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Snippets 27th Jan

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 takes $1bn in sales

Video game Modern Warfare 2 has become one of only a handful of entertainment franchises to take more than $1bn (£625m) in revenue. It went on sale in November and made an estimated $550m in its first five days. In terms of revenue, it puts it alongside other entertainment franchises such as the recent 3D science fiction smash Avatar. http://news.bbc.co.uk

Women's handbags getting lighter

The weight of women’s handbags has more than halved in the last two years because of new technology. Although the size of handbags has grown the weight of contents has decreased. Research by Debenhams has shown that the average handbag weight has plummeted from about 3.5kg in 2006 and 2007 to 1.5kg last year (2009) – a reduction of 57 per cent. And researchers believe the drop in handbag weight – is because of the introduction of iPhones and Blackberries which have replaced laptops, mobile phones, PDAs, chargers, MP3 players and filofaxes. http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Facebook Fugitive Caught

Craig ‘Lazie’ Lynch, the 28 year old escapee from the Hollesley Bay Prison, had attracted a following of 40,000 people after he began taunting the police authorities from his Facebook account, challenging them to catch him. Lynch was serving a seven-year jail sentence for aggravated robbery at the Suffolk prison before he escaped. http://www.itproportal.com

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Snippets 7th September	07/09/2010
Google offers free voice calls via Gmail Google is taking on internet telephone companies like Skype by allowing users to call from its free web-based email service. The service allows users to make calls to land lines and mobiles from inside their Gmail account. Phoning anywhere in the US and Canada will be free until the end of the year, while calls to the UK, France, China and Germany will cost 2 cents a minute. Until now Google offered only computer-to-computer voice and video chat services. The product will initially be rolled out in the US, the firm said. However, for a brief time, international users were also able to use the feature because of an error. Google says it hopes to roll out the service internationally soon. http://news.bbc.co.uk Facebook now 'worth $33 billion' Facebook is now worth as much as $33.7 billion, after investors have paid up to $76 for a share in the company ahead of its much-hyped flotation on the stock market, according to a report. The Financial Times has said that the implied valuation means that Facebook is now has a higher valuation than technology giants such as eBay and Yahoo!, which have capped market values of $30.1 billion and $18.3 billion respectively. http://www.telegraph.co.uk YouTube UK to launch free movie service in UK YouTube is to launch a free movie service after striking deals with US studios including Sony Pictures. YouTube, which already delivers TV through deals with Channel 4 and Channel 5, will initially make more than 400 titles available for free and on-demand. The new section, www.youtube.com/movies, is offering films ranging from horror to classics. http://www.guardian.co.uk
Snippets 31st August	31/08/2010
One in 20 people reprimanded for inappropriate emails One in 20 people have been reprimanded at work for sending an ill-advised email, according to a survey. Inappropriate jokes, angry messages sent in the heat of the moment, and scathing email replies forwarded to the wrong people are among some of the email gaffes that have landed office workers in hot water with their employers or clients. According to the research, men were more likely to make an email gaffe than women, with 28 per cent admitting to sending an ill-judged message, compared to 17 per cent of women. www.telegraph.co.uk UK firms can pass IT problems onto the cloud David Bradshaw, European SaaS (Software as a Service) and cloud services research manager at International Data Corporation (IDC) has said that organisations can relieve themselves of a certain degree of responsibility by adopting cloud services. The comments come after recent research published by IDC revealed that revenue for public cloud computing is set to grow from $582 million (£375 million) in 2009 to $718 million (£463 million) in 2014. www.bcs.org Facebook "Places" lets users track friends and services Facebook's 500 million-plus users will soon be able to track friends' whereabouts across the United States. The new "Places" feature which began rolling out in August will go nationwide within weeks. It is touted as a tool to help users share where they are, figure out who is in the vicinity, and check out happenings and services within the same locale. The addition of so-called location services to Facebook opens new revenue opportunities for the company, but also presents it with delicate privacy challenges. www.reuters.co.uk
Snippets 24th August	24/08/2010
Home computers discover rare star By putting their home computers to work when they would otherwise be idle, three "citizen scientists" have discovered a rare astronomical object. The unusual find is called a "disrupted binary pulsar"; these pulsars can be created when a massive star collapses. The discoverers, from the US and Germany found the object with the help of the Einstein@Home project. It asks users to donate time on their computers, allowing them to be used for searching through scientific data. This type of project is known as "distributed computing". http://news.bbc.co.uk Google could use spy drones for UK mapping Google could be allowed to use unmanned spy drones in the UK to gather information for its Google Maps and Street View services. The news follows reports that the web giant had ordered at least one drone from German company Microdrones, which has supplied unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to UK police and special forces.http://www.pcpro.co.uk Android Outsells Apple's IPhone Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, has introduced new voice-activated services to drive more users to phones that run on its Android operating system as it challenges Apple Inc.’s iPhone. The new voice services are available on the latest Android models, Google said. The company is updating Android as it expands in mobile communications. Worldwide, Android became the third-best-selling operating system in the second quarter, with 17.2 percent of sales compared with 1.8 percent a year earlier, acording to Gartner Reasearch. Apple’s iPhone dropped to fourth place. http://www.bloomberg.com
Snippets 17th August	17/08/2010
'iPod oblivion' threatening drivers and motorists Motorists and pedestrians risk causing accidents because they lapse into ''iPod oblivion'' while listening to music, according to the AA. It reported incidents of drivers breaking down on the hard shoulder of motorways and then dangerously pacing up and down while using a mobile phone. In addition, AA patrol staff have noticed a marked increase in pedestrians seemingly oblivious to the traffic as they cross busy roads. These ''podestrians'' can sometimes be spotted checking their emails as they contend with passing cars. http://www.telegraph.co..uk Jail For Laptop Hacker Exposed By Sky News A laptop engineer who was caught by Sky News trying to hack into a bank account has been sentenced to nine months in prison. Grzegorz Zachodni was caught in an undercover sting as part of an exclusive investigation into the service offered by computer repair shops. The 30-year-old worked at Laptop Revival in Hammersmith in March 2009 when a reporter dropped in a laptop with a seemingly simple fault. Spy software revealed that Zachodni tried to access the reporter’s bank account online on six occasions. http://news.sky.com Glitches blight one in three air bookings Almost one-in-three people who book flights online have suffered a technical problem or made a mistake when booking and 14% have paid more for a flight as a result. One-in-40 had ended up buying a new ticket at full cost as a consequence. This astonishing error rate and its cost to consumers was revealed by an Ipsos MORI survey of more than 2,000 consumers carried out on behalf of the Air Transport Users Council (AUC). The survey found 17% of respondents had made a mistake by entering the wrong information when booking a ticket online, of whom 58% - or 10% of the total - were out of pocket and 9% (1.5% of the total) had paid for a new ticket. www.travolution.co.uk
Snippets 10th August	10/08/2010
Gulf States to ban Blackberry functions Two Gulf states have announced bans on some functions of the Blackberry mobile phone, claiming security concerns. The United Arab Emirates is to block sending emails, accessing the internet, and delivering instant messages to other Blackberry handsets. Saudi Arabia is to prevent the use of the Blackberry to Blackberry instant messaging service. Both nations are unhappy that they are unable to monitor such communications via the handsets. This is because the Blackberry handsets automatically send the encrypted data to computer servers outside of the two countries. http://news.bbc.co.uk iPad users are ‘selfish elite', claims survey A survey has revealed the typical person who has bought Apple’s latest gadget is unkind and has little empathy for others. They have been branded the ‘selfish elite’ by a poll of 20,000 consumers carried out by an American research company. The £429 device has become the most desired gadget in Britain since its launch in May and 600,000 are expected to be sold before the end of the year. http://www.dailymail.co.uk WikiLeaks: suspected army source sent back to US A US army private under investigation for allegedly leaking classified material to the WikiLeaks website has been transferred from Kuwait to the US amid growing White House and Pentagon anger over revelations about the war in Afghanistan. Bradley Manning, who has already been charged with leaking a video and other material relating to the Iraq war, is now said to be a suspected source for tens of thousands of documents which made their way via WikiLeaks to the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel in Germany. http://www.guardian.co.uk
Snippets 3rd August	03/08/2010
Google Waves Goodbye To Nexus One Google has quietly closed its Nexus One online presence, relegating the handset to other "no longer available" products like Google Notebook and Google Answers and closing its direct sales store for the handset only seven months after it was launched. Nexus One was Google's first foray into the consumer hardware sector with Vodafone being the only mobile network operator in the UK to sell it. www.itproportal.com Clamping down on file-sharers goes against the Digital Economy Act. Ofcom should tear up its draft code designed to cut down on illegal file sharing and start again, the Open Rights Group (ORG) has claimed. The campaigning organisation said the draft, which features guidelines for how accusations of copyright infringement should be sent to internet users and internet service providers (ISPs), does not include essential requirements to outline important “standards of evidence”. By not including a specification on the means of obtaining evidence or a standard of evidence, the code fails to comply with the Digital Economy Act, ORG said. www.itpro.co.uk MySpace loses 49% of visitors in 12 months The net research firm ComScore has revealed that in May 2010, just 3.3 million web users visited the social network, compared to 6.5 million in May 2009. At its peak MySpace had 100 million members and was acquired by News Corp in 2005 for £351m. Facebook recently announced it had reached the 500 million members mark globally - 30.4 million in the UK. Twitter has 4.3 million users in the UK, up 62 percent on last year. ComScore also revealed that 90 percent of UK web users aged 15 and over used social-media sites in May 2010. www.pcadvisor.co.uk
Snippets 27th July	27/07/2010
Apple admits it’s not perfect Apple has acknowledged signal problems with the iPhone 4, and will give users a free case or a full refund. Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, admitted that the company was “not perfect” at a press conference to address reported signal problems with its latest must-have gadget, the iPhone 4. He said that iPhone 4 users would be given a full refund if they were unhappy with the device, and that all purchasers would be issued with a free case. Jobs said the problems had affected less than one per cent of iPhone users. http://www.telegraph.co.uk Raoul Moat's tribute page removed A controversial Facebook tribute page to gunman Raoul Moat has been removed by the woman who created it. Siobhan O'Dowd confirmed she had taken the page down, but has not ruled out putting it back up. She told Talksport radio she did not condone Moat's actions but said "he was still a human being" and everyone was entitled to their own opinion. Moat was on the run in Northumberland for a week after shooting three people, one fatally. http://news.bbc.co.uk PC sales soar, but iPad hurts netbooks Computer sales are soaring, according to figures out from two research groups, but the impact of Apple's iPad is taking its toll on netbooks. The global PC market grew by 22.4% in the second quarter of the year, said IDC figures, and they were backed up by rival research company Gartner, which put the sales upswing at 20.7%. Although the overall figures remain positive, the netbook has seen growth drop significantly, suggesting that the netbook sector has been hit by the popularity of the iPad. www.pcpro.co.uk
Snippets 20th July	20/07/2010
Gamers to play for cash at home Entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson has a new business venture - a website allowing console gamers to organise competitive matches, enter tournaments, and win cash prizes. Virgingaming.com promises to become a destination for competitive gamers who want to compete in tournaments from home. Xbox and PS3 gamers can use the website to compete over the net for anything between $1 to $1,000 a game. http://news.bbc.co.uk One third of young women check Facebook when they wake One third of women aged 18 to 34 check Facebook when they first wake up, before even going to the toilet, according to new research according to a study conducted by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research. The study polled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June 2010 in an effort to chart behavioural trends. 42 per cent think it is fine to post drunken photos of themselves onto the social network. Seventy-nine per cent are also happy to be seen kissing in photographs posted on Facebook. http://www.telegraph.co.uk Mozilla unveils Firefox 4 beta Mozilla has released the first beta of Firefox 4. The latest version of the open-source browser features a new add-on manager, crash protection from third-party plug-ins, more support for CSS3 and better performance with accelerated hardware support, Mozilla said. The most obvious change is the tabs have moved to the top of the screen, following the lead of rival Google Chrome. http://www.pcpro.co.uk

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