The UK Technology Strategy Board, an executive non-departmental public body established by the UK Government in 2007 and sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has invested £1M into over a dozen research projects for the development of ULTRA Fast up to 10Gbps broadband technologies. The ultimate aim, the development of pan-European Ultra Fast Broadband, could give EU companies a massive competitive advantage on a global scale — via Slashdot
A controversial database which holds the details of every child in England has become available to childcare professionals for the first time. ContactPoint, a response to Lord Laming’s report following the death of Victoria Climbie, is beginning its national roll-out in the north west. But the system, costing £224m, has been delayed twice amid data security fears
Vodafone has become the first mobile phone operator to abolish roaming charges, meaning its customers will pay the same price abroad as they do at home
Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity has already been called into doubt because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups. Now, one of the defence lawyers says he has uncovered another scandal and claims to have evidence that Norström wasn’t assigned to the case randomly, as should be the case according to court procedure
The controversial French HADOPI anti-piracy law was passed by the National Assembly today, one step closer to being signed into action. The new law introduces draconian measures to combat piracy including a three strikes
regime for persistent offenders
The outage that took Google offline for scores of users on Thursday was caused by a traffic routing error, the company now says. The Google outage affected users across the United States and in numerous other countries. The vast majority of Google services became unavailable, including Gmail, YouTube, Google News, and even the google.com home page
Google has unveiled new products that it says will push search in a new direction. Google is using so-called semantic web technology to leverage the underlying data on web sites to enhance results
PC maker Dell has formally banned the export of broken computers, monitors and parts to developing countries amid complaints that lax enforcement of environmental and worker-safety regulations have allowed an informal and often hazardous electronic-waste recycling industry to emerge. Although Dell’s announcement does not mark a significant change in the PC maker’s behaviour, environmental groups hope that by making its standards public, Dell will raise the bar for other electronics makers
Cuttlefish are masters of disguise, able to change their skin colour in less than a second to hide from predators or draw in prey for the kill. Now, scientists from MIT and elsewhere are developing cuttlefish-inspired electronic ink and screens that use less than one-hundredth the power of traditional television screens
Just when you thought invisibility cloaks couldn’t get any weirder, researchers come up with this: a way to make one object look like any other. Invisibility cloaks work by steering light around a region of space, making any object inside that region invisible. In effect, an invisibility cloak creates the illusion of free space. This is possible because of a new generation of artificial materials called metamaterials that can, in principle at least, steer light in any way imaginable. Indeed, various teams have built real invisibility cloaks that hide objects from view in both the microwave and optical bands. Now Che Chan and pals from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology say that metamaterials could be used for an even more exotic effect: for cloaks that create the illusion that a different object is present
A privacy watchdog has banned Google from gathering detailed, street-level images in Greece for a planned expansion of its panoramic Street View mapping service until the company provides additional privacy safeguards. In rejecting Google’s bid to roam Greek streets with cameras mounted on vehicles, Greece’s Data Protection Authority, or DPA, said it wanted clarification from the US Internet company on how it will store and process the original images and safeguard them from privacy abuses
Google has released a tool that lets you import contacts and mail from popular services like Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL Mail and from ISPs like Verizon, Comcast and Earthlink
Rackable received bankruptcy court approval on April 30 to close its purchase of SGI, although it had to raise its original $25 million offer to $42.5 million. On Monday, Rackable announced that the deal had closed and that the combined company would be called SGI — short for Silicon Graphics International instead of the original Silicon Graphics Inc — and continue to use the Rackable brand on some products. It’s a curious turn of events, considering that Rackable has come to represent the new guard in the server market, while SGI has struggled for years
Google first implemented a basic task management service as a Gmail Labs feature, then it developed an iPhone version and an iGoogle gadget. Now you can manage your tasks from Google Calendar. There are two ways to view your tasks in Google Calendar: in the right sidebar, where you can also manage your tasks, and as a built-in calendar
Baby monitors and wireless TV transmitters are responsible for slowing down Wi-Fi connections in built-up areas, according to an Ofcom-commissioned report. The regulator commissioned the report to evaluate the effectiveness of the unlicensed 2.4GHz band that Wi-Fi operates over. The report smashes the myth that huge congestion on overlapping Wi-Fi networks is responsible for the poor performance of Wi-Fi in urban areas. Instead, it points the finger of blame at the raft of unlicensed equipment operating on the 2.4GHz band
Lyse has become the largest fibre-to-the-home provider in Norway thanks to an innovative business model that asks customers to preregister before any fibre is dug, then offers them a $400 savings if they dig their own trench from the street to the home. So far, 80 percent of Lyse’s customers have broken out the shovels
A new approach developed by Philips now offers fresh hope for colour e-paper displays that are so bright and clear that even traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) will pale in comparison. According to Kars-Michiel Lenssen, who headed the work at Philips Research, based in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, the new approach has the potential to create colour images that are three times brighter than displays that use colour filters, including LCDs. This is the closest an electronic-paper technology ever got to printed paper,
he says
Like patents and copyright, trademarks are a weapon that companies can use to battle each other and ultimately restrict the freedom of their customers. As such, I find it odd that while many people in the world of open source are campaigning for reforms in copyright and patents, most ignore trademarking. Trademarking is just as dangerous as its two intellectual property brothers
In Get Smart, the 1960s TV spy comedy, secret agents wanting a private conversation would deploy the cone of silence
, a clear plastic contraption lowered over the agents’ heads. It never worked — they couldn’t hear each other, while eavesdroppers could pick up every word. Now a modern cone of silence that we are assured will work is being patented by engineers Joe Paradiso and Yasuhiro Ono of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their idea, revealed in US patent application 2009/0097671 on 16 April, is to make confidential conversations possible in open-plan offices and canteens. It will even let a conversing group move around a room and still remain in a secure sound bubble
Solar company Konarka has developed a transparent solar cell that it hopes will be built onto electricity-generating windows. The company said it has reached an agreement with Arch Aluminum & Glass to use Konarka’s plastic solar cells in building materials, including windows. Under its Arch Active Solar Glass development, the company has built prototypes of windows with the solar cells between two panes of glass. The photovoltaic cells can be tinted different colours
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