Computer Weekly articles from June 2009

Computer Weekly archives from June 2009

News.(briefs)
June 9, 2009... Sat-nav challenge: a one hour journey in 35 minutes If newspaper headlines are anything to go by, life in the UK is quite dangerous enough. Some people, however, seem to think it necessary to risk their lives and those of others by racing...

News.(Apple Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Details of Apple's new iPhone, which is rumoured to include a digital compass and an autofocus camera, have been leaked by a Chinese-language website. Pictures, some apparently taken using the new phone itself and showing the new features...

News.(British Telecommunications PLC)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... A free speed upgrade to 20mbps for BT's broadband customers suggests that communications minister Stephen Carter's plans for a universal service running at one-tenth the speed are unambitious. BT announced today that following successful...

News.(computer crimes)
June 9, 2009... The Conservative Party will push for a cybersecurity minister to raise awareness of the importance of fighting computer crime, the shadow home affairs minister said yesterday. Conservative MP James Brokenshire said computer crime was the...

News.(illegal file sharing)
June 9, 2009... Internet service providers may be required to cut online access speeds for persistent online file-sharers, culture minister Andy Burnham indicated this week. A departmental spokesman said the minister referred to "technical measures" to...

News.(Data Domain Inc.)(EMC)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... EMC has made a counter offer for Data Domain which is 20% higher than the $1.5bn bid tabled by NetApp last month. Despite having a comparable deduplication portfolio, EMC's $1.8bn all-cash proposal launched late last night is bound to...

News.(Ericsson Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Ericsson hopes to free mobile computer users from users from dongles and wires with a new chip that allows netbook makers to build broadband connectivity into the motherboard. Launching the F3307 mobile broadband module today, Ericsson said...

News.(Microsoft Ltd.)(resignation of Jerry Fishenden)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Jerry Fishenden, Microsoft UK's national technology officer, is stepping down after five years in the role and nearly 12 years with Microsoft. A prolific speaker and commentator on IT issues, particularly with respect to public policy,...

News.(chief information officers)
June 9, 2009... CIOs should accept that consumer devices and services are being used in the workplace today, and develop strategies to embrace them. Speaking at Forrester Research's EMEA IT Forum in Berlin, analyst Dr Thomas Mendel warned that devices such...

News.(information technology jobs)(General Motors Corp.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... IT jobs are at risk as more than a fifth of General Motors workers face losing their jobs by the end of the year as the company restructures, GM CEO Fritz Henderson said today. Speaking in a news conference, Henderson said job cuts across...

News.(restructuring of General Motors Corp.)
June 9, 2009... It is too soon to tell how many IT workers will be laid off in the restructuring of General Motors, the biggest US car and truck maker, which will emerge from bankruptcy protection in 60 to 90 days. The slimmer "New GM" will have less debt...

News.(Microsoft Ltd.)
June 9, 2009... Microsoft hosted 190 police and law enforcement officers for three days' training in IT forensics this week, saving the government some [pounds sterling]325,000. It's Microsoft's way of giving something back to the industry, says Ed...

News.(Nokia Corp.)
June 9, 2009... This month Nokia will start shipping its new flagship mobile computer, the N97, to more than 75 countries. Carphone Warehouse, the UK's largest mobile phone retailer, will be stocking it from 26 June, kicking off with 18-month contracts...

News.(Nominet UK)(appointment of Bob Garratt)
June 9, 2009... Nominet, the UK's top-level domain name registry, is fighting to preserve its right to self-regulation following government concern over its ability to manage its affairs in the public interest. It is asking its members to ratify a new...

News.(Oracle Corp.)(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
June 9, 2009... In the wake of Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, analysts and industry commentators have been predicting the emergence of a more commercially aware version of the Java programming language and platform. The first signs of this may...

News.(Alcatel-Lucent)(Orange France S.A.)
June 9, 2009... French-owned mobile phone network operator Orange and communications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent are joining forces to address the healthcare markets in Europe and emerging markets. The increasing use of electronic patient record systems...

News.(Palm Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... The Pre, the latest smartphone from Palm, will go on sale in the US via the Sprint mobile network for around $200 on 6 June. It is a move that the firm hopes will rescue it from a two-year sales decline that has seen it drop out of the top...

News.(Tesco Telecoms)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Tesco is giving away free laptops and netbooks as part of a "build your own" mobile broadband offer. The deal allows customers to choose from over 30 laptops or netbooks bundled with mobile broadband packages from some of the mobile...

News.(Dell Inc.)(EqualLogic Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Dell has indicated it may look to exploit the relatively low valuations of technology companies in the current climate by acquiring more businesses. The firm has made 10 acquisitions in recent years, with the purchase of storage vendor...

News.(Information Commissioner's Office)
June 9, 2009... One morning in February 2009, two investigators from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) knocked on the door of The Consulting Association, set discretely off an alley in Droitwich, West Midlands. A 30-year covert operation to...

News.(cloud computing)(Survey)
June 9, 2009... Many businesses have expressed lingering doubts about the security and reliability of cloud computing despite forging ahead with plans to buy software and services online. More than three quarters of 200 UK CIOs and CFOs surveyed by...

News.(cloud computing)
June 9, 2009... CIOs of large organisations need to embrace cloud computing, or risk losing control of key areas of computing infrastructure, Forrester Research has warned. Speaking at Forrester's IT Forum in Berlin, principal analyst James Staten warned...

News.(Data Domain)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... NetApp has raised its bid price for Data Domain by more than 26% to $1.9bn. EMC tabled a [pounds sterling]1.8bn counter offer for the data deduplication specialist yesterday and said its submission was not subject to financing or due...

News.(National Program for IT)
June 9, 2009... The cost of BT's [pounds sterling]1bn contract as a local service provider to London's NHS as part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) has risen by more than [pounds sterling]500m as a result of contract renegotiations and new work - the...

News.(United Kingdom. Ministry of Defence)
June 9, 2009... Today, in the week of the 15th anniversary of the notorious crash of a Chinook helicopter on the Mull of Kintyre, Computer Weekly is publishing, in full for the first time, an MoD memo that is the clearest evidence yet that software problems...

News.(Identity and Passport Service)
June 9, 2009... First-time applicants for passports may be asked about their credit card debts - which is one result of a link between public and private sector databases. Similar questions may be asked in future when individuals apply for ID cards,...

Web guide.
June 9, 2009... The required series of six primes in arithmetical progression is 7, 37, 67, 97, 127 and 157. In the second problem, the skeletal sum reconstructs to form This is the only fraction of this type known to established theory to equal...

Web guide.
June 9, 2009... This week's Puzzler is based on the digit 7. First you are asked to search for an unusual series of six prime numbers in arithmetical progression. This special series starts with the single digit 7 and all the other five primes end in 7....

Special Report.(information security management)
June 9, 2009... In a downturn information security professionals have to balance the rise in vulnerabilities and threat vectors with a fall in budget. Hence the increasing requirement to work smarter and develop holistic, sustainable approaches to information...

News.(briefs)
June 9, 2009... Lead Photos: Windows 7 Touch Pack games and applications for the home Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 is six multi-touch applications and games that are designed to show the capabilities of Windows Touch in Windows 7. ...

News.(cyber threat)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges faced by the US, President Barack Obama has acknowledged. The same is therefore true for the UK and most other countries, but in unveiling the findings of a...

Feature.(mobile technology)
June 9, 2009... Mobile technology has the potential to revolutionise health care in developing countries, particularly in the area of heath awareness schemes and training health care professionals. Mobile phones are generally affordable and available to the...

Feature.(usage of mobile health)
June 9, 2009... Mobile technology has the potential to revolutionise healthcarein developing countries, particularly in the area of heath awareness schemes and training healthcareprofessionals. Mobile phones are affordable and available to the population at...

News.(HSBC Holdings PLC)
June 9, 2009... HSBC has launched an investigation after systems failed at the weekend leaving customers unable to withdraw cash from ATMs. Online banking was also down. "HSBC would like to apologise to those customers that were affected by issues...

News.(British Computer Society)
June 9, 2009... The British Computer Society (BCS) wants to focus less on three elements of its name: British, computer and society. These are the words of the BCS president Alan Pollard speaking on the organisation's restructuring plans. He says the BCS...

News.(United Kingdom. Home Office)
June 9, 2009... The Home Office is to use a newly-launched guide to handling personal data to improve the security of its internal data. The Home Office model will help the department classify the sensitivity of data and either certify data handling...

News.(software piracy)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... A fifth of software used by London businesses is unlicensed, costing the software industry [pounds sterling]149m a year, according to a report published today. The report coincides with the start of a two-month campaign by the Business...

News.(computer viruses)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... More than 40,000 websites have fallen victim to a virus attack that is still growing, security experts have said. Security firm Websense says the site beladen.net is infecting legitimate websites all over the world with malicious code that...

News.(computational biology)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Youths with no criminal past are being arrested so their DNA can be stored on a database, according to the Metro. In the London borough of Camden, 386 under 18s had their DNA put on record in 2008 and 169 so far this year, a freedom of...

News.(Google Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Google plans to open a digital bookstore by the end of the year to challenge Amazon's dominance of the online book sales market. The move is unrelated to Google's controversial agreement with authors and publishers to make digital copies of...

News.(HSBC Holdings PLC)
June 9, 2009... HSBC has launched an investigation after systems failed at the weekend leaving customers unable to withdraw cash from ATMs. Online banking was also down. "HSBC would like to apologise to those customers who were affected by issues relating...

News.(anti-trust investigation)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Google, Yahoo and Apple face anti-trust investigation IT giants Google, Yahoo and Apple are being investigated by the US Justice Department over their recruitment practices. The Justice Department is investigating allegations that the...

News.(information technology skills)
June 9, 2009... UK students could be looking a gift horse in the mouth by ignoring IT careers in favour of professions viewed as more exciting and rewarding. Despite the abundance of IT skills following thousands of redundancies, demand for IT staff is...

News.(Facebook Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... An MP was "devastated" after his Facebook account was hacked and rogue messages sent to over 1,500 of his friends on the site. Michael Fabricant, MP for Lichfield, clicked on a message saying "Look at this" that took him to a page...

News.(financial services)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... A PhD course that combines financial computing skills with science and engineering has been inundated with applicants for its first year. London's first centre for financial computing, the UK Doctoral Training Centre in Financial Computing,...

News.(Adobe Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Adobe is planning to tackle the complexities of developing rich internet applications in the next version of is Flash platform, which is available as a beta version from the company's Labs site. The software separates the tasks of designing...

News.(Air France S.A.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... A system failure following a short circuit is thought to have caused an Air France Airbus to crash into the Atlantic Ocean today. The aircraft disappeared off radar screens between Brazil and France after it hit thunderstorms at around 3am...

News.(Akamai Technologies Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Akamai Technologies, which specialises in caching web pages so that users can access them more quickly, is tackling the inefficiencies of cloud computing. Today, the company's content delivery network is used to cache web pages closer to...

News.(computer crimes)(Survey)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... More than half of IT professionals say exploiting security vulnerabilities is the easiest way for criminals to hack into organisations, a survey has revealed. This is up 13% from a year ago, according to an annual poll conducted by...

News.(Microsoft Corp.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has threatened to move US jobs offshore if president Obama's proposal to impose higher taxes on US companies' foreign profits is voted in. In an interview with Bloomberg, Ballmer said the tax would...

News.(Research in Motion Ltd.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Research in Motion has issued a patch to fix a security hole for its Blackberry Enterprise server that affects Acrobat Distiller. In a posting on its website Rim said that a security vulnerability exists in the PDF distiller of some...

News.(malware)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... The cash machine network may be prone to a serious hacking attack, banks have been warned. SpiderLabs, the security team at Trustwave responsible for incident response and forensics, ethical hacking and application security tests, has...

News.(internet access)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... The Chinese government has blocked access to Twitter, You Tube, Hotmail, Flickr and Microsoft's new search engine Bing ahead of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests on Thursday. The move appears to be a measure to...

News.(Google Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Developers can now download an early version of Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux. Google product managers Mike Smith and Karen Grunberg warned ordinary web users not to download them, as the software was still at an early stage of...

News.(Cisco Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Network equipment maker Cisco Systems and US insurer Travelers are to replace recession hit Citigroup and General Motors on the Dow Jones Industrial Average US stock market barometer. The changes, which take effect next week, come after GM...

News.(back office)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Businesses can cut costs by 30% if they automate, standardise and offshore processes, in that order. That is the view of Matt Havens, director of Europe at Cognizant Business Consultancy. Offshoring your back office processes without...

News.(data.gov)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... The UK government is considering launching an open source data website, similar to the data.gov site launched by the US government in May. A post by Richard Stirling on the Cabinet Office's digital engagement blog asks for views on what...

News.(e-voting technology)(Survey)
June 9, 2009... People died for the right to vote, but now Brits need it to be made easier if they are to bother. E-voting technology, which could give voters the ability to register their choice over the internet, could make elections more democratic,...

News.(information technology services industry)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Forget the recession, IT directors and CIOs should ask the board for more money to invest in IT, according to analyst Gartner. Gartner is urging IT directors to prepare a plan for future IT projects to support business growth by 1 July...

News.(Huawei Technologies Company Ltd.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Huawei, China's telecoms equipment maker, has complained that India is withholding contracts to the company over unfounded security concerns. The security issue was one of the biggest stumbling blocks that led to the company's failure to...

News.(Intel Corp.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Intel has unveiled a family of processors for low-cost mobile computing. The company said the chips will power a range of ultra-thin laptops, weighing between 0.9kg and 2.2kg. Until now, users wanting lightweight ultra-thin laptops had to...

News.(British Telecommunications PLC)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... BT has been accused of slowing down its internet connection in the evenings when users try to watch or downalod TV programmes using the BBC iPlayer. The BBC has spoken to a viewer who complained that his internet access bandwidth speed...

News.(Red Hat Inc.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Red Hat has unveiled its Java strategy and a platform called JBoss Choice, which it says tackles application complexity by providing a single environment for deploying different programming models for Java. Red Hat said its aim was to...

News.(information technology services industry)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Demand for IT staff fell in May, but the news was not all bad, with the number of vacancies falling slower than in most other sectors and the rate of decline easing. Some skills are still in demand, with .net, Sharepoint, PHP, business...

News.(antitrust investigation)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... The US Justice Department's antitrust investigation of the recruitment pacts made between IT companies such as Google, Yahoo and Apple could set a precedent that will be difficult to uphold. The department is investigating allegations that...

News.(Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.)(Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... When investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt it owed Indian IT service provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) tens of millions of pounds. "We learned a lesson from the Lehmans bankruptcy. This was that you have to be closer to your...

News.(Lloyds TSB Group PLC)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Lloyds TSB continues death by a "thousand cuts" Lloyds TSB accused last month by union Unite of embarking on a strategy of "death by a thousand cuts", has announced another 500 job cuts this week. They follow 650 job cuts last month. ...

News.(Metronet)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... The failure of Metronet, which maintained two-thirds of the London Underground but collapsed in July 2007, was partly due to the poor dissemination and use of information. A National Audit Office (NAO) report found that poor quality of...

News.(information systems)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... UK organisations should always consider the impact on an individual's privacy when developing new IT systems, says the Information Commissioner's Office. Assistant information commissioner Jonathan Bamford said that for people to have...

News.(LG Electronics Inc.)(Nortel Networks Corp.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Nortel Networks is seeking to sell its majority share in its Korean joint venture with LG Electronics. The Canadian telecoms equipment maker, which has been operating under chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since mid-February, owns a 50%...

News.(Lloyds TSB Group PLC)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... The union that represents Lloyds TSB workers has failed to win any commitment from the bank's executive board to bring jobs back to the UK from India. The Lloyds TSB Group Union met the board today, arguing that it should bring 5,000 IT...

News.(Oracle Corp.)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Oracle chief Larry Ellison confirmed his company's long-term commitment to Java at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. Sharing the stage with Sun chief executive officer, Scott McNealy, Ellison said, "Oracle's middleware strategy is...

News.(Information Security Awareness Forum)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... A professional code of best practice for handling personal data has been launched in London. The Personal Data Guardianship Code (PDGC) was developed by the British Computer Society (BCS) and the Information Security Awareness Forum...

News.(Quickoffice)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Quickoffice has updated its MS Office-compatible iPhone application. Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite 1.2.0 offers three applications, which can each be pruchased separately. Quicksheet enables users to view and edit Excel documents in...

News.(social networking sites)(Brief article)(Statistical data)
June 9, 2009... Web surfers in the US spent the equivalent of over 3,600 years, some 1.3 million days, on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpacein April alone, according to research. And the amount of time people are spending on these sites is...

News.(Sun Microsystems Inc. updates OpenSolaris)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Sun Microsystems has boosted networking and performance in the latest version of OpenSolaris, by including Project Crossbow from the Solaris operating system. The changes to network and storage performance make the operating system much...

News.(Steve Jobs to return to work after six months medical leave)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is expected to return to work soon after six months' medical leave, according to the Wall Street Journal. The report has sparked speculation that Jobs could return early to unveil a new iPhone at Apple's...

News.(trends in Europe, the Middle East and Africa's external disc storage market )(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... The EMEA external disc storage market suffered in the first quarter of 2009, dented by the recession and volatile currency markets. According to data released by market watcher IDC today, revenues across the region fell 19.1% year-on-year...

News.(The Sunday Times will launch a website)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... The Sunday Times is to launch a website which will charge readers for looking at content. The details do not appear to have been finalised, but the move follows publisher Rupert Murdoch's public statement a few weeks ago that paid-for...

News.(overseas information technology service providers bends immigration rules to provide offshore services)
June 9, 2009... IT service providers from overseas are bending immigration rules to provide offshore services by stealth as thousands of IT workers join dole queues, it was claimed today. Figures on the total UK job cuts and statistics on the number of...

News.(Technology will reshape the United Kingdom business landscape says HSBC)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Technology will reshape the UK business landscape in its biggest shake-up since the industrial revolution, according to HSBC. The bank's Future of Business report says robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology and cybernetics will help to...

News.(scareware attack on Twitter )(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... A scareware attack on Twitter over the weekend is the latest in what has been described as a "worrying new trend" of social networking security attacks. In the latest attack Twitter users were invited to click on a "best video" link which...

News.(Harvard Business Publishing's study about Twitter user)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Men like to be followed and women are more picky about who they follow. But the average Twitter user only tweets once every 74 days. These are just some of the findings of a study of more than 300,000 Twitter users carried out by Harvard...

News.(First Capital Connect trains uses Twitter to alert commuters on delays)(Brief article)
June 9, 2009... Twitter is being used by First Capital Connect trains to alert London commuters to possible delays on some routes. Commuters simply have to "follow" First Capital Connect. Users can specify the routes and times they are interested in...