Home access to NHS records plan

Patients are set to be able to look at their medical records on their home computer, it has been announced. The plan was set out by Connecting For Health, which is overseeing the introduction of the new NHS IT system - The Spine - which will cover England more...

Digital switchover date set

The exact date of the UK's first digital TV switchover has been announced. People living in the town of Whitehaven in Cumbria will have their BBC2 analogue signals turned on October 17 more...

Millions missing out on internet boom

Young people, wealthy families and graduates use the internet more than the elderly, poor or unqualified, according to a report that highlights Britain's growing "digital divide". Internet access is directly linked to people's age, income and education, the Office for National Statistics said in a major survey of the use of computers, mobile phones and digital television more...

BBC Jam session ends after complaints

The BBC is to suspend its online interactive service aimed at school children in support of the national curriculum. It follows industry concerns that the BBC Jam service is damaging the commercial sector, resulting in complaints to the European Commission more...

Is Martian Life on Ice?

Scientists have long known that Mars' polar regions contain huge reservoirs of frozen water, but today's findings on the depth and purity of that ice have raised the regions' profile as a place to search for evidence of life - as well as a destination for future human missions more...

Video game legend hopes to change mankind

Video game god Will Wright thinks his latest creation might do far more than entertain. It may just save the planet. The agenda laid out by Wright, creator of SimCity and the Sims, today at the SXSW technology, movie and music festival goes beyond ambitious. He's looking for the upcoming game Spore from Maxis/Electronic Arts to help youngsters think about how their actions and the actions of groups of people affect the environment around them. The kind of teaching through experience present in Spore could aid mankind, which is notoriously bad at long-term thinking more...

Games icon gets modern makeover

Iconic technology firm Commodore has chosen Cebit as the launch pad for a new subsidiary dedicated to PC gaming. From April, Commodore Gaming will start selling a line of PCs that cater for the high-end home gamer more...

Mourners bid farewell on internet

A Northern Ireland undertaker has begun broadcasting funerals live on the internet. In what is thought to be a UK first, the County Down firm says the move allows mourners from across the world to watch the funeral service of friends and loved ones more...

The unsung guardians of the internet

Peter, a financial adviser living in the UK, was taken aback when he got a gruff, no-nonsense call on his mobile last week. The voice at the other end told him not to send £17,300 to Spain. "I still don't know how he found me," said Peter, who had been thinking about buying a cheap Porsche Boxster that he'd seen in a paper. The seller had asked him to send the money to an escrow company and pointed him to its website. When it received the money and the car, the seller said, the trade would be made and the car would be released for shipment more...

Microsoft buys voice tech company

Microsoft has bought a voice-recognition software firm in a move analysts say may change the way people search the internet. The software giant has paid a reported $800m (£413m) for California-based Tellme Networks - though the value of the deal was not officially disclosed more...

Rockstar unveils Beaterator

Rockstar has teamed up with hip-hop big-shot Timbaland to bring Beaterator to PSP this summer. It was originally created back in 2005 as a web-based music mixing program to help you hone your skills, or quickly mock up an idea out of studio. With a large bank of stock sounds, multiple usable effects, eight sequencing tracks, a two-octave keyboard and "loop crafter", it quickly made a mark as a handy and powerful little tool more...

Rampant piracy threatens PC games

Rampant piracy is threatening the future of the PC games industry, Todd Hollenshead, head of Doom 3 creator Id software has said. He warned that unless the problem was tackled some companies could relegate the PC to a second tier platform more...

International fight against software piracy escalates

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has taken steps to more assertively combat online fraud as part of its continuing fight against software piracy. Simultaneous international legal action has been taken against five alleged software pirates, one in the US, one in the UK, one in Austria and two in Germany, marking the beginning of BSA's international enforcement efforts against people selling illegitimate software online more...

Microsoft Search Software Will Replace Google's on Lenovo PCs

Microsoft Corp.'s search software will replace Google Inc.'s rival program on Lenovo Group Ltd. personal computers, a victory in Microsoft's fight against the dominant search company more...

Wii goes online with Gamespy help

Whereas Microsoft have embraced online gaming with the mature and feature rich LIVE offering, Nintendo has always been a little gun-shy in this arena. No more! Up steps the big N, brandishing a proposed GameSpy platform to bring Nintendoites online. The proposed feature set will include advanced matchmaking, friend rosters comprehensive rankings data and other community features no doubt involving Mii’s more...

Unlimited downloads ‘a scam’

Broadband providers are selling customers “unlimited” downloads, only to cap the amount of songs and films they can access, according to a study. Millions of people were signing up to deals in the belief that there are no limits, said uSwitch, the price comparison service. But “fair usage” policies allowed suppliers to cap the access of those who share vast amounts of files more...

Viacom will sue YouTube for $1bn

Entertainment giant Viacom Media says it will sue web search engine Google and its video-sharing website YouTube for $1bn (£517m). Viacom, which owns MTV and Nickelodeon, says YouTube uses its shows illegally. Viacom alleges that about 160,000 unauthorised clips of its programmes have been loaded onto YouTube's site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times more...

Sunderland wins digital challenge

A challenge issued by the UK government to find ways for technology to improve the lives of the socially excluded has been won by Sunderland City Council. Sunderland's plans include a scheme to allow carers respite from their jobs and a video-conferencing system to benefit local charities more...

'Social surfing' could lose parents millions to ID fraud

Young people are putting their parents at risk of online fraud and identity theft through their social networking activities, according to a survey conducted by vendor Webroot. Signing up for new accounts, engaging in IM chat, downloading files, and other activities that expose personal data to spyware, are all cuasing a rise in ID fraud, the survey says more...

IT recruitment companies feel skills pinch

Over three quarters of IT leaders expect demand for skilled IT workers to increase over the next 12 months, according to research. A study by recruitment software supplier SkillsMarket found the top issue for IT recruitment companies in 2007 is a skills shortage. Rick Bacon, chief executive of SkillsMarket, says data from a separate skills survey shows a 50 per cent drop in the number of permanent and contract jobseekers over the last year more...

Major space missions move ahead

The European and US space agencies are moving ahead on their next major missions to explore the Solar System. Nasa has begun choosing a destination for a "flagship" robotic venture along the lines of Cassini-Huygens, which has been exploring Saturn and its moons more...

Riskiest web sites are outed

Each month internet users make more than 550 million clicks to risky web sites and even relatively safe domains like Germany (.de) or the UK (.uk) account for millions of risky clicks, according to a survey by McAfee. McAfee analysed and ranked 265 top-level domains like Japan (.jp), France (.fr) and commercial (.com) based on its web safety tests for spyware, spam, exploits and scams. The report, Mapping the Mal Web, reveals surprisingly large differences in safety from one domain to another more...

Express iPod-ready Play List Jacket

Clothing company, Express, is leaping on the iPod accessory bandwagon with this jacket. The Play List Jacket is a pretty simple jacket that includes an inside pocket for the iPod and fabric buttons to control the iPod more...

PlayStation Home dated for October

Sony's PlayStation Home online service will be released on PS3 this October, it has been uncovered.The news comes from a third party relations PDF on Sony's developer website, which says that the initial download will arrive at "under 500MB" with later patches integrated via a streaming system more...

Miyamoto concerned about gamer image during GDC keynote

Shigeru Miyamoto presented a reflective more than visionary speech during his time in the spotlight at the Game Developers Conference. A packed house wanted to know more about the Nintendo Wii's future; instead they got a history lesson more...

GamesIndustry.biz: You Are The Colony

Following Phil Harrison as he delivered his keynote in San Francisco yesterday brought back an almost forgotten but eerily similar memory of console launches past - another shaven-headed, confident console executive, grinning to the camera and announcing, "You Are The Colony" more...

Microsoft's antivirus deletes users' e-mails

Microsoft has admitted that its Live OneCare security suite has been accidentally deleting some users' Outlook and Outlook Express e-mails. According to postings on Microsoft's OneCare forum, erasures have been caused when the antivirus program finds a virus in an e-mail attachment. Instead of then quarantining that single e-mail, users have reported that entire .pst or .dbx files -- the personal folder where non-Exchange Server users' messages and other details are kept -- have been quarantined or, in some cases, even deleted more...

Net copes with key character test

Tests have been carried out to see if spelling internet domains with non-English characters will disrupt the smooth running of the net. The tests are a step towards the formal use of non-English character sets such as Chinese and Arabic in domain names more...

Google targets television advertising revenues

Google is involved in a pilot project to target television commercials to cable subscribers. The aim is to extend its success in targeting online adverts to the currently much bigger business of television advertising more...

Babelgum joins Joost in bid for broadband viewers

Babelgum is a new contender for the global broadband video market. Just like the Joost project from the creators of the Skype internet telephone service, it is based on a secure peer-to-peer video network. It is backed by Silvio Scaglia, who made a personal fortune from Fastweb, the Italian broadband video, voice and data service provider more...

Pimp my ride - or just its chips

Last week's outbreak of fuel contamination showed how very dependent modern cars are on the computers hidden inside them. Because of a small quantity of silicone in a batch of petrol from an Essex refinery, hundreds of motorists found their cars would only run very slowly, if at all. This wasn't because the petrol had damaged the engines - older cars drove on perfectly well - but because a chip on board had decided that there was a danger and gone into nanny mode, shutting off most of the engine's power more...

PS3 makes ad play via video-on-demand

Sony is kicking off its marketing campaign for the eagerly awaited PlayStation 3 games console via BSkyB and Channel 4's video-on-demand services. They will also launch a simultaneous assault on virtual online world Second Life more...

SEC takes action against spammers

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has suspended 35 companies from trading in securities on Thursday. According to press reports the action was taken in response to alleged stock promotion through spam email campaigns. The trading suspensions were ordered because of questions about the adequacy and accuracy of information about the companies more...

Cybercrime must be a priority

Not enough is being done to prevent low-level cyber-crime because it is not a priority to the police or Home Office, according to independent peer Lord Erroll. Erroll told Microsoft's Architectural Insight Conference that cybercrime has been a contentious issue for some time and is not going away. 'E-Crime is climbing steadily, but it's not a Home Office or police priority,' said Erroll. 'There is a feeling that all we need to do is say use a firewall or anti-virus product and lock the doors of your data. This doesn't work. There is no ability to prosecute level two crimes where the amount lost is low because it is below the individual police area's radar.' more...

Scientists set to rock the world

The world's geologists are to bring together all their maps, producing the first truly global resource on rocks. Known as the OneGeology project, it will pool existing knowledge about what lies under our feet, and present it through one web portal more...

Designer hopes for love in games

Veteran designer Peter Molyneux has said that he wants to put love into his next game, Fable 2. "This is my bold claim - I need you to experience something in Fable that you as gamers have never experienced before," he declared more...

British Skynet satellite launched

The British military's Skynet 5 satellite has been launched into space from Kourou in French Guiana. The spacecraft is part of a £3.2bn system that will deliver secure, high-bandwidth communications for UK and allied forces more...