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14th May 2012 Archive

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  • Atlassian, Zynga among San Francisco's best town bikes

    Free tune-ups, showers and bike parking win awards for code shops

    Australia’s developer darling Atlassian, Zynga, AirBnB, Rackspace and less-techy corporate brethren Levi's and Veritable Vegetable have been recognised as the most bike-friendly employers in San Francisco. The tech companies scored the gong at San Francisco's annual Bike to Work Day, at which Mayor Edwin Lee and the SF Bicycle …

    Jobs 14 May 01:56

  • Apple drops '4G' label from new iPad

    Fondleslabs now link to 'fast mobile data networks'

    Apple has stopped using the term “4G” to describe the new iPad in the UK and Australia, after regulators took it to task for doing so because the device would not work with what carriers call 4G in both nations. In the UK the company now says the fondleslab works with “fast mobile data networks”, as you can see in the screen …

    Mobile 14 May 02:17

  • China and India scoop 17% of venture capital cash

    USA still number one, but investors like startups in high-growth markets

    Deals with Chinese and Indian web firms are helping to fill the pockets of Silicon Valley venture capitalists (VCs) with ever greater wodges of cash, with one quarter of the top 100 VCs now investing in the region, according to Forbes’ Midas List 2012. The US business magazine’s annual list of the best dealmakers in the tech …

    Business 14 May 02:56

  • How to simulate a light armoured vehicle

    Thales Australia reveals tech behind trainers for eight-wheeled monster

    The Australian Light Armoured Vehicle (ASLAV) is an eight-wheeled, 13,450-kilogram monster, which bristles with a grenade launcher, a pair of machine guns and a 25 millimetre M242 “Bushmaster” chain gun. The ASLAV can carry six troops in addition to its three crew. Two of the latter ride inside the vehicle's turret, where the …

    Software 14 May 04:17

  • China begins work on world-beating MEGA power cables

    An 800kv line will have largest capacity on the planet

    China’s apparently unceasing efforts to lead the world in every conceivable field continued on Sunday after engineers in the western region of Xinjiang began construction of what is claimed will be the largest capacity power line on the planet. The 800 kilovolt (kv) ultra-high voltage power transmission line is being built by …

    Policy 14 May 05:45

  • Overclockers to fight for global supremacy

    Keep an eye on your servers as 'Chimp challenge' hits Folding@home

    Overclocking enthusiasts around the world spent the weekend topping up their coolant tanks and tuning their rigs with unusual fervour, as they prepared to go into battle in the annual Chimp Challenge. The competition sees overclocking and hardware enthusiast communities assemble special teams, each of which aim to do as much …

    HPC 14 May 05:57

  • Telstra to hand T-box customers to Foxtel

    Exec exodus continues as speculation downloads

    Telstra is expected to shut down its aggressive IPTV ambitions and hand over its 300,000 plus T-Box customers to Foxtel, once the merger of Foxtel and Austar is completed, sources close to the deal have told The Register. Speculation has been rife that Telstra’s burgeoning IPTV division would be the casualty of the AUD$1.9 …

    Business 14 May 06:17

  • StorSimple, TwinStrata join in HP Cloud love-in

    .44 cloud magnum could blow your SAN head clean off - punk

    Cloud storage gateway suppliers are cosy-ing up to HP with both StorSimple and TwinStrata emphasising their HP Cloud Storage creds. StorSimple has certified the HP Cloud Services public beta offering, and says it can be used with its cloud data management features, like Cloud Snapshots, thin restores, non-disruptive upgrades …

    Cloud 14 May 07:02

  • Heathrow CIO pledges seamless future with £1.5bn collaborative system

    Let's get this baby off the ground

    The CIO of the world's busiest airport has announced that £1.5 billion will be sunk into improving real-time and decision-making software systems at Heathrow. Philip Langsdale gave 2012's Appleton Lecture at the Institute of Engineering and Technology and explained the systems that Heathrow needed to make the airport run …

    Management 14 May 07:27

  • Ofcom: Now's your chance to make Local TV for Local People

    Getcher applications in for White Space telly channels

    Ofcom has received 87 expressions of interest from groups interested in running Local TV channels, and three companies interested in broadcasting them, so has launched the beauty contest to see who gets to be the next Alan Partridge. Local TV should be up and running within the next two years, in the 21 locations selected for …

    Broadband 14 May 08:00

  • Behind the lens of NASA's self-adapting ISS space telescope

    Analysis A hunk of space glass this ain't

    Funding cutbacks and an arguably anti-science fiscal policy haven't stopped exciting new projects emerging from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, California. We spoke to Dr Michael Sievers from JPL about one such project, cutely named the Optical Testbed and Integration on ISS eXperiment (OpTIIX …

    Science 14 May 08:28

  • Freecom Hard Drive Sq 2TB

    Geek Treat of the Week DIY DVR

    Freecom’s Hard Drive Sq is a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 hard drive which is clearly pitched at the growing number of us who have smart TVs and want to be able to record programmes without investing in a Freeview or Freesat DVR. Designed by Berlin-based Iranian designer Armam Emami, the aluminium enclosure looks strikingly like Apple’s …

    Hardware 14 May 09:00

  • Stuck in a dull conference? You need Verity's survival guide

    Stob Getting your own back on technical seminar speakers

    The technical conference season is once more upon us. The speakers at these affairs spend a lot of time sharing their software design patterns and anti-patterns with us; as a regular attendee it seemed to me that we punters were overdue for revenge. Here is some of their own medicine. Pattern: BTDTGTTS Motivation: At a talk …

    Verity Stob 14 May 09:19

  • SpaceX sets new blastoff date for Dragon: 19 May

    Really this time, we think

    The flight of the Falcon 9 has once more been rescheduled, with a new launch date of 19 May, as Elon Musk's SpaceX decided to tweak the software one more time. The first commercial craft to restock the International Space Station, a Dragon capsule strapped to a Falcon 9 rocket, has seen more than its fair share of push-backs …

    Science 14 May 10:01

  • Tomb Raider delayed for quality improvement

    Lara Croft doesn't believe Mayan prophesies

    Lara Croft's rousing return to current-gen consoles has been pushed back to 2013, so developers at Crystal Dynamics can make Tomb Raider "the best game of their careers", apparently. The latest instalment of Tomb Raider was pegged for release this autumn, and while fresh content will be revealed at next month's E3 expo, the …

    Games 14 May 10:27

  • Cost-cutting Serco says UK economy improving

    ... but too late to save jobs of 500 souls

    IT outsourcing behemoth Serco Group says the outlook for the UK economy is decidedly brighter as the nation feels its way through the economic gloom. The services player reckons it is on track to meet 2012 targets with sales in the first half expected to grow 6 per cent, due to acquisitions made last year. In a steady-as-she- …

    The Channel 14 May 10:34

  • Hyundai Veloster coupé

    Review Welcome to the world of 2+1 motoring

    Tradition dictates that cars look the same from the left as the right. Not Hyundai’s new hatchback coupé, though. It has a rear door on the passenger's side but not on the driver’s. Clever idea or gimmick? More to the point, will it lure buyers away from the the obvious alternatives, the VW Scirocco and Vauxhall Astra GTC? …

    Science 14 May 11:00

  • UK milk wastage = 20,000 cars = actually completely unimportant

    For goodness' sake, can't headline writers count?

    A scientific paper written with the aim of highlighting nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions has resulted in a crop of foolish headlines pointing out that the UK's waste of milk creates an environmental burden equivalent to having another 20,000 cars on the roads. To anyone with even a basic grasp on numbers - someone aware, let us …

    Science 14 May 11:28

  • Never mind the buzzwords: How the landscape looks to resellers

    Survey: Big Data, BI and hosting services to grow

    By now you should all be busy filling in the latest channel survey, but it’s worth casting your eye over the results from our last channel survey, conducted at the back end of last year. It showed that resellers were increasingly getting out of their boxes - and not just because it was Christmas. The results covered a range of …

    The Channel 14 May 11:33

  • Foxconn chief: we're gearing up for Apple 'iTV'

    Sharp investment explained?

    Foxconn chief Terry Gou reportedly reckons that Apple, one of the contract manufacturer's biggest customers, is indeed preparing the so-called 'iTV'. To be fair to Gou, he didn't actually say Apple is planning to offer an HD TV, but he did say his company is preparing its production lines for such a product, at least according …

    Hardware 14 May 11:39

  • Antitrust probe looms over Windows RT 'browser ban'

    Internet Explorer shenanigans: Hasn't Microsoft been down this road before?

    US politicians are reportedly poring over complaints by Mozilla that Microsoft will block access to rival browsers in Windows 8 on ARM, aka Windows RT. The powerful Senate Judiciary Committee plans to “take a look” at the allegations made by the Firefox maker last week, which were backed up by Google. Whispers of a probe …

    Law 14 May 12:04

  • What you should know about migrating to the cloud

    Have a pleasant journey

    Small businesses account for roughly half the UK economy. The technology requirements for a one-man band are wildly different from those of a 250-seat tech support service company, yet both fall under the SME banner. So what is the general advice that will work for everyone and anyone who is considering moving some IT into the …

    Small Biz 14 May 12:30

  • Adobe backs down, patches critical Photoshop CS5 hole

    Paid upgrade fix row leaves a nasty taste

    Adobe backed down on Friday and promised to release a fix for earlier versions of its Photoshop software after previously insisting users who wanted to safeguard themselves from a critical security vulnerability had to pay for an upgrade. A security flaw in Adobe Photoshop version CS5 and earlier means users could be exposed …

    Security 14 May 12:59

  • Road deaths spark crackdown on jaywalking texter menace

    Vid lok b4 u cross or els!11

    Cops in Fort Lee have fined 117 pedestrians in a fortnight for jaywalking while engrossed in their smartphone screens - after three people died by wandering into traffic. So far this year officers have warned 575 citizens in the New Jersey borough that they risked, apart from death, an $85 (£52) ticket for strolling into …

    Phones 14 May 13:31

  • Headbanger plays Star Trek theme on floppy drives

    Vid Very heavy metal

    Storage is weird, wonderful and sometimes very odd. Did you know floppy disk drives can be used for something other than emergency boots of legacy kit or as cool antiques? It must have been a fairly uneventful day when floppy lovers discovered their drives can be used as "musical instruments" – to play the theme tune to …

    Media 14 May 14:01

  • Study shows SMB cloud security fears largely overstated

    Cost and security assumptions questioned

    Research into small businesses in the US and Asian markets has shown that there's an increasing mismatch between the theory and practice of cloud security. When questioned in a blind test conducted by comScore and funded by Microsoft, a third of SMBs said they didn’t use cloud security because of fears over the cost of …

    Cloud 14 May 14:32

  • XMA sales throttled by UK gov belt-tightening

    Reseller's revenues plummet £24m in 2011

    XMA lost a huge chunk of revenues in calendar 2011 as public sector austerity measures were pushed through by the Coalition. The Nottingham-based dealer, part of the Kelido Group which also includes distributor Westcoast, saw sales for the year ended 31 December tumble 17.4 per cent to £116m. "The IT industry was extremely …

    The Channel 14 May 14:57

  • Intel woos microserver makers with Xeon E3-1200 v2 singlers

    Ivy Bridge better for baby boxes

    For a company that had to be dragged to the microserver space – though not exactly kicking and perhaps muttering instead of screaming – Intel has certainly taken a shining to the market and is not about to give X86 rival Advanced Micro Devices and the army of ARM RISC server wannabes any chance of getting a toehold in this …

    Servers 14 May 15:03

  • Intel goes wide and deep with Xeon E5 assault

    Blunting AMD's advantages

    If you were planning on buying new servers in the coming weeks and months, Intel just gave you a whole lot of homework. And if you work at Advanced Micro Devices, you're getting some homework, too. Intel already has a slew of E5-2600 processors aimed at workhorse two-socket machines and a bunch of E7s in different flavors …

    Servers 14 May 15:14

  • EMC gobbled XtremeIO to Xterminate NetApp, says Xpert

    And Fusion-io 'a mosquito they could squash at any time'

    A financial analyst reckons EMC bought XtremIO to fend off the threat posed by NetApp. Andrew Nowinski, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, had this to say in a recent research note: "We believe this threat of potential market share gains from [NetApp's Data ONTAP] 8.1 is what prompted EMC to acquire XtremIO for $430m." We asked …

    Storage 14 May 15:34

  • Next-gen MacBook Pro, iMac make benchmark site debut

    Ivy Bridge chips, retina screens, USB 3.0 all a-board

    Faster MacBook Pros have surfaced on the Geekbench benchmark collation site promising, if genuine, performance 17 per cent up on its predecessor. The reference, to a 'MacBook9,1', lists a machine with a four-core Intel Core i7-3820QM Ivy Bridge processor operating at 2.7GHz and running Mac OS X 10.8 (Build 12A211). It has 8GB …

    Laptops 14 May 15:58

  • Mp3Tunes files for bankruptcy

    Also-ran run-in

    For Michael Robertson, it’s déjà vu all over again. The same flexible and somewhat optimistic interpretation of copyright law that sank his music service in the dot.com bubble has also sunk his current music service, over what was essentially the same idea. On Friday Robertson’s cloud music locker – MP3Tunes – filed for …

    Media 14 May 16:02

  • Kelway accuses rivals of cloak-and-dagger cloud strategy

    Lifts covers off ServiceWorks cloud packages

    Kelway has accused rival service providers of using irrelevant metrics as a smokescreen to blind customers evaluating contracted cloud services. The London-based firm has lifted the covers off ServiceWorks, a bunch of standardised cloud services with a set price list, including Platform-as-a-Service compute, managed private …

    The Channel 14 May 16:02

  • Japanese operator to test quake-proof floating phone-mast BLIMPS

    Now that's a cloud network

    Japan's third-largest network operator will trial blimp-based cells that could be instantly deployed to 100 metres above the ground even if said terra firma is shaking uncontrollably or has disappeared under flood waters. Next month's tests, reported by IDG, involve attaching 3G base stations to a handful of helium-filled …

    Mobile 14 May 16:29

  • Google shoves cybersquatter off 763 Googletastic domains

    'Gay network' owner had splashed over £6k on names

    Google has seized over 750 domain names from a cybersquatter who used them to drive traffic to a series of "gay interest" websites and now wants Google's trademark cancelled. The company has won a complaint covering 763 domains that all included the word "google" followed by the name of another company, keyword or celebrity, …

    Hosting 14 May 17:01

  • Nvidia launches Nsight CUDA dev tools into Eclipse

    GTC 2012 Visual Studio tools get some polish, too

    Nvidia kicked off its GPU Technical Conference today by launching an updated version of its Nsight development platform that wraps around the CUDA compiler set and now interfaces with Eclipse-based integrated development environments. Nvidia also unwrapped updated versions of the Nsight tools that plug into Microsoft's Visual …

    HPC 14 May 18:01

  • Buffalo ships world's first 1.3Gbps Wi-Fi hardware

    Edges out Netgear in 802.11ac race

    If you've been jonesing for faster Wi-Fi performance – not that you have any client devices that can yet take advantage of next-generation wireless networking technology – your wait is over: Buffalo has begun shipping the industry's first 802.11ac router and bridge. Not only do Buffalo's new Wi-Fi devices promise impressive …

    Broadband 14 May 18:37

  • LightSquared files for bankruptcy

    End of the line for 4G wannabe? Wanna bet?

    Just hours before the expiration of a deal designed to keep it from defaulting on its debt, 4G wannabe LightSquared announced on Monday that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. "The filing was necessary to preserve the value of our business and to ensure continued operations," said the company's interim co-COO …

    Mobile 14 May 21:43

  • Solving traffic jams with maths

    Make the traffic control the lights, instead of the other way around

    A Swiss traffic management and transport economics expert believes a combination of queue management and computing can help solve the gridlock that plagues the modern city. Dr Dirk Helbing of ETH Zurich, a professor of sociology specializing in modeling and simulation, says “self organizing” traffic control systems, using …

    Software 14 May 22:25

  • Physicists iron out lumps in quantum dots

    Silicon part of the problem at the nano-scale

    Continuing to shrink the scale of electronics presents a host of problems, including the way surfaces interact with electrons. At the smallest scale, it's difficult to get a "ballistic" electron to follow a consistent path, something an international team of physicists hopes to solve. In a paper published in Physical Review …

    Science 14 May 23:12