24 July 2009

Hit by PC Blight, Microsoft Profit Skids 29%
Dragged down by a slump in PC demand, Microsoft Corp. posted a 29% drop in quarterly profit and weak sales across all of its units. The quarter capped the software giant’s first full year of declining sales since it went public more than two decades ago. But executives at the Redmond, Wash., company struck a bullish note for the future, predicting the PC and computer-server markets, on which so much of its business depends, could see growth during the next calendar year. “We’re still in tough economic conditions and we don’t see that getting better in the near term,” Chris Liddell, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “Having said that, there is some sense we have hit bottom.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124838125495076817.html

Swine flu website overwhelmed by demand as new cases double in a week
About 100,000 people caught swine flu in England last week, the chief medical officer revealed today, as the government’s online diagnosis service crashed within minutes of launch when thousands of people tried to log on at the same time. The world’s first government-run swine flu diagnosis website could not cope with the volume of traffic when it opened for business at 3pm today. Designed to handle 1,200 hits a second, the service was suspended just four minutes later when 2,600 people tried to access it every second.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/23/swine-flu-website-overwhelmed

East Africa finally joins broadband revolution
The jigsaw is finally complete. East Africa shed its tag as the only major inhabited coastline excluded from the global broadband map today when an undersea fibre-optic cable linking it to networks in Europe and India went live. The commissioning of the 10,625-mile Seacom cable, which will soon be followed by two other submarine cables, is expected to drastically lower the cost of high-speed internet services and telephone calls. The region is currently dependent on expensive and often unreliable satellite links, which has prevented the spread of internet access. In countries where much of the infrastructure has fallen into neglect since independence, the landing of the finger-thin fibre-optic cable has been hailed as a milestone. Aly-Khan Satchu, a financial analyst in Nairobi, compared its significance to the construction of the railway network in east Africa a century ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/23/east-africa-broadband-revolution

Google’s Android To Invade Homes
In a sign that Google’s Android mobile platform has a future far beyond cellphones, San Francisco-based start-up Touch Revolution says a string of well-known companies will introduce a range of Android-powered household gadgets before the end of the year.The devices will fall into three basic categories: home control devices, media control devices and home phones, says Bill Brown, Touch Revolution’s vice president of marketing. All the gadgets will feature touch-screens in sizes ranging from 4.3 to 10 inches, support Android as an operating system, and connect to the Web through wi-fi or wired ethernet. Depending on their purpose, they will sport bases (for perching on a desk or kitchen counter) or have a flat, tablet shape for handheld use or for embedding in a wall.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/22/google-android-homes-technology-wireless-google.html

Bharti boosts rural Indian subscriber base
Bharti Airtel, the Indian mobile group that is in takeover talks with South Africa’s MTN, added a record 8.5m subscribers in the first quarter of this year as it pushed deeper into India’s vast, under-penetrated rural hinterlands. The increase, Airtel’s highest-ever net addition, brought the group’s total number of subscribers to 105.22m. ndia’s mobile market is the fastest growing in the world, adding more than 10m subscribers a month. It presently has more than 415m users. The growing competition and the penetration of poorer rural areas is eroding average revenue per user, a key conventional measure of performance for mobile operators.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/78de7afc-77ac-11de-9713-00144feabdc0.html

O2 unveils small biz landline to mobile link
O2 is launching “Fixed Number Anywhere”, which allows you to automatically reroute calls made to a landline to a mobile phone. Small businesses often rely on mobile phones to keep in touch with customers. But new customers are often more trusting of businesses which are run from a landline number. A landline number also makes clear that the small business is local and not entirely ‘fly-by-night’ – which is another positive for new customers. Fixed Line Anywhere links any landline to any mobile, or group of mobiles. Calls can go from up to five landlines to one specific mobile, or to a group of mobiles – either all at once or according to a priority list.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/24/mobile_landline/

Wireless power system shown off
A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference. The technique exploits simple physics and can be used to charge a range of electronic devices. Eric Giler, chief executive of US firm Witricity, showed mobile phones and televisions charging wirelessly at the TED Global conference in Oxford. He said the system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries. “There is something like 40 billion disposable batteries built every year for power that, generally speaking, is used within a few inches or feet of where there is very inexpensive power,” he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8165928.stm

Kenyans invent bike phone charger
Two Kenyan university students have invented a device that allows bicycle riders to charge their mobile phones. Jeremiah Murimi, 24, and Pascal Katana, 22, said they wanted their dynamo-powered “smart charger” to help people without electricity in rural areas. “We both come from villages and we know the problems,” Mr Murimi told the BBC. People have to travel great distances to shops where they are charged $2 a time to power their phone, usually from a car battery or solar panel. The two electrical engineering students have been working on the invention, which they are selling for 350 Kenyan shillings ($4.50) each, over the last few months during their university break.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8166196.stm

23 July 2009

Microsoft releases Windows 7 code to PC makers
Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday it is releasing the code for Windows 7 to PC manufacturers, keeping the software company on track to have machines running its new operating system in the stores by late October. Both Microsoft and the manufacturers are hoping the full launch of Windows 7, scheduled for October 22, will help lift PC sales out of the slump caused by the global economic downturn, and give the holiday shopping season an extra lift. Manufacturers have been testing early versions of Windows 7 for several months, but this week marks the release of the “gold code,” according to a Lenovo Group Ltd executive, referring to the software industry jargon for the finished product.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56L6QL20090722

Amazon to buy online shoe store Zappos
Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, is to acquire Zappos, the privately-held company that helped convince Americans they could buy shoes on the internet, in a mostly stock deal valued at more than $900m. The deal is Amazon’s largest acquisition to date. Zappos’ investors will receive 10m Amazon shares, worth $888m at Wednesday’s closing price, with an additional $40m in cash and restricted stock to be paid to employees. Zappos, which started in 1999, pioneered the sale of footwear on the internet, stocking a vast range of styles and allowing customers to order and return multiple pairs without incurring extra shipping charges.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/955e849e-770f-11de-b23c-00144feabdc0.html

Voice technology firm under fire
A UK firm that turns mobile messages into text faces questions over its privacy standards, technology and finances following a BBC investigation. Spinvox’s service aims to convert voice messages into text messages using advanced speech recognition software. But claims to the BBC suggest that the majority of messages have been heard and transcribed by call centre staff in South Africa and the Philippines. The firm declined to comment on how many messages are “read” in this way.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8163511.stm

Intel launches appeal over €1bn fine
Intel on Wednesday launched a legal appeal against the record-breaking €1.06bn ($1.5bn) fine handed down by Europe’s competition authorities.The European Commission accused the world’s largest chipmaker of abusing its dominant market position and using illegal sales practices to encourage computer manufacturers to carry its micro-processor chips. The fine, which was announced in May after a decade-long investigation by the European Commission, was the largest single penalty imposed on a company for antitrust breaches in Europe. The US company confirmed on Wednesday that it was filing a formal appeal against the penalty with the Court of First Instance, one of the leading European courts in Luxembourg.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a17bd6d6-76de-11de-b23c-00144feabdc0.html

Qualcomm sales surge hints at sector recovery
Qualcomm, the biggest maker of chips for mobile phones, reported a surge in demand in its June quarter amid growth in the 3G market. The San Diego company raised its guidance for its fiscal year in another sign that the chip industry was recovering from a slump in demand. Intel, Texas Instruments, Advanced Micro Devices and now Qualcomm have all reported in the past 10 days that customers have begun replenishing their stocks after running them down in the recession. “Things have pretty much come back on the chipset side,” said Paul Jacobs, chief executive, in an interview with the Financial Times.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6b0c0f66-7711-11de-b23c-00144feabdc0.html

Yahoo confirms acquisition of Xoopit
Yahoo has agreed to acquire Xoopit, a start-up that helps people share content from their inboxes with social-networking sites such as Facebook, the Web pioneer confirmed Wednesday.With the purchase of the San Francisco-based start-up, Yahoo plans to add new photo features to Yahoo Mail. Financial terms of the deal were not revealed, but earlier reports on the possible deal pegged the deal’s value at about $20 million. In 2008, Xoopit won the Yahoo Open Hack contest by building an app that runs on top of Yahoo Mail. The application digs through a person’s in-box to reveal photos and other media lurking within, including both attachments and Web addresses that link to sites such as Flickr or Picasa Web Albums.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10293555-93.html

Touch screens soon to track 10 fingers
Touch screens that track two fingers will soon seem basic. At least if you compare them with the multitouch-sensor ClearPad 3000 Series, recently announced by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Synaptics. The transparent sensor tracks up to 10 simultaneous finger touches–we assume that should cover most uses–making possible complex multifinger gestures such as closing an application by “crumpling” it with several fingers, or playing polyphonic sounds on a virtual piano keyboard. Apple made multitouch popular with its iPhone, which debuted about four months after Synaptics introduced its currently shipping two-finger sensor, ClearPad 2000, in August 2006. Though widely speculated that Apple is using Synaptics’ technology, that has not been confirmed.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10293342-1.html

22 July 2009

Nortel Auction Gets Testy; RIM Cries Foul
The auction for Nortel Networks Corp.’s most profitable assets is giving off sparks, with at least one rival exceeding the minimum bid and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. urging the Canadian government to intervene, saying it was blocked from bidding. On the eve of the deadline to submit bids, Research in Motion released a statement blaming Nortel, its advisers and the monitors overseeing the bankruptcy process for preventing it from bidding for the wireless assets. RIM says it would have been willing to pay $1.1 billion for those units plus unspecified assets including patents.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124822264843370511.html

Tech ‘has changed foreign policy’
Technology means that foreign policy will never be the same again, the prime minister said at a meeting of leading thinkers in Oxford. The power of technology – such as blogs – meant that the world could no longer be run by “elites”, Mr Brown said. Policies must instead be formed by listening to the opinions of people “who are blogging and communicating with people around the world”, he said. Mr Brown’s comments came during a surprise appearance at TED Global. “That in my view gives us the first opportunity as a community to fundamentally change the world,” he told the TED Global (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference. “Foreign policy can never be the same again.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8161650.stm

O2 confirms outage on 3G network
O2 has confirmed to TechRadar that its 3G network has gone down in the UK – but only for pay monthly customers. Those on pay as you go deals have dodged the data-less bullet, while BlackBerry users are also safe from the data demons. O2 didn’t give us any indication over whether the data collapse was due to loads of people tethering their iPhones without paying the data charge, thus leading to an underestimation on how much support was going to be needed.
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/o2-confirms-outage-on-3g-network-618578

Apple Sold Twice As Many iPhones As Macs Last Quarter. And It’s Closing The Gap On iPod Sales Too
The quarterly numbers are in for Apple. And once again they’re very good. It was another non-holiday record quarter in terms of revenues and earnings. But the real number that jumps off the page is the iPhone sales. Let’s just say it: The iPhone looks well on its way to being Apple’s primary business. And the 5.2 million number is perhaps even crazier when you consider that it’s exactly double the number of Macs Apple sold last quarter (2.6 million, a modest rise from basically 2.5 million Macs a year ago). And the 5.2 million number means the iPhone is now more than halfway to the sales of the iPod — and its sales are going the wrong way.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/21/apple-sold-twice-as-many-iphones-as-macs-last-quarter/

Sony Ericsson’s Rachael Xperia X3 ‘properly’ leaked
Sony Ericsson’s much-rumoured Rachael Xperia X3 Android handset has moved a giant step closer to reality after pictures and specs of the phone were leaked by Expansys. If Sony Ericsson was going to have a renaissance, it would be with a phone like this, given the super-heavyweight specs.And that’s before we even get to Android, which it seems Sony Ericsson has skinned to the hilt to match the new version seen on the Satio. Of course, it could just be the Android rumours aren’t true… but that would surely shatter the illusion.
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/sony-ericsson-s-rachael-xperia-x3-properly-leaked-618624

Yahoo posts fall in revenue
Internet search engine Yahoo has seen revenues in the quarter to 30 June fall 13%, citing the challenging economic environment. Revenues for the three-month period dropped to $1.57bn (£953m) from $1.79bn in the same period a year earlier. Meanwhile profit for the quarter edged up to $141m from $131. Yahoo shares fell 4% in after-hours trade after saying income this quarter would range between $55m to $65m, from $76m in the second quarter.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8162119.stm

Microsoft Officially Retires Soapbox, The Poor Man’s YouTube
Microsoft’s YouTube clone Soapbox is officially shutting its doors, according to reports today. Soapbox, which was launched in 2006 as a hub for downloading and sharing user-generated videos, was never able to be a viable competitor to YouTube. MSN corporate vice president and chief media and technology officer, Erik Jorgensen, said that Soapbox delivers less than 5 percent of the overall 480 million video streams worldwide on MSN Video each month. In June, MSN Video posted its best month ever, with 250 million streams. But this nothing compared to YouTube’s streams which top around 1.2 billion per day.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/21/microsoft-officially-retires-soapbox-the-poor-mans-youtube

Phone gadget to diagnose disease
Researchers have developed an add-on to a mobile phone that can take detailed images and analyse them to diagnose diseases such as tuberculosis. The CellScope works as a so-called fluorescence microscope that can identify the markers of disease. It is hoped the device will be useful in the developing world, where such medical diagnostics are rare but mobile ownership and coverage are common. The team is now making a more robust, “field-ready” version of the device, which will be used in field testing and clinical trials in the future.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8161775.stm

21 July 2009

Google cleared in UK defamation suit
Google Inc is not responsible for allegedly defamatory online comments that appeared in its Internet search results, a British judge ruled in a decision made known on Monday. Google’s automated search engine trawls the Web and indexes content without any human input, said Justice David Eady. As such, he said, Google can not be considered a publisher under English law. The case centered around Metropolitan International Schools, a European provider of long-distance vocational skills for adults, which sued Google as well as an online bulletin board for negative comments posted about its business practices. Google had not authorized or caused the comments to appear on a user’s computer screen, the judge wrote in a decision dated July 16.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56K05Q20090721

Yahoo to Launch New Homepage Months Ahead Of Prior Schedule
Yahoo’s overhaul of its flagship site, originally scheduled for this fall, has been one of its biggest undertakings over the past year. The project, known internally as “Metro,” was kicked off under Yahoo’s former chief executive, Jerry Yang, as a way to let users customize the site with links to other Internet services with which Yahoo has been continually competing for users’ attention. Yahoo’s new chief executive, Carol Bartz, has recently pushed up the time frame, sending employees scrambling to complete some finishing details, according to one person familiar with the project. Yahoo issues its second-quarter earnings report Tuesday and analysts are predicting that revenue and profit will drop from a year ago.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124813737985367091.html

Samsung to spend $4bn on eco-tech
Samsung Electronics, Asia’s biggest producer of chips, flat-panel screens and mobile phones, yesterday announced plans to invest Won5,400bn ($4.3bn) by 2012 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Samsung said it would spend Won3,100bn on research and development of environmentally friendly products and devote Won2,300bn to energysaving technologies. “We are committing to becoming a truly green enterprise that places eco-management at the very heart of our business decision-making and growth,” said Lee Yoon-woo, chief executive.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/63d49bb2-758d-11de-9ed5-00144feabdc0.html

Orange, T-Mobile could get iPhone in the U.K.
According to a report on Mobile Today, Apple may open up iPhone 3G sales to other wireless carriers in the U.K., namely O2 competitors Orange and T-Mobile. O2’s exclusive with Apple reportedly ends in September, giving Apple a couple of months to set up other deals. T-Mobile is so sure that they will get the contract for the iPhone 3G that its call center employees have already begun telling customers that it may have the iPhone in the future, according to Mobile Today. If Apple were to open up the iPhone to other carriers it could increase sales of the older model phones, while continuing sales of the new iPhone 3GS with O2.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10291453-37.html

Nortel sells unit to Avaya for $475m
Nortel Networks, the Canadian telecommunications equipment maker operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, moved ahead with its planned break-up, agreeing to sell its enterprise unit which builds networks for companies, to Avaya for $475m. The ‘stalking horse’ agreement – designed to flush out other potential bidders – follows the proposed sale of the bulk of Nortel’s wireless assets to Nokia Siemens Network for $650m. The deadline for rival bids for Nortel’s CDMA and LTE wireless assets is today. “We now have stalking horse agreements for the two largest businesses within Nortel, said Mike Zafirovski, Nortel’s chief executive.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9909fae4-7587-11de-9ed5-00144feabdc0.html

Korea’s LG Dials Up Cellphone Growth, Gaining Market Share on Rivals
While the recession forces a sharp decline in global sales of mobile phones, LG Electronics Co. is posting some of its strongest growth ever and taking market share from cellphone rivals.LG last year passed Motorola Inc. and Sony Ericsson to become the world’s third-largest seller of cellphones, shipping just over 100 million units, or about 8.6% of the global 1.17 billion. One of the South Korean firm’s strategies is a business process in which each product has an individual responsible for it from the moment it moves out of the research lab until its last day on a store shelf. “In the past, we didn’t have people who owned the performance of a product,” says Kim Myung-ho, a vice president in LG’s cellphone division. “Now that we do, the number of hit phones we have is increasing.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124811493126765971.html

Apps ‘to be as big as internet’
The market for mobile applications, or apps, will become “as big as the internet”, peaking at 10 million apps in 2020, a leading online store says. However, GetJar say, the developer community will decline drastically as each developer makes less money. “Apps will be as big if not bigger than the internet,” according to Ilja Laurs, chief executive of GetJar, a leading independent application store. “The full blossom will come in ten years and mobile apps will become as popular as websites are today with consumers,” Mr Laurs told BBC News.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8157043.stm

20 July 2009

Apple, RIM Outsmart Phone Market
No wonder they are called smart phones. Not only can these fancy phones send email, get directions and play music, they can generate huge profits for their makers.  At least for iPhone’s manufacturer Apple and BlackBerry’s Research In Motion. The two accounted for only 3% of all cellphones sold in the world last year but 35% of operating profits, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff. The disparity will become even starker this year when, he estimates, the two will take 5% of the market in unit terms but 58% of total operating profits. The two companies’ outsize share of profits underlines the shift in the wireless industry toward feature-rich devices accenting easy-to-use software and away from an emphasis on hardware.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124805149501664033.html

Yahoo board member Icahn wants Microsoft deal
Activist investor Carl Icahn spoke out in favor of a search deal between Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp, as talks between the two companies appeared to regain momentum. Icahn declined to comment on the state of any negotiations between Yahoo and Microsoft. He had tried to broker a partnership between the two companies last year, when talks on Microsoft’s $47.5 billion takeover bid for Yahoo fell apart. “I’ve been a strong advocate of getting a search deal done with Microsoft,” Icahn, who owns about 5 percent of Yahoo and is a director on its board, told Reuters on Friday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56H0C420090718

Accenture buys into Symbian services
Consultancy Accenture is set to extend its expertise in embedded software services for mobile phones by acquiring the Symbian Professional Services unit from handset giant Nokia. The Nokia unit, provides engineering consulting and product development services to mobile phone manufacturers, chip manufacturers and mobile operators globally, said Accenture. Symbian’s operating system is still the world’s most widely used smartphone platform for mobile devices. The deal will help Accenture enhance its existing embedded software, product development and testing capabilities, according to Jean Laurent Poitou, managing director of the firm’s electronics & high tech industry group.
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2246333/accenture-buys-symbian-service

Amazon Kindle users surprised by ‘Big Brother’ move
Owners of Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader have received a nasty surprise, after discovering that copies of books by George Orwell had been deleted from their gadgets without their knowledge. The books – downloaded from Amazon.com by American Kindle users – were remotely deleted after what the US company now says was a rights issue regarding the publisher, MobileReference.com.In an ironic twist, one of the titles in question was Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 – the book that introduced the concept of Big Brother. The story, considered a modern classic, has become synonymous with political spin and remote surveillance – and many Kindle owners could not help but see the juxtaposition as amusing. “Sounds ironically like Big Brother is monitoring our Kindle content,” said one user.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle-1984

Movie studios try to harness “Twitter effect”
Audiences are voicing snap judgments on movies faster and to more people than ever before on Twitter, and their ability to create a box office hit or a flop is forcing major studios to revamp marketing campaigns. The stakes are especially high this summer season when big budget movies like “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which opened last Wednesday, play to a core audience of young, plugged-in moviegoers. Film marketers look at weekly declines in ticket sales to judge fan buzz. In recent years those “drops” have widened significantly as communication has speeded up thanks to the Internet and more recently social networking services like Twitter and Facebook. “If people don’t like the movie now on Friday it can die by Saturday,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of tracking firm Hollywood.com Box Office.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56G74H20090717

New space station toilet ‘out of order’
The new toilet in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module aboard the International Space Station broke down Sunday, forcing the combined 13-member shuttle-station crew to share a single Russian toilet and one aboard the shuttle Endeavour until the problem is resolved. “When you get a second, if you could put an out-of-service note on the WHC (waste and hygiene compartment) and advise the crew members that station crew members will have to use the (Russian toilet) and shuttle crew members on the shuttle until further notice,” Hal Getzelman radioed from mission control.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19514_3-10290381-239.html

17 July 2009

Nokia reports sharp fall in sales but says worst is over

Nokia called the bottom of the mobile handset market yesterday, providing a faint glimmer of hope as it disclosed a 66 per cent fall in second-quarter profits, compared with the same period the previous year, and cut its targets for market share and profitability.
Investors reacted to the target cuts with disappointment, sending the company’s shares down €1.40, or 12.6 per cent, to close at €9.65 in Helsinki. The world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturer reported a €380 million (£330 million) profit for the second quarter as weakening demand for handsets and increasing competition dragged sales down by a quarter to €9.91 billion.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article6717150.ece

Amazon To Launch UK Mobile Phone Network?
US Retailer Amazon may well be mulling plans to release a low-cost mobile phone network – as well as the kindle-uk/Kindle DX – as revelations about its interest in becoming a mobile virtual network operator surfaced.  Barring unforeseen circumstances, the Kindle DX e-book reader should reach UK by the end of the year, before Christmas. Mobile Today revealed how Amazon is in “advanced negotiations with a mobile operator” to become an MVNO.
http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2009/7/16/amazon-launch-uk-mobile-phone-network/

Google profits rocket despite recession
Internet giant Google continued to shrug off the worst effects of the recession, announcing today that it had seen an 18% increase in profits for its last financial quarter.  In its latest financial results, the Californian technology giant posted net profits of $1.48bn (£901m) for the three months to the end of June, on the back of revenues of $5.52bn (£3.36bn). While that marks just a 3% increase in revenues on the same period of 2008, net profit rocketed by 18% – up from $1.25bn for the second quarter of last year.  The increases, achieved through what it called “responsible efforts to manage expenses”, marked a surprise boost for the company which has so far managed to ride through the depths of the worldwide economic crisis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/16/google-q2-results

Symbian to develop mobile apps
Symbian, the operating system on nearly half the world’s smartphones, is to become involved in the development of mobile applications, or apps.  Symbian will be a one-stop location for app developers, standardising and testing software and then making it available to existing app storefronts.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8152443.stm

Google sees YouTube profitable in near future
Web video site YouTube will be profitable for Google Inc in the near future, the Internet search leader said on Thursday.  Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, but has lost money on the site that lets people post and share videos free.  Analysts have raised concerns about the huge costs involved in streaming millions of videos with only a tiny swathe of them being supported by advertising. “YouTube is now on a trajectory that we’re very pleased with,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said during an earnings call on Thursday.  He added that Google is helping marketers and advertising agencies create “great ads easily” for YouTube.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56F75P20090717?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

Three Quarters Of Music Aficionados Prefer CDs To Downloads
Media and technology research agency, Leading Question, together with Music Ally released the results of a survey they carried out that reveals that an overwhelming proportion of music fans prefer music CDs to MP3 downloads.  The report found out that 73 percent of the 1000 consumers questioned said that they would rather listen to CDs compared to virtual downloaded tracks. Surprisingly two thirds of those aged between 14 and 18 years old say that they would opt for CDs over MP3s.
http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2009/7/16/three-quarters-music-aficionados-prefer-cds-downloads/

Coronation Street becomes first soap on Google Street View
ITV soap ‘Coronation Street’ has stolen a march on Albert Square by getting featured on Google Street View.  A partnership between ITV and Google led to the Street View car being invited onto the set of the famous soap to capture a 360-degree view of the cobbled streets of fictional town Weatherfield.
http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/920813/Coronation-Street-becomes-first-soap-Google-Street-View/

16 July 2009

Twitter calls lawyer over hacking
The microblogging service Twitter is taking legal advice after hundreds of documents were hacked into and published by a number of blogs. It posted information about Twitter’s financial projections and products. “We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker and anyone who accepts…or publishes these stolen documents,” said Twitter’s Biz Stone.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8153122.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/15/twitter-law

Virgin Media wraps up next-generation network
Virgin Media has just about completed the upgrade to its next-generation broadband network. The 18-month project has tripled its network capacity, and will offer broadband speeds of up to 50Mbit/s to a potential 12 million UK homes. “As the first company to bring broadband to the UK 10 years ago, the completion of our next-generation network marks another pioneering moment for internet access in the UK,” said Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media.
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2246119/virgin-wraps-gen-network

O2 to offer cash cards to 13-year-olds
A mass roll-out of Visa cards for teenagers is to begin this summer, with 02 launching Britain’s first cash card from a mobile phone network that will allow youngsters to buy virtually anything over the internet. 02 is targeting children as young as 13 with the card, which it expects to replace traditional pocket money. It revealed that the average age at which a child obtains a mobile phone is now just eight years old, and that one in five children are already pinching their parents’ debit or credit card to buy goods on the net, such as music downloads.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jul/15/02-cash-cards-visa
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/16/o2_banking/

Sony Ericsson Swings to Loss as Sales Plunge
Mobile handset maker Sony Ericsson today posted a narrower than expected net loss for the second quarter but sales remained well down compared with last year, hit by weak consumer spending and the company’s failure to bring high-end smartphones to market quickly enough.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124772672877649907.html#mod=rss_whats_news_technology

Windows 7 flies off virtual shelf
The latest version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system, Windows 7, is available for pre-order in the UK. Amazon said that sales of Windows 7 in the first eight hours it was available outstripped those of Windows Vista’s entire 17 week pre-order period. The home version of the operating system costs around £50, while the professional version costs around £100. The limited number of pre-ordered copies will be shipped on 22 October, the same day it goes on sale in stores.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8151342.stm

UK network ‘ready’ for swine flu
BT is confident it can cope with the extra demands the swine flu pandemic may put on the UK’s broadband network. It follows a meeting in Whitehall of emergency services which raised doubts about whether the network could cope. There were concerns it could freeze as more people suspected of having the virus are encouraged to work from home.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8151525.stm

15th July 2009

Tagging technology to track trash
The ebb and flow of thousands of pieces of household rubbish are to be tracked using sophisticated mobile tags. It is hoped that making people confront the final journey of their waste will make them reduce what they throw away. Initially, 3,000 pieces of rubbish, donated by volunteers, will be tagged in New York, Seattle and London. “Trash is almost an invisible system today,” Assaf Biderman, one of the project leaders at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told BBC News. “You throw something into the garbage and a lot of us forget about it. It gets buried, it gets burned, it gets shipped overseas.” The Trash Track aims to make that process – termed the “removal chain” – more transparent.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8149183.stm

Google Voice coming to Android, BlackBerry
Google is ready to bring Google Voice to a place where it really makes the most sense: the smartphone. Android and BlackBerry owners who are also Google Voice users will be able to use the service directly on their handsets starting today, said Vincent Paquet, senior product manager for Google Voice and a co-founder of GrandCentral, the product currently known as Google Voice. Google Voice, which is expected to be available at some point today, lets users assign a single number to ring their home, work, and cell phones, and also get voice mail messages as text transcriptions.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10286763-2.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/google-voice-apps-for-android-and-blackberry-are-here/

T-Mobile believed to be in talks with Apple to snatch iPhone from 02
The new UK managing director of T-Mobile is preparing to announce his plans to resuscitate the mobile phone company’s flagging fortunes, amid speculation that the country’s fourth-placed network is trying to wrest the iPhone from Apple’s exclusive British partner O2. Richard Moat, who joined T-Mobile UK last month, has had a rough ride after it emerged that bankers at JP Morgan have approached Vodafone to discuss the possibility of a bid for the company. Orange has had overtures to T-Mobile’s German parent Deutsche Telekom rebuffed, while market leader O2 is also interested in looking at the firm’s books.  Moat, however, is preparing to reveal his plans to turn around T-Mobile’s fortunes in the UK market, where it has fallen far behind O2, Vodafone and Orange.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/14/tmobile-apple-iphone-02

Iranian consumers boycott Nokia for ‘collaboration’
The mobile phone company Nokia is being hit by a growing economic boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement begin targeting a string of companies deemed to be collaborating with the regime. Wholesale vendors in the capital report that demand for Nokia handsets has fallen by as much as half in the wake of calls to boycott Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for selling communications monitoring systems to Iran. There are signs that the boycott is spreading: consumers are
shunning SMS messaging in protest at the perceived complicity with the regime by the state telecoms company, TCI. Iran’s state-run broadcaster has been hit by a collapse in advertising as companies fear being blacklisted in a Facebook petition. There is also anecdotal evidence that people are moving money out of state banks and into private banks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/14/nokia-boycott-iran-election-protests

Dell Says Tech Spending Is Likely to Remain Weak
Dell Inc. executives said world-wide technology spending is weak and likely will remain so for the near future as companies delay computer purchases and consumers gravitate to low-cost devices. “We’re going to run the business assuming relatively weak demand continues,” said Dell Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden, speaking at the Round Rock, Texas, company’s annual conference for Wall Street analysts.  Chief Executive Michael Dell added that big customers are delaying new technology purchases during the recession and are “elongating the life cycle” of personal computers. He said spending should pick up next year.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124760529668341211.html#mod=rss_whats_news_technology

Teenagers losing interest in illegal file-sharing as streaming starts to flow
Illegal file-sharing in the UK has fallen dramatically, according to media and technology researchers at Music Ally. The analyst firm published a study on Monday that showed the numbers of those who regularly file-shared had dropped by a quarter between December 2007 and January 2009. The trend was particularly pronounced among 14-18-year-olds – at the earlier date, 42 per cent were file-sharing at least once per month but at the latter date only 26 per cent were doing so. At the same time, streaming music services
appear to be taking off.
http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39451677,00.htm

14 July 2009

Microsoft to Offer Office Over Web as It Responds to Google Threat
Microsoft provided new details of a plan to offer a free, Web-based version of its Office software, the latest acknowledgment that the company’s decades-old model of selling boxed software is threatened by rivals such as Google. The free online offering — expected to be ready in the first half of 2010 along with a new version of its conventional software called Office 2010 — is the latest milestone in an 18-month-old strategy by the world’s largest software supplier to offer more of its core products via the Web.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124749451107332731.html#mod=rss_whats_news_technology
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8148969.stm

Blockbuster, Samsung set on-demand video pact
Blockbuster today announced an agreement that allows consumers to instantly view movies and video from its OnDemand service on Samsung’s televisions and electronics devices. The deal expands the reach of the company, best known for its brick-and morter-movie rental stores, further into the market for digital distribution of video. The service, due to launch in
September or October in the United States, is similar to Blockbuster’s existing pacts with TV maker Vizio and digital video recorder maker TiVo Inc, which was announced in March.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56D0RD20090714

LG launches app store, initial focus on Asia
LG, the world’s No. 3 handset maker, is launching an online store for mobile phone applications today with an initial focus on Asia and aspirations for a more global reach by year-end. Phone makers and mobile firms worldwide are in a race to match the success of Apple’s App Store, creating their own virtual stores where users can download software and content.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56C0HN20090713

Mobile phone directory suspended
A controversial service which allows connection to millions of mobile phone numbers in an online directory has been suspended, just weeks after it was launched. The 118 800 service, which charges up to £1 to put people in touch with a mobile number from its list, went live in June. Since then it has been deluged with people trying to remove their details from the system. The site had caused concerns about privacy after it emerged it was making available details of 15m mobile phone numbers it had bought from market researchers and list brokers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/jul/13/mobile-phone-directory-suspended
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/8148463.stm

Government launches awards for tech innovation
The first government-backed innovation awards for science and technology were unveiled yesterday at the Science Museum in London. The government claims that the awards will make the industry more exciting, and help it achieve the recognition it deserves. Science and Innovation minister Lord Drayson said that the Iawards would recognise individuals or businesses at the “cutting edge” of science and technology, in the same way that the Baftas rate the best films.
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2245970/government-launches-awards-tech

Australia seeks new army robots
Australia has launched a multi-million dollar competition to build a new generation of military robots.  The winning design must help soldiers fight by remote control in urban combat zones, defence officials say. The aim is to reduce casualties in urban areas where fighting is unpredictable and treacherous. The competition is being run by Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation in partnership with the US military.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8149043.stm

9 July, 2009

UK hit by 3G mobile coverage ‘not-spots’
Large parts of the UK cannot access the internet through the country’s mobile networks, according to maps published today by communications regulator Ofcom. The gaps in third-generation (3G) mobile coverage are mostly found in rural areas in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the north of England. Ofcom’s maps – which show where calls can be made and received outdoors over the various 3G networks – also show significant “not-spots” in the southwest of England and in East Anglia. Mobile phones are increasingly used to access the internet, with more than 2m new connections to mobile broadband made between February 2008 and February 2009. The government has proposed making more mobile spectrum available for mobile broadband as it looks to achieve universal broadband coverage by 2012.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/08/3g-mobile-coverage-not-spots

Broadband penetration set to hit half a billion
The growth of broadband internet connections is set to top more than 500 million by next year, according to researchers. Analyst firm Futuresource Consulting said that the broadband market should reach the milestone in 2010, bringing the total number of connected households up over 500 million. The study found that DSL connections are still far and away the most popular form of broadband connection. Going forward, analysts believe that much of the future growth will take place in developing markets rather than the traditional market of developed countries where broadband is firmly established.
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2245705/broadband-penetration-set-hit

Bing Now Bigger Than Digg, Twitter and CNN
With the headlines that Microsoft’s new search engine Bing has been grabbing, it’s easy to forget that Bing only went live about a month ago. Since its launch at the beginning of June, it has given Google pause and even had its own web infomercial. But none of that matters if Bing doesn’t grow and find a way to compete with Google. So after a month, where are we?  According to Compete.com, Bing was able to amass 49.57 million unique visitors in its first month as Microsoft’s official search engine. Bing’s traffic trumps that of Digg (Digg) (38.96 million) Twitter (Twitter) (23 million), and CNN (28.54 million).
http://mashable.com/2009/07/08/bing-numbers/

Apps a nail in coffin of broadcast mobile TV
For years it was the talk of the wireless industry: beaming television to the world’s four billion cellphones would be the icon of the digital age. Now, just three letters are hastening the demise of that vision. App. Short for “application,” the programs people download from online stores to run on their portable phones have enabled consumers to choose for themselves which moving pictures to take in when they are on the go. Perhaps the best illustration of the fast-shifting outlook is the history of forecasts for the market. Strategy Analytics now expects the mobile TV broadcasting market to total $280 million next year. Only three years ago the firm forecast the market to reach $5.4 billion in 2010.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56801M20090709

Open-source companies log impressive growth in Q2 2009
Signs of “green shoots” notwithstanding, the economy doesn’t seem to be getting any better, but open-source companies continue to log impressive growth as open source pervades the enterprise, according to analysts. Importantly, according to an analyst, while open source starts as a cost-saving exercise, it often morphs into something far more strategic: “Organizations tend to start [with the goal of saving money with open source]. And then what tends to happen is the more that they become comfortable with using open source and the more that they apply it successfully, the more they start to realize that there are benefits other than cost savings that they can take advantage of. And that’s when you start to see them turn from open source opportunists into open source advocates.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10282668-16.html

Ad Spending on Social Networks to Shrink, eMarketer Says
Advertising on social networks is expected to drop in 2009 after a period of hot growth, amid spending cuts by marketers and problems at MySpace, according to a forecast from research firm eMarketer. The report, set to be released Thursday, sharply reverses an earlier projection. EMarketer predicts that U.S. ad spending on social networks will drop 3% to $1.1 billion this year. In December, it projected growth of 10.2% for 2009 to $1.3 billion. Those levels are just a fraction of total ad spending, but online advertising has been considered an important area of growth in the depressed ad industry. While social-networking sites have been popular with consumers, they have yet to gain significant traction with marketers.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124709462751814669.html

Orange UK exiles Firefox from call centres
Yes, the corporate world is taking its sweet time upgrading from Microsoft’s eight-year-old Internet Explorer 6, a patently insecure web browser that lacks even a tabbed interface. Take, for example, the mobile and broadband giant Orange UK. According to a technician working in an Orange call centre – Orange UK still requires the use of IE6 in all its call centres, forbidding technicians from adopting Mozilla’s Firefox or any other browser of a newer vintage. A recent email from management informed call-centre reps that downloading Firefox was verboten and that they would be fined £250 if their PCs experienced problems and had to be rebuilt after running Firefox or any other application downloaded from the net.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/08/orange_and_ie6/