Archive for the ‘News’ Category
News aggregators
I used to swear by Bloglines.com but it became a bit flaky so I changed to Google Reader which is very versatile. See shared stories in the left hand side bar at the bottom – any story i find interesting, amusing or relevant to this blog I try to share. I hope my readers will find it of interest.
Tech support calls can be costly
Up until now a ten minute call to Tesco broadband cost £5
A survey from Which? Computing has found that most internet service providers are using premium rate numbers for their technical support.
The consumer group compared the technical support costs of 45 firms.
While a handful used a freephone number, firms including Tesco broadband, Supanet and Roxio use premium rate 090 numbers.
Tesco has said that it is planning to change to a cheaper tariff “as soon as possible”.
“The cost of calls to Tesco broadband technical support is something we’ve been looking at and listening to customer feedback on,” said a spokeswoman for the retail giant.
“As a result we’ll continue to provide a very high quality of technical expertise to all our broadband customers but calls will now be charged at a local rate.
“We’ll be contacting all our customers as soon as possible to let them know about the change in price,” she said.
The chief executive of Microsoft has admitted that his firm’s slowness to grasp the potential of internet search had hit the business.
Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft had become a “David” in search alongside the “Goliath” of its arch-rival Google. Mr Ballmer also warned the economic downturn could hit technology spending. And he called on politicians in Washington to make the right choices to sort out the economic crisis.
“I don’t think there’s any confusion in Washington that they need to make smart choices to help the US economy,” he said. The Microsoft chief said that, while it was not clear how consumers would react to the economic crisis, “you’ve got to assume that people are going to assess their overall wealth differently so they aren’t going to be spending as much on high-cost capital goods”.
Mayor proposes London-wide wifi access
Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has backed plans to create a wireless network stretching over the capital, allowing Londoners to use the internet via wifi for free.
Speaking in response to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s proposal to give £300m to lower-income families to allow them to buy computers and broadband, the Mayor told BBC London he wanted to create a “wifi city”.
“I certainly think there is a case for dealing with people who are information technology-poor, and trying to help people get online,”
“What we need is a city where anywhere you go, you can log on, you can get on the web,” Mr Johnson said.
“They’ve done it in other parts of the world; why on earth can’t we do it?”
Currently, companies such as The Cloud offer citywide wifi access in a number of locations across Europe including Amsterdam, Stuttgart and London. Manchester and San Francisco are among several cities that have discussed the possibility of offering free of charge wifi access to their residents.
Spam experiment overloads inboxes
Surfing the web unprotected will leave the average web user with 70 spam messages each day, according to an experiment by security firm McAfee.
It invited 50 people from around the world, including five from the UK, to surf without spam filters.
The experiment revealed that UK residents are most likely to be targeted by the infamous Nigerian e-mails and "adult" spam.
One UK participant received 5,414 spam e-mails during the month-long trial.
GLOBAL SPAM LEAGUE
US – 23,233
Brazil – 15,856
Italy – 15,610
Mexico – 12,229
UK – 11,965
Australia – 9,214
The Netherlands – 6,378
Spain – 5,419
France – 2,597
Germany – 2,331
Design revamp for ‘$100 laptop’
The wraps have been taken off the new version of the XO laptop designed for schoolchildren in developing countries.
The revamped machine created by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project
looks like an e-book and has had its price slashed to $75 per device.
OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte gave a glimpse of the "book like"
device at an unveiling event at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
The first XO2 machines should be ready to deliver to children in 2010.
Stolen Laptop Helps Turn Tables on Suspects
May 10, 2008 NYT
By LISA W. FODERARO
WHITE PLAINS — The thieves were voracious, filching flat-screen
televisions and computer games, purloining iPods and DVDs, even making
off with a box of liquor and a set of car rims in a burglary two weeks
ago at an apartment three young people shared here. Luckily, they also
took two laptop computers.
One of the laptops was a Macintosh belonging to Kait Duplaga, who works
at the Apple store in the Westchester mall and thus knows how to use
all its bells and whistles. While the police were coming up dry, Ms.
Duplaga exploited the latest software applications installed on her
laptop to track down the culprits and even get their photographs.
Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, lovely Spam…
Spam – the scourge of every e-mail inbox – celebrates its 30th anniversary this weekend.
The first recognisable e-mail marketing message was sent on 3 May, 1978
to 400 people on behalf of DEC – a now-defunct computer-maker.
The message was sent via Arpanet – the internet’s forerunner – and won its sender much criticism from recipients.
Thirty years on, spam has grown into an underground industry that sends out billions of messages every day.
Christmas online sales ‘rise 50%’
UK online sales rose by more than 50% in the three months to Christmas, according to an industry survey.
Internet sales between 1 October and 31 December hit £15.2bn, up from £9.61bn a year earlier, with electronics and clothing doing well, Capgemini said.
Firms with both a High Street and online presence, such as John Lewis, did best, the survey said.
For every pound spent on goods in 2007, 15 pence was spent online, pushing annual electronic sales to £30.2bn.
In 2006, for every pound spent on retail goods, the internet spend had been 10 pence.