Has Hillingdon Borough managed to find a way to introduce an ID card scheme that is non-intrusive, respects civil liberties – and is actually welcomed by local residents?

Webcast ReplayThe Register's latest video webcast, an expert look at open source and traditional proprietary software models, is now available on-demand from the Reg archives. This broadcast explores the relative merits of open source and traditional proprietary software, and discusses how they can best be made to co-exist happily.

The IBM mainframe may not have a lot of direct competition when it comes to z/OS-based batch and transactional work, but the story is different when it comes to Linux. There's plenty of competition among Linux platforms, and Big Blue can't ignore the pressure that Moore's Law brings to bear.

We've seen tiny Bluetooth adaptors that are barely bigger than a standard USB connector and now here's a Flash drive built to the same form-factor.

As Apple fanboys eagerly await the firm’s 7 September announcement, images of the much-rumoured iTablet have appeared online.

Dixons' own PC brand, Advent, is having a go at taking on Apple MacBook Air. While the skinny Altro won't beat the Air on thinness, it does have it licked on price.

The first phone developed by Dell has finally been revealed, thanks to the PC manufacturer’s tie-up with a Chinese network operator.

The economy may be looking up but the ever cash hungry tech sector will have to wait before the capital markets begin loosening their purse strings.

A US International Trade Commission judge has ruled that Nokia is not infringing four disputed patents owned by InterDigital, paving the way for the Finns to walk away from the lengthy spat come December.

Disputed figures put out by broadcasting industry regulator Ofcom last week, in respect of Second Life usage, raise questions as to how seriously we should take Ofcom reports.

Western Digital appears to be working on a networked version of its WD TV streaming media package.

Miscreants have recently begun peppering Facebook with a variety of new phishing scams with sex, sex, sex and more sex featuring prominently.

Apple VP Phil Schiller has expanded his one-man operation to sort out the iPhone application store, this time conceding that magic tricks can indeed be "confusing" to users.

Fans of enormous government files will be overjoyed today as the National Archives release the third tranche of accumulated Ministry Of Defence (MoD) UFO-sightings bumf.

Leccy TechThe truly wretched East German Trabant looks set to make a comeback at next month’s Frankfurt Motor Show. But, unlike the fume-belching 1950s-era model, the updated Trabant will run on electricity and sunshine.

Samsung is pitching its fast 256GB solid state drive (SSD) at desktops and notebook gamers and cites a YouTube blogger saying it will make their systems "stupid fast."

The government has dismissed reports that suggest business secretary Lord Mandelson plans to crackdown on illegal file sharing, by slapping hefty fines on thousands of individuals found guilty of abusing their web access.

ReviewNow in its third generation, the MacBook Air hasn’t had the same sort of overhaul as the rest of the MacBook range has had in recent months. Even so, Apple’s super-slim laptop has received a welcome price and performance tweak that should help broaden its appeal in more ways than one.

The inventor of a potentially revolutionary super-quiet "flying taxi" has died in a crash while test-flying his prototype in Malaysia.

Scientists in the US have developed what they claim is the world's smallest laser. The device, which is just 44nm in diameter, could pave the way for the development of chips that operate using light rather than electrons.

TomTom has switched its attention to the iPhone, launching a “turn-by-turn” navigation application for the 3G and 3GS models.

UpdatedA false alert left users of Kaspersky's internet security software fearing there was malware on HSBC's website last weekend.

The Labour Party has appointed a 'Twitter tsar' to spearhead its social media efforts to win the next election.

The French regulator has put a price tag of €240m on a chunk of spectrum to run a fourth 3G mobile network - a third of the €619m paid by the incumbents, who are not amused and could challenge the decision.

Boffins in America have violated every rule of Invisibility Club by stating that their astounding new "active cloaking" research has nothing to do with Harry Potter or Star Trek.

Freecom may say its new Hard Drive XS is "the size of a credit card", but as the following picture shows, there's a bit more to the mini storage add-on than that.

A legal standoff has developed in Arizona between sheriff’s deputies and county officials over a management system overhaul.

Read the release and you'd think IBM has discovered the Holy Grail of chip making: a way to "pack more power and speed" into microprocessors, while "making them more energy efficient and less expensive to manufacture".

Microsoft's long march towards model-based development has seen it integrate its latest effort with the Visual Studio and the .NET Framework teams.

Intel's long-awaited consumer-level Nehalem-based processors and motherboards are already available in Asia in "small volumes", ahead of their expected launch early next month.

CommentWe may have a long way to go before Moore's Law, which calls for the doubling of transistor counts — and therefore computing capacity — every two years or so, runs completely out of gas on current electron beam and optical lithography techniques.

Psystar is vigorously defending itself against Apple's latest charge that the Florida Hackintosher has destroyed documents relevant to the two companies' ongoing legal brawl.

Aussie boffins have developed an operating system micro-kernel mathematically established as free of many types of errors. The development points the road toward "safety-critical software of unprecedented levels of reliability" for applications such as aircraft and cars.

Federal authorities have charged a previously indicted hacker with breaching additional corporate computers and stealing data for at least 130 million credit and debit cards, the biggest identity theft case ever prosecuted in the United States.

The second edition of the open-source edition of Microsoft's Silverlight media player has been released to beta testing.

It takes money to make money, and commercial Linux distributor Red Hat knows this.

A noted British writer has joined an exclusive literary league: authors whose writings about Steve Jobs Apple has tried to suppress.

Fail and YouVirgin Media's UK customers are about to experience a wonderful new service that intercepts unresolvable DNS requests and redirects the user to a page full of ads and search results.