February 9, 2010

BT now has a million wi-fi hotspots

by Darren Allan
BT has announced that it now has a network of a million wi-fi hotspots across the UK and Ireland. It reckons this is the most expansive wi-fi network in the country, and it has grown considerably in the last six months. Just half a year ago, BT had 500,000 hotspots on its roster, so the company has managed to double that figure since. These hotspots reportedly consist of 860,000 home hubs, ...

---

Google prepares real-time status updates

by Darren Allan
Social networking behemoths Facebook and Twitter won't be too worried, not yet anyway, but Google is making moves towards their territory via Gmail. The plan is to incorporate real-time status updates into Gmail, so folks can stay in touch with everyone in their contacts book via a stream of updates (or indeed, a stream of garbage, as often turns out to be the case). Google will announce this new development ...

---

O2’s free broadband offer extended

by Darren Allan
O2 has decided to extend the period that its free broadband offer will run. The offer, which previously was due to finish at the end of January, will now run until February 25th. So if you sign up to O2 broadband before the end of this month, you'll get two months free. The offer is valid on any of the company's broadband packages – standard, premium or pro. If you sign up ...

---

CEOP and Microsoft produce child-friendly browser

by Darren Allan
Internet Explorer could do with some good publicity, what with all the security problems it has recently been dogged with. And as if by magic, the web wizards at Microsoft have combined forces with CEOP (the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre) to produce something positive with the browser. Although not IE6, obviously. The two organisations have put their heads together to bring forth a kid-friendly custom version of Internet ...

---

February 8, 2010

Egypt announces Facebook Fatwa

by Rapid TV News
Website: Rapid TV News Some of Egypt’s Islamic leaders have issued a religious Fatwa against social networking site Facebook. BBC Monitoring is quoting Arab-language newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi saying that some Egyptian religious clerics are calling for Facebook to be a prohibited site. Shaykh Abd-al-Hamid al-Atrash, the former chairman of the Fatwa Commission in Al-Azhar University, issued a Fatwa on Feb 5 that has aroused “a loud clamour on the Egyptian ...

---

Disney Channel internet radio launched in France

by Rapid TV News
Website: Rapid TV News Kids’ channel Disney Channel France launched Disney Channel internet radio yesterday following a deal with radio group NRJ. Accessible through websites nrj.fr and disneychannel.fr , the first kids’ radio station launched by a youth channel targets tweens and offers music hits, stars and news all-day long. With this offspring, Disney Channel intends to strengthen its universe based on music programming. The radio will thus broadcast hits ...

---

BT has half the UK hooked up to 24Mbps

by Darren Allan
BT has passed the halfway mark when it comes to connecting the nation up to speedier broadband. 730 telephone exchanges are now 21CN enabled, which means they can offer up to 24Mbps speeds via ADSL2+ (as opposed to the standard 8Mbps ADSL line). According to the company, over half a million users are now motoring along on ADSL2+, with something like 20-30,000 being added to that figure every week. BT says ...

---

Want broadband? That’ll be £37,000, please

by Darren Allan
Mr and Mrs Walker, who run a bed and breakfast in a village in Cumbria, fancied getting broadband instead of their ever more sluggish dial-up modem. But when they contacted BT regarding moving up to broadband – a 0.5Mbps connection that a number of other villagers already have – they were told it would cost them £37,000. The reason being that BT said there was no more capacity for any ...

---

BT will open fibre network to rivals

by Darren Allan
BT has announced plans to open up its underground network of ducts for rival companies to run their fibre down. This move means that other ISPs won't have to dig up pavements at great cost (not to mention disruption) to lay their own fibre. And as a result, it will hopefully bring the UK swifter next-generation broadband coverage. BT has been in talks with Ofcom regarding this issue for some time ...

---

February 5, 2010

Vodafone employee tweets offensively on company account

by Darren Allan
The “VodafoneUK” Twitter account was the victim of a rogue staff member posting an offensive tweet this afternoon. The post was disparaging to homosexuals, and stated the user's intention to go out chasing women. In slightly more concise terms than that. At first, Vodafone followers assumed the account had been hacked, but Vodafone clarified the issue when it removed the tweet, and responded to many complaints by tweeting: “We weren't hacked. ...

---

Happy birthday to Facebook

by Darren Allan
Three cheers for Facebook, for it's the social networking site's sixth birthday this very week. You'll find none of what's traditional at a sixth birthday party, though. No pass the parcel, musical statues, or eating jelly and ice cream until you're sick. Instead, Facebook has opted to go for a celebratory makeover, with a minor re-design of the website. The tweaks, which are in the process of being rolled out, include ...

---

Criminals on Facebook part two

by Darren Allan
Over Christmas and the new year we had the story of Craig Lynch, the convict on the run who taunted police via two Facebook profiles. And now Facebook has been embroiled in another UK prisoner controversy, except this time the inmate actually ran his page from inside the jail. Convicted arsonist Brendan Rawsthorn is believed to have used a mobile smuggled into the prison (near Hull) to update a Facebook ...

---

Adobe hits back over Apple’s Flash comments

by Darren Allan
Remember how we reported at the start of the week about Steve Jobs unfavourable comments regarding Google? Well, he also tarred Adobe in the same meeting, so reports state, calling the Flash developer “lazy” and the application “buggy”. Which is why the iPad doesn't support the web multimedia standard. However, Adobe has now hit back at Apple, with CTO Kevin Lynch taking the time to address the issue on the company ...

---

February 4, 2010

Slight dip in digital radio listeners

by Darren Allan
RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) has published its latest round of radio related statistics. And as far as digital radio is concerned, although listening figures are up year-on-year, that's not the case in comparison to the previous quarter. Year-on-year, the amount of digital radio listeners increased by 14%, to a total share of 20.9% of all radio listeners. However, in the previous quarter that figure had been 21.1%, so has slipped ...

---

New Internet Explorer vulnerability discovered

by Darren Allan
Microsoft's web browser Internet Explorer hasn't been having a great time of things lately. Hot on the heels of the China-Google hacking furore, it seems another issue has raised its ugly head. The new problem allows an attacker to access a file (or files) on a PC, providing they already know the name of the file and its location. It affects those running IE on Windows XP, or those who have ...

---

February 2, 2010

A Tory government may use TV Licence for broadband

by David Allen
It seems that the funding of the BBC will be going under the microscope should the Conservatives win the general election. All of the cash coming in through the TV Licence fee seems to be just too appealing and could be used to help fund other projects as well as going towards funding the BBC. One of the main projects that appears to require funding is the rollout of fibre ...

---

February 1, 2010

Amazon caves in to publisher in e-book price row

by Darren Allan
Amazon stood its ground when publisher Macmillan announced it wanted to charge its own price for its electronic format best-sellers on the Kindle store. For a couple of days, anyway. Now the company has done a u-turn, and bowed to Macmillan's desire to set their own prices between $12.99 and $14.99 (rather than Amazon's $9.99 standard). In a statement, Amazon said: “We want you to know that ultimately, however, we ...

---

Conservatives vow widespread 100Mbps broadband by 2017

by Darren Allan
The Tories have said that they will aim to bring 100Mbps broadband to the “majority” of the UK by the year 2017, if they get into power. It's certainly a tall order, and achieving it would be facilitated by the Conservatives opening up BT's monopoly, and allowing other firms to move in with their own cables. The ambitious project could also possibly be funded by TV license payer's money. Even more ...

---

Google gives IE6 the boot

by Darren Allan
From next month, Google will cease to support the aged version of Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer 6. Google applications such as Google Docs and Sites will no longer support IE6 come March. IE6 users will still be able to access these sites, but newer features won't be available, and indeed existing features might fail to work properly. Google recommends users upgrade to a newer version of Internet Explorer, or switch to ...

---

January 29, 2010

Guardian sets newspaper site traffic record

by Darren Allan
The Guardian has announced that it has broken the record for the most web traffic on a UK newspaper site. In December almost 37 million readers perused the Guardian's musings on events around the world. In fact, the paper had broken the record in November, so this is the second month in a row of massive traffic for the site (with over a 3% increase in December). The latest figure represents ...

---