Author Archive
Thursday, November 15th, 2007
Comcast is well on its way to becoming the least popular company since "We come round your house and corrupt your savegames Incorporated". This recently came to a head with the story of geek Phil Shapiro, who’s moving out of his apartment because they’re switching to Comcast.
Posted in Crime, Internet, Legal, Opinion, Scams, Technology | No Comments »
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
Mobile phones are the modern cockroach – there are millions of them, you can’t keep them out no matter how hard you try, and if you hear one in the cinema you’re going to be pretty upset. A portable new device that jams handsets at the push of a button is selling like hotcakes, despite serious concerns about legality.
Posted in Cell phones, Legal, Science and technology | 1 Comment »
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
Two California State University students face up to twenty years in jail for hacking the academic record keeping software to raise their grades. It might be a cute plan in an eighties movie (WarGames, anyone?) but in the real world that’s called unauthorized computer access, wire fraud and conspiracy. Which aren’t cute – and when you’re going to jail for two decades, you better hope you’re not cute either.
Posted in Crime, Legal | No Comments »
Saturday, November 3rd, 2007
In a move which proves that their different departments don’t even have each others phone numbers, Sony has announced plans to release a compact cut-price PS2 in 2008.
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
Saturday, November 3rd, 2007
Blockbuster have announced that they’re going to stop bothering online competitor Netflix, and instead concentrate on trying to rent people movies. This decision was brought on by the fact that they haven’t been making very much money doing either while they tried to do both.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 2nd, 2007
Chain stores like Target are famous for reducing prices and cutting costs wherever possible, but running a fashion show without any models might be a bit extreme. That’s exactly what Target will do next week though, using holographic technology to take their place.
Posted in Advertising, Technology | No Comments »
Thursday, November 1st, 2007
In a move straight out of an internet cliche, the US Navy are deploying robot boats which could be used to hunt pirates. Life used to imitate art – now it’s imitating web cliches, leaving us with no option but to destroy all computers or kill ourselves before the furry Harry Potter slash fiction arrives. Or the robot boats kill us.
Posted in Crime, Piracy, Science and technology | 1 Comment »
Thursday, November 1st, 2007
The infamous Storm worm has seen a surge of activity this Halloween, spread by spam promising the "most amazing dancing skeleton", but delivering a trojan which puts the computer under the control of the storm botnet.
Posted in Antivirus, Crime, Malware, Security | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007
Jeff Zucker, chief of NBC Universal, took the stage at Syracuse University for questioning. While there he made the position of NBC Universal quite clear: they’re not making enough money, and it’s everyone else’s fault.
Posted in Apple, Online video | No Comments »
Monday, October 29th, 2007
Southern California may be doing a credible impression of Hell, with over half a million acres of blazing inferno, but it’s set to become a wireless haven as AT&T promises to offer three weeks of free wireless connection in hundreds of hotspots for refugees.
Posted in Wi-Fi | No Comments »
Sunday, October 28th, 2007
Only a true geek would go walking and think "Look at all this energy I’m wasting". Maybe it’s because they stereotypically have less energy to spend before shortness of breath sets in. Whatever the inspiration, a new product in development by CSIRO (Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) could harness that energy to mean you never run out of batteries again.
Posted in Technology | No Comments »
Saturday, October 27th, 2007
Google attracts hordes of bloggers and opinion-shovelers uploading ten sourceless articles a week in the hope they’ll be the one to correctly guess what happens. A flock of seagulls trailing a ship – noisy, annoying, they all look the same and they feed on the scraps left by people who are actually going somewhere. Here I list top five things people like to say about Google, in the hope that we can all agree these are now officially “Done”.
Posted in Google | No Comments »
Friday, October 26th, 2007
Microsoft are seeking to crack into the lucrative family market with the XBox 360 Arcade, a new model of XBox that went on sale earlier this week. Bundled with simple, family friendly games like Pacman and Uno, the device hopes to earn some of the market share currently dominated by the Wii.
Posted in Microsoft, Online video | 1 Comment »
Thursday, October 25th, 2007
The new Sandisk TakeTV will allow users to display computer files on a regular television set. The simple device uses a USB connection to a computer and a plug-and-play interface on the TV, allowing users to enjoy their shows on something other than a computer monitor.
Posted in Online video | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007
Apple have announced that one in six iPhones sold (that’s over a quarter of a million handsets) has been cracked to allow connection to networks other than AT&T, and that’s just counting SIM hacks. Including software modifications that allow the use of unauthorized software the number is thought to be twice that.
Posted in Cell phones | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
A server belonging to a major online advertising company has been hacked and used to infect computers visiting otherwise ‘trusted’ websites through the embedded ads. 24/7 Real Media Inc, the advertisers in question, have so far refused to comment on the issue.
Posted in Advertising, Crime, Malware, Security | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
NBC have canceled their YouTube channel in preparation for the launch of their own video site, Hulu.com. Experts fear that the loss of official support could delay the arrival of new episodes of The Office on YouTube by up to a minute.
Posted in Online video, YouTube | No Comments »