25th > January > 2012 Archive
69
Apple CEO: 'Amazon Fire didn't dent our sales'
If purchases of the successful-if-flawed Amazon Fire bit into iPad sales during the holiday season, Apple CEO Tim Cook didn't see it.
Orange Tahiti 7in Android tablet
Review
Review
The iPad is all very well, but with its 9.7in display it can be just too big to cart around. Something lighter and more luggable could be the answer. Since there’s no 7in iPad – and the BlackBerry PlayBook has very few apps – we’re left with Android and even this smaller size is still relatively rare on Googleslabs.
Judges probe minister's role in McKinnon extradition saga
The long-running case of Gary McKinnon returns to court on Friday.
Outside-the-box thinking literally can't be done inside a box, say profs
Time-rich trick cyclists in Singapore and America have determined to their own satisfaction that it is actually much more difficult to think outside the box if you are, in reality, inside a large box at the time.
Facebook 'contributes' €15.3bn to EU economy... bitch
The UK economy might be down in the dumps, but there is a ray of sunshine from an unlikely source: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has supposedly helped to contribute £2.2bn to the country's GDP in 2011.
Dr Who phone game puts Daleks in your living room
Toy Fair 2012
Robotics toy tycoon WowWee is down at the Toy Fair 2012 in London this week with its range of smartphone games based on the notion of augmented-reality.
Infinity Blade II
iGamer
I liked the original Infinity Blade when it arrived just over a year ago, but it seemed to fall short of classic status due to the repetitive nature of the combat, the rigidly linear exploration and threadbare fantasy storyline.
Google finally admits it wants to OWN YOU
Mountain View's Chocolate Factory is putting its vast userbase on notice of major changes to its privacy policies.
Nokia exec praises Brazilian...
Nokia has shipped 1.5bn Series 40 handsets, the milestone unit being snatched up by a Brazilian lass, 21-year-old Mayara Rodrigues.
Winners and losers in the information race
Live today
Involved in information management? Then join us live today at 11:00 GMT, as we discuss the findings from the latest Reg research and offer tips and techniques on good information practice.
New Euro IP law promises artists torpedoes to sink pirates
A revised EU anti-piracy laws will provide content creators with "solid legal certainty" when developing new ways for consumers to legitimately access their works, an EU Commissioner working on the legislation has said.
Scalextric restarts space race with Star Wars craft
Toy Fair 2012
Hornby is at the London Toy Fair 2012 this week putting the Force into slot racing classic Scalextric with a series of Star Wars race kits.
London Underground Wi-Fi pusher to be announced in spring
Transport for London (TfL) is in the final stages of the tender process for the supply of Wi-Fi to up to 120 of its underground stations.
Megaupload master loses Call of Duty crown
Being held in custody is bad enough for anyone accused of a crime, but when it means you'll lose the number one position on the Call of Duty ranking boards, it's really gonna hurt.
Remote-controlled Star Wars kit blown up
Toy Fair 2012
Gadget specialist Bladez Toys is to cater for the Star Wars collective with a handful of officially-licensed remote-controlled inflatables based on characters from the films.
Acer bids to raise prices after levelling inventory mountain
Acer has said it expects ASPs to continue to climb this year as the market shifts to ultrabooks – even as the vendor finally levels the inventory mountain that bedevilled it last year.
Super-powered 'frankenmalware' strains detected in the wild
Viruses are accidentally infecting worms on victims’ computers, creating super-powered strains of hybrid software nasties.
O2 leaks 3G users' mobile numbers to every website visited
Updated
O2 UK is dishing out its customers' mobile numbers like free sweeties to every website they visit over a 3G connection.
Pope praises Twitter and your 'profound' tweets
Pope Benedict XVI has given a tentative thumbs-up to micro-blogging sites such as Twitter, but explained to his followers that they may reap more spiritual reward by just piping down a bit online.
Loyal NASA rover Opportunity enters 9th year of Mars boffinry
NASA’s exploration rover Opportunity entered its historic ninth year of service on Mars today, having already driven over 21 miles and helped boffins make groundbreaking scientific discoveries on the unforgiving world.
Toshiba Qosmio DX730 PC TV combo
Review
Review
Toshiba’s Qosmio laptops regularly appear in our hardware reviews but the new Qosmio DX730 is a bit of a departure. In fact, it’s not a laptop at all. It is, according to Toshiba, the very first desktop PC that they’ve ever released here in Europe. And it’s a pretty good one at that.
Reding's 'right to be forgotten' bill polarises Euro biz world
EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding will imminently table a draft bill that will – if passed in Parliament – require internet firms to be upfront about the user data they hold.
Punters to pick up cheap laptops not Ultrabooks
Ultrabooks are still too darn pricey for punters, with the new skinny laptops' average selling price during Q4 2011 63 per cent higher than that of regular notebooks.
iPad users 'risk shoulder pain', say US gov, Microsoft boffins
Boffins employed by the US Department of Environmental Health and Microsoft (among others) say that users of tablet computing devices – an area almost completely dominated at the moment by Apple's iPad, selling in unbelievable numbers – run a more serious risk of "neck and shoulder discomfort" compared to people using normal desktop kit.
Paramount opens Cloud-based movie shop
IPTV Week
IPTV Week
Paramount has opened the door of the the first Ultraviolet-based film rental and download service.
Acer unleashes account managers on corporate customers
Acer will capitalise on its Olympics prominence this year by ratcheting up its SMB channel and setting an end-user sales team on the UK's biggest companies.
Lego readies kit for Minecraft lovers
Lego has given the green light to a set of the famous building bricks based on the world of the cult cyber-block game Minecraft.
EU commissioner unleashes draft data protection bill
European Commission vice-president Viviane Reding was forced into a defensive corner today, after putting forward her proposed rewrite of the EU's 17-year-old data protection law.
Groupon banned from selling SNAKE OIL
Groupon has been rapped for selling snake oil after the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) ruled that the online deals giant couldn't substantiate their claims about the reptile juice.
Microsoft to cash in chips on virtual currency
Microsoft will call time on its virtual currency, Microsoft Points, with a switch to real money on the cards later this year, it has been claimed.
O2 3G stops giving punters' mobile numbers to websites
After a flurry of complaints, O2 engineers appear to have shut off the proxy server quirk that leaked to websites the phone numbers of punters browsing the net on 3G connections.
Google plays the long game with Chrome OS
Google is betting that slow and steady will prove a winning strategy for its Chrome OS platform, and is reporting some successes for the system in the education sector.
The Pirate Bay torrents printable 3D objects
Tremble, thing-makers, because The Pirate Bay has started to share the source files for physical objects.
Apple's soaraway growth is Google's pain - and here's why
Analysis
Compare these two headlines: "Google shares tank after disappointing financial report" (here) and "Apple tops estimates with earnings leap of 118 per cent" (here).
Pwn2Own 2012 touts bigger prizes, drops mobile hacks
Organisers of security conference CanSecWest have changed the rules for the next outing of its Pwn2Own computer hacking contest.
Try a 'shroom before ruling on chill pills, boffin tells gov
The government may never be able to “think rationally” about the therapeutic properties of hallucinogenic drugs, says Professor David Nutt. The top boffin was speaking on the publication of two new studies that show the anti-depressant qualities of magic mushrooms.
Dell fluffs up fatter Microsoft private clouds
Dell is hedging its bets in the private cloud war that is ranging between VMware and Microsoft and has crafted two different versions of its vStart prefabbed clouds: one to run the vSphere stack (and thus ending with a "v") and another the Hyper-V-Systems Center stack (and thus ending with an "m"). Dell is today rolling out the largest Microsoft vStarts and promising to build even larger machines later this year to support both stacks.
Telly makers aim to put OLED in your lounge in 2012
IPTV Week
IPTV Week
Five years ago, the display technology on the consumer electronics industry's lips was OLED. Screens made from an "active" matrix of organic light-emitting diodes - tiny components that contain molecules which emit light when an electric current passes through them - could produce a more colourful, higher contrast …
OpIreland hackers spank gov sites as 'Irish SOPA' nears
Anonymous took out several key Irish government websites last night and promised more disruption to come in retaliation for new SOPA-like legislation which it claimed would make it easier for copyright-holders to block access to file sharing and other sites in the country.
pcAnywhere let anyone anywhere inject code into PCs
Symantec is urging users to patch pcAnywhere, its remote control application, following the discovery of a brace of serious security flaws.
Quad-core Samsung Galaxy S III set for April launch
The unannounced Samsung Galaxy S III will hit shelves in April with some meaty specs, including a quad-core processor and a 12Mp camera, it has been alleged.
EE and BT get LTE extension
Ofcom has granted BT and Everything Everywhere an extension to their test licence for cohabited LTE spectrum until the end of 2012, much to the relief of the trialists.
Nvidia hit by GPU slump, too
Microprocessor and GPU maker Advanced Micro Devices said yesterday that its financial results had been whacked by an unexpected downturn in discrete graphics processor sales in the fourth quarter, and Nvidia now says it had the same problem.
Why O2 shared your mobile number with the world
O2 has been sharing customers' phone numbers with every website they visited, but O2 isn't the only offender - it's just the one that slipped up and got caught.
Amazon bridges enterprise IT with cloud backup
Amazon has become an official supplier of enterprise IT by turning its cloudy Simple Storage Service (S3) into a back-up option for earth-bound data.
Super Micro awaits the Xeon E5 launch
The shortages of disk drives due to flooding in Thailand continues to take its toll on IT suppliers, with motherboard and whitebox system maker Super Micro joining the club of companies adversely impacted by the shortages.
Tucci to hang around another year as EMC earnings soar
EMC recorded record revenues and profits for the full year and final quarter of 2011, although Information Intelligence results didn't look so clever.
Nekkid Tech: Pricey frocks, Duran Duran and VMware power users
Podcast
Greg Knieriemen fought through a 1,000-strong crowd at the New England Area VMware User Group (VMUG) to bring El Reg readers a piping hot dose of Nekkid Tech.
Intel issues dividend, Apple sits on $97.6bn
Intel has quietly announced that it will pay a quarterly dividend of 21 cents per share on March 1, just as they did last September and December, and in earlier quarters at lower rates.
Fusion-io revenues flash upwards
Server flash array vendor Fusion-io saw stonking quarterly revenues but disappointed with a loss despite unexpected higher sales. Did it under-price its ioDrive 2 products?
O2 apologizes for 'unintended' number-leak cockup
O2 has issued a public apology for leaking the phone numbers of some 3G customers in header information sent to website managers.
HP outlines schedule for full WebOS open source release
HP has announced the schedule for the open sourcing of WebOS tools and source code, and said it will be continuing to push development hard to build a truly open platform.
Two million-degree matter from SLAC laser
From “wow, that’s cold” we now get to meet a “wow, that’s hot” laser application, courtesy of the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory: its X-ray laser has created and probed matter as hot as the Sun’s corona.
