1st August 2012 Archive

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FDA clears edible medical sensor for human consumption

System in a pill communicates via skin patch

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has officially cleared edible computers to be used in medical applications for monitoring patient health. After four years of discussions, Proteus Digital has received approval for its Ingestion Event Marker, a silicon sensor about 1mm square that is encased in a pill and is meant to …

Science 1 Aug 00:07
Nexus Q preorders halted, price dropped to $0

Google admits it's balls

Google has stopped taking orders for its spherical Nexus Q streaming-media player, but customers who have already preordered the device will still be getting theirs, albeit at a much lower price: free. The Chocolate Factory has decided that it needs to add more functionality to the Android-powered media ball before it releases …

Media 1 Aug 00:14
Metronode opens eco-friendly data centre for Victoria

Time to shut down old school bit barns

Leighton’s data centre subsidiary Metronode has opened its second wholesale data centre in Melbourne. Investment in the new facility, the M2, is between AUD$150- $180 million and is part of Metronode’s capital intensive, four year, $500 million national data centre rollout. In May, Metronode announced it would invest $183 …

Cloud 1 Aug 00:30
New version of Chrome can WATCH and LISTEN

Google shows off new API by sending your face to London Science Museum

Google now has technology that could allow ads that offer classes to correct your posture, thanks to features in a new stable version of its Chrome browser. Version 21 of the browser offers users the chance to allow Chrome to monitor their activities with a PC's camera and microphone. The getUserMedia API makes this trick …

Software 1 Aug 01:13
Apple foe Proview laughs off debts, ressurrects business

IPAD trademark combatant wants to sell bio-energy

Apple’s Chinese IPAD trademark nemesis Proview is set to kick start yet another business venture, having managed to attract over 100 million yuan (£10m) in funding to launch an LED lighting and bio-energy firm. The firm’s charismatic founder Yang Rongshan is hoping to reinvent the company after its Shenzhen subsidiary was …

Business 1 Aug 03:56
EMC, Lenovo, in servers alliance

Iomega cut loose, Lenovo servers to power EMC arrays

EMC and Lenovo have announced a partnership that will see the pair create “a server technology development program that will accelerate and extend Lenovo’s capabilities in the x86 industry-standard server segment. These servers will be brought to market by Lenovo and embedded into selected EMC storage systems over time.” The …

Servers 1 Aug 04:53
Submarine cable plan sinks without trace

Pacific Fibre folds as funders flee

Pacific Fibre, a company formed to build a submarine cable linking the USA, New Zealand and Australia, has called it a day after failing to find the funds it needed to build the project. “We believed funding for these long term infrastructure investments would have been more readily available and were confident the business …

Networks 1 Aug 05:40
Bribery claims call Chinese labour audits into question

China Labor Watch tells Congress of "severe flaws"

Labour rights groups have warned a US Congressional hearing that severe flaws in the auditing process of technology production facilities in China threaten to undermine the efforts of big name tech brands to ensure their kit is produced in legal and humane conditions. Li Qiang, founder of non-governmental organisation China …

Business 1 Aug 06:29
The Dragon 32 is 30

Feature Fire starter

The Dragon 32, arguably the best-known and most-successful of the UK's early 1980s home computer also-rans, was introduced 30 years ago this month. The micro's story goes back more than a year before its launch. Tony Clarke, a senior manager at Swansea-based toy company Mettoy - best known for its Corgi die-cast metal car …

reghardware 1 Aug 07:00
ROBOTS battle bunker-buster bank blast blaggers

Down-under bomb robbers in Perth ATM explosion rampage

Aussies in the city of Perth have been left shaken by a wave of potentially deadly "bunker-buster" style terror explosions at ATMs as a crew of blaggers blast the machines open to rinse them of cash. Local cops, rattled by the devastating outrage rampage, have deployed police robots to battle the menace. The tally of hole-in- …

Bootnotes 1 Aug 07:19
BT charged rivals 'unjustified' prices to use network – Appeals Court

Competitors claimed the telco overcharged them, 'distorted' the market

The prices that BT charged rivals to access parts of its network to provide services to their subscribers were not justified, the Court of Appeal has ruled. The Court rejected claims by BT that the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) had not acted in accordance with EU telecoms laws when it considered whether what it had charged …

Broadband 1 Aug 07:38
Blighty's coolest mapper will flog its stuff to global buyers

Ordnance Survey to take geographic data skills overseas

Ordnance Survey (OS) is launching an international service intended to make its expertise about data collection and maintenance, product development and geospatial data management available to overseas governments. To be known as Ordnance Survey International, the new organisation will be launched in September. It will be …

Government 1 Aug 08:02
LOHAN breathes fire in REHAB

Vid Hypobaric rocket motor test an explosive success – finally

We're delighted – and somewhat relieved – to announce that last weekend we finally persuaded a solid rocket motor to fire at a simulated altitude of 76,500ft (23,300m). Followers of our Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) mission will need no introduction to the ongoing saga of the Rocketry Experimental High Altitude …

SPB 1 Aug 08:32
Linux lessons for Hadoop doubters

Open ... and Shut Before IBM there was Linus

While Hadoop is all the rage in the technology media today, it has barely scratched the surface of enterprise adoption. In fact, if anything, we are still only on the first few steps of the Big Data marathon, a race that Hadoop seems set to win despite its many shortcomings. The big question will be whether the market will …

CIO 1 Aug 09:02
Systemax files $2.2m losses as US shoppers stay home

Bullish outing in Europe can't save reseller giant's Q2 profit margins

Systemax was hit by Q2 losses as continued strong trading in its business-to-business operation in Europe was more than offset by US shoppers' reluctance to part with cash, the reseller giant confirmed late last night. Operating losses for the period ended 30 June were $2.2m compared to a profit of $15.6m a year earlier, " …

The Channel 1 Aug 09:18
Lords call for the end of TV transmissions

Stream it over the net instead, says upper house

The UK House of Lords has recommended ending broadcast television and re-allocating for mobile data usage the spectrum currently used to transmit digital TV signals. Rather than take up vital electromagnetic spectrum, TV should be delivered exclusively over the internet, the House of Lords' Communications Committee concluded …

reghardware 1 Aug 09:28
Rackspace wolfs down own OpenStack dog food

Just nibbling on it before

Rackspace Hosting, the service provider that helped launch the open source OpenStack cloud controller along with NASA's Ames Research Center two years ago, has finally become its own OpenStack Fanatic. Rackspace has now gone live with the Nova compute cloud controller and other elements of OpenStack behind its production Cloud …

Servers 1 Aug 09:43
RBS must realise it's just an IT biz with a banking licence

Analysis Expert drills into what it'll take to prevent another bank technology fiasco

Banks need to start thinking of themselves as IT companies, said David Chan of City University London. "A senior banking technologist has said to me: 'A retail bank is nothing but an IT company with a banking licence'," Chan told The Reg. "While this may seem extreme, when one looks at the economics of any retail bank, it is …

CIO 1 Aug 10:02
Now French watchdog wants to look at Google's slurped Wi-Fi data

CNIL follows ICO in demanding to inspect info before it is destroyed

Google has been ordered by France's Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) to hand over payload data retained on the company's system that its Street View spycars slurped from unsecured Wi-Fi networks. The demand follows Google's confession to Britain's Information Commissioner last week that it still …

Cloud 1 Aug 10:16
Beak explodes at Samsung's evidence leak in Apple patent spat

Jury nobbling fears over banned slides

Samsung has enraged the US judge overseeing its patent battle with Apple by leaking to reporters evidence she had previously banned from court. The South Korean electronics monster is hoping to persuade a jury that it did not rip off Apple's designs for its own smartphones. It kicked off the first day of arguments in the trial …

Law 1 Aug 10:32
Murdoch's fondleslab epaper axes 50 staff

First app-only news publication The Daily downsizes

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has announced that its tableted news publication The Daily will be axing 50 staff members in cost-cutting moves. The Daily, first released on iPad only but now available to be fondled on other slabs, was denying rumours of changes at its offices right up until AllThingsD broke the story of the …

Media 1 Aug 10:48
Slim debut sales for fatter Nintendo 3DS

Fewer than 10k XLs sold, hints market watcher

The 3DS XL was picked up by less than 10,000 UK punters following its British debut this past Saturday, underlining the decline handheld consoles have experienced over the years. While Ninty has yet to officially release official sales figures, initial estimates tacitly said to have been made by market watcher Chart-Track show …

reghardware 1 Aug 10:50
Dropbox blames staffer's password reuse for spam flood breach

Stolen login led to hackers striking gold

Web attic Dropbox has admitted spammers got hold of its users' email addresses after an employee reused his or her work password on a website that was subsequently hacked. Suspicions of a breach at the online storage service arose two weeks ago when punters received floods of unwanted messages touting gambling sites at …

Security 1 Aug 11:03
Microsoft: MED-V won't help you escape WinXP end-of-life

No extensions, no mercy... just migrate already

Slipping Windows XP inside Microsoft's Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) to get around the PC operating system's end-of-life date won't work. That's the warning from Microsoft, which has advised customers to stop looking for ways to keep Windows XP going and finally migrate. Extended support for Windows XP finishes on …

Applications 1 Aug 11:32
Wintel takes kicking from Apple, market share at all-time low

iPad whacks life out of PC founding fathers

Wintel's grip on the PC market has dropped to an all-time low due to the encroachment of Apple's seemingly unbeatable iPad. Figures from industry box-counter Canalys show 73 per cent of the 108.7 million PCs - desktops, notebooks, netbooks and pads - sold worldwide in Q2 were running on Microsoft's OS and had Intel inside. In …

The Channel 1 Aug 11:44
Higgs boson chasers: Now only 1-in-300 MILLION chance we're wrong

Yup, we're feeling lucky, say boffins in new findings

CERN boffins are growing in confidence that the particle they spotted in the latest data from their Large Hadron Collider is indeed a Higgs boson. The Atlas experiment team has upped its level of certainty for Higgs-ness in a paper [PDF] for Physics Letters B, putting the sigma level at 5.9, which translates into a one-in-300- …

Science 1 Aug 12:02
Google falls for Web2.0 smoke signals from Wildfire

Snaps up start-up to dunk brands in even more social goo

Google has bought Web2.0 marketing startup Wildfire for an undisclosed sum. In explaining the acquisition, the company said that it wants to do a better job of managing brands across social networks. Mountain View's product management director Jason Miller said in a blog post announcing the takeover: The ultimate goal is …

Media 1 Aug 12:28
Hulu, Apple TV deal sparks fanboi Glee glee

If you're into that sort of thing

Apple TV won't get a wall-sized Siri-controlled LCD screen that punters predicted a few months ago, but the little black box will get some telly from Hulu. Video warehouse Hulu has the rights to stream over the internet television series past and present, including Family Guy, Glee and Saturday Night Live, as well as music …

Media 1 Aug 13:02
Smutty books strip Harry Potter of Amazon crown

Readers no longer seeking a crafty wand?

EL James' over-hyped bonkbuster trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, has become the best-selling book ever on Amazon UK, stealing the title from JK Rowling's seven-novel Harry Potter collection. The first novel in the Fifty Shades series has experienced twice the number of sales Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, taking the saucy …

reghardware 1 Aug 13:42
SHEEP NEED TWITTER, insist my noble Lords

Analysis Taxpayers should cough to get one's country place online

A House of Lords committee this week declared that British taxpayers must foot the bill for an internet that nobody wants - unless perhaps they have a second home in the country. You may have caught the highlights of this report yesterday, and some observations are accurate: Britain's broadband is slower than its rivals. But …

Media 1 Aug 14:02
If Hotmail was a person it could have kids now. But it would be a crime

Sketch Vast spam archive was only used for signups, shurely

It's a slow day on the tech-news desk in the temporary Olympic capital of the world, London. But, with proper IT news being in short supply, more than one starving blogger has been forced to resort to writing a "my first pony" story about Hotmail, now that it's turning into Outlook.com. We take you now to a newsroom not far …

Applications 1 Aug 14:23
M.R. James, master of the ghost story, was born 150 years ago

Oh whistle and I'll scare you to bits, my lad

British writer of ghost stories - and arguably one of the genre's finest storytellers - MR James, was born 150 years ago today. Montague Rhodes James was born on 1 August 1862 in Kent but spent many of his earliest years in Suffolk. East Anglia would later form the backdrop for many of his ghost stories. A number of James' …

reghardware 1 Aug 14:26
Apple iPad fondlers are about to enter a THIRD DIMENSION

A dimension not only of sight and sound but of Kinect

Apple has designed three-dimensional touch technology so iPad fanbois can "pull" virtual 3D objects off the tablet screen. The US patents office has granted the secretive secretor of shininess a patent on a method of creating and modifying 3D objects by detecting hand movements, similar to Microsoft's Xbox Kinect games …

Hardware 1 Aug 15:01
Juniper Network pushes button, exits two distributors

Azlan and Computerlinks jettisoned

Juniper Networks has given Computerlinks and Azlan their marching orders following a review of the UK distributor line-up, leaving it with Arrow ECS, Avnet TS and Westcon. The review began in May when Juniper named Will Hamber to manage its fragmented network of 30 wholesalers across EMEA. Former HP and Edge-Core Networks …

The Channel 1 Aug 15:32
Lenovo iPad-smiting Windows 8 slate slips out

Pen is to be used, not fingers

You'd never have guessed this, but Lenovo will be shipping a ThinkPad-branded tablet running Windows 8 when Microsoft's next major OS release comes out. Still, we do no have details. According to a leaked presentation, Lenovo reckons the 10.1in beast is a clear iPad killer: it has NFC; HDMI, SD and USB portage; two mics rather …

reghardware 1 Aug 15:36
Commtouch gulps down Icelandic anti-virus pioneer FRISK

The fresh minty taste of white-label security solutions

FRISK, one of the early pioneers in anti-virus technology, has been acquired by Commtouch. Terms of the deal, announced Wednesday, were undisclosed. Icelandic-based FRISK developed the first versions of its flagship F-Prot anti-virus software in 1989, and claims it was the first firm to develop heuristic (generic) detection of …

Financial News 1 Aug 16:03
Lenovo: 'Us, buy Nokia? Surely you jest'

Flushes flap about Finnish phone firm feast as fiction

Lenovo's EMEA chief Gianfranco Lanci has laughed off suggestions that the Chinese computer giant would buy out flailing phone-maker Nokia, dismissing the idea as a "joke". When asked about rumours that Lenovo was considering swooping on the troubled phone-makers, whose value has plunged in the past two years, Lanci told …

Financial News 1 Aug 16:22
Speaking in Tech: We grill EMC's Mr VMWare

Podcast Virtual geek Chad Sakac talks SDNs, Oracle's Xsigo, CloudFoundry and more...

It's another enterprise and techcast with Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela. This week, your hosts are grilling a special guest: EMC's Chad Sakac. Last night they spoke to the storage guru, prolific blogger and virtual geek – who become a senior veep at EMC in January – about his promotion and new responsibilities, …

Virtualization 1 Aug 17:05
Microsoft RTMs final Windows 8 and Server 2012 code

Shuts the gate on final changes

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 8 and Server 2012 have gone RTM and the final code is now in the hands of OEMs, ready to be tested and installed onto new systems. MSDN and TechNet subscribers can download the final Windows 8 build on August 15, and Redmond's reseller network gets it a day later. So do those with Software …

Windows 8 1 Aug 17:37
Outlook.com launch a gold rush for jokers, spammers

Analysis 'One million people' could be wrong

Microsoft's servers have been going bonkers processing account requests for its newly launched Outlook.com webmail service, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that Redmond's Gmail competitor may be less of a breakout success than it would have us believe. On Tuesday, just six hours after the service launched, the …

Applications 1 Aug 21:36
AMD poaches Keller from Apple's mobile chip team

A call to ARMs?

Jim Keller, formerly director of the platform architecture group at Apple, has become the newest recruit to AMD as part of CEO Rory Read's recent talent buying spree. Keller has worked for AMD before, helping to develop its 64-bit Athlon and Opteron designs. He also coauthored the x86-64 processor instruction set, as well as …

Hardware 1 Aug 21:45
RMIT serves up video tagging at ~~Olympics~~ London sportfest

Aus badminton team gets help with data swing

The Australian Olympic badminton team has been perfecting its moves using a video tagging and tracking platform developed by RMIT University. The RMIT project team developed a statistical video tool that tags movements of players and provides comprehensive data analysis of the performance. The performance videos provide …

Software 1 Aug 22:22
Nokia shutters Qt Brisbane office

Linux exit takes its toll

Australian Qt developers are the latest to feel the bite of Nokia’s decline, with the Finnish company deciding to shutter the operation’s Brisbane outpost. Qt is a cross-platform application and UI framework. Nokia acquired Qt developer Trolltech in 2008. The decision became public via an employee’s post on the Qt mailing …

Business 1 Aug 22:25
AGIMO issues invitation to cloud party

New guidelines and panel fling feds forward to the fluff

The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) has made two significant cloud-related announcements. The most significant is a new Approach to Market process for would-be-providers of cloud services to Australia’s federal government. The prize for such providers is a place on the “Data Centre as a Service ( …

Cloud 1 Aug 23:24
Judge: Oracle must remain on Itanic

Upholds HP's breach of contract claim

A California court has ruled that Oracle is contractually obligated to produce software for Hewlett-Packard's Itanium-based servers and must continue to do so for as long as HP sells them. The ruling issued on Wednesday by Judge James Kleinberg in San Jose is the latest chapter in a bitter, ongoing struggle between the two …

Servers 1 Aug 23:37