5,261 Posted Topics
 | Well not quite, but the Wikisari search engine could make quite a splash if Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Amazon.com have anything to say in the matter. Using the same basic technology as Wikipedia, and with a provisional launch date planned for the first half of 2007, will be a …  |
| | J.K.Rowling has now officially announced that the latest, and last, in the Harry Potter series of books will be called ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ putting an end to the frenzy of speculation on the subject over the last few months. While it has been genuine fans interested in … |
| | I took delviery of a BlackBerry yesterday, courtesy of RIM and the UK PR people, which has been preloaded with some applications that I wanted to review. They set up an email account as part of the process, of course. When I switched it on there was a welcome message … |
| | A browser with vulnerabilities that could lead to arbitrary code execution and cross-site scripting attacks. An urgent automatic update to patch eight such vulnerabilities, five of which are rated as critical and the complete set as ‘highly critical’ by security exploits tracker Secunia. And even then missing a password management …  |
| | As I sit here shivering in the North of England cold and fog, it seems kind of appropriate to be writing about a technology that has been developed by [URL="http://www.polarrose.com"]Polar Rose[/URL] who are based in the even colder region of Malmo in Sweden. Using face recognition technology originally researched at … |
| | [URL="http://www.websense.com"]WebSense [/URL] security experts have published their predictions regarding the security threats that we will face in the new year, and perhaps unsurprisingly they revolve around the changing and dynamic nature of the Internet. “Organized criminals are realizing that the Internet has been a largely untapped resource in terms of …  |
| | A report published by the Social Issues Research Centre, combining data from a YouGov poll with the results of physiological tests on separate study group of Internet users, suggests that there is a link between badly designed websites and negative effects on human health. Specifically, the reports links five key …  |
| | Blogging, like all things that grow so explosively, will settle down. This is no bad thing, in my opinion, as I believe it will have the effect of increasing the relative quality of the blogs that remain. Very few people want to read what I ate for breakfast, far more … |
| | According to an in-depth study by the [URL="http://www.socialfuturesobservatory.co.uk"]Social Futures Observatory[/URL], anti-bank feeling is running so high in the UK that 74% of Brits would consider borrowing or lending money through a social lending community in preference to their high street bank. In the ultimate case of old concept finds new … |
| | Just as the games console which has the honor of being at once both one of the most innovative entertainment devices to arrive in our homes and the most stupidly named, the Nintendo Wii, arrives on the market so a lawsuit starts that attacks the very heart of that innovation: … |
| | I have always been fascinated by the fact that, in most areas of technology, physical size is constantly shrinking. The one exception being LCD displays, of course, which seem to get bigger every year. So I was excited by two pieces of news to cross my desk this week, the … |
| | A UK company has launched what it claims to be the first search engine that lets you not only search for specific moments within a video, but click on and interact with moving objects during online playback. [URL="http://coull.tv"]Coull.tv [/URL] has adopted a community approach, which we thoroughly approve of here … |
| | If you believe the results of a study by those chaps over at the USC-Annenberg School Centre for the Digital Future, the answer to the question posed in this blog posting title is 43% of Americans. That is the number of people who took part in the survey, were already … |
| | According to my Finnish friends, [URL="http://www.f-secure.com"]F-Secure[/URL], Bagle looks like it might be back in business. Not that it has ever really gone away of course, as it is one of the most prevalent of worm families. F-Secure have noticed new activity during the last couple of days, which sees a … |
| | As some of you may know, I am a Contributing Editor with [URL="http://www.pcpro.co.uk"]PC Pro Magazine[/URL] in the UK, which is why I am able to reveal that according to figures ‘obtained’ by the publication Microsoft Office 2007 will officially be a rip-off. If you are buying in the UK that … |
| | London taxi drivers have a reputation as being amongst the most opinionated and talkative in the world, and their grueling training and testing program ‘The Knowledge’ is equally well known. Now, it appears, the black cab driver has a new claim to fame: the place where more technology kit is … |
| | About five years ago the BBC carried a news story about a chap in Australia who had taken advantage of a new law which meant that patent applications only needed to innovation rather than invention. He registered a patent application for something known as a ‘circular transportation facilitation device’ or … |
| | Although it sounds too good to be true, Toshiba Europe has released details of what it claims to be the first rewritable printer in the world. Yes, you read that right, a printer that can print onto the same piece of paper as many as 500 times. In what may … |
| | [URL="http://www.kaspersky.com/"]Kaspersky Lab[/URL] has released its latest Malware Evolution [URL="http://www.viruslist.com/en/analysis?pubid=204791907"]report[/URL], covering the period between June and September 2006 and, as usual, it makes for interesting reading. Alexander Gostev, Senior Virus Analyst, Kaspersky Lab comments that the first six months of 2006 was “notable for the complexity of the technologies which antivirus … |
| | Webmasters are becoming increasingly aware of the power of the sitemap as an SEO tool, enabling search spiders to crawl more pages in less time with the end result of getting more or your links indexed faster. Because sitemaps require only those pages that have changes to be visited, valuable … |
| | [URL="http://www.rackspace.co.uk"]Rackspace Managed Hosting[/URL] has today sent me the formula to create the perfect website, and being a nice chap I felt I had to share it with you, so here goes: [B]Pwebsite = { ((14.14* EaseNav) + (13.56*Speed) + (13.11*CleanDes) + (10.89*Func) + (10.89*Up)) – ((12.63*Pops) + (10.32*Ads) +(5.21*MultiM)) } … |
| | For the longest time, the Children’s Online Protection Act, signed off by President Clinton way back in 1998, has been a contentious issue in the US. It was originally kicked out of town, well Philadelphia anyway, after a federal district court banned the enforcement of the law, and a federal … |
| | I hate it, you hate it, [B]everyone hates spam[/B]. Perhaps just as annoying as the fact that most of us have no interest in improving our sexual performance, enlarging our sexual organs or accepting a refinancing deal from a complete stranger, is the fact that we just do not know … |
| | Although it sounds like some kind of fantasy computing game, and in a way that sums it up pretty nicely, a 40 core supercomputer for your desktop will be a reality from January 2007 thanks to [URL="http://www.tyanpsc.com"]TyanPSC[/URL]. The next generation personal supercomputer from Tyan Computer Corporation was launched today, with … |
| | If you think of a virus as being something that replicates itself, spreading from computer to computer, until seemingly everyone has it installed, then maybe you could classify Google’s [URL="http://www gmail.com"]Gmail[/URL] service as being one. If you happened to be using Microsoft [URL="http://www.windowsonecare.com"]Windows Live OneCare[/URL] security over the weekend then … |
| | According to a report posted at [URL="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061112-8204.html"]Ars Technica[/URL] Vista has been cracked. [URL="http://www.pegasus3d.com/wordpress/"]Jeremy Reimer[/URL] reports that Torrents are now being circulated of the cracked version, known as Vista BillGates. Microsoft is keeping remarkably quiet on the subject, and my emails requesting official comment have gone unanswered. Perhaps because the pirated … |
| | OK, I know that Sun Microsystems has already open-sourced the Java EE5 application server code under the auspices of its [URL="https://glassfish.dev.java.net/"]GlassFish [/URL]project, but the breaking news is that the full Java source code is to follow next. Sun has announced that the Java code will be covered by the General … |
| | It looks like NVIDIA really means business, announcing it intends to attack the Intel integrated graphics processor market with an ICP of its own. Now that is some target, given that Intel is pretty much the heavyweight champ when it comes graphic chip manufacturing and sales by the numbers. No … |
| | It is the sort of no-brainer question that ordinarily you wouldn’t waste any time on: does a Windows OS need additional antivirus protection to be considered a safe platform? Obviously, the answer is yes, unless you are the Co-President, Platform and Services Division of Microsoft Corp, it would appear. Jim … |
| | You know when you are invited to the [URL="http://www.stjohns.co.uk/"]St John’s Innovation Centre[/URL], part of the Cambridge Enterprise Hub in the UK that supports early-stage knowledge-based businesses and research institutes, that you are going to be in for an interesting day. When it is a press day with a focus on … |
| | So Intel has announced, at the Web 2.0 Conference, that it is launching into the Web 2.0 space with [URL="http://www.suitetwo.com/"]SuiteTwo[/URL]. This integrated suite, courtesy of a collaboration with numerous partner companies, sees Intel positioning itself in the same way as Google does with its services. That is a collection of … |
| | Dell has today announced the addition of its ninth-generation PowerEdge servers, the first to be powered by Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors. Not only is this good from the performance perspective but also when it comes to bang for your buck in the enterprise, with up to 40 percent enhanced performance … |
| | It’s that time of the year again, and the Microsoft Tech.Ed Developers Conference 2006 Europe has hit the beautiful city of Barcelona, capital city of Catalonia in Spain. Hot off the press news for today is the keynote speech by Eric Rudder, senior vice president of technical strategy with Microsoft. … |
| | The bad news for the US is that it is now responsible for more than a fifth of the world’s spam. That is 21.6 percent if you prefer, although whichever way you say it there is no escaping the nasty smell it leaves behind. The team of experts at IT … |
| | Oh well, that’s one less thing I can moan about when it comes to Microsoft Vista. The Seattle giant has had a change of heart, it would seem, when it comes to licensing terms for the new Windows Operating System. Previously, the Windows Vista retail license included the incredibly restrictive, …  |
| | Google has provided WAP access to email for the longest time, an apt description seeing as that’s how long it takes to read your email via a WAP based mobile device. But all that has changed thanks to the availability of a brand new Java based version of [URL="http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about_mobile.html"]Gmail for … |
| | Microsoft has issued an [URL="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/927709.mspx"]advisory [/URL]warning about a Visual Studio 2005 vulnerability in the WMI Object Broker ActiveX control, part of WmiScriptUtils.dll which could allow remote arbitrary code execution. The WMI Object Broker ActiveX control will circumvent the ActiveX security model, because it is marked as being ‘safe for scripting’ … |
| | Well, yes, if you believe the Sony hype then the [URL="http://www.dynamism.com/g1/main.shtml#"]Vaio VGN-G1LAP[/URL] at just 1.98 pounds is indeed the world’s lightest lappy. The carbon fiber body helps considerably, meaning that despite the low weight you still get the benefit of a 12.1” 1024 x 768 screen rather than the only … |
| | According to Symantec, 64% of small businesses have seen a surge in the volume of spam received during the previous six months. And it isn’t the only one: whether you talk to ISPs or security vendors, gateway mail filtering services or end users, the message is the same. Spam is … |
| | Tim Berners-Lee has a [URL="http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4"]blog [/URL]that is, more often than not, worth reading. Certainly that has been the case over the weekend as the inventor of the World Wide Web has been talking about reinventing HTML. Referring to the W3C HTML group Berners-Lee admits that it is important to have … |
| | I guess when you are a billionaire, finding somewhere new and exciting to go on vacation gets difficult after a while. No such problem for Charles Simonyi, who as part of the original Xerox PARC team helped developed the mouse, the GUI and even laser printing, and went on to … |
| | Ordinarily this headline would no longer come as any surprise, after all everyone is pretty much used to Microsoft keeping the competition at bay using whatever methods it can. However, this is no ordinary headline because what IO left out is the name of that competitor: Windows XP. In an … |
| | The [URL="http://www.acte.org"]Association of Corporate Travel Executives[/URL] (ACTE) has warned, during a conference in Barcelona this week, that the visitors to the United States risk having their laptops seized and searched on arrival and departure. The law applies equally to US and non-US passport holders, and following an appeal judgment in … |
| | Google has launched a new search engine, or rather has made the old one available with a few user configurable tweaks. The [URL="http://www.google.com/coop/cse/"]Google Custom Search Engine[/URL] (CSE) is now open for business and provides a brand new and tailored search experience, or at least that is what Google is saying. … |
| | A number of owners of new iPods could be getting more than they bargained for, as Apple has [URL="http://www.apple.com/support/windowsvirus/"]admitted[/URL] that a ‘small number’ of iPod video products sold after 12th September are infected with the RavMonE.exe virus. Mistakes happen, and while Apple has been forthright about owning up to the … |
| | According to a survey by the [URL="http://www.ponemon.org"]Ponemon Institute[/URL], sponsored by [URL="http://www.pgp.com"]PGP Corporation[/URL] and [URL="http://www.vontu.com"]Vontu Inc[/URL], the true cost of data breaches in 2006 was $182 per compromised record on average, that is a 31% increase over the 2005 figures. Furthermore, the results of the report, published today, reveal that the … |
| | The founders of Skype, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, have already pretty successfully shaken up the telephony marketplace, and their next target could be YouTube. According to their [URL="http://www.theveniceproject.com"]posting [/URL]the duo are “working on a project that combines the best things about television with the social power of the internet … |
| | At first glance it should be good news, after all it would appear that Microsoft has plugged a hole that left the claims of Vista being highly secure shot to pieces. Nonetheless, the security researcher who demonstrated the original Blue Pill exploit at both SyScan 06 in Singapore and the … |
| | According to Oxford, UK based database security specialists [URL="http://www.secerno.com/"]Secerno [/URL]databases are open to attack from growing insider threats that give employees carte blanche to access confidential data. Naturally, the company has a product to plug, a database assurance platform called Secerno.SQL, but to be honest I am more interested in … |
| | Well, not quite. However, Panasonic are claiming to have developed a tellurium suboxide palladium-doped phase-change recording film with a very high transmittance and crystallization rate. Or put another way, this Te-O-Pd process enables four 25Gb layers to be used without any loss of data quality and Panasonic reckons that will … |
The End.