5th > May > 2010 Archive
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Google tutorial lets developers play malicious hacker
Google has released a free online tutorial that gives developers the chance to play the role of malicious hacker by exploiting real security bugs in a mock web application.
Intel wades into smartphone wars
Intel has introduced its second-generation ultra-mobile Atom processor, and the chip giant is telling the world that its new offering is targeted directly into the heart of today's hottest mobile market: smartphones.
Microsoft's social lab does 'the impossible'
Web 2.0 Expo
Microsoft has unveiled an experimental online service that pools "social" content from various and sundry online sources, including Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, and Redmond's own Bing search engine.
HAMR knocks perpendicular recording down a notch
A manufacturer in the hard disk drive industry has ordered a Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) deposition tool from Veeco - another sign of the end of perpendicular magnetic recording.
Solar Freeloader Pico solar-charged back-up power supply
Review
Running out of battery power can clobber your day and leave you incommunicado when you least want to be. There are various secondary power supplies on the market, but few of them can recharge themselves entirely from daylight. The Freeloader Pico claims to be one that can.
Cray revenues slammed in Q1
Nothing illustrates so clearly why supercomputer maker Cray has been expanding into entry and midrange supercomputer markets as the financial results that the company posted in the first quarter ended in March.
Accenture and HP hardest hit by services drop
Accenture and HP were the worst hit of the big IT services players, with both losing more than ten per cent of their services revenues.
Microsoft kills off newsgroups
Microsoft is killing off its newsgroups and encouraging users to move to forums instead.
Judge de-ASBOes yoof's low-slung kecks
An 18-year-old Bedford yoof has secured what appears to be a landmark legal victory for those who prefer their trousers at half-mast, the Times reports.
Microsoft releases Symbian Communicator
The alliance between Microsoft and Nokia, announced last August, has delivered its first fruit: Microsoft Communicator Mobile. Microsoft had previously made the software available on Java, and now it's here on Symbian.
Seagate intros 'universal' external hard drives
Hard drive maker Seagate has revamped its range of external HDDs, restyling the line as the FreeAgent GoFlex series - drives with a proprietary interface that feeds standard ports through adaptor cables.
Iomega announces StorCenter networked storage array
Iomega has announced the StorCenter ix12-300r 2U rackmount networked storage array for small and medium businesses and small enterprise workgroups, departments and distributed/branch offices.
TfL signs £27.6m road CCTV deals
Transport for London has awarded Easynet and Serco contracts to upgrade its CCTV cameras monitoring roads.
Logica says things less bad
Logica's revenue is still falling, but not as fast as in the last three quarters, the company has said in a trading statement.
Getting the IT department into shape
Live Now
Today at 10:30am BST we're running a live broadcast that discusss practical steps to help your IT department get into shape to tackle the next wave of IT management priorities. We'll explain how 'process' can be your friend – to help simplify things, set priorities and identify where to focus your attention and effort.
Apple-obsessed geeks launch fanboi dating site
Here's some bright news for those of you who are so hooked on the divine manifestations of the Church of Jobs that you can't attract a member of the opposite sex: a dating site exclusively for fanbois and gals which reckons that it's "time to share the love".
Obama may get personal V-22 Osprey tiltrotor
The official helicopter of the US President - known by the callsign "Marine One" when he is aboard, just as his jet is "Air Force One" - may in future be a V-22 "Osprey" tiltrotor rather than a normal whirlybird, according to reports.
Asus pitches all-in-one for home entertaining
Asus has set its sights on desktopthe UK home entertainment market with a sleek and rather cheap all-in-one.
Northamber hit by industry-wide slowdown in April
Northamber said it was hit by an industry-wide fall off in sales last month, and is anxiously waiting to see if the slide was a blip or a longer term trend.
Google to be bookseller by summer
Google has confirmed it will enter the retail digital book business, with the launch of an online store called Google Editions by July. Google Editions will also be available as a B2B service, allowing third-party retailers to sell eBooks on their own websites.
Orange restyles mobile broadband deals
Orange has tweaked its mobile broadband contracts, adjusting its existing deals slightly and introducing its 'animal' branding to the array of tariffs on offer.
Sharing bank PINs leaves consumers at risk
One in ten consumers either write down or share their ATM card PIN codes, according to a new survey by the UK's Consumer Association.
Election 2010: The sillier options
With the UK general election upon us, the chances are that you have already decided how to vote. But if – like almost 40 per cent of the electorate, according to some current polls – you still haven’t made up your mind, here are a few more tools to help you decide.
Canon punts fast, film-friendly scanner
Canon has introduced its latest film scanner, promising the rig will zip through 35mm slides or grab them at very high resolution.
Sage banks on 'pent-up demand' for salvation
Geordie accountancy software seller Sage believes pent-up demand among its customers means it will be in for a sales bean-feast when the market recovers.
Britain and Israel in stand-off over Mossad officer
The Foreign Office has refused to allow Israel to return a Mossad officer to London following the assassination of a senior member of Hamas in Dubai by agents travelling on British passports, it's reported.
Leaked release shows Visa plotting NFC iPhone case
Visa is planning an iPhone case with integrated NFC, according to an accidentally-posted press release that wasn't pulled fast enough.
Feel.me up for grabs in dot-me domain auction
The Montenegro company behind dot-me internet domains, doMEn, has put 42 catchy names up for auction, including feel.me, see.me and mini.me.
Operator gang gunning for iTunes
The Wholesale Application Community has been laying out its philosophy ahead of a promised business plan next month, and all-out war with Apple next February.
Lost mental hospital memory stick had health records
A USB memory stick containing personal information on patients and staff at a secure hospital near Falkirk has been found in a car park outside an Asda store in nearby Stenhousemuir.
Servers: Getting a grip on power and control
Video
Power has long been a consideration for server and data centre operations and design. In many cases, power was a constant to design the solution around, and not something that could easily be monitored, manipulated or optimised.
Labour manifesto changes a byte bit
If you thought that what a party puts in its manifesto is a cast-iron guarantee of promises to the electorate, then think again – because the Labour Party appears to have no qualms about amending its online manifesto, post-publication, and hoping no one will notice.
Dell Studio 17 touchscreen notebook
Review
When it comes to mobile phones, tablet PCs or one of those brightly-coloured public access kiosks you find in airports and shopping centres, touchscreen displays make perfect sense. They do away with the need for a space-consuming keyboard and let the display take up the majority of the device.
Compellent moves to 6Gbit/s SAS interfaces
Compellent is going to give its storage array controllers more power, update its software and move to faster SAS drives.
Vote Lib Dem, doom humanity to extinction
Updated
Updated
Opinion
Tomorrow is election day, and on most issues the politicians aren't offering you any clear choices. Nobody's being open regarding what they'll do about the public finances, for instance: more than one politician has revealed total ignorance combined with terrifying eagerness to make policy.
What's going on with server virtualization
Webinar
Server virtualization is almost-but-not-quite mainstream affair. Too many enterprises remain in pilot project mode for it to be considered as just part of the furniture
Viagra spam shop live on Twitter for a month
Canadian Pharmacy spammers have set up shop on Twitter, staying online for weeks despite complaints from a leading security firm that would normally prompt action.
Microsoft's Cambridge boffins to up sticks in 2012
Microsoft Research
Microsoft's UK research arm in Cambridge, England is moving home after more than 10 years occupying the Roger Needham Building on J J Thomson Ave.
HP rolls out dozens of updated notebooks
HP has introduced a host of new notebooks, punting eight key additions to its Envy and Pavilion lines, each of which will undoubtedly extend to umpteen separately specced models.
Latest Chrome beta fastest ever - again
Google claims the latest beta of its Chrome browser is a third faster than the previous release.
Microsoft drops second IE9 preview
Talk about bad timing. Today, Microsoft released a second developer preview of its next Internet Explorer, just as word arrived that the browser's market share has dipped below 60 per cent and a storm of criticism hit Redmond for handling HTML 5 video with a closed codec it partly owns.
Boffins turn Bunsen burners on Frank Skinner
"Science isn’t fun. It’s just maths in fancy dress," wrote TV presenter Frank Skinner in the Times on Friday, and it's earned a gentle rebuke from the Royal Society of Chemistry's chief executive Richard Pike. The RCS caustically calls Skinner a "comedian" only between inverted commas*. But Pike says he may be onto something.
Kindle cuddles Twitter
Kindle users will be able to post book passages to Twitter or as Facebook updates, as Amazon updates the device's firmware with ever more web-friendly features.
3TB Seagate disk drive ahoy
Seagate is developing a 3TB disk drive which could hit the market this year.
SGI books big(ger) loss in Q3
Another HPC player has blamed its financial woes on product transitions.
Microsoft update secretly fixed two 'severe' bugs
Updated
A recent security patch from Microsoft silently fixed two severe bugs that were never disclosed even though they posed a risk to many of its customers, a security researcher said.
Adobe CTO paints Steve Jobs as Big Brother
Web 2.0 Expo
Adobe chief technology officer Kevin Lynch believes that Apple barred translated Flash from the iPhone not because Flash runs poorly on the Jobsian handheld but because it runs so well.
Apple demands public apology for iPhone parody
For years, Apple has ruthlessly ridiculed Windows users with its Get a Mac ads - but like many a schoolyard bully, Cupertino can dish it out, but it can't take it.
Super Street Fighter IV
Review
Capcom’s Super Street Fighter IV release is the antithesis of EA’s 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa, and a rare beast in the ever-increasingly profit-driven videogames world.
Facebook bug allowed users to eavesdrop on chats
Facebook engineers on Wednesday disabled the site's live chat function after people outside the company discovered a bug that allowed users to eavesdrop on their friends' conversations.
Canonical explains Ubuntu unfree video choice
Ubuntu's commercial sponsor Canonical has tried to clarify how - if not why - it has licensed a closed-source and patented codec for video on PCs running its Linux.
SGI chills new Altix ICE supers
As promised, Silicon Graphics is today shipping the Switzerland version of its Altix ICE blade server clusters, supporting either Intel or Advanced Micro Devices processors - or a mix of the two, if that makes you happy.
Kafkaesque cloud outage traps Microsoft Hotmailers
Microsoft has apologized for a cloud outage that saw its customer support services evaporate.
Microsoft calls for IE9 Canvas tag
Web 2.0 Expo
A Microsoft "web technical evangelist" has indicated that he wants Internet Explorer 9 to include the HTML5 Canvas tag, a means of rendering 2D graphics inside a browser. But for reasons unknown, the company won't actually commit to the tag.
US data-collection bill gets chilly reception
A proposed US congressional bill to regulate the collection of personal data is being almost universally panned, with privacy advocates arguing it's inadequate and pro-business groups saying it goes too far.
HP software lands ex-Microsoft Windows and Office chief
So much for that idea of running a business from end-to-end. Bill Veghte, a 20-year Microsoftie who ran development, sales, and marketing operations for Office and Windows, is now doing essentially the same job at the much smaller, much less influential, and much more opaque unit at Hewlett-Packard.
Lindsay Lohan to pull off Linda Lovelace
Lindsay Lohan has landed what has been described as "one of the most challenging roles any actor could play" - that of portraying 1970s grumble flick star Linda Lovelace.
