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BBC releases MYSTERY RIDDLE poster for Doctor Who anniversary episode
Pic The BBC has released a teaser image for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, which will be a feature-length episode called The Day of the Doctor.
Doctor Who 50th Anniversary episode poster. Credit: BBC (click to enlarge)
The pic is full of clues about the episode, showing two damaged Daleks, the Tenth, Eleventh and "X" …
IBM offloads customer services biz for half a BEELLION DOLLARS
IBM is planning to outsource its Business Process Outsourcing customer services after last night confirming plans to offload the unit to US tech distie and BPO player Synnex for $505m.
Under the terms of the deal, Synnex will cough $430m in cash and $75m in stock to take on 45,000 soon-to-be-ex IBMers operating across a network …
Tell me why I don't like Moon days: Bob Geldof heads into SPAAACE
Sir Bob Geldof has dubbed himself the "first rock astronaut" after confirming that he'll be on a trip to space in 2015 with the Space Expedition Corporation.
Bob Geldof
The Boomtown Rat said he was given the chance to go on the trip after his band agreed to perform at a charity ball where further flights on the same trip will …
HP dumped from Dow Jones Industrial Average
Hewlett-Packard may still pull more than a hundred billion dollars a year through the door, but that's no longer enough for the company to win a place on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, (DJIA) the venerable and prestigious basket of 30 stocks held to represent a vital sample of American listed companies.
HP's removal from the …
Alibaba stands firm against Hong Kong exchange over IPO
Chinese tech biz Alibaba has revealed details of its internal partnership structure, which would allow a group of founders and senior employees to keep control over the board after the company goes public.
Founder Jack Ma spilled the details in an email to employees, according to Reuters, adding to pressure on Hong Kong to …
CSC boss post-NHS IT flop, Ford CEO 'pitched' as the next Steve Ballmer
Three top Microsoft shareholders have apparently recommended the CEOs of car-maker Ford and IT giant CSC as possible replacements for chief exec Steve Ballmer - because both bosses are in the middle of trying to turn around their companies' fortunes.
It's claimed the three investors want the Microsoft board to consider Ford …
We made the iPhones, now we want OUR 'UNPAID' WAGES – student Pegatron toilers
A group of Chinese student workers who have been making iPhones in a Shanghai factory have claimed Apple manufacturer Pegatron owes them unpaid wages – and say they want their cash back.
The students handed a list of their grievances to China Labor Watch, which has released a report today making a series of allegations about the …
Twitter to buy ad exchange as it edges closer to IPO
Twitter plans to spend a reported $300m on MoPub - a mobile ad exchange.
The micro-blogging company announced its intentions in a blog post yesterday. The proposed acquisition strongly hints that Twitter is taking a step closer to floating on Wall Street next year.
It said:
The two major trends in the ad world right now are …
Facebook tramples Twitter's turf with media-friendly tracking
Facebook is adding a couple of APIs that will let certain media organizations track what's trending on the social network.
Certain media partners, such as Buzzfeed, CNN, NBC's Today Show, BSkyB, and Slate (as well as social media marketing firm Mass Relevance) will be getting access to a Public Feed API that allows them to see a …
ICAHN'T with this guy: Activist investor gives up battle with Big Mike
Activist investor Carl Icahn has announced that he and his partner Southeastern Asset Management are giving up the fight to stop Michael Dell from taking the PC maker private.
Icahn said in an open letter to shareholders that he still thought that Big Mike's $13.88 per share offer for the firm undervalued it, but had decided …
The bank that likes to say... crash: TSB's online banking goes titsup on launch day
The newly single Trustee Savings Banks (TSB) has been hit with major website problems on the first day of its split from Lloyds.
The two banks are pulling apart ahead of the sale of TSB, which the European Commission set out as a precondition before the government bail-out of Lloyds during the banking crisis.
Some five million …
Brit online property bazaar Zoopla ponders BILLION-pound flotation
British online property portal Zoopla is reportedly considering a stock market listing that could value it at £1.3bn.
The UK's second-biggest property search website by page views is looking for new ways to compete with its main rival, Rightmove, and has appointed investment bank Credit Suisse to help it assess its strategy.
" …
BING! Microsoft plants Xbox Music flagpoles in Android and iOS
Xbox Music is one of Microsoft's best kept secrets - ubiquitous on Microsoft's own consoles but poorly promoted, even on Microsoft Windows Phone devices. But on the eve of the iTunes Radio rollout, Redmond has woken up and remembered that it exists.
The streaming service formerly known as Zune Pass has finally sprouted native …
Deutsche Telekom: We don't need no steenkin' set tops
IFA 2013 One of the big pieces of news from the IFA in Berlin came out of Deutsche Telekom’s network day, where it showed its progress so far in its search for a set-top-free IPTV world.
Deutsche is one of Europe’s leading pay TV players and looks ready to adopt the "cloud" for TV.
It has been looking into what it calls "virtualisation …
Don't tell the D-G! BBC-funded study says Beeb is 'too right wing'
A study funded by the BBC into editorial bias has concluded that it isn't Left Wing enough: it's too friendly to business, and far too hostile to the European Union.
The "voice of the licence-fee payer", the BBC Trust, commissioned the study, and gave the job to academic Mike Berry of the Glasgow Media Group - the latter a Dave …
UK investor throws £14.8m at firm that makes UNFORGEABLE 2-cent labels
UK investment house Invesco has acquired 13 per cent of Norway's ThinFilm, just as the company prepares to launch its first printed product, which it tells us will cost almost two cents.
The investment gives Invesco 56 million shares in ThinFilm, which amounts to 13.3 per cent of the company, but this should provide the …
Cash-bleeding Overland: A healthy BYOD brings a sound mind
Overland Storage announced its usual loss-making quarterly results but said it was going full tilt into giving BYOD and smart mobile device owners full access to enterprise apps no matter their size. CEO Eric Kelly has now become chairman of its Canadian partner, Sphere 3D, which provides the virtualisation wizardry needed for …
Finns, roamers, Nokia: So long, and thanks for all the phones
Special Report Finns are in mourning this week after Nokia has sold its mobile phones unit to Microsoft: a decision that weirdly seems both inevitable and shocking at the same time.
But they should be proud, for Nokia had an incredible 15-year run at the top of an entirely new industry, making stalwarts like Motorola and neighbours Ericsson …
New! Yahoo! logo! shows! Marissa! Meyer's! personal! touch!
After 18 years the Yahoo! logo has had a redesign, courtesy of newish boss Marissa Mayer and her team, who spent a weekend hammering out the new look for the company.
New Yahoo! logo Behold Marissa's new creation!
"On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator," Mayer wrote on …
Mail.ru says 'да' to half a BILLION dollars, flogs its 14m Facebook shares
Russian internet giant Mail.ru has gotten rid of the last of its Facebook shares, making over $525m.
The company originally invested $200m in Facebook in 2009 and had a stake worth around $700m just before the social network went public last year. Mail.ru sold off some of its stock in the IPO and said it had let the remaining 14 …
Microsoft, Nokia and the sound of colliding garbage trucks
Opinion History, it is said, doesn't repeat itself – there are merely echoes through time. Listening to Microsoft's $7.1bn purchase of Nokia's phone and services, you'd have certainly heard an echo – the distant grinding noise of two colliding garbage trucks reverberating down the years.
The phrase "the sound of two garbage trucks …
Arbor slurps Packetloop
Packetloop, a two-year-old Australian security analytics outfit whose claim to fame is a threat engine that can visualise terabytes of packet captures, has been slurped by US-based Arbor Networks.
Announcing the purchase, Arbor says it intends to keep Packetloop's Sydney HQ alive and will add dozen staff to its Australian …
LinkedIn looks at bank account, thinks: We'll raise one Instagram*
LinkedIn says it will sell off an extra $1bn worth of stock to raise funds to buy new systems, tout better services and potentially snap up other firms.
The social network for the gainfully employed hasn't said when it expects the sale to take place. The website had around $900m in cash and short-term investments as of the end …
The only thing holding Dell back is ... er, Mickey D himself
Blocks and Files Uncertainty abounds at Dell's Texas HQ as Michael Dell struggles to take the company private. Sources keep whispering that there's a "plan" in the offing – but what is that plan?
My personal prediction – reading the tea leaves at the bottom of the Dell teacup – is that the deeply fractured organisation wants to dance with the …
Shareholders' advisors back Big Mike's deal to take Dell private
Dell continues to insist that founder Big Mike's offer to take the firm private is what's best for it, announcing today that proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), Glass Lewis and Egan Jones are all recommending it.
“We are pleased that all three of the nation’s leading proxy advisory firms have …
China, India the key to Micr-okia's fate says IDC
The mega-markets of China and India, and more broadly the rest of the Asia Pacific region, will be key to Microsoft’s success in the handset space with its newly acquired Nokia assets, according to analyst IDC.
China is the number one market for Lumia shipments, with India in second, Vietnam in eighth and Thailand tenth globally …
Microsoft's $7.1bn Nokia gobble: Why you should expect the unexpected
Analysis With Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s mobile business for $7.1bn, the Redmond software giant has finally become a phone and device maker.
The deal gives Microsoft Nokia’s global handset engineering, manufacturing, sales and distribution business; the family of Windows-Phone-powered Lumia smartphones; a war chest of 8,500 Lumia …
'WTF! MORONS!' Yahoo! Groups! redesign! traumatises! users!
Yahoo! has told thousands of users who are complaining about the Purple Palace's pisspoor redesign of its Groups service that it will not be rolled back to the old format - despite a huge outcry.
The Marissa Mayer-run company revamped Yahoo! Groups last week, but it was immediately inundated with unhappy netizens who grumbled …
Microsoft - do you really think you can take on Google with Nokia?
Blocks and Files Microsoft's purchase of Nokia's phones business – which outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer has since described as a way for Redmond "to accelerate" – appears to be an attempt to add another weapon to its anti-Google arsenal.
Ballmer is quoted as saying: "By the early part of this year it was clear to me that perhaps acquisition would be …
Torched £30 server switch costs phone firm millions in lost sales
At the BCS CMSG conference in London earlier this year, Unisys CM manager Michel Delran spoke about how to design and implement a successful configuration management process and how a configuration management database can save you millions.
He began with the real-life cautionary tale of a phone company which lost millions as a …
Vodafone, can you get a signal at the top of your $130bn Verizon cash pile?
Verizon will buy out its UK partner Vodafone from their US joint-venture Verizon Wireless for $130bn, as expected.
But rather than pocketing or spending the cash after years of negotiations, Voda will hand most of it over to its shareholders and nothing at all to the UK taxman.
The deal - one of the biggest in corporate history …
Microsoft's Nokia plan: WHACK APPLE AND GOOGLE
Microsoft has posted the presentation it's used to explain its decision to acquire Nokia's mobile phone business and it reveals the key reason for the acquisition: hitting back at Apple and Google.
The presentation is available as a PDF or a slow HTML slideshow here and gets interesting at slide 15, depicted below.
Slide 15 in …
Microsoft buys Nokia's mobile business
Updated Microsoft has announced it is buying Nokia's mobile devices and services business.
Revealed in a flurry of press releases in the small hours of Tuesday, the deal will see Microsoft “pay EUR 3.79 billion to purchase substantially all of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, and EUR 1.65 billion to license Nokia’s patents, for a …
Science fiction titan Frederik Pohl dies, aged 93
Science fiction Grand Master Frederik Pohl has died, aged 93.
Pohl was one of last survivors of Science Fiction's “golden age” of the late 1930s and early 1940s, a time when he contributed to and edited pulp fiction magazines. He was also an important figure in the emergence of fandom, founding the “Futurians”.
A contemporary …
World+dog left counting costs: Still can't bury corpse of titsup Brit IT giant 2e2
The administrator of deceased 2e2 appears to have made slow progress in collecting book debts, with tens of millions still outstanding months after the integrator-cum-reseller failed.
The latest progress report filed at Companies House today revealed that JP Associates (JPA), previously hired by 2e2 administrator FTI Consulting …
Sage 50 activation blackout: Shops sent back to paper age
New and existing retail customers of the Sage 50 online accounting service were left in the lurch following a “massive” server outage last week.
Shops installing new versions of the Sage 50 accounts software or upgrading their existing accounts were unable to register their serial numbers or activation keys for the new systems …
Lenovo chief Yang wangs hefty bonus wodge to workers
Yang Yuanqing, CEO of the world's largest PC maker, Lenovo, plans to share a portion of his whacking great bonus with staffers for the second year in a row following bumper sales figures.
A pool of 10,000 workers out of the firm's more than 30,000 employees will each be given a piece of the $3.25m portion of Yuanqing's bonus, …
It's not the data you have, it's what you do with it
Companies may “miss out on gaining business advantage because of failure to optimise stored data”, according to a survey conducted on behalf of Computacenter in June 2013.
About 60 per cent of companies find it hard to analyse the information stored on their systems. While they may be able to cope with the volume and velocity of …
Top Twitter lawyer quits micro-blogging site ahead of IPO
Twitter's general counsel Alex MacGillivray has quit his job as top lawyer at the micro-blogging site.
He will continue to advise the company, which is widely expected to float on Wall Street next year.
Vijaya Gadde, who most recently managed Twitter's corporate and international legal business and previously worked at Juniper …
Vodafone and Verizon update relationship status: $130bn worth of complicated
Vodafone has confirmed it is in "advanced talks" with Verizon, which has agreed to pay $130bn to buy out its UK partner - and has apparently found a way to avoid paying tax on the windfall too.
Tax has been the stumbling block to previous deals. Vodafone has made good money on its Verizon investment – it currently owns 45 per …
'World's worst director' plans Snowden-inspired movie comedy
Uwe Boll, the recipient of a lifetime Razzie award who has been called “the world's worst director” has taken to Kickstarter to fund a political comedy movie inspired by Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
The German director, most famous for making terrible films out of video games like BloodRayne and Far Cry, wants to use the …
Microsoft cedes board seat to activist investor
Just a week after Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer announced plans for his retirement Redmond has offered activist shareholder ValueAct Capital a seat on the Microsoft board.
Redmond announced the "cooperation agreement" in the late hours of Friday afternoon in San Francisco before the Labor Day three day weekend, which is an ideal …
