The natural pigment, melanin, which endows humans and animals eye, skin and hair colour is set to be the driving force behind a new generation of bio-powered gadgets.

ReviewThe only Batman I have ever cared about is the cynical desperate anti-hero of Frank Miller's The Dark Night Returns but Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes may have just changed my mind.

Secunia has taken the wraps off a new version of its consumer patch management tool, Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) version 3.0.

DataCore has pushed out its ninth SANsymphony release, which is orchestrated for the cloud, large data centre deployments, and storage-as-a-service.

OpinionWhen Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock opens his mouth, his foot soon disappears inside. The UK's leading digital rights advocate has just demonstrated still more difficulty understanding the "rights" the group campaigns about.

Future of WirelessThe problem with UK radio spectrum policy, apparently, is that we have too much competition and not enough proper disasters, which means our emergency services won't get enough radio spectrum until people start dying.

British PS3 owners are more willing to splash the cash on digital content than their Xbox 360 counterparts, it has been claimed.

QuotWThis was the week when there was an almighty tech disaster at RBS and Natwest that froze millions out of their bank accounts. Stories abounded of houses lost because sales hadn't gone through, people stuck in prison because their bail hadn't been paid and legions of folks just plain old p***ed off because they couldn't put their hands on their own money.

The Whittington hospital NHS trust is speeding its discharge rates and saving about £150,000 a year by using teleconferencing, according to Jar O'Brien, team leader for Islington's community rehabilitation services.

CommentIt would be charitable (that is, untrue) to call the consumer electronics strategies of Microsoft and Google coherent today. But what they lack in coherence they make up for in er, … sheer recklessness. That's OK, then.

Concept art for Half-Life 3 has leaked onto the web, whetting fans appetites for what might be in store if Valve ever releases the long-awaited followup.

A parental internet controls consultation document released by the Department for Education yesterday is currently exposing the email addresses, unencrypted passwords and sensitive answers of members of the public who fill in the associated form.

We're certain that plenty of Reg readers have at one time or another been given short shrift by the company finance department for presenting a dodgy receipt as part of an expenses claim.

New European Commission-imposed EU mobile data roaming price regulations kick in on Sunday, and Vodafone has announced a modification of its European roaming package.

The three taikonauts aboard Shenzhou-9 have returned safely to Earth, touching down in northern China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region as planned.

Accessory of the WeekStick an iPad in B&O’s Beoplay A3, take a step or two back and look at it square on. It looks like a mini B&O TV. Put it down on a kitchen worktop or office shelf and you have a video player or jukebox capable of producing rich, full-bodied audio which does iPad far more justice than its own tiny speaker.

The developer of KeePass, the popular open-source password management utility, has promised an update this weekend following the discovery of a "minor" security bug in the tool.

An Apple patent application just published by the US Patent Office shows that the masterminds of Cupertino have figured out (or hope to figure out) a cunning way to work out what words you're going to tap into your little Jesus mobe before you type it.

Governments have started to put ICANN's massive top-level domain name expansion under scrutiny, after the revelation of 1,930 applications for new naming suffixes two weeks ago.

Something for the weekend, Sir?"The TV has stopped working."

London OlympicsOn 27 July, London will be transformed as the biggest celebration of sports in the world kicks off in the newly built Olympic Stadium in Stratford.

BMW and Toyota are to work together on the development of fuel cell and electric powertrains, the two automotive giants said today.

As part of the slow death of Adobe's Flash Player, the company has announced it won't be making a certified version for Android's new 4.1 OS – aka Jelly Bean.

AnalysisThe War On Standby rumbles on: this week, courtesy of the UK government and "third sector" quangocracy, we heard yet again that gadgets left on standby suck vast, planet-wrecking, expensive amounts of energy from our electricity sockets.

That Ultrabooks have grabbed almost 11 per cent of the $700-and-up Windows notebook market in the US during the first five months of the year sounds impressive, until you realise how small that market segment is.

ISC 2012The 2012 ISC Student Cluster Challenge ended last week, and it’s high time we take a look at the winners, the awards and some of the results.

We’ve all read about how cloud computing is "more than just a buzzword" or a passing phase. And we’re all well-versed in selling the benefits of cloud and managed services in terms of cost-savings, flexibility, managing complex tasks and only paying for what you use.

Google's new Chrome browser for iOS has stormed the iTunes download charts - hitting the top spot for free apps worldwide. Announced at a dev meeting yesterday, the mobile browser was quietly released in Apple's App Store on 26 June.

Open ... and ShutMost everyone believes that cloud computing is taking off in a big way. Finding agreement on why it's booming is a bit more problematic. The issue becomes particularly nettlesome for private cloud adoption, which is either heavily driven by public cloud cost management... or the exact opposite, depending on whom you ask.

Those nice people at RBS have provided me with a worked example for how you can best get through fan-hitting situations without having to take up minicab driving or going to work in local government.

Apple is building in automatic update checking into the next version of Mac OS X – Mountain Lion.

At last, one can rent tens of thousands of cores-worth of HPC teraFLOPS on demand from an HPC cloud.

The Ethiopian government has refuted reports that anyone caught using Skype in the country will go to jail. It insists the claims publicised by western media are completely groundless.

Integrator 2e2 recorded steep losses in calendar 2011 caused by crippling interest repayments, discontinued operations and restructuring costs, but despite all this, some progress was made in the underlying operations.

Suffer from excessively sweaty palms when you're gaming on your PC? Accessory maker Thermaltake has a - rather bizarre, IMHO - answer: a mouse with its own tiny clip-on fan.

Stratfor has agreed to forgo $1.75m in income to settle a class action lawsuit arising from a high-profile hack by hacktivist group Anonymous against the global intelligence firm's systems last December.

Apple has been credited with the first smartphone, with creating the mobile application business and pioneering touch interfacing. None of these things are true: but actually the launch of the iPhone, five years ago, was a much bigger revolution than that.

UpdateThe employees at the Global Technology Services unit of Big Blue got some unwelcome but probably not unexpected news that there would not be a broad-based salary increase at the unit this year. There are also reports that IBM has frozen salaries of higher-level executives across the company, which the company has not confirmed.

The forthcoming mega IT Hardware & Services public sector framework is expected to yield savings of £6.5m this year, according to Government Procurement Services (GPS).

Capita IT Services staff waiting to hear if they have a future at the integrator-cum-reseller have been invited to attend a photo shoot to be used in marketing material.

You think phones are for making calls? No longer, if a poll conducted by O2 is anything to go by. Talking to people is not even in the top three activities folk spend most time doing on their handsets.

Even though the DNSChanger safety net deadline expires in just two weeks, 12 per cent of Fortune 500 firms still have at least one infected machine on their network, according to a new survey.

Security researchers have intercepted a Mac-based Trojan attack targeting Uyghur human rights activists.

Bob Mansfield, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, has announced his retirement from the company after 13 years in situ, and it seems he's also walking away from tens of millions in unclaimed share options.

Researchers in Texas have discovered a way to break down the components of a battery into liquid form and paint power cells onto everyday objects.