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Articles about Pr Man
Pope's PR says Vatican in grip of WikiLeaks-style scandal
The Pope's top PR man has declared that the Vatican is in the midst of its own "WikiLeaks" scandal after a flurry of confidential Papal documents were fed to the media by apparently disgruntled cardinals.
The leaks have ranged from documents covering allegedly murky operations at the Vatican bank, to an investigation into a …
Distributing Microsoft gear in UK? You might not be for much longer
Microsoft has put out to tender its UK distribution contracts in a bid to ascertain if those already on board can be trusted to take the new services and device mantra to market.
Seven UK wholesalers were forced to submit responses to an "enormous" Request For Proposal by 10 October and will be sitting on their hands for a month …
Fujitsu on hunt for UK directors after re-jig
Fujitsu is in headhunting mode to fill some senior positions in the UK following a revamp of the company structure, El Chan can reveal.
The local big boss Duncan Tate is moving to head up the EMEA and India regions but will continue to look after Blighty until a successor is found, the company confirmed.
"We still have the UK …
Acer writes off MEELLIONS again, scraps raw materials
Beleaguered PC maker Acer is back in the red again after scrapping millions of pounds worth of raw materials inventory as the first move to "dig" itself out of a deepening hole.
With a new broom on board - the latest CEO Jason Chen was plonked into the top job back in December - operating under the gaze of founder and returning …
EasyJet website crashes and burns
Barrel-scraping orange airline easyJet is apologising to customers over a "technical" error that has brought down its website worldwide, preventing punters from booking flights or checking in online.
The easyjet.com site has been down for several hours with the firm taking to Twitter to 'fess up to the unspecified gremlins …
Royal Mail FAIL as web brokerage Hargreaves Lansdown struggles with investor demand
Online share brokerage Hargreaves Lansdown is still struggling to cope with the massive spike in Royal Mail share dealing that brought down its trading portal this morning.
The company's Oracle-based infrastructure collapsed 45 minutes after trading began at 8am today, Tom McPhail, a spokesman at HL confirmed to El Reg.
"Demand …
Barclays says soz for titsup website, bank app
Barclays UK has spent this morning on Twitter apologising to customers frustrated by a crashed banking app and online outage that occurred over the past two consecutive days.
The bank turned a day of rest - for most of us anyway - into a stress-fest for its loyal punters who woke up on Sunday morning unable to use the mobile app …
Cough up or else, HMRC tells storage channel biz
Surrey-based storage player Glasshouse Technologies has been slapped with a winding-up petition over unpaid debts from the tax bulldogs at HM Revenue and Customs.
HMRC used to issue these orders like they were going out of fashion because it was first in the queue as a preferential creditor if a business went under as a result …
Is it TRUE what they say about the 'Moto G'? We FIND OUT on the 13th
Google-owned Motorola’s rumoured lower-cost alternative to the top-of-the-range Moto X looks set to arrive in time for Santa to drop it down a few of the world’s chimneys this year.
A suitably seasonal promotion card scanned and then posted on GSM Arena by a punter who claims to have found a batch about to be sent to Phones4u …
Barclays warns freelance techies of DOUBLE DIGIT rate cut
Cost-cutting Barclays has incurred the wrath of all its contractors, including techies, by confirming plans to slash rates by ten per cent from next month.
This is the third cut to IT freelancers in as many years, say our sources, and comes as the business prepares to wave goodbye to up to 12,000 workers worldwide including 7, …
Big customers need a personal servicing, says Big Blue grand fromage
IBM has handed the bulk of its largest corporate hardware customers to channel partners – some 200 accounts – but it is retaining 23 clients who will still get the touchy-feely treatment from its direct sales reps – who comprise half of the unit's sales.
So the crown jewels remain firmly nestled in the bosom of Big Blue, so to …
Dell tried gobbling doomed Brit IT giant 2e2 for £350m, say insiders
Dell narrowly avoided buying Brit IT giant 2e2 before the integrator went titsup, say sources close to the £350m talks.
The negotiations collapsed after 2e2's venture-capital backers Duke Street Capital held out for more. Both sides met across the table a year ago, long before 2e2's UK operations nosedived into administration. A …
Gov tech buyers told to buy from CloudStore first
The Cabinet Office has mandated procurement heads in central government to use the CloudStore first when splashing taxpayers' cash on tech in a bid to kill off old world buying habits.
And despite a faltering start to the G-Cloud programme*, just £1.25m was transacted under the first iteration and a total of £18.6m over the two …
Intermedia's Exchange hive goes titsup ... and no one's answering calls
Intermedia, the world's largest third-party provider of hosted Microsoft Exchange services, today delivered a masterclass in how to mismanage customers' expectations when cloud services crash.
Hordes of angry customers on both sides of the Atlantic took to Twitter this afternoon to complain about "issues" with the company's …
I saw aliens at Roswell, claims dead PR man
The public relations officer at the Roswell air base in 1947 has released claims that he saw a crashed spacecraft and the bodies of aliens at the site, despite a lifetime spent denying any such things.
In the affidavit, Lieutenant Walter Haut says the weather balloon was a cover story, and that the real crashed object had been …
HP sacks English employees to bag Scots gov jobs cash
HP will axe workers in Sheffield and shunt their roles to Renfrewshire in Scotland to bag a £7m grant from the Scottish government, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) trade union claims.
It's understood the multimillion-pound grant from the public purse is a reward for boosting local employment.
About a third of support …
PR man falls in love with politician
Pictured here is one of our favourite spin doctors, Mr Chaz Brooks (01483 277711) who bumped into Her Majesty's Leader of the Opposition at a heliport in London. His first words to William Hague? "Come fly with me." ®
NHS IT bods 'walk out' in pay row with crashed UK tech giant 2e2
A number of contractors from collapsed UK tech giant 2e2 refused to turn up for work in NHS IT today after their January pay was withheld, it is claimed.
Debt-crippled 2e2 Group went into administration this week and put staff wages under "review", but its new handlers assured health service bosses that hospitals are a top …
Plans for special police-run ICT firm to firm up this month
Home Office Minister Theresa May is set to finally add some colour to the plans she sketched out last year over the creation of a police ICT company, the department has confirmed.
The way IT is procured and managed by the boys in blue was criticised by May last summer for being "confused, fragmented and expensive" and a firm, …
Resellers smack down Microsoft's 'single-digit' price rise claim
Microsoft says that a planned overhaul of volume licensing pricing due in the summer will be capped at single digit percentage rises.
Redmond said that Open, Select and Select Plus agreements struck in the UK after 1 July would be aligned to euro prices and charged based on the exchange rate with sterling.
"Based on the …
Zuckerberg advises UK.gov on using Facebook
The culture secretary Jeremy Hunt today met Facebook's main node Mark Zuckerberg.
The young CEO is in London for a developer conference, and took the opportunity to press the government to use Facebook more in its decision-making.
"Really smart guy with some good ideas on improvement [sic] digital engagement in policy making," …
Microsoft skewers Google's anti-Android conspiracy claim
Microsoft has hit back at Google's claim that Redmond teamed with Apple and Oracle in some sort of patent conspiracy against Android, revealing that it offered Google the opportunity to join a bid for Novell's patent portfolio, and producing an email in which a Google general counsel declines the offer.
On Wednesday, Google …
Virgin Media begins 100Mb upgrades
Virgin Media today said it will begin increasing the maximum downstream broadband speed available via its network to 100Mbit/s, and maximum upload speed to 10Mbit/s.
The gradual programme will take more than 18 months to cover the country, it said, and is due for completion in mid-2012. The first areas scheduled for upgrade, in …
MS wields price cutlass at Chinese pirates
Microsoft has slashed the retail price of its Office 2007 suite in China by over 70 per cent for versions to counter widespread piracy in the country.
The software giant has cut the selling price for Office 2007 Home and Student Edition to 199 yuan ($29) from 699 yuan ($102) as a special promotional offer that kicked off on …
Tories swallow Web 2.0, spit out £1m crowdsource prize
The Tories are waving a £1m taxpayer-funded crowdsourcing prize under the noses of developers to produce a website that can "harness the wisdom" of voters to "resolve difficult policy challenges".
According to shadow culture secretary and ex-tech PR man Jeremy Hunt, the prize money would be paid for out of Cabinet Office coffers …
Tories would scrap 50p broadband tax
A Conservative government would scrap the planned 50 pence per month tax on every landline - which the current government plans to use to subsidise faster broadband in rural regions - "as soon as possible", according to the shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.
The levy hasn't yet been implemented but is a cornerstone of the …
Google Spanner — instamatic redundancy for 10 million servers?
Google’s massively global infrastructure now employs a proprietary system that automatically moves and replicates loads between its mega data centers when traffic and hardware issues arise.
The distributed technology was first hinted at — in classically coy Google fashion — during a conference this summer, and Google fellow Jeff …
Kiwis go all black over copyright enforcement laws
Filesharers have deployed the ultimate weapon on the Antipodean front in their global copyright battle with the music and film industries: Twitter*.
New Zealand is on the verge of enacting laws to curb illegal filesharing. ISPs will be compelled to introduce policies that could lead to disconnection from the internet for repeat …
Reg reader in exploding phone charger drama
An angry Register reader has told how his Sony Ericsson CST-20 charger exploded on Monday night, spraying the room with shrapnel. Swindon man Scott Wichall said the lid of the smoking unit flew across the kitchen, striking his three-year-old son Kieran square in the chest.
Kieran was “very scared” by the incident. Scott had …
Google Caffeine: What it really is
As it invites the world to play in a mysterious sandbox it likes to call "Caffeine," Google is testing more than just a "next-generation" search infrastructure. It's testing at least a portion of a revamped software architecture that will likely underpin all of its online applications for years to come.
Speaking with The Reg, …
Phorm CEO clashes with Berners-Lee at Parliament
An exasperated Kent Ertugrul took on Sir Tim Berners-Lee in a tense encounter at a discussion on internet privacy at the Houses of Parliament today.
The Phorm CEO was in the audience at a packed event sponsored by the Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Miller and organised by the privacy activist website NoDPI.org.
Fellow peers, …
Web flotation will be absolutely fabulous, sweetie
The man who ran the firm that inspired cult comedy Absolutely Fabulous plans to float his Internet company on the stock market. The former MD of Lynne Franks PR, Graham Goodkind, aims to raise £5 million for his latest venture, Funmail, according to today’s Times newspaper. The flotation, tipped to take place on the Alternative …
Cyber Patrol bans The Register
We are officially irresponsible. Surfcontrol, the Internet filtering company, has, for some reason, put us on its CyberNOT list - which means that those using CyberPatrol won't be able to see us (or even this story).
Don't believe us? Look here.
We have a few questions. The first would have to be: why? We write about IT, for …
WAPit's scrapped it
Top WAP portal and app developer WAPit has filed for bankruptcy after failing to get a second round of financing.
The Finnish company was set up in 1998 and was a main force behind open source WAP, gateways and middleware. Its products will live on in other products but WAPit itself and a range of talented staff are out the …
Anand twiddles with GeForce2 Pro
Anand gets his teeth into Nvidia's GeForce2 Pro. Faster than a GTS and cheaper than an Ultra, but is it any good? Well, the conclusion isn't snappy, but can best be summed up in the sentence: yes, but we probably won't buy it. Go here for the rest.
The Sharky boys don their tech support hats and put together a guide to CPU …
3dfx and Nvidia's public flame war
We've said it before, but ain't it great when you're reminded that businesses are run by real people with real prejudices and flaws? This one's a treat and was played out on Glide Underground.
Nvidia and 3dfx are getting increasingly uptight with each other. They were neck and neck once, but Nvidia is now storming ahead ( …
Designing intelligent petitions too taxing for Brits
Tony Blair has his finger on the button and is preparing to fire. Fortunately, there are no weapons of mass destruction, only emails of mass dissemination, as New Labour preps a reply to the 1.5 million people who don't want road tax priced by the mile:
Re: Blair ready to spam Britain ...and what will happen to the No. 10 …
Virgin goes down on clients
Following Barclays' cock-up yesterday, we were surprised to discover that Virgin customers have been unable to access their online accounts since this morning. Has it been the victim of a bank-hating hacker? Has it pulled its service ASAP following a security breach?
That's the problem with media hype. Suddenly if the cashier …
Bring on the Little Guys
Later we cruised around Las Vegas. Williams and I tried to find ways to scare Jason. It all came to an end when Williams drove up on the sidewalk and then hit the breaks. The car slid to a stop and Williams screamed, "let's kill some pedestrians!" As people scurried away, Williams muttered, "these people have no idea who I am …
HP's 'ethics' chief emerges as spy scandal star
On September 6 - Carly Fiorina's birthday - investigators involved in the HP spy scandal could hear the butcher's footsteps. Quite a few people would be sacrificed because of the public relations mess, and those closest to the probe would likely be cut across the neck first.
"We are being hung out to dry, the politics, smokes, …
Pervert! You're using the Internet
Guy Kewney is probably the UK's best-known computer journalist. He has his own site, our news partner, the marvellous Newswireless.Net.
Here's a small coincidence for you. Microsoft is going to charge users for mobile MSN mail, and is going (try to) to charge other Instant Messaging systems a royalty for access to MSN Instant …
Sex and Trade
The limo rolled up to the Casino and Frank opened my door and grinned. When I got out I had to step around a punk with blue hair wearing a woman's leopard-print shirt. He was screaming and crying and his legs bent as he sagged against his girlfriend. She slapped his face. "Get with it!" she snarled.
Later in a conference called …
ICANN Blog: Fear and redemption
I’m in Luxembourg attending the 23rd ICANN conference in a big tin can in the sun.
I spoke to someone from the outside world last night and was surprised to find I’d only been here two days. After another day in the can, I may have to call them back to make sure it’s now only three.
How could I have written two blogs and not …
The bizarre world of Patrick Byrne's Overstock
The SCO Group and Senator Hatch aren't the only strange things you'll find in the beautiful state of Utah.
Take Overstock, whose CEO Patrick Byrne has held calls with financial analysts in which he delved into his sexuality and experiences with cocaine, in the midst of a tirade on how a cabal led by a "Sith Lord" was out to …
Get your new global domain names here
A start-up company, New.net, is offering Internet users the chance to register one of 24 new global domain names, including many that were dismissed by ICANN in its recent review, like .kids, .shop and .xxx.
The news has been greeted with tremendous enthusiasm by the Internet community who are tired of ICANN's inactivity …
Games review StarLancer
Following the popularity of a recent games story, we have decided in our wisdom to cover more gaming news. We made the mistake of telling this to a Microsoft PR man and three games arrived in the post the next day.
It seems only fair then to write a review. StarLancer was the only one that didn't require us to install M$'s …
