HP refuses to let its software partners enjoy all of the virtualization glory. The company today announced a broad virtualization management package that will see HP tread on the toes of partners such as VMware and start-ups such as Scalent.

White coats at IBM today said they have built the world's teeniest optical switch, measuring 100 times smaller than the cross section of a human hair.

Smartphone software distributor Handango has signed a deal with Carphone Warehouse to have its service promoted with sales of the pink edition BlackBerry Pearl.

Arguments rage over the importance of adding comments to your code versus the importance of writing clear code that speaks for itself, thereby potentially eliminating the need for comments. The dichotomy boils down to this: writing comments versus writing self-commenting code, as if comments and clear code are somehow mutually exclusive.

Brussels has now officially endorsed DVB-H as the mobile TV technology of choice in Europe. This means that member states are now required to "encourage" use of the technology, though the commission has no advice as to how to encourage punters to tune in.

These are relatively dark days for the ISP business. With the market saturated, fewer and fewer new broadband customers are scrapped over by fewer and fewer players.

Reg chiefs have been holding daily crisis meetings for several months over what has become of Professor Kevin "Captain Cyborg" Warwick.

Sage, the finance and small business software provider, has appointed a new boss for its US business.

Companies processing children's data may need explicit consent directly from a child to continue using it once that child reaches maturity, Europe's privacy officials have said. The child may also revoke consent given earlier by a parent or guardian.

Dextre, the mighty tonne-and-a-half space robot intended for repair and servicing tasks at the International Space Station (ISS), is now fully operational, according to reports. The 12-foot-tall mechanical maintenance man, a product of cutting-edge Canadian space robotics tech, has been fully assembled and is ready for work.

Intel's 45nm 'Nehalem' processor design will incorporate the second generation of the chip maker's SSE 4 technology. For now, the company is calling the post-'Penryn' Streaming SIMD Extensions instruction set SSE 4.2.

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone last night called on German prestige car builder Porsche to drop its lawsuit against the new CO2-based "Congestion Charge" bands planned for the capital.

Filming during a beach party or on board a boat means placing your camcorder at risk of an nasty H2O overdose. Thankfully, Panasonic has realised that water-resistant cases aren’t always suitable and has created a fully waterproof rugged recorder.

Manufacturer Thomson has designed a stylish wireless home phone supporting VoIP and Dect. However, the Symbio has enough additional features to leave you wondering how everything fits into its skeleton-like look.

UpdatedThere's little doubt that anyone with the time and the inclination can overhaul at least a few Wikipedia entries to suit their personal ambitions. All they need is the right friends. Or a little pillow talk. The question is, could someone overhaul the entire encyclopedia?

Vodafone is laying off 450 staff at its Newbury headquarters and employing more staff in shops to show customers how mobile phones work.

A former Microsoft worker has identified security vulnerabilities in smart card plug-in software for Windows Vista that might allow hackers to take over vulnerable PCs.

A week ago Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg told us how his website is bringing peace to the Middle East by giving young people in Lebanon a wider view of the world.

The head of Cambridge University's Computer Lab has advocated a restructuring of today's computer architecture, in which processing power would move away from desktop systems and scattered data centres and be centralised close to mighty wind farms.

Adobe has withdrawn a Photoshop product update because it was too buggy and has told customers to uninstall it.

A teachers' union is complaining that schools are not doing enough to combat cyberbullying - students sending offensive text messages or emails, or posting videos to sites like YouTube.

Nintendo has scored the bottom place slot in Greenpeace's latest guide to green electronics with a measly 0.3.

The US Air Force has announced that it will carry out the first supersonic flight powered by Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) synthetic fuel tomorrow. A 1980s-vintage B-1 "Lancer" swing-wing bomber will take off from Dyess air force base in Texas, filled up with a 50/50 mix of ordinary petroleum jet juice and synthetic, and go supersonic above the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

ReviewAMD’s 700-series chipsets covers all the motherboard options that a gamer could require for the quad-core Phenom processor. There’s the 790FX with support for CrossFireX to handle three or four graphics cards, the 790X that does CrossFire with two cards, and the 770 that combines Phenom with a single PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 slot.

Now and then a wacky patent application comes to light that combines futuristic technology with a cutting-edge gadget. An number of such applications have been revealed online, all from Apple and including one that's World+Dog is claiming could be a twin-touchscreen clamshell iPhone.

Microsoft is rumoured to have signed deals with two additional manufacturers to make Xbox 360s. The claim follows reports that sales of the console have dropped in the US.

Online shoppers in the UK will be able to pay direct from their online bank account rather than via a credit or debit card, thanks to a new service.

Nvidia has rolled out what it claims is the "fastest graphics card on the planet", the GeForce 9800 GX2, as expected.

A New England-based supermarket chain has warned of an information security breach that exposed an estimated 4.2 million credit card records.

Just as the world had begun to recover from January's now-infamous insight into the workings of the mind of Tom Cruise, another succulent morsel of old footage has emerged showing the Top Gun star acting mad.

DARPA (the Pentagon asylum for usefully-insane scientists) is apparently making progress with its plan to build cyborg infiltrator machines wearing living creatures like fleshy cloaks.

HP has agreed to pre-install Novell's Linux distribution on some of its notebook and desktop range in India. However, the computer maker said it currently has no plans to extend that deal to EMEA.

Ofcom wants to make mobile network operators responsible for their resellers, reporting that a voluntary code of practice for the industry has failed to reduce complaints.

Hackers have been caught using a malicious scripting scam in an apparent attempt to boost their rating on eBay.

Pentax today unveiled its latest compact camera, combining many of the features found on rivals’ snappers into one sleek point-and-click snapper.

Nokia has gone back to black with its N82 geo-tagging handset and launched the phone in a sultry midnight shade.

Microsoft has released the long-awaited first Windows Vista Service Pack, a wrap-up of incremental updates that apparently cripples certain vendors' software.

Microsoft and Intel have put their money where their fear is. The two companies have shelled out $10m each to the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois to fund research around advanced software programming techniques for PCs and mobile devices.

Special FeatureWhy did millions of money-making post-holiday clicks suddenly disappear from the world's largest search engine? It depends on who you ask. Some people blame a soft economy, insisting that Google is well on its way to piddling quarterly revenues. But Google disagrees. CEO Eric Schmidt and company claim that they planned the whole thing - that this dip in paid clicks indicates that both Google and its advertisers are richer than ever.

A Seattle man who admitted using file-sharing programs to pinch personal information on 50 people as part of an ID theft scam has been jailed for four years.

Vyatta isn't the biggest dog in networking gear — but it's a wee terrier with a distinct mean streak. The firm got its teeth planted firmly into Cisco's hindquarters from the get-go, and isn't about to release any time soon.

When Google introduced the Google data APIs two years ago, it did not exactly rock the firmament like, say, other Google offerings.

Dell today is selling two new single-socket servers with speedy quad-core chips and copious memory capacity for small businesses.

Chalk up another win for websites hosting user-generated content, but be sure to add an asterisk.

Bell Microproducts lost its NASDAQ listing today because it can't get its act together on financial filings.

Nike’s love of all things iPod may have hit a rut - the sportswear company is rumoured to be going it alone by launching a non-Apple wireless workout dongle.

Brocade is shoving its Windows file virtualization portfolio into a separate appliance and adding automated data migration and file-level controls to the metal.

Ohio investigators are treating a warehouse where 15 electronic voting machines have been quarantined as a crime scene following a report someone may have illegally tampered with them to remove a candidate's name from the ballot.