Miscellaneous
16 February 2007
Microsoft hit by Vista upgrade workaround ZDNet
An IT professional has discovered a way of getting a full version of Vista for the cost of a simple upgrade
15 February 2007
IT goes green Sydney Morning Herald
As the climate debate heats up IT finds itself part of the problem ... and part of the solution. The inconvenient truth about IT can be found in a simple equation: at the heart of every computer is a machine that sucks in power, and creates information plus heat. The more IT there is in the world, the more power is consumed and heat expelled. It's a basic law of physics.
13 February 2007
Teraflop chip hints at the future BBC
A chip the size of a fingernail and capable of more than a trillion calculations per second is unveiled by Intel.
12 February 2007
New Energy Star ratings for PCs on the way CNet
Standards for energy-efficient PCs are about to take a step forward for the first time in more than a decade.
09 February 2007
us: NY Senator Wants iPods Out of Crosswalks E-Commerce Times
New York pedestrians could find themselves on the wrong side of the law just for crossing the street while chatting on a cell phone or listening to an iPod if state Senator Carl Kruger gets his way. The New York lawmaker plans to introduce legislation to make it illegal to use portable electronic devices such as a BlackBerry or PlayStation Portable game console while crossing the street. The legislation comes after the deaths of two pedestrians in Sen. Kruger's Brooklyn district within the past five months.
06 February 2007
I hate Macs The Guardian
Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark - unless you have been doing that, you surely can't have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. ... I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.
Google profits double to $3bn The Guardian
Google saw its profits rocket by 110% to $3.07bn last year as the company extended its dominance in guiding people around cyberspace.
05 February 2007
Mobile giants plot secret rival to Google The Daily Telegraph
Europe's biggest telecoms groups are aiming to create a mobile phone search engine that could challenge Yahoo! and Google, the US giants. Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and one American network, Cingular, are among the companies that will come together for secret, high-level talks at the mobile industry's biggest annual trade show in Barcelona next week.
30 January 2007
Firms helped to make PCs greener BBC
A single PC left on overnight and at weekends racks up an annual electricity bill of £53. In addition a typical PC left on for 24 hours a day, 220 days of the year, is responsible for up to a tonne of CO2 over a 3-year period.
More energy-efficient computers on the horizon International Herald Tribune
Prodded by fears of global warming and surging electric bills, corporate computer users are demanding more energy-efficient machines, and the U.S. government is preparing to issue tough new standards for greener machines.
Mobiles linked to tumours Sydney Morning Herald
Long-term mobile phone users are more likely to develop a particular type of brain tumour on the side of the head where they hold their handsets, research suggests.
Wikipedia, you are the strongest link The Observer
John Naughton of The Observer examines the loop between Wikipedia and the major search engines and asks whether the encyclopedia is now as dominant as Google: There are two kinds of people in the world - those who think Wikipedia is amazing, wonderful, or inspiring; and those who simply cannot understand how a reference work compiled by thousands of 'amateurs' (and capable of being edited by any Tom, Dick or Harry) should be taken seriously. Brisk, vigorous and enjoyable arguments rage between these two camps, and provide useful diversion on long winter evenings.
26 January 2007
Firms helped to make PCs greener BBC
The Green Advisory Service has been launched to help businesses reduce the carbon footprint left by PCs and other equipment. Its research found that a single PC left on overnight and at weekends racks up an annual electricity bill of £53. In addition a typical PC left on for 24 hours a day, 220 days of the year, is responsible for up to a tonne of CO2 over a 3-year period.
25 January 2007
Vista to play second fiddle to XP until 2009: Gartner IT Wire
Windows XP will continue to reign supreme, while Vista will have scant market share until 2009, according to new projections from technology research group Gartner. According to Gartner, Vista is just catching up to Mac OS X in the consumer space but will make steady progress as the years roll by.
22 January 2007
Father of internet warns against Net Neutrality The Register
Robert Kahn, the most senior figure in the development of the internet, has delivered a strong warning against "Net Neutrality" legislation. Speaking to an audience at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California at an event held in his honour, Kahn warned against legislation that inhibited experimentation and innovation where it was needed.
Peaks, valleys and vistas: Microsoft The Economist
The launch of a new version of Microsoft Windows, called Vista, is not quite the event it used to be. Has the software giant reached the pinnacle of its power?
An end to that blue screen of death? Microsoft's latest upgrades should make PC users happier The Economist
It is an old chestnut, but a telling one: if carmakers built vehicles as Microsoft produces software, they would come in only one colour, the dashboard would be incomprehensible and they would crash a lot. Microsoft's latest products mean that its users should no longer double as crash-test dummies.
ITU: Voice Revenues in the Telecommunications ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog
The ITU workshop The Future of Voice held on the 15th and 16th of January 2007 in Geneva, Switzerland looked, inter alia, at the voice traffic and revenue trends in the last fifteen years. On the global level, local and national long-distance reported telephone minutes per capita were growing in the 1990s and stably falling since the beginning of the new decade. A notable exception of the general rule is the US experiencing continuous growth in the number of local minutes: in 15 years, the number of local minutes per capita has grown four-fold. The international outgoing traffic grew significantly over the last fifteen years: in the Republic of Korea, in 2005 it was 15 times more intensive than in 1990, in the US - five times. Even though, since the beginning of the new century, the international voice traffic tends to slowly decrease.
15 January 2007
Convergence is at present a key factor in developments underlying electronic communications OECD
Almost any type of content can be converted into a digital form and then exchanged over the Internet, via fixed or mobile connections and using multiple platforms and terminal devices. This has had, and is expected to continue to have, a major effect on electronic communication markets. Telecommunication operators, in effect, have become content providers, broadcasters offer Internet services and network providers provide multiple-play services.
10 January 2007
Apple's 'magical' iPhone unveiled BBC
Apple has confirmed its move into the telecoms industry, unveiling the long-awaited iPhone. Users will be able to download music and videos with the phone.
09 January 2007
At electronics show in Las Vegas, covergence grabs the spotlight International Herald Tribune
Technology companies unveiled new offerings at the International Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas on Monday that highlighted the convergence of mobile devices, media and the Internet.
07 January 2007
us: Sex sells - just not as fast International Herald Tribune
The sex-related entertainment industry's leading performers, owners and fans gather in Las Vegas for three conferences starting next week amid indications that the robust growth of pornography since it came out from behind the counter in the 1970s is slowing.
Germany quits search engine project International Herald Tribune
The German government confirmed Tuesday that it had decided to opt out of a multimillion-euro research effort to build a European search engine that would compete with Google, in what one participant described as a disagreement with France over the basic design of the project.
Internet infrastructure 'too fragile' Sydney Morning Herald
The chaos in Asia's internet service sparked by an undersea earthquake shows the network is too fragile, industry observers say.
28 December 2006
Founder of Wikipedia plans search engine to rival Google The Times
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, is set to launch an internet search engine with amazon.com that he hopes will become a rival to Google and Yahoo!
