Posts by newsguy

McAfee has today announced that it has launched a Cybersecurity Expert Council which features security experts from some of the largest companies in the world, including the likes of BAE Systems, Dell and even NASA.

Apparently the idea is for the CEC to provide what McAfee refers to as "real-world experience" in order to support its own research. So there will be an organisation loosely composed of between 50 and 100 globally recognised authorities who will review McAfee research studies in order to provide analysis, commentary and share best practise ideas.

The announcement coincides withe the publication of a new McAfee research report entitled "Unsecured Economies: Protecting Vital Information" which will be the first that has input from the newly formed CEC.

“Unsecured Economies: Protecting Vital Information report provides insight on securing intellectual property during these uncertain times,” said Brian Young, Senior Systems and Security Analyst at Adena Health Systems, one of the companies with a position on the CEC, adding “Knowing that our input may help other businesses in similar situations is very satisfying.”

According to the DC Examiner a former contract worker with Fannie Mae has been indicted, and bailed, on charges of computer intrusion. It is alleged that Rajendrasinh Makwana dropped a virus into Fannie Mae software which had the potential to cause millions of dollars worth of damage if it had not been spotted in time. The computer engineer who had worked at Fannie Mae for some three years, had access to all 4000 servers at the company.

Fired on Jan 24th, apparently for changing settings without permission, Makwana is said to have attempted to hide a malicious script in the server software the same day that was coded to execute on January 31st. The script would have disabled the Fannie May monitoring systems and then disable access to all 4000 servers and delete all data. It was only by chance that the code was uncovered as only a total of 20 engineers had access to the server where it resided.

A FBI agent, Jessica Nye, says in her sworn statement that had it worked the total damage "would include cleaning out and restoring all 4,000 of [Fannie Mae’s] servers, restoring and securing the automation of mortgages, and restoring all data that was erased."

If found guilty, Makwana faces a maximum ten years in prison.

"Obviously this case is ongoing, with charges not yet proven against Makwana, but it should serve as a timely reminder to all companies." says Graham Cluley, senior technology …

Apple has updated the iPhone and iTouch software to 2.2.1 with immediate effect. The new software is more a bug fixing patch than being packed with exciting new features. So if you were expecting to get that much waited for cut and paste functionality, for example, you will be disappointed. It will not prevent your iPhone cheating on you, for example, nor can it make the iPhone see through walls.

No doubt you will discover soon enough the joys it brings, as soon as you connect your device to iTunes in fact. However, as long as you are sitting down and do not mind the spoiler, I can reveal it will include: a more stable Safari browsing experience and better display of images saved from email when viewed in the camera roll.

The iPhone Dev Team, though, is advising users of jailbroken or unlocked devices not to update whatever they do as 2.2.1 will, for the moment at least, break yellowsn0w and effectively brick your iPhone.

If past form is anything to go by, a new version which works with 2.2.1 will be available within a day or two so you should not have long to wait.

Apple users opting not to grab a free 30 day demo version iWork 09, or even cough up the bucks for a full retail version, have found themselves getting more than they bargained for. It appears that something in the region of 20,000 people have downloaded a pirated version of iWork 09 which comes complete with something called OSX.Trojan.iServices.A

Yep, it is that rarest of beasts for the usually secure OS: an Apple Trojan.

According to Mac security specialists Intego the newly discovered Trojan poses a serious risk to OSX users. The iWork 09 BitTorrent download will install OK, but will also dump the iWorkService.pkg package onto your Mac which becomes a startup item with read, write and execute permissions for root.

The first thing it then does it let the bad guys know you have installed it by connecting to a remote server, and the bad guys then get control of your Mac. "The risk of infection is serious, and users may face extremely serious consequences if their Macs are accessible to malicious users" Intego says. Although the actual payload is unknown at this time, additional malware downloads to your already infected Mac are a given.

It seems the only 'cure' would be to format the drive and reinstall OSX. Let's hope that this helps get the message across that Macs are not immune to security problems.

Heartland Payment Systems, one of the biggest card payment processors in the US, has been the victim of what could well be the biggest security breach of its kind. Malicious software installed onto the Heartland network could have compromised as many as 100 million transactions according to numerous emerging reports. This would dwarf the TJ Maxx breach which involved details of some 40 million credit card transactions being stolen.

Apparently the hack attack at Heartland was discovered in-house last week and law enforcement agencies notified along with the credit card companies whose customers could become potential victims of the fraud. Data including names and card numbers was compromised, exactly the kind of information needed to clone cards.

Some security experts have accused Heartland of attempting to bury the news of the breach by releasing the news just as US Presidential inauguration hysteria swept the world. Others have expressed doubts as to whether what actually happened here, as regards the detail of how the malware was installed onto what was meant to be a highly secure system, will ever be exposed for public consumption. "It will be interesting to see how this incident pans out. Our best guess is that the software was either installed by a sleeper, a rogue employee working inside the firm who passed the usual vetting procedures, or a direct systems attack followed by the insertion of a custom application on the processor's IT resources," said Rob Rachwald, a director at security specialists …

Apple has had marked success with the 'I'm a Mac' advertising campaigns, and Microsoft is back banging it's head against a seeming brick wall of indifference with the ongoing 'I'm a PC' marketing drive that has featured both Bill Gates and Steve 'Monkey Dancer' Ballmer. Now, it would appear, that the Linux Foundation is feeling left out and so has decided to join in the fun with an 'I'm Linux' advertising run.

As far as I am aware there has never really been a concerted advertising campaign for Linux. That is because it has never needed one, the dedicated fanbois will be screaming at the screen right about now I suspect. Well, maybe. However, if you were to sit back and look at the overall position of Linux in the overall market when compared to either Windows or Mac, then perhaps you might think the reality is that some marketing is long overdue.

Whatever, The Linux Foundation is convinced it is necessary and despite the lack of a budget or a multi-national conglomerate with a marketing department the size of a small African nation to drive it, it has decided to push on and get an advert made.

The key, of course, is those fanbois. So instead of getting an outside agency to come in with something clever and costly, it has opted to do the Linux thing and embrace the community. So what we have is a community contest to …

According to Vik Singh of the Yahoo! BOSS team, the combination of Twitter and BOSS is a real time news search facility that can mash Yahoo news with Twitter topics. What you end up with is the most timely delivery of news you can get, certainly much more so than the likes of even Google News for example.

BOSS, in case it has passed you by, is the Yahoo! open search web services platform and stands for Build your Own Search Service. The idea behind BOSS is simple enough, to foster innovation within the search industry.

If TweetNews is anything to go by, then I would say it is working.

In his announcement, Singh describes it as being a way to boost Yahoo’s freshest news search results by basing them on how similar they are to emerging Twitter topics. This fixes the problem that those original results are not very relevant as they are ordered by timestamp only. Employing Twitter to determine authority for fresh content that is not yet linked is sheer genius.

"Freshness (especially in the context of search) is a challenging problem" Singh admits, continuing "traditional PageRank style algorithms don’t really work here as it takes time for a fresh URL to garner enough links to beat an older high ranking URL."

Gary McKinnon, the British hacker who is still fighting against extradition to the US despite the European Court of Human Rights ruling he should go, has played yet another card in his battle for justice in the UK.

Apparently, lawyers representing McKinnon have told the British Crown Prosecution Service that he would be prepared to plead guilty to offences under the Computer Misuse Act if prosecuted in the UK. This rather than face trial for his crimes, where it is argued he would face lengthy prison time as a consequence of being something of a scapegoat for the authorities there. It has even been suggested he would face a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.

Let us not forget that McKinnon is facing charges of breaking into systems not only belonging to NASA but also the US Army, Navy and Department of Defense - right after the 9/11 attacks. Many would argue that his actions deserve to be treated seriously, and if that means US jail time so be it.

If the 'plead guilty at home' gambit works, and he is both prosecuted and punished in the UK courts, it would make any ultimate extradition for the same crimes highly unlikely.

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, reminds us however that "Any form of hacking is illegal and should be punished as such, and hacking into US government networks is bound to come with harsh repercussions – anyone thinking …

According to reports the new Yahoo! CEO will be Carol Bartz, the 60 year old former Autodesk chairman. She will replace Jerry Yang, the Yahoo! co-founder who was pretty much forced into resignation late last year following his handling of the Microsoft takeover offer.

Bartz has a good reputation in the industry, with nine years at Sun Microsystems during which time she ended up as the company number two after CEO Scott McNealy. Then came 14 years at Autodesk where she also rose to the top. Indeed, Bartz is one of the 50 most powerful women in business according to Fortune magazine.

She has already been president of the British Computer Society and was the first feamle senior vice-president of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She is a professor of computer science at the University of Southampton here in the UK, and sits on the Prime Ministerial Council for Science and Technology. Now Wendy Hall, responsible for creating the Microcosm hypermedia system which is widely thought of as being a predecessor to the World Wide Web, has been honoured by the Queen and made a Dame for her services to science and technology.

It is not her first royal honour, having already been appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2000 Birthday Honours. Nor is it the first time she has been considered to be the First Lady of the Web, after all back in 2006 she co-founded the Web Science Research Initiative with Sir Tim Berners-Lee amongst others. WSRI exists to bring together academics, scientists, sociologists, entrepreneurs and decision makers from around the world in order to create a multidisciplinary research body to provide practical solutions to the problems facing the Web in the future.

On hearing of her elevation to Dame, Wendy Hall said that she didn't think computer scientists "get the rewards they deserve, when you think that computers are what run the world at the moment."

All 43 police forces across England and Wales have now published crime maps on the Internet, according to the UK Home Office. This means that people can access details of crime in the areas they live in via the neighbourhood crime maps scheme. What a monumental waste of time and resources!

As well as showing where crime is happening, helping to identify hotspots as it were, the maps also plot trends and provide a comparison with the rest of the country. The idea being, so says the Home Office, that the maps will "allow the public to see how local crime fighting partnerships are impacting on issues of local concern and give people the information they need to dictate local priorities." Say that again? While it might be of some passing interest to see information about burglary, robbery, theft, vehicle crime, violent crime and anti-social behaviour in your local area, I am at a loss as to how this is enabling in any real sense of the word. Certainly there seems little evidence that a crime map is suddenly going to empower residents to be able to change policing priorities.

Still, the Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker insists that he is "determined to give people the crime information which, as the Casey Review found, they want. Every single police force in England and Wales now has crime mapping. This gives comprehensive knowledge about crime patterns and hotspots to communities." Right, and that empowerment issue? "By empowering people with …

It has been a long time coming, but Apple has finally announced that iTunes is going DRM-free. As in, all songs on the iTunes site will ditch DRM. That's everything from Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI along with thousands of indie labels. All with their musical offerings now available in the iTunes Plus DRM-free format.

According to Apple the iTunes Store will begin offering eight million songs in the DRM-free format immediately, with the remaining two million songs offered in iTunes Plus by the end of March.

But at what cost? Apple might have ditched DRM, but it has also ditched flat-rate pricing which means you could end up paying less, or more, for your tracks come April when the new pricing structure is introduced.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirms this, telling us "in April, based on what the music labels charge Apple, songs on iTunes will be available at one of three price points — 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29 — with many more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29." This despite earlier claims that Apple would rather close iTunes than charge higher prices.

If you want your existing library of previously purchased iTunes songs upgraded to DRM-free status complete with higher quality encoding, no problem. Apple says that this is a simple one-click process. It also says it will 'only' charge you 30 cents per song, or 30 percent of the album price if you …

It should come as no real surprise, but Microsoft has announced that Halo 3 is the undisputed king of games when it comes Xbox Live. The Xbox Live Director of Programming, the unlikely sounding Major Nelson, has revealed that when it comes to the games that were being played online on Xbox Live during the whole of last year, nothing could come close to Halo 3 in terms of unique users playing the game. Or being killed in the game, of course.

There are some surprises in the top twenty most played games of 2008 list though, not least the double Gears of War whammy at 4 and 5, beating Call of Duty: World At War into 6th place. It is a shame that I have not been made aware of the actual numbers behind the placings, as it would be kind of interesting to see just how many people played, or how many hours were spent playing, the likes of the Too Human demo at the bottom of the table when compared to Halo 3 at the top.

Here's the full chart anyway:

1. Halo 3
2. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare
3. GTA IV
4. Gears Of War 2
5. Gears of War
6. Call Of Duty: World At War
7. Guitar Hero III
8. Battlefield: Bad Company Demo
9. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Demo
10. Rock Band
11. Fable 2
12. Mirror's Edge Demo
13. Madden NFL 09
14. BF: Bad Company
15. Rainbow Six Vegas 2
16. UNO
17. Castle Crashers
18. COD: World …

If you thought that gaming was all about next generation technology, HD graphics or innovative input systems think again. If the results of a survey into console usage in the US during 2008 is anything to go by, it would appear that gameplay is still in charge.

The Nielsen research shows that more people were playing with their old PlayStation 2 that their new PlayStation 3. Heck, it showed that more people were playing with that PS2, in terms of the number of minutes spent using a console throughout the year, than the Nintendo Wii or the Xbox 360.

Rather interestingly, I thought, was the fact that the old generation Xbox even managed to beat the PS3 into 5th place.

Of course, a lot of this taps into the sheer numbers of older consoles that have been sold and are still out there in daily use. So while the PS3 can claim to have sold around 18 million, and the Wii 40 million, neither can compete with the PS2 and its incredible tally of 140 million consoles sold.

The official Nielsen game console usage chart for 2008 looks like this:

1. PS2
2. Xbox 360
3. Wii
4. Xbox
5. PS3
6. Gamecube
7. Other

In the USA, according to the Digital World Digital Life study, housewives spend around 38 percent of their spare time on the Internet. Bored British housewives, however, spend a whopping great 47 percent of their leisure time online.

That is more time online, by the way, than students (39 percent) and the unemployed (33 percent.)

So what are they all doing? Apparently, the answer would seem to be a little stereotypical: shopping. Which is good news for the online economy, with Brits accounting for something in the region of a billion pounds spent per month.

In general though, across all socio-economic groups and globally speaking, it is China that leads the way when it comes to spending free time online (oh the irony in that statement) with 44 percent. The people spending least leisure time online are the Danish with just a paltry 15 percent. The global average, I am informed, is 30 per cent.

Here in the UK, we take our video gaming pretty seriously. No more than at this time of year when more games are bought than at any other time. So the annual xmas sales charts are always much anticipated as a barometer of just what is winning the hearts, minds and wallets of gamers.

To be honest, this year it looked as if all bets were off as far as which game would be top of the pops. Not least because Call of Duty: World At War has been sitting pretty in the number one position for no less than five whole weeks. Even the mighty Mario Kart Wii could not dislodge the war gamers.

But then something strange happened, that very English fascination with football came to the fore and FIFA 09 stormed right to the top to take the coveted number one all-format game slot.

It's good news for Electronic Arts following a number of development studio closures off the back of the continuing global economic crisis.

Perhaps just as surprising as the late run of FIFA 09 is the incredible rise of a game from 2006 to the number five position in the sales charts. Yet that is where Dr Kawashima's Brain Training on the Nintendo DS ended up.

The full Xmas chart is as follows:

1. FIFA 09
2. Call Of Duty: World At War
3. Mario Kart Wii
4. Need For Speed: Undercover
5. Dr Kawashima's Brain Training
6. Wii Play
7. Quantum Of Solace
8. Professor …

According to an application vulnerability specialist, Fortify Software, HUB Computer Systems in the US has been hit by a $52,000 phone bill following the unauthorised access of the company IP-enabled PBX by hackers.

"The advent of IP-enabled PBXs, and the facility of remotely- programmable `conventional' PBX systems, means that hackers can – with sufficient time and access - rack up large phone bills on the unfortunate victim's account" said Robert Rachwald, Fortify's director of product marketing.

Of course, it now being holiday season and companies priming for a prolonged shutdown, the risk is even greater for business and the opportunity even greater for the hacker with time on their hands and a little insider knowledge to strike.

IT staff need to take extra care to protect company PBXs by shutting down systems that are unlikely to be used and locking down the ability to reprogram the system remotely.

According to Rachwald, this time of year is one of the busiest periods for phone companies on the international call front, with the result that international call resale fraud is also at its highest. Indeed, the very fact that HUB Computer Systems appears to have been hit by that $42,359.59 phone bill for calls to Bulgaria pretty much proves the demand for fraudulent international calls.

"The modus operandi is always the same - the hackers stand at known meeting and gathering points for international visitors in a given city and then announces they …

A public beta has started for the latest version of the BBC iPlayer desktop download manager which supports Linux, Mac and Windows. This represents a huge, and hugely overdue, move forward for the BBC which previously only allowed Windows users to download programmes using the iPlayer.

The secret is in the air, literally.

The new iPlayer is built upon Adobe AIR, a key component of the Adobe Flash Platform, and the download manager enables users to view BBC TV shows, online or offline, with a high-quality solution across all three operating systems.

Currently it is only available to BBC iPlayer Labs users who need to go sign up to get the beta application, but I am reliably informed it will be rolled out to all BBC iPlayer users during the course of 2009. Start, middle or end of 2009 has not as yet been made clear.

Erik Huggers, director, BBC Future Media & Technology, said: "Since it launched at the end of last year, BBC iPlayer programmes have been available for streaming on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. Today, we're pleased to display our commitment to providing a cross-platform download solution for BBC iPlayer users, as Mac and Linux users are now able to download BBC iPlayer programs to play offline."

Jim Guerard, vice president and general manager of Dynamic Media at Adobe, said: "The BBC is recognised worldwide as a trusted broadcast innovator. The BBC iPlayer Desktop beta on Adobe AIR will …

Facebook can claim many things, from defeating the Nazis to recruiting spies and even helping to elect Barack Obama. Now it can add serving legal papers to the list.

These days, it would appear, the legal process is catching up with the technological reality of the world we live in. Being served with legal papers has already, in some parts of the world, become less about throwing a document at someone and more to do with clicking a mouse button and sending an email. Nowhere is this change more obvious than Australia where the courts have even given permission to serve legally binding papers by the medium of text message before now.

Now a Canberra court has given permission to a lawyer to use Facebook to serve legal papers, mainly as it was a case of last resort. The people concerned, a couple who had fallen behind on their mortgage repayments, could not be contacted any other way. The lawyer looking to serve the repossession papers reckons they did not answer the door at the house, nor the telephone, nor respond to email. In fact, they did not turn up at a court hearing either.

However, a little detective work found the woman on Facebook. Her date of birth and other details matched the person in question, and her partner was on her list of Facebook friends which seems to have sealed the deal.

The Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court …

Now that could be cool, or maybe not: a whole new look to the MacOS desktop could be on the cards after Apple puts in a patent application for a 'Multi-Dimensional Desktop.'

The patent application, 20080307360, describes how the planned graphical user interface will have "a back surface disposed from viewing surface to define a depth, and one or more one or more side surfaces extend from the back surface to the viewing surface." In other words, a 3D Mac desktop!

The patent abstract talks of "An icon receptacle is disposed on one or more of the side surfaces, and one or more icons are disposed within the icon receptacle. The one or more icons correspond to one or more desktop items." Fortunately, there are images attached which give a better idea of how it might all look. Unfortunately, that better idea can best be summed up as 'complex' and certainly not the usual simple functionality combined with pleasing design that you expect from an Apple OS.

Of course, there is no hint from Apple as to when, or even if, the idea will ever make it into production.

If it does, I hope it has better success than the recent Google exploration of 3D worlds.

The Android Open Source Project continues to go from strength to strength as the Open Handset Alliance announces a batch of new members. Amongst the 14 new companies to sign up and demonstrate support for Android as an open mobile platform, are Sony Ericsson and Vodafone. The importance of which should not be lost in the marketing message. Getting these truly big players in the global mobile phone game on-side is vital for the future success of Android.

The other new members to join the Open handset Alliance are: AKM Semiconductor Inc., ARM, ASUSTek Computer Inc., Atheros Communications, Borqs, Ericsson, Garmin International Inc., Huawei Technologies, Omron Software Co. Ltd, Softbank Mobile Corporation, Teleca AB and Toshiba Corporation.

Of course, there is no immediate word as to whether Sony Ericsson or Vodafone will be deploying a compatible Android device, or if they will be contributing significant code to the Android Open Source Project, or maybe just supporting the ecosystem through products and services to hopefully advance the Android cause. However, membership does demand at least one of these things.

Facebook spam is nothing news, nor for that matter is Facebook malware. While we are on a nothing new about Facebook theme, ever since grown-ups started to invade the social network has suffered a tad from 'phoney friend syndrome.' I mean, come on, do you really think that Barack Obama is your friend just because a social network says so?

This problem of collecting Facebook fends like some weird hobby is starting to cause real problem, not least because the bad guys have hooked onto the fact that it makes for a great way to spread malware. And that's exactly what is happening right now with the whole Koobface thing which seems to go from bad to worse.

Ever since Kaspersky first warned of the dangers of Koobface, people have apparently been ignoring the warning because the menace continues to spread.

Although Facebook itself says only a "small percentage" of users have been hit by the latest attack, the fact that Koobface is back has to be a worry. Especially when a small percentage of a multi-million userbase is actually quite a lot of people, rather a lot of infected Facebook friends.

So what can you do to avoid falling victim to Koobface? Facebook itself offers some sage advice, not just about the latest Koobface threat but in general when it comes to security matters on the social network:

• If a link or …

The IBM Internet Security Systems division, better known simply as ISS, has today warned of the 'perfect storm' of security threats which has been created by the global economic slowdown, an unprecedented level of cybercrime activity and both the cost and complexity of legal security infrastructures.

ISS announced a set of actions in order to help bolster its security solutions to navigate this perfect storm while, apparently, saving money at the same time. These actions have been prompted, I am informed, after the IBM X-Force team of elite security experts detected a couple of things which startled them somewhat. First there was the 30 percent increase in network and web-based security events in a matter of just 120 days. The total numbers being seen rising from 1.8 billion to 2.5 billion per day on a global basis. Then, it saw a 40 percent jump in the same period when it came to client access of it's IBM Virtual Security Operations Centres. These are used by business and governments alike to monitor and verify network and web-based attacks. A significant portion of the increase came from clients that had not previously logged in to the security operations centres in more than six months.

IBM security experts predict the rise in cyber threats has just begun. These researchers have the ability to not only detect various potential network and Web-based vulnerabilities, but also to monitor when attempts are made to exploit those flaws through IBM’s global customer base. They can …

Now that, if you are a hardcore PC gamer, is cool. ASUS has announced the availability of what it claims is the world's first quad core gaming notebook. The G71 series is powered by the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 processor, and has had 'overspeed protection' removed to push it through the overclocking boundaries of ordinary laptops and enable truly extensive user multitasking.

ASUS tell us that, as far as the gaming goodies go, the G71 gets:

• 17” Crystal Shine high brightness display with super fast response time of 8ms
• NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT GDDR3 512MB graphics card
• 4 GB of DDR2 1333MHz SDRAM memory
• Dual hard disk drives 500GB (250GB x 2)
• Blu-ray drive for total entertainment
• Webcam and Bluetooth for great connectivity and communication

Then there is the 'Direct Console 2.0' stuff which serves as an all-in-one gaming control interface. Basically, this lets the user select from three different processor speed settings depending on what it is they want to do at the time. Oh, and there are also gaming hotkeys to launch games and execute in-game commands.

What else? How about the programmable lighting system within the chassis which lights up and blinks during in-game events? Or the direct messenger secondary display for notifications, instant messages, battery reserves and system loadings in real-time even during intense game play?

Throw in the Altec Lansang Dolby Home Theatre speakers, the gaming keyboard and a 2.0 megapixel webcam and I know what I want …

Mobile phones have become many things, and I am just waiting for the first to appear which does away with that 'make and receive voice calls' requirement. Mind you, there is some argument that the iTouch does that, considering that it is an iPhone without the phone bit.

But I digress.

Nokia has been one of the movers and shakers in the smartphone development market for as long as I can recall. Now it has taken one more step into the realm of mobile phone madness by announcing it has developed a smart home platform that will allows users to control their homes with their cellphone.

The announcement today says that Nokia is working on something called the "Nokia Home Control Center" which will be a "new era" platform for networked home services and solutions. Think next generation security, smart home solutions and household energy management systems and Nokia will be happy that you have got it.

I am not sure that I have, to be honest. Sure, I like the concept of an open platform to allow third parties to integrate their own smart home solutions and services; anything that is truly plug and play with regards to extending functionality is a good thing.

But why would I really want to "monitor and control... electricity usage, switch devices on and off, and monitor different objects, such as temperature, camera, and motion" from the comfort of my mobile phone when away from the …

John Tu is the President and Co-founder of Kingston Technology which just happens to be one of the biggest providers of memory products on the planet, so when he talks about trends and developments in the memory market a lot of people start listening. Especially when he does so against a backdrop of a global economic downturn that has hit the tech industry hard. "Too many companies producing memory chips have caused prices to fall over the last months and consolidation should help the industry correct itself" Tu admits.

However, when it comes to those companies that can weather the economic storm, things are looking surprisingly good through Tu's rose tinted crystal ball. "DDR3 memory is set to gain more ground during 2009" he insists, and this will be boosted by the introduction and adoption of triple-channel and possibly quad-channel memory technologies. "We are also seeing an increased demand for higher speed memory products by prosumers, who need higher performances in applications like video/audio content creation to improve application speeds” Tu adds. Then there is Flash which just continues to go from strength to strength. 2009 is likely to be no exception it seems, especially with regards to high capacity and high performance SD cards for HD-based video and photography use.

What about virtualisation, something which has both benefited and suffered from a bad case of being over-hyped? Tu is upbeat about this saying that "virtualisation is now over the Hype Cycle... IT managers are likely to start …

Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC technology Correspondent, is apparently the most visible person online in the UK according to the latest MostPublic Index due to be published tomorrow.

The NowPublic network, which acts as a detailed barometer of whose voices are the most heard in the digital landscape, reveals that Cellan-Jones is at the top of the tree as far as MostPublic UK index is concerned.

The index works by gauging connectivity across four categories: online visibility, social networking and UGC presence, interactivity and microblogging impact. In other words, how your news and views are reported within networks such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Alexa, YouTube, Google and Technorati to name but a few.

“The goal of NowPublic’s MostPublic Index is to measure—on a completely transparent, metric-driven basis—who has the greatest digital reach and is most effectively broadcasting their own personal brand online,” said Leonard Brody, CEO of NowPublic. “The UK Index is our first foray into analyzing the digital landscape outside of North America. Our neighbors across the pond have a history of early technology adoption and it’s clear that the utilization of leading US-based microblogging tools is no exception.”

So who else features in the new UK most visible top 20?

1. Rory Cellan-Jones
2. Darren Waters
3. Iain Dale
4. Paul Bradshaw
5. Erik Huggers
6. Tom Coates
7. Ewan McIntosh
8. Stephen Fry
9. Nick Robinson
10. Neil McIntosh
11. Suw Charman-Anderson
12. Alan Connor
13. Kevin Anderson
14. Andy Murray
15. Ian Betteridge
16. Robert Peston
17. Jon Kossman
18. Euan Semple
19. Jack Schofield
20. Charles Arthur

I admit it, I love a good TLA. That is a Three Letter Acronym to you, guvnor. I have probably used BTW (By The Way) more than any other in close on 20 years of emailing and online discussions.

BTW, did you know that today, right now, there are two of these acronyms that are guaranteed to get the juices flowing and the tempers flaring when mentioned in quick succession? And they are: GTA and DLC.

Grand Theft Auto IV smashed all the records when the game was released earlier this year, and remains a real hot potato as far as the Xbox 360 line up is concerned. DLC, in case you had not cottoned on yet, stands for Downloadable Content (yeah, I know, but the world of the TLA does not insist on such strict conformity as requiring three words for three letters.)

There has been a great amount of hype over whether the first pack of downloadable content for GTA IV will be made available in time for the holiday season, and much shaking of heads in the gamer community when the answer became quite obviously a big negatory one.

Then one of the kingpins behind the game, Dan Houser from developer Rockstar, gives an interview to USA Today in which it is revealed that the DLC episode will be called 'The Lost and Damned' that it will feature a member of the Liberty City 'The Lost' biker gang called Johnny Klebitz. …

If you spend anytime online, posting in forums, discussing blog entries and getting involved in heated IM conversations then the chances are you have said it.

Even Lisa and Bart Simpson have said it.

Meh. We said meh!

Now, meh is officially a word rather than just an online utterance. It has crossed that line between being a strictly US only interjection, a mostly online phenomenon, to being a word in the Collins English Dictionary.

It means, as if you did not know, 'an expression of utter boredom or an indication of how little you care for an idea' and can be used as an interjection to suggest such indifference or boredom according to the dictionary.

So how did meh manage to get such official recognition? Pretty unsurprisingly it is that Internet effect again as this was a word chosen in preference to hundreds of other new words for inclusion by the public as entries in the 'word of mouth' campaign organised by bookseller Waterstones and the dictionary publisher.

The head of content at Collins Dictionaries reckons the Internet is helping formalise spellings of previously vocal only interjections such as meh. "People are increasingly writing in a register somewhere in between spoken and written English" he says.

Meh!

What happens when your security software thinks your operating system is out to get you? Users of AVG8 discovered the answer when it decided that a Windows XP user32.dll system file was infected with a Trojan, and deleted it.

Uh oh Buck, biddly biddly biddly.

What happens when you delete the user32.dll in Windows XP? Well it might not reboot at all. If you are lucky it might try to reboot and then enter into a never ending reboot cycle. Neither are exactly good things to happen to your computer.

That said, as The Inquirer reported you cannot argue with it as being a highly effective anti-virus strategy "Try getting a Trojan to do its nefarious work under those circumstances" an Inquirer reporter said.

A small mercy was that the glitch, for want of a better word like disaster or catastrophe, only impacted users of AVG8 running Windows XP in Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish and who had updated the definition file recently.

AVG corrected the fault rather quickly, rather unsurprisingly.

Microsoft Corp. has today announced a new version of Windows Live. Think of it as Windows Live: The Next Generation if you will. Not that Microsoft is calling it that, or anything else for that matter. The press release just refers to "an integrated set of online services that make it easier and more fun for consumers to communicate and share with the people they care about most" which sounds pretty much like the old Windows Live.

Of course, this new generation of Windows Live comes with some extras.

There are updates for photo sharing, e-mail, instant messaging, as well as integration with multiple third-party sites. But perhaps the most interesting new addition has to be the inclusion of Windows Live Essentials. Billed as free downloadable software that enhances consumers' Windows experience by helping them simplify and enjoy digital content scattered across their PC, phone and on Web sites. Microsoft told me it is "a suite of applications for communication and sharing that also works with leading e-mail, photo and blogging services worldwide."

Working with Windows Live Essentials, the upgraded service will include:

New social features including an updated profile, a "what's new" feed of activities across the network and Web, photo sharing, and on-the-go access from virtually any device with Windows Live SkyDrive. Online storage is increasing from 5 GB to 25 GB.

Updated Windows Live Messenger, to include more personalization, a "what's new" feed with updates from contacts across the Web, drag-and-drop photo …

Following the publication of the second quarter and half year results to September 30, 2008 it seems that BT is to slash some 10,000 jobs before March next year.

That is equivalent to some 6 percent of it's global workforce, and I understand that most are likely to be found in the shape of contractors and temporary workers along with offshore workers. 4000 staff have already been axed, which leaves plenty of others wondering they will make up the remaining 6000.

BT Chief Executive, Ian Livingston, admitted that profits in BT Global Services "are simply not good enough and we are taking decisive action to put matters right."

Not good enough, indeed. Profits fell by 11 percent in that second quarter. Of course, the markets work in mysterious ways, and news of the impending job cuts boosted the BT share price which shot up by 12 percent as a result.

Might I suggest that the entire team responsible for the secret Phorm trials gets the chop?

What a difference a day makes. In the 12 hours following the take down of McColo Corp, a web hosting service that stands accused of being responsible for enabling as much as 75 percent of the world's email spam, the volume of said junk mail recorded by specialists at MessageLabs dropped to eight times less than average.

The bad news is that levels started to rise again after that, an almost inevitable consequence of the free market economy that exists within the criminal underground. Knock one player off the top of the tree and others rise up to replace it. This happens all the time.

Matt Sergeant, Senior Anti-Spam Technologist at MessageLabs, still thinks that attacking a spam kingpin can have a dramatic effect. He told me that "First with Atrivo and now the demise of McColo is a testament to how community action is absolutely vital in the fight against spam."

In this case that community action came courtesy of the Washington Post which investigated McColo for four months prior to the outfit having connectivity pulled by two US-based ISPs as a result of its findings.

Hopefully this will, at the very least, come as a wake up call to ISPs and web hosts alike that they are under scrutiny from all angles. That allowing customers to get away with herding botnets is not acceptable and action will be taken. Peering companies cannot simply pretend that what customers do is nothing to do …

The BBC is apparently looking for a UK based family which cannot live without gadgets to, err, live without gadgets while being filmed for a new fly on the wall style documentary show.

The idea is for a kind of Back to the Future themed series which will transport a thoroughly modern British family back to a decade when gadget coolness was measured by how much fluff it could remove from your jumper or how easily it could stitch a button on to your jacket. OK, maybe a very early game of Pong or a portable record player that weighed half a ton as well. Yes, the BBC wants to dump some unfortunate family back into the seventies and see how they get on with the gadgets available then.

"In the 1970s the family will experience life without the technology we've begun to take for granted; they'll live a seventies life in a seventies house without Sky +, Facebook and the Wii" a spokesperson says.

Next the family will jump into the eighties, and nineties, all the time surrounded only be the gadgetry of the decade.

To qualify you must be a home owning family with three or more kids aged between 8 and 18, live in the UK obviously, and be so thick skinned (or is that just thick) that you don't mind TV cameras invading your privacy and showcasing your every moment of madness in front of a gawping nation.

If …

Hey, now that is pretty cool! Hot on the heels of a report suggesting that some 280 million people around the world have suffered some kind of data loss (through theft or incompetence mainly) during the last three years, Dell just might have the answer.

It would appear to be shipping laptops which can, quite literally, encrypt themselves. Well, OK, encrypt the data that is stored upon them so making it useless to anyone who steals said machine or buys it second hand on eBay.

The laptops, which have yet to be priced, will feature Seagate Momentus drives that have full disk AES 128-bit government grade encryption options. This is really cool, because the encryption key never has to depart from the drive itself which means that even relatively complex cold boot attacks are ineffective at gaining access to the data stored within. Dell, it seems, will be coupling drives with McAfee software which allows for easy user management of the self-encrypting systems via user policy application.

Maybe someone should let Gordon Brown know?

What a difference a year makes. Was it really only in August 2007 that Google added the Sun developed StarOffice suite to the Google Pack software collection? Yes, it was. Back then Google was happy to have a $70 value package available for free to Google Pack downloaders. Things, apparently, have changed.

Exactly what, it has to be said, is unclear. However, look at the Google Pack page where you can choose which items are to be downloaded today and you might notice that StarOffice is no longer on the list.

You can still download Google Earth, Google Toolbar for IE, Norton Security Scan, Spyware Doctor, Google Desktop, Picasa, Firefox with Google, Google Photos Screensaver, Adobe Reader, Google Talk, Skype and RealPlayer. But StarOffice has fallen off the menu, and Google has apparently made no official announcement as to why this may be.

I searched the Google Pack help files for a clue, and the only thing I could find was a discussion thread where a user noted that StarOffice had stopped being tracked by Google Updater and had vanished from the Google Pack site. Said user suggested this might be a temporary thing until StarOffice 9 is released into the mix on November 19th. No reply from Google though, and still no official announcement or reply to a request for comment.

To be honest, the dropping of StarOffice is no great loss. Not that I do not like it, but rather quite simply …

With the gadgets sadly lacking from the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, I am glad to report that a British company that specializes in bringing unlikely innovation to market has stood up and been counted to fill the gap. Virtuity has today announced it has developed self-destruct technology for lost and stolen mobile phones.

BackStopp Mobile has been released, designed to totally obliterate the contents of a lost or stolen mobile phone or other hand held device. The technology uses the mobile's own communications to track it down, pretty much anywhere on the planet. But the interesting stuff starts when the tracking has finished and the phone has been located.

BackStopp starts deleting all information that could be of any interest or value to any villain, be they of Blofeld proportions or just chancer looking to make a few bucks. Once the data has been wiped, BackStopp then sets about creating a report to detail exactly what data has been erased, when it was erased and where the devices was when the erasing took place.

The good news is that this is not some MI6, or FBI for that matter, gadget but rather a data protection solution that anyone and any business can employ. It supports all Windows Mobile OS devices at the moment, while a Nokia Symbian OS version is under development.

I almost thought it was April 1st, but no it is actually just a couple of days before the election of the new President of the United States. Which probably accounts for why EA has apparently decided to develop a download content pack for the Mercenaries 2 game which will allow you to play as either Barack Obama or Sarah Palin.

Yep, Sarah Palin in her trademark and apparently very expensive red suit, complete with prim hair and glasses, can wield a rocket launcher and kick some soldier ass. Meanwhile, a sober suited Barack Obama is somehow more out of character as he grapples with the bad guys and drops a grenade into a tank before heading into battle.

It looks like hilarious stuff, and a trailer video of both Palin and Obama in action can be viewed here.

Of course, this is not the first time that Obama has appeared in a video game. He has already been appearing in EA Xbox 360 games on billboards as part of the ongoing advertising blitz. The first time a Presidential candidate has appeared in-game.

Palin, meanwhile, is better known for being on the receiving end of virtual skullduggery.

The one question that I keep asking myself though, is why Palin and Obama? Surely McCain, the veteran and hero, would be ideally suited to the role? And why no Biden?

I guess, as an outsider looking in who has followed …

At the risk of being sexist, does anyone really fall for this 'computers for the ladies' hard sell? I am assuming that the answer must be yes, otherwise companies would not keep pumping out the pink gadgets and Hewlett Packard would not have come up with the special edition ladies 'clutch' netbook.

It would appear to be a standard HP Mini 1000 netbook, but pimped out somewhat by one Vivienne Tam. Indeed, it goes under the name of the HP Mini 1000 Vivienne Tam edition.

What you will get for your £400 when it finally appears in January here in the UK, is a netbook based upon the Tam's China Chic design. Which means it is bright red and covered in flowers, peony flowers to be precise, well pictures of them to be even more precise.

It remains the same size and weight as any other Mini 1000 netbook, but that does not stop HP from spinning the 'one for the ladies' line to the absolute max. Apparently the light weight and small size make it ideal to "carry as a clutch" the press release reveals.

Erm, having consulted with 'her indoors' and discovering just what a 'clutch' is I can assure HP that it cannot be carried as one in any manner. There is nowhere to put the lipstick, the powder compact, the mobile phone or the car keys for a start!

As for the "cosmopolitan design complements Spring outfits beautifully" I am reliably …

Historically, here in the UK at least, the electronic and gadget online marketplace has ruled the roost when it comes to consumer spending. However, according to one new survey, now it is milk and bread that are selling the most.

Statistics from the largest discount voucher code website in the UK, MyVoucherCodes, reveal that for the first time since Internet retailing took off on this side of the pond, grocery shopping has stormed past electronics in terms of consumer sales.

Put this one down to the credit crunch, I reckon, with more people now concerned about finding food cheaply than spending money they have not got on gadgets and big flat screen televisions (says the man who has just bought a new big flat screen television after his old one died in the middle of Special Victims Unit - curse you old TV!)

MyVoucherCodes reckon that consumers are being attracted to online supermarket sites "because of the exclusive offers and discounts on home delivery as well as shopping."

The research concludes that the top four online shopping sectors are:

31 percent share - online grocery shopping
25 percent share - electronic items
21 percent share - clothing and fashion
15 percent share - holidays and travel

Once it identified this upwards trend in web-based supermarket shopping, the company then commissioned further research into which supermarkets were the most popular and how much was being spent on average.

This revealed that …

You cannot have escaped the fact that this week is the Microsoft PDC2008. Those attending the Professional Developers Conference, only held every other year, were lucky enough to witness the first full public demo of Windows 7. What's more, PDC attendees even walked away with a full pre-Beta build of the next generation Windows Operating System.

Microsoft announced plans to release a full Windows 7 beta early into 2009.

Windows 7 promises to deliver new features to help protect privacy and data, while making it easier to recover from problems. Then there is the streamlining and simplification of common tasks courtesy of a new taskbar and a streamlined user interface. Hmmm, is it just me or does that sound an awful lot like the promises that were made for Vista? In fact, Windows 7 sounds an awful lot like Vista! You would have thought, with all the developers working on it, Microsoft might have made more of an effort to make it appear like a different product. After all, Microsoft does seem to be trying to leave Vista behind elsewhere, such as in the new official Windows blogs for example.

"We are excited to be delivering a pre-beta developer release of Windows 7 today at PDC2008," said Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group. "With our new approach to planning and development we now have a great foundation for our partners to start learning and innovating on …

The actual Patent title reads "Personal area network systems and devices and methods for use thereof" but PANTS is much snappier don't you think? That's Personal Area Network Technology Systems in full.

Apple is looking to patent always-on from anywhere access to the Internet. I thought that was already tied up in something called a 'smartphone' which I am pretty sure, from the back of my brain somewhere, I recall Apple being involved with.

Anyway. The new patent filing apparently actually relates to a system which would allow products like iPods or Macbooks to connect to the Internet from anywhere by making use of RF modules. Or, in other words, by connecting to an iPhone.

According to AppleInsider "These special RF modules would be "constructed to be a high efficiency, low cost, devices" that may lack a direct user interface, like the company's AirPort base stations. They'd package short-range circuity -- such as WiFi, Bluetooth and other high frequency systems (2.4 GHz, and 5.6 GHz communication systems) -- for connecting to devices that lack long-range circuitry, in addition to long-range circuitry that those host devices can tap into, such as GSM, GPRS, EDGE, and CDMA."

Well, that clears that up then.

It's actually not a bad idea, when you get your head around it and start taking it seriously. After all, the RF modules could be attached to your clothing or a bag, inside your car or on a train, in fact pretty …

Sex on the Internet is nothing new, in fact it has been one of the great unspoken drivers of ecommerce and ecommerce technology over the years.

Selling stuff on the Internet is nothing new, it too has been pivotal in driving online development. In particular, when you think of eBay and Craigslist, the development of communities where ecommerce and social networking mix.

Now Craigslist and sex have driven straight into each other as the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Apparently some thirteen people in Polk County have been arrested following a sting by the Sheriff's Office there which targeted people trolling for sex on Craigslist. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, but the prostitution sting transfers perfectly to the Internet. The police simply posted an advert on Craigslist offering sex for money and lured the unsuspecting sex seekers to an undercover house in the Winter Haven area.

The arrested include teachers, software developers and a truck driver.

Polk County Sheriff, Grady Judd, has gone on record to say that the message regarding prostitution is pretty clear: "If you want to engage in prostitution, stay out of our community."

Judd also says he intends to look into any legal liability that Craigslist might have by running the advertisements for prostitution in the first place, promising that the hugely popular classified ads community should not be able to hide behind the First Amendment.

There's a really interesting blahblahtech posting that has popped up to address what it refers to as the "myth that video games harm children both socially and intellectually."

It approaches the debate from parental questioning perspective, which seems as good as any to be fair. Some of the research it picks up upon includes that which suggests gamers process information more quickly and multi-task better than non-gamers. I rather liked the research quote which was based upon surgeons playing Super Monkey Ball: "Surgeons who play video games three hours a week have 37 percent fewer errors and accomplish tasks 27 percent faster."

Obama has once again linked underachieving kids with video gaming. In a speech last week Obama promised to invest in education, but then added that "it won't make much of a difference if parents aren't turning off the television set and putting away the video games and making sure that our children are doing their homework."

Which is fair enough, but then at the same time it appears that Obama is moving his Presidential campaign in front of gamers by advertising inside Xbox 360 games such as Burnout Paradise and Madden 09. You can see his face on in-game posters asking for votes and promising change. Well, he is certainly delivering that - one minute video games bad, the next video games good!

According to Russian forensic security experts and 'password recovery' specialists ElcomSoft, the days of protecting documents and files with 40-bit encryption are now officially over.

It has now released a product which uses Thunder Tables technology to unlock password-protected documents that have been created using Microsoft Word. In fact, it guarantees that it can provide "near-instant recovery" of any such documents protected with 40-bit encryption. That compares with the days it would have taken using a straightforward brute-force approach.

Apparently the secret is the Thunder Tables technology, something that ElcomSoft claims is a result of "scientific research in cryptography" which ensures all 40-bit encryption keys are unlocked in seconds. These seem to be somewhat similar to Rainbow Tables, which come shipped on a DVD containing pre-computed hash tables. Rainbow Tables are well known in the security field, and can be sued to 'unlock' around 99 percent of encrypted documents in just a few minutes.

However, unlike Rainbow Tables the new Thunder Tables promise 100 percent 'password recovery' and in seconds rather than minutes.

They seem to work in a similar fashion though, pre-computing decryption information to speed up the password cracking process. With 40-bit encryption providing for a trillion possible keys, the Thunder Tables simply accounts for all of these possibilities as incredible as that may sound.

The news comes hot off the heels of ElcomSoft also revealing it has found a way of cracking WiFi WPA and WPA2 encryption by employing the …

As unlikely as it may sound, Elvis Presley has been cloned.

OK, it's a fair cop, not your actual Elvis Presley but rather his passport. According to reports a gang of Dutch hackers have managed to clone RFID driven e-passports of the type we are always being told are highly secure.

More to the point, the group not only cloned an e-passport in the name of Elvis Aaron Presley, but actually managed to use it at Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam.

Because an unmanned, automatic passport reading scanner was used at the airport nobody was around to notice that the hacker was not, for want of a more tactful way of putting it, pushing up the daisies.

At least in Europe there is still some choice in passport types, in the US e-passports are now the only option.

This is not the first time they have been cloned, and it will not be the last. Maybe the authorities will take notice when instead of announcing that Elvis has left the airport, a terrorist organization reveals how it used clone passports during the course of some atrocity.

This particular hacking group even have a video of their Elvis exploits for all to see at The Hacker's Choice site, showing how no alerts were raised as the long dead Elvis passed the document through the scanner.

They also publish full details, including source code, of how they did the cloning. Just in case anyone else, including …

Peter Wood admits he walked unchallenged into an insurance company and was able to steal all their data. He is not in trouble though, it was part of a security exercise and he was hired to try and steal that data.

Of course, as Wood says, very often companies "unwittingly hire people whose sole purpose is to steal data" without even realizing it.

Wood explains how some people in the banking community have "quietly and anonymously said to me" that they have found employees who have "been placed in their company by criminal gangs and they have been operating as moles over that period."

During the course of a rather interesting podcast for anyone who finds such security insight intriguing, Wood goes on to reveal that one Japanese company were proud of the fact that they "could store all their key data, all their intellectual property and the stuff that really differentiates them on a thumb drive." Of course, from the security perspective that means it is really easy to get all that data in one small package.

"The physical attack is sometimes the easiest and probably the way of the future for a lot of criminal gangs" Wood says, but warns "you don't have to be on site, remote control attacks through email phishing, spear phishing, email attached Trojans or even web drive-by attacks are increasing in popularity and someone receiving an email that directs them to a site that appears innocent and …

Hot off the press comes the news that Mozilla is pushing out yet another Firefox update real soon now, Firefox 3.0.3 will be released as soon as possible to fix a rather serious bug in Firefox 3.0.2 which has not long been released itself. In fact, my 3.0.2 update was only pushed to me a couple of days ago, so it really is annoying to know it has added an unwanted bug into my browser.

The official explanation from Mozilla is that "shortly after releasing Firefox 3.0.2 our QA and Support teams began seeing reports of problems certain users were having with the Firefox Password Manager. This was being caused by non-ASCII data (in domains, logins or passwords) saved as something other than UTF-8 failing to convert back to Unicode (see bug 454708) which was a regression from a fix to make the Password Manager work on IDN sites with characters over U+0100."

Which means that users with password data stores including non-ASCII characters that are saved as anything other than UTF-8 cannot, er, actually access them or create any new saved passwords for that matter.

"There is no permanent dataloss" Mozilla assures us, adding "the saved data is just inaccessible."

Well that's OK then. Not.

Mozilla admits that this represents a "significant regression" and so has triggered a fast-release Firefox 3.0.3 process to fix this single issue. Indeed, I am told that the fix has been landed and tested, and updates will …

T-Mobile has today announced the international launch of the first Android powered cellphone in the world.

It is available 'soon' say T-Mobile, for customers in both the USA and Europe. The T-Mobile G1, as it is called, will feature full touch-screen functionality a combined with a QWERTY keyboard and the familiar Google experience thrown in. Most importantly though, it is the first to be driven by that Google Android OS and enable access to the Android Market, an Apple App Store alike site for downloading applications to the handset.

With one-click contextual search, T-Mobile G1 customers in a flash can search for relevant information with a touch of a finger. A full HTML Web browser allows users to see any Web page the way it was designed to be seen, and then easily zoom in to expand any section by simply tapping on the screen. With built-in support for T-Mobile's 3G and EDGE network as well as Wi-Fi, the T-Mobile G1 can connect to the best available high-speed data connection for surfing the Web and downloading information quickly and effortlessly.

T-Mobile customers in the U.S. can, from today, pre-order the G1 although quantities are said to be limited. It will also be available for over the counter sales in T-Mobile stores stateside from October 22nd.

Pricing has been confirmed at $179 with a two-year voice and data agreement.

As far as Europe is concerned, the T-Mobile G1 will become available beginning in November, …

"It’s Harvard or Yale, Harpic or Domestos, AA or RAC, PC or Mac. Binary tribalism: Gilbert and Sullivan wrote a song about it" writes Stephen Fry as he explains that when it comes to the world of serious digital photography that choice is pretty much narrowed down to Canon or Nikon.

Stephen Fry, was half of a British comedy double act known as Fry and Laurie. He is the half, if you are American, that you have probably never heard of. His partner was Dr House, or Hugh Lawrie if you prefer. Yet Fry is arguably the more famous of the two outside of American-TV-Drama-Land. An eccentric English humourist, intellectual, writer and novelist, actor and undoubted wit, Fry is probably best known for his roles in Blackadder on the telly, as Oscar Wilde on the big screen and for talking with refreshing honesty about being bipoler to anyone who will listen.

Stephen Fry is also a real tech-guy, writing about gadgets and technology with an equally refreshingly honest passion.

And so we come back to the piece in point, Canon or Nikon? That is the question and, for Fry at least, it would appear that the answer is Canon.

"I have been spending the past week in the company of Canon’s new 1000D (aka the Rebel XS or Kiss F), which I will come straight out and say I adore" he reveals. Mind you, Fry also reveals he has "Mr Magoo’s eye for a …