That's competitive as in really expensive

UK infrastructure owner BT has today announced its new consumer bundle offerings following relaxation of Ofcom competition rules. The headlining £7.99-a-month anytime calls plus broadband is reasonable - but lasts for only 3 months, followed by a 15-month lock-in at an unimpressive £15.99.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

abartels writes "It seems like there's been nothing but bad news and resignations coming from Oracle since it finally managed to close the deal on Sun. Finally, there's good news in that Drizzle seems to have a bright future ahead. It just isn't with Oracle but with the Rackspace Cloud."

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It's not a joke, it's real!

Ex-Sun open source veteran Simon Phipps has been elected to the board of directors at the Open Source Initiative (OSI) group.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

Twitter scourge changes pants

Command and Control servers associated with the infamous Koobface worms have gone through a complete refresh over the last fortnight. Russian net security firm Kaspersky Lab reckons the change up might be aimed at making takedown efforts by cybercrime fighters more difficult.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

tbcpp writes "The Khronos Group has announced the release of the OpenGL® 4.0 specification. Among the new features: two new shader stages that enable the GPU to offload geometry tessellation from the CPU; per-sample fragment shaders and programmable fragment shader input positions; drawing of data generated by OpenGL, or external APIs such as OpenCL, without CPU intervention; shader subroutines for significantly increased programming flexibility; 64-bit double precision floating point shader operations and inputs/outputs for increased rendering accuracy and quality. Khronos has also released an OpenGL 3.3 specification, together with a set of ARB extensions, to enable as much OpenGL 4.0 functionality as possible on previous generation GPU hardware."

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itwbennett writes "In a 45-minute press conference at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Sony announced its motion controller, officially named the Playstation Move. The Move, consists of the Eye Toy (a camera pointed at the player) and a wand-like controller with a lighted ball at the end and a range of buttons on the shaft, writes blogger Peter Smith. 'Alternatively games can use two of the wands, or one wand and one "sub-controller" that has an analog stick (the camera is always required),' says Smith. 'If this is sounding very much like the Wii's Remote and Nunchuk well, you aren't far off (though at least there's no cable between the two parts to smack you in the face when things get heated).' Here are Smith's thoughts on the demo: 'All in all, the demos seemed OK, but I, at least, wasn't really blown away by any of them. That said, it's always hard to tell how well these systems work without actually trying them for yourself. You need to feel the connection (or lack thereof) between what your hands are doing and what's going on on-screen in order to be sure. For example, in the boxing demo the player did a quick spin move that led to a roundhouse punch. It's hard to say if his motion triggered a pre-set action (a 'combo') or if the system was able to track the controller that accurately, and was able to 'connect the dots' from when his body briefly occluded the wand to when it reappeared.'"

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Superfast broadband needs super funding

Mandybill minister Stephen Timms has attacked Tory promises of "superfast broadband" as "hopeless" and lacking in funding.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Bits of the internet on a phone? WE OWN THAT!

Gathering information from around the internet and presenting it on a mobile phone is protected by patent, according to Wireless Ink, which is suing Google and Facebook over it.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Nexus One estimates drop 70%

Google is discovering just how dangerous it is to ruffle the feathers of the major cellcos. Its Nexus One handset may be one of the most advanced on the market and bear the magical brand, but half-hearted marketing efforts by carriers have led to disappointing sales. Now, analysts at Goldman Sachs have slashed their estimates for sales of the phone this year by 70 per cent.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Paul Taylor noted a story that I would have thought to be an april fools day joke a few weeks from now, which makes it only seem more tragic. A 3 year shot himself with a gun after mistaking it for a Wii controller.

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The search for revenue continues

Mobile operators are looking at application stores as a way to boost revenue, not by selling applications but by selling the bandwidth needed to use them.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

alphadogg writes "Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World's Billionaires." I'd still let the guy buy me dinner if he's ever in my town. He's probably still good for it even tho he's fallen on hard times.

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Belgian 'blue cow' biotech produces: Das Überfisch

After ten years of tinkering with DNA in a Rhode Island lab, a top fish boffin claims he has created a genetically enhanced mutant supertrout.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

As Hillier says give kids ID cards for social networks

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has given Parliament some details on the most recent breaches of the various identity databases held by his ministry.…

What is your recession sales strategy?

Ninjakicks writes "Although they won't hit store shelves for a few more weeks, today Intel has officially unveiled the new Core i7-980X Extreme processor. The Core i7-980X Extreme is based on Intel's 32nm Gulftown core, derived from their Nehalem architecture and sports six execution cores. The chip runs at a 3.33GHz clock frequency, that can jump up to 3.6GHz in Intel's Turbo Boost mode. This processor has a max TDP of 130W, which amazingly is the same as previous generation Core i7 quad-core CPUs. Of course, it's crazy fast too. Some may say that the majority of applications can't truly take advantage of the resources afforded by a six-core chip capable of processing up to 12 threads. However, the fact remains there are plenty of multi-threaded usage models and applications where the power of a CPU like this can be put to very good use."

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Infection still spreading

An Estonian virus writer has been jailed for two and a half years for creating a Windows worm family that launched denial of service attacks on the websites of a local insurance firm and ISP.…

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Claims Conservative government would cap tech +£100m contracts

Shadow chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne claimed today that the Conservative party, if elected to form the next government, would meet its "ambition" of ensuring that the next generation of "Googles, Microsofts and Facebooks" were British companies.…

No! Really? That many eh?

The government expects to have issued 17 million ID cards by 2017, Home Secretary Alan Johnson told the Commons yesterday.…

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

Stringing up rural communities

Virgin Media is to see whether it can string up extensions to its fibre-optic network to Britain's telegraph poles in a bid to explore ways of bringing high-speed broadband to rural communities.…

The power of collaboration within unified communications

CWmike writes "Two insurance organizations in upstate New York said on Wednesday that they will offer their members and employers virtual physician visits beginning this summer, making New York the fourth state to provide these types of services. BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, BlueShield of Northeastern New York and technology services provider American Well said the Online Care service will allow members to talk with physicians in real time through a private online chat network or through a voice-over-IP phone call. The service also offers video chat and instant messages. Members can sign on to the insurer's Web sites and look for physicians who are available online in various specialty areas."

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