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14th June 2012 Archive

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  • Kogan 'taxes' IE7 users

    UK users exempt from prankster merchant's latest stunt

    Australia's electronics hawker Ruslan Kogan has decided he's had enough of tuning his eponymous website for Internet Explorer 7. Shoppers who use the venerable browser to make purchases from his store will therefore be charged an additional 6.8% for goods. IE 7 users will have the tax thrust in their faces, with the popup below …

    Business 14 Jun 00:15

  • Super sushi-bot churns out 2,500 rolls an hour

    NOM NOM NOM!

    Japanese boffins have unveiled their latest engineering masterpiece, a six speed sushi-making robot that can churn out 2,500 pieces of the stuff in just an hour. Sushi is big business in Japan and around the world, but the art of handmade rolls is sadly dying as the delicacy becomes ever more commoditised. Ensuring that …

    Bootnotes 14 Jun 01:06

  • Microsoft develops mood-matching ad engine

    Feeling blue? Prozac ads heading your way, thanks to Redmond

    Microsoft has filed for a technology patent which will allow advertisers to push their advertising to consumers based on their emotional states and recent behaviours and activities. The platform works across devices, tracking and monitoring the online activity data of consumers stored in logs including browsing history, web …

    Business 14 Jun 01:45

  • HTC wants a fresh start with new HQ

    It’s not you, it’s me…

    HTC celebrated its 15th anniversary in style on Wednesday with the opening of a new state-of-the-art global headquarters on the outskirts of Taipei, but the firm remains mired in legal disputes with Apple and faces a tough battle to project its brand in the ultra-competitive smartphone space. The Taiwanese handset giant cut …

    Business 14 Jun 02:30

  • CIOs must do more with mobile

    Too many thinking inside the box, says IDC

    Mobile analysts have urged Asia Pac IT managers to keep an open mind ro BYOD and other new technologies with the potential to transform the business. Claus Mortensen, principal for emerging tech at IDC, used the analyst’s Asia Pacific Enterprise Mobility Conference in Hong Kong on Tuesday to share some findings from a new …

    CIO 14 Jun 03:13

  • Australia 'should not be scared' of NBN cost

    Broadband to account for AUD$1trillion of activity by 2050

    Australia should not be afraid of the NBN's price tag, but should be scared enough to build the network, according to Phil Ruthven, founder and chairman of research company IBISWworld. Speaking at the launch of a study commissioned by IBM, A Snaphsot of Australia's Digital Future to 2050, Ruthven predicted the nation's gross …

    Networks 14 Jun 03:57

  • Vodafone unfurls booster brolly for mobes

    Music festival-goers gain antenna and solar charger in handy, eye-poking, form

    Vodafone UK will unfurl a “booster brolly” at summer music festivals, to give concert-goers a chance to charge their phones and shout at absent friends even at events staged in muddy fields where reception is thin. Designed by Kenneth Tong of University College London, the umbrella has solar cells sewn into its canopy (the …

    Networks 14 Jun 04:19

  • Salesforce.com signs up Twitter firehose

    You whinge, salesforce customers pounce

    Salesforce.com has inked a new deal with Twitter to hook up the micro-blog's “firehose” of all public tweets to its social media monitoring tool Radian6. The cloudy software purveyor acquired Radian6 in early 2011. At the time Radian6 had an agreement with Twitter, but Ross J. Piper, a Senior Vice President for enterprise …

    Business 14 Jun 06:07

  • Samsung Galaxy S Advance mid-range Android

    Review HTC thrasher?

    Things sometimes change fast. Take the HMS Lord Nelson, a fine battleship when laid down in 1905 but almost instantly rendered obsolete by HMS Dreadnought, laid down just a few months later. Or take HTC’s One V. A 3.7in single-core LCD Android phone now up against a dual-core 4in OLED-screen device for the same contract price …

    reghardware 14 Jun 07:00

  • Hurry up, EU: CERN boffins need clouds to hunt Higgs boson

    CCWF2012 Some of the LHC data has already gone cloudy

    Physics boffinry centre extraordinaire CERN would love to be processing its reams of research data in the cloud, if only Europe would hurry up with a regulatory framework. Bob Jones, head of openlab at CERN, said that not having standards and a legal framework in place that applies across Europe is holding up its move to the …

    Cloud 14 Jun 07:18

  • Girl Geek Dinner lady: The IT Crowd is putting schoolgirls off tech

    Real girls don't think Googling Google breaks the internet

    Sexism in The IT Crowd and other TV shows that chronicle of life in the tech industry is preventing women from considering a career in IT, said Sarah Lamb of women-in-tech-group Girl Geek Dinners. The IT Crowd's Jen: Not an inspirational role model The portrayal of IT workers as sexist and women as technically inept and …

    CIO 14 Jun 07:38

  • EU's 2020 CO2 target 'will add a year to economic slump'

    Emission cuts are 'too much too soon'

    The EU's effort to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent is twice as costly as it needs to be, and is likely to impact growth across the continent, according to a new study by a leading environmental economist. Europe failed to produce a cost-benefit analysis when it set its climate target, so Dr Richard Tol has filled …

    Science 14 Jun 07:58

  • G-Cloud boss hopes sexy cloud expos will warm up gov bods

    Denise McDonagh: Buy camps will 'propagate' G-Cloud

    The G-Cloud programme is being developed to help the wider public sector transition to cloud services, according to Denise McDonagh. In an interview with Guardian Government Computing, the director of the G-Cloud programme said that she is currently focusing on the "propagation" of the G-Cloud. "Propagation for me is about …

    Cloud 14 Jun 08:14

  • You can break EU cookie rules ... if your site breaks without cookies

    It's the way the cookie crumbles when you split hairs

    Website operators can only take advantage of an exemption from new cookie laws if site users specifically request a service or function and that service would not work without the serving of the cookie, EU data protection regulators have warned. After changes to the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications (e-Privacy) …

    Cloud 14 Jun 08:27

  • New Opera 12 hooks web apps to 3D graphics acceleration

    Screaming themes may mean screaming users

    A new version of Opera's desktop browser rolls out today, six weeks after the public beta. The list of new features hasn't changed much - and the new version also deprecates older features such as Opera Unite and widgets. HTML apps can now take advantage of experimental hardware acceleration and also access to the computer's …

    Cloud 14 Jun 08:42

  • Tim Cook reveals 'great' update for Mac Pro

    Apple bobbing ahead

    Apple CEO Tim Cook has revealed the Mac Pro range will be updated in 2013 with "something really great". Insubstantial Ram and processor tweaks to Apple's Mac Pro line had fans up in arms this week, prompting the removal of the machine's "New" tag on the company's online store, MacRumours reports. Without the addition of …

    reghardware 14 Jun 08:53

  • Computacenter to hire 700 new bods to meet bulging service needs

    Painful Euro plunge could impact its bottom, however

    Computacenter (CC) is splashing £7m on hiring hundreds of personnel and investing in systems to underpin faster than expected growth in services, the London-based reseller giant confirmed this morning. But surprises for investors didn't stop there: CC also warned that should the depreciation of the Euro against sterling remain …

    The Channel 14 Jun 08:54

  • McAfee enlists 2e2 for BYOD security blitz

    Cloud service for telcos

    2e2, the big UK reseller, won a tasty cloud gig this week, to supply McAfee Enterprise Mobility Manager (EMM) as a hosted service to telcos and managed service providers. 2e2's hosted resellers will in turn offer the McAfee mobile device management software to their own customers, large and small. Sales prospects are telcos …

    The Channel 14 Jun 09:11

  • Foundering Nokia pushes 10,000 bods, 3 veeps overboard

    Google, Apple peer through periscope torpedo sights

    Nokia will shed another 10,000 staff by the end of next year, and has shuffled its VP pack in the ongoing struggle to make money against increasing competition. It's not just the workers getting the boot this time around, three existing vice presidents are "stepping down ... to pursue other opportunities outside of Nokia", and …

    Financial News 14 Jun 09:15

  • Got no idea what Hadoop is, but think you need it? You're not alone

    Open ... and Shut It won't happen without Appening

    Hadoop is quickly becoming essential infrastructure for enterprises hoping to glean insights from the massive quantities of data they collect. The problem is that relatively few enterprises have the necessary competence to make effective use of the still-complex open-source project. While Hadoop vendors like Cloudera, …

    Cloud 14 Jun 09:27

  • Reborn UK internet super-snooper charter to be unveiled today

    New ministers: Same spooks, same cops, same plans

    Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed this morning that under existing UK laws her department receives half a million requests to intercept communications data in the country every year. Later today, the Home Office will unveil its plans to greatly increase the amount of internet communications information kept on file in the UK …

    Government 14 Jun 09:39

  • Orange: The way to a customer's heart is, well, slicing into the body

    Wirelessly slurping your ticker via home broadband

    Orange's Healthcare arm has signed up to provide data management to users of implanted cardiac monitors made by device manufacturer Sorin: which is one way to ensure your broadband customers don't churn. Sorin makes various bits of kit for improving the heath of one's heart through cybernetics, including a range of battery- …

    Mobile 14 Jun 09:58

  • Stephen Fry's Pushnote goes titsup

    Shleb tech guru comes a cropper

    Pushnote, the startup backed by Stephen Fry that attracted a wave of publicity from his endorsement last year, has gone titsup. A farewell message on the site hints that the founders, having pocketed Fry's cash, got bored with it: It was a lot of fun and we made a lot of friends, but our passions have led us elsewhere. The …

    Cloud 14 Jun 10:20

  • Cisco + OpenFlow + OpenStack = ONE software-defined network

    Cisco Live 2012 We're open to the max

    Everybody is talking about OpenFlow, the "Quantum" networking abstraction project that is part of the OpenStack cloud controller, and software-defined networks in general. A lot of the talk has been about removing the hegemony of Cisco Systems in switching and routing. Now it is Cisco's turn to talk, the company's top brass …

    Data Networking 14 Jun 10:27

  • Apple iMac refresh due Real Soon Now

    Benchmark listing suggests debut is near

    Online benchmark result sites have revealed the imminent arrival of new Macs before. Witness the appearance of the new MacBook Pro in Primate Labs' Geekbench site in May - a month before Apple announced the machine. While this week's WWDC keynote made no mention of new iMacs, don't forget that a new all-in-one machine also …

    reghardware 14 Jun 10:36

  • Home Office spunks another £12.8m on face recog tech

    Before £8m spent on IRIS has a chance to hit bottom of bin

    The Home Office is offering £12.8m for new facial recognition technology according to a tender notice from Home Office Procurement published on 12 June. The new multi-million pound face scanners would be used to determine an applicant's right to a British passport: and must be able to compare the biometric data extracted from …

    Law 14 Jun 10:43

  • Over 40 Magnifier

    iOS App of the Week The eyes have it

    I almost decided not to review Over 40 Magnifier, simply because of its rather insulting name. I may be over 40 but my eyeballs haven’t given up the ghost just yet. Nonetheless, this simple little app has still proven to be very useful and has taken up permanent residence on my iPhone. My eyesight is respectable enough, but I …

    reghardware 14 Jun 11:00

  • Cameron: A nod's not as good as a wink to a Murdoch blind bat

    Some of my best friends are journos, admits PM

    Prime Minister David Cameron has dismissed as "nonsense" claims that suggest a "nod and wink" arrangement had been struck between his Conservative Party and Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper business News International. The PM, speaking at the Leveson Inquiry into the relationships between politicians and media owners, added …

    Government 14 Jun 11:12

  • Another investor pulls out of Habbo Hotel after grooming claims

    'Focused on safety of our users': Shurely not all of them

    Investors are pulling out of Finnish social networking firm Sulake and its teen-aimed website Habbo Hotel after revelations that Habbo was hosting illicit content. Private equity firm 3i announced today that it had left Sulake's board and was ditching its 16 per cent stake in Habbo Hotel, a social gaming network and online …

    Cloud 14 Jun 11:31

  • £CHING: ICANN bags $357m from 1,930 dot-word domains

    Selling dot-sizzle, not dot-sausage

    Companies have rushed to file for top level domain names including .wang, .ketchup and .dog. A total of 1,930 applications for the new top level domains were filed, ICANN revealed yesterday as it published the list of applications. The name registry company will have scooped in $357m from the name sale, after charging $185,000 …

    Cloud 14 Jun 11:39

  • Office 365 in moving pictures

    Site news Man the whiteboards

    Check this out, a short whiteboard-style animation by our art guy Andy, for an Office 365 campaign we are running with Microsoft. Of course, all you IT pros know the cloud drill, and are wedded to text. But the next time your business manager asks you what this Software-as-a-Service malarkey is all about, you can show them …

    Small Biz 14 Jun 11:45

  • HP and SAP: What we need is a MASHED UP cloud

    CCWF2012 'We've moved away from doing it cheaper' (Thank god)

    The next step in cloud computing is to mash up all the different clouds hanging about with traditional IT systems to give one big mixed-up cloud, SAP and HP both insist. Sven Denecken, SAP AG's VP of strategy and co-innovation cloud solutions and Christian Verstraete, chief technologist of cloud strategy at HP, were sharing …

    Cloud 14 Jun 11:48

  • Carphone Warehouse clings to buoyant fondleslab, avoids submerging

    Margins sure to be better in China than Europe, right?

    Lower handset subsidies and a lack of choice in the low end caused high-street business to drop more than 5 per cent in Europe according to Carphone Warehouse, though the retailer still managed to maintain profits within its own predictions. The drop in retail was offset by a decent performance in Virgin Mobile France, which …

    Financial News 14 Jun 11:59

  • Microsoft's $1bn Yammer gobble gabble blabbed by insiders

    Talks underway on biznet buy, 'tis whispered

    Microsoft is reportedly in talks to snap up enterprise social network Yammer for over $1bn. Redmond is currently discussing the acquisition and it could make up its mind as early as tomorrow, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Yammer was set up in 2008 and is used by over 200,000 companies, including Shell, DHL, …

    Financial News 14 Jun 12:29

  • Orbitsound fills rooms with T9 soundbar

    Docked margins

    Orbitsound shrunk its audio offerings this week with the T9, a compact followup to its well-received speaker-dock soundbar, the T12. The Orbitsound T9 boasts power levels of 140W RMS from its array of in-built speakers. These include two 2.5in mid-high drivers, a couple of 1in mid-range spatials and a 1in tweeter, all squeezed …

    reghardware 14 Jun 12:33

  • Wraps come off UK super-snooper draft plans

    Attempt to log everyone who cares foiled by duff website

    Legislation relating to communications data will be yanked out of the existing Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and brought under a new regulatory framework if the Home Office's plans to step up the monitoring of internet traffic passes through Parliament. Home Secretary Theresa May unveiled her proposals for the …

    Networks 14 Jun 12:37

  • Start to finish: Building a cloudy service in two weeks

    Feature Trevor dons overalls for Microsoft private cloud project

    Wading through Microsoft's private cloud offerings has been a bit of a slog for me. My background is mostly VMWare and my experience of providing web services is largely Lamp-based. A major element in Microsoft's play is the concept of services, and an outsider looking to learn the details of how these work may face a wall of …

    Cloud 14 Jun 12:44

  • BPM: From back office to front office and beyond

    Live event You have the question? We have some answers

    Are you tough enough to take on Business Process Management (BPM) and win? Someone has to. It has never been more important to handle workflow efficiently. But it has never been more tricky: different types of information, acquired in different locations, for different business needs, need to be integrated into the process. …

    Site News 14 Jun 12:47

  • Slippery £4bn supplier deadline flies through UK.gov's fingers AGAIN

    Who'll pick up the soap in the public sector showers?

    The folks at Government Procurement Services certainly seem to like to play it fast and loose with deadlines; there has been yet another slip in the schedule for the forthcoming £4bn IT Hardware & Services framework. As revealed by The Channel last week, GPS told suppliers whether they had provisionally made it onto the three- …

    The Channel 14 Jun 12:50

  • HBO 'sorry' for skewering Dubya

    From Game of Thrones to Blame of Thrones

    HBO has been forced to issue an apology after Game of Thrones' creators admitted a decapitated head - spotted in a scene at the end of the first series of the fantasy show - was actually a replica of ex-president George W Bush. Oops. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss - the chaps behind the big-budget series - explained in the DVD …

    reghardware 14 Jun 12:53

  • WD beams in 802.11n Wi-Fi stations

    Time Capsule clone too

    Hard drive maker WD is extending its reach in home networking. Already a provider of powerline Ethernet kit, it's now going to offer wireless routers, including one with on-board storage. The MyNet family comprises four 802.11 dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz routers with three to four antennae for 300Mbps or 450Mbps maximum raw up …

    reghardware 14 Jun 12:54

  • GiffGaff in data spaff, goodybag gaffe: ICO says its 'avin a laff

    Three embarrassments = a rather ramshackle impression

    The people's network operator, GiffGaff, has leaked customer details to other customers and fouled up its goodybag topup scheme. Those who complained were surprised to find that GiffGaff isn't registered with the Information Commissioner's Office. The information leak was more embarrassing than damaging, and involved a load of …

    Mobile 14 Jun 13:22

  • Clouds gathering on horizon for software devs, say wise men

    'There are things to be done. I don’t know what they are'

    The software industry will dissolve into a soup of micro-detailed web services delivered over the cloud by 2022, with IT departments reduced to “guiding” users to prevent them from leaking their companies’ crown jewels onto the net. That was the extremist version of the vision sketched out by a panel considering “The Software …

    Cloud 14 Jun 13:27

  • Supreme Court dismisses Assange bid to reopen extradition case

    WikiLeaker-in-chief to feel UK boot to arse in two weeks

    Supreme Court judges have rejected Julian Assange's bid to get his extradition case reopened, which means the 40-year-old WikiLeaks founder will be sent packing from Blighty in a fortnight's time. However, it's likely that Assange will now take his case to the European court of Human Rights to have one final attempt at getting …

    Government 14 Jun 13:56

  • Computacenter bigwig dethrones older brother to head up Camwood

    One Foxall is good, two is better, reckon board

    Fresh from its MBO, application portfolio management firm Camwood has lured Computacenter (CC) alliances director Adrian Foxall to move across as CEO. The board of the London-based Camwood bought out backers Matrix Partners and Foresight in April, some nine years after the venture capitalists first invested in the business. …

    The Channel 14 Jun 14:45

  • Amazon offers cut-price support to make sure your Cloud stays up

    Various levels of certainty it won't rain on your parade

    Cloud gorilla Amazon Web Services has revamped its technical support services for its various heavenly compute and storage infrastructure while at the same time tweaking the packaging of those support services. Tech support is something that AWS customers and competitors alike grouse about, and internal IT staff that have …

    Cloud 14 Jun 15:13

  • Nokia's Great Software Cleansing scrubs off everything since the '90s

    The type of cleansing you do in a bath full of BLOOD

    Nokia took an axe to much of its non-Windows software capacity today, leaving all but a core team working on S40, company insiders say. Among the 10,000 casualties officially announced are teams working on Meltemi, Qt and QML. The team imported via the Smarterphone acquisition will work on S40, we understand. Engineers were …

    Operating Systems 14 Jun 15:55

  • RIPE reverse DNS broken for much of day

    Dutch titsup kit off, wobbly, in and out

    Reverse DNS services for subscribers to RIPE - the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia - were disrupted yesterday for over three hours. Some users were still experiencing outages this morning. Used to check domain names in email receiver fields, reverse DNS checks are a helpful way …

    Networks 14 Jun 16:08

  • Dell Cloud descends on Europe (by way of Slough)

    US and Canada first

    Dell opens a data centre in Slough next month, to support the delivery of cloudy services to Europe. The doors open to European customers on August 31, so no pricing and little in the way of firm detail yet But the company has plenty to say about the introductory trial it is running in US and Canada for Dell Cloud. On offer …

    Cloud 14 Jun 16:17

  • Outrageously old galaxy spied birthing new stars at furious rate

    Every star is sacred, it's like the pop biz, etc

    Astronomers at the Max Planck institute have successfully glimpsed one of the oldest galaxies known to man, finally discovering how far away the primordial cluster is and explaining why it produces so many stars. Galaxy HDF850.1 cannot be observed by visible light telescopes Galaxy HDF850.1 is 12.5 billion light years away …

    Science 14 Jun 16:18

  • Tomb Raider dev denies Croft rape scene

    Implied threat only

    Crystal Dynamics has denied the existence of rape scenes in the upcoming Tomb Raider refresh, after the title's Producer implied just such a threat faces Lara Croft in the new game. Producer Ron Rosenberg is reported to have said: "And then what happens is her best friend gets kidnapped, she gets taken prisoner by scavengers …

    reghardware 14 Jun 16:55

  • Apple, Time Inc. ink iPad magazine subscription deal

    Year-long dalliance consummated at last

    Apple and mega-magazine publisher Time Inc. have decided to consummate their year-long digital-subscription dalliance and go, as the kids used to say, "all the way" by sealing a deal that will allow iPad users to subscribe to Time, People, Sports Illustrated, and other rags directly from their Cupertinian fondleslabs. "For a …

    Mobile 14 Jun 19:30

  • openSUSE 12.2 release delayed, team calls for a rethink

    Candidate's coding can't continue in current condition

    The OpenSUSE community is engaged in an intense debate about the future of the project after the team announced that the 12.2 build won’t be ready for release on July 11 as scheduled. "Pretty much every milestone of openSUSE 12.2 has been delayed or even canceled," said openSUSE community manager Jos Poortvliet in a blog post …

    Developer 14 Jun 19:36

  • Dell to focus on enterprises and cut $2bn in costs

    Wall Street gets a divvy reward

    If you have Dell stock in your portfolio this week, your 401(k) is probably a little bit happier and healthier. The computer maker is to pony up some cash dividends, funded in part through aggressive cost cutting and a continuing expansion into enterprise IT and away from over-reliance on consumers. Dell hosted its Wall Street …

    Servers 14 Jun 20:20

  • Apple adds gay and lesbian icons to iOS 6 messaging

    Let the "homosexual agenda" fear-mongering begin

    Apple's next-generation mobile operating system, iOS 6, will include oh-so-cute 'n' cuddly gay and lesbian emoji couples for your texting and emailing enjoyment. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The two hand-holding couples are nestled among their heterosexual brothers and sisters – although, for reasons we at The …

    Mobile 14 Jun 21:44

  • PGP founder, Navy SEALs uncloak encrypted comms biz

    Claim total security for phone, text, email, and more

    Phil Zimmermann and some of the original PGP team have joined up with former US Navy SEALs to build an encrypted communications platform that should be proof against any surveillance. The company, called Silent Circle, will launch later this year, when $20 a month will buy you encrypted email, text messages, phone calls, and …

    Security 14 Jun 21:52

  • Amazon slides MapR into elastic Hadoop service

    Hadoop World 2012 Rolls up 2.0 releases for M3 and M5 distros

    MapR Technologies, one of the main distributors of commercial-grade Hadoop data-munching software, has been tapped by Amazon Web Services to be an alternative to the open source Hadoop stack in the Elastic MapReduce service that Amazon sells to people who don't want to manage their own Hadoop clusters. At the same time, MapR …

    Cloud 14 Jun 23:21

  • Solar power can head out of the clouds says CSIRO

    It's always sunny somewhere, so smarter grids could make large-scale renewables viable

    The old saw about solar power is that the sun isn’t always shining – but in a country as large as Australia, good engineering and intelligent grids can go a long way to overcoming the challenge of intermittency, according to Australia’s CSIRO. The nearly 200-page report, Solar intermittency: Australia’s clean energy challenge …

    Science 14 Jun 23:28

  • Australian company claims world’s fastest switch

    Traders the target, but 130ns latency has storage industry sniffing around

    A new Australia company, Zeptonics, has created what it claims is the world’s fastest network switch. The company’s “Zeptomux” bills itself as a “23-to-1 multiplexing switch that operates with a fibre-to-fibre latency (including SFP+s) of ~130ns.” The Zeptomux can achieve that speed over copper or fibre, and uses 10G Ethernet …

    Data Networking 14 Jun 23:52