representing the interests of mobile application developers is to be launched at CES next week. The association is being led by the former executive director of the US Digital Media Association Jon Potter. Potter told Infoworld that the Application Developers Alliance will initially be focussed on mobile …

    Mobile 3 Jan 22:30

  • Very tiny RF transistor made from graphene

    Sweden’s Chalmers mixes up smaller, faster microwave electronics

    Researchers at Chalmers University in Sweden have demonstrated a graphene-based transistor design that allows more compact RF mixer processing. Not only would the technology permit more compact RF electronics: reducing the size of electronics also allows circuits to run faster – in the case of the Chalmers G-FET (graphene …

    Physics 3 Jan 23:00

  • Chip sales sag says semiconductor seller survey

    2011 semi flat, 2012 semi hopeful

    Thanks to the flooding in Thailand and other macroeconomic issues, chip sales fell by 3.1 per cent last November to $25.13bn, according to statistics from the Semiconductor Industry Association. Those figures are a three-month moving average running from September through November, compared to sales from the same period on 2010 …

    PCs & Chips 3 Jan 23:32