happygeek in a Nutshell
I am a freelance technology journalist from England, and have been for fast approaching 20 years now. For 14 of them I have enjoyed being Contributing Editor with PC Pro magazine, the biggest selling monthly IT publication in the UK.
Currently, I hold the title of Information Security Journalist of the Year (2008) an award that I also was fortunate enough to win in 2006 as well. Other awards include Best Information Security News Story (2008) for a DaniWeb piece about TomTom satnav Trojans, Best IT Security Feature (2008) and (2007), as well as Technology Journalist of the Year back in 1996. All of the above being UK based awards, I hasten to add.
My latest book 'Being Virtual' was published by Wiley, in conjunction with the Science Museum in London, during May 2008.
Currently, I hold the title of Information Security Journalist of the Year (2008) an award that I also was fortunate enough to win in 2006 as well. Other awards include Best Information Security News Story (2008) for a DaniWeb piece about TomTom satnav Trojans, Best IT Security Feature (2008) and (2007), as well as Technology Journalist of the Year back in 1996. All of the above being UK based awards, I hasten to add.
My latest book 'Being Virtual' was published by Wiley, in conjunction with the Science Museum in London, during May 2008.
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Although Google itself refuses to budge from the official company line of confirming or denying nothing, it looks increasingly likely that a Googlephone is in the offing. Several sources are now claiming that prototype phone devices have been touted around the US mobile carriers in recent weeks... (Read More)
Featured Aug 4th, 2007
Legality prides itself as being the first virtual law firm in the UK, having set up in business some five years ago now. So it seems fitting that it should be providing advice to those businesses looking to set up shop in the daddy of virtual worlds, Second Life.
Now I appreciate that this is... (Read More)
Featured Aug 3rd, 2007
Remember Lonelygirl15? If you have ever been anywhere near YouTube then the chances are the answer is oh yes, or more likely oh no. This was the supposed video diary of a teenager on the run that resonated with intrigued, and often concerned, viewers around the globe. A total of 60 million hits on... (Read More)
Featured Jul 30th, 2007
The first interesting missive to arrive in my inbox came courtesy of the words of Microsoft COO, Kevin Turner, speaking at the July 26th Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2007. Turner decided to focus his attention on Vista security, rolling out the usual 'most secure Windows operating system... (Read More)
Featured Jul 29th, 2007
Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker has admitted that Thunderbird is to be booted out of the Mozilla camp in order to allow “the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny” apparently. Put through my patented BS translator this produced “Thunderbird brings us no revenue, gets a bad press... (Read More)
Featured Jul 28th, 2007
If you were to just take weekly media reports and monthly security researcher statistics as your metric, then I suspect it would be a safe bet to suggest that you would say software security vulnerabilities are on a steep upwards curve. Furthermore, it is just as likely that given the media... (Read More)
Featured Jul 27th, 2007
In what could prove to be of major importance to the future of motherboard and component data transfer rates, the Photonics Technology Lab at Intel has announced a silicon laser modulator that can encode data at 40Gb/sec.
According to Dr. Ansheng Liu, Principal Engineer with the Intel Corporate... (Read More)
Featured Jul 26th, 2007
Twenty years ago the hard drives I recall using might not have been fast in the data transfer stakes, they were certainly not lithe and sexy pieces of hardware and I prefer not to think how much I actually paid for a large and clunky bit of kit to store hardly any data at all. One thing they did... (Read More)
Featured Jul 25th, 2007
Has JK Rowling created a lovable hero or out of control monster in her Harry Potter character? Amazon would probably suggest the former considering that it has just announced, with no surprises whatsoever, that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has become the 'largest single-product distribution... (Read More)
Featured Jul 24th, 2007
Having returned from a pleasant family vacation where the main topic of conversation was a huge tanker being split in two by controlled explosions off the East Devon coast in England, it was nice to get back to reality and discover the nerdfest surrounding how much power could be saved globally if... (Read More)
Featured Jul 23rd, 2007
No less than three critical vulnerabilities have been identified by Adobe affecting upon users of Flash Player 9.0.45.0 and earlier, 8.0.34.0 and earlier, and 7.0.69.0 and earlier.
The cross-platform problem refers to an input validation error that could, potentially, lead to arbitrary code... (Read More)
Featured Jul 13th, 2007
Could we be on the verge of seeing the end of that spam scourge known as the pump and dump scheme? You know the drill, an email arrives urging you to invest in some little known penny stock and beat the experts to the punch. Nice one son, get your own back on those greedy stock broker types, that... (Read More)
Featured Jul 11th, 2007
Word has it that the long awaited Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, also known as what Vista would have been if it were released when actually fully tested and ready, could be with us sooner than expected. While most industry commentators have been sticking to the official ‘sometime in the first... (Read More)
Featured Jul 9th, 2007
Romanian security developer BitDefender has issued a warning about a fast spreading Trojan dubbed Spammer.HotLan.A which is using Hotmail and Yahoo accounts to send spam. According to BitDefencer some 15,000 accounts have already been compromised and the situation is likely to get much worse over... (Read More)
Featured Jul 6th, 2007
A British company claims to have developed software which can spot pedophiles online and catch them in the act of ‘grooming’ children in chat rooms and IM sessions. Just as handwriting and voice analysis is used by law enforcement agencies the world over in order to accurately determine age, so... (Read More)
Featured Jul 2nd, 2007
It has always been something of a running joke here in England, where you have to buy a license from the government in order to watch TV (I kid you not, it helps fund the good old BBC), that blind people get a 50 percent reduction on the annual £135 ($271) fee.
Some might say that not being able... (Read More)
Featured Jul 2nd, 2007
Were you one of the many, and the chances are that being a reader of Inside Edge dumps you squarely into the informed geek category (and there really is no offense meant in that remark, says a fellow informed geek), who mourned the passing of promised core parts of Longhorn such as WinFS when Vista... (Read More)
Featured Jun 30th, 2007
Forty three British MPs have backed a House of Commons motion calling for the Duchy of Cornwall estate, owned by Prince Charles, to make its accounts more transparent and the finances of the Prince of Wales clearer. Which is just what might happen following the disclosure that a laptop belonging to... (Read More)
Featured Jun 26th, 2007
According to a posting by someone calling themselves Gabriel, published on the Full Disclosure list (warning – this link contains the so-called plot spoiler), the ending of the yet to be published Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book has been revealed. Not by magic or wizardry, but by good... (Read More)
Featured Jun 24th, 2007
In a rather ironic turn of events, the US Department for Homeland Security has found itself having to admit to Congress that it has been subject to the odd one or two minor security problems in-house.
Well, I say one or two. Actually the figure is more than 800.
Well, I say minor... (Read More)
Featured Jun 22nd, 2007
While there is no doubting that virtualization is not only a technology to watch, but one that will move into the mainstream real soon now, there remains a question of just how soon that will actually be. A new survey by emedia suggests that the timescale for making that move, at least as far as 50... (Read More)
Featured Jun 21st, 2007
A member of Skype staff posting in the Linux support forum there seems to have taken a course in customer relations from <insert your least favourite company here> if his responses to criticism of the lack of real world development of the Linux version of Skype, compared to Windows development, are... (Read More)
Featured Jun 17th, 2007
Who would have thought, before the Nintendo Wii came along, that the idea of controlling a video game by waving a lump of plastic around in the air like a deranged loon would gain such mass appeal so quickly? Which is why I am not writing off the latest thinking in video game control that could be... (Read More)
Featured Jun 17th, 2007
Check Point Software Technologies, developers of the ZoneAlarm security range, has announced the results of research which suggest that half of all staff will happily walk away from employment with competitive information about your business in their pockets. That they are walking straight into... (Read More)
Featured Jun 13th, 2007
Privacy International has accused Google of embarking upon a smear campaign within the media to discredit both PI and a report, to be published in full later in the year, which ranks the privacy performance of the top Internet service companies. The interim results which were published on the 9th... (Read More)
Featured Jun 10th, 2007