No 10 urged to throttle 'unlimited' broadband claims

A petition on the Downing Street website is urging Tony Blair to put a stop to broadband advertising which trumpets "unlimited" broadband, despite reining users in usage limits more...

Sony To Finally Bring Blu-ray Player To Europe

As the founding father of Blu-ray, Sony – logically – should have been the first company to bring a player to the UK. As it stands the company is over six months behind Samsung and its debut will be a model it unveiled over a year ago more...

BBC offers its shows via mobiles

BBC TV and radio channels will be available on some mobile phones for a trial period, it has been announced. For an initial 12 months, a range of broadcast output will be syndicated to the Vodafone, Orange and 3 networks more...

Cyberbullies scare schoolgirls

Bullies, no longer content to taunt their victims in the playground, are turning to the Web.
They are using e-mail, text messaging and social-networking sites in new forms of victimization, according to Canadian researchers more...

'GTA IV' Revealed: Game Returning To City That Made It Famous

"Grand Theft Auto" is back in New York. After making stops in stand-ins for Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas, Rockstar Games' notorious chart-topping series is heading back to Liberty City, the stand-in for the Big Apple that served as the setting in 2001's breakthrough "Grand Theft Auto III" more...

Nintendo confirmed for 'public E3'

Confirming earlier reports, Nintendo is to attend the consumer games event Entertainment for All as the expo's "flagship exhibitor".The expo was announced last year, and unlike that other Los Angeles game expo, is fully open to the general public more...

Sky Anytime pushes video on demand to set-top boxes

British satellite broadcaster BSkyB has gone live with a broadcast video-on-demand service, initially to its customers with high-definition set-top boxes. Selected programmes are downloaded automatically to reserved storage space on the digital video recorder more...

Pupils to be taught via PlayStation

PlayStation learning is being introduced to Holyhead School in Birmingham to help teach French, history and geography. Technology giant Sony is using the school as a pilot for the scheme, which could be extended nationwide if successful more...

Wi-fi buses drive rural web use

Buses equipped with wi-fi are being used to deliver web content to remote rural villages in the developing world. In rural India and parts of Rwanda, Cambodia and Paraguay, the vehicles offer web content to computers with no internet connection more...

Widgets to play major role in desktop information access

Desktop software widgets have taken their time to establish themselves in the mainstream of computing, but with support now integrated into both major operating systems and development of third party platforms, the business community is finally taking notice of widgets and their potential applications more...

YouTube names best video winners

Video-sharing website YouTube has named the winners of its first annual awards. US rock band OK Go won in the "most creative" category for a video featuring the performers on treadmills more...

Google agrees mobile deal with LG

Korean firm LG Electronics has said it has reached a deal with search engine Google to let customers access the site from its mobile phones. LG said it would enable customers "easy access to their favourite internet services even without a PC" more...

Web ad spend overtakes newspapers

Spending on UK internet advertising surged in 2006, overtaking newspaper ads for the first time, a report says. Online advertising expenditure jumped 41.2% to £2.01bn during the year, the report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers said more...

Xbox revamp aims at digital home

The long-awaited revamp of the Xbox 360, designed to store and display high definition video, has been launched. The black Elite console has a 120GB hard drive and will go on sale in the US in April for $479.99 (£255). No details of a UK release were announced more...

Blog death threats spark debate

Prominent blogger Kathy Sierra has called on the blogosphere to combat the culture of abuse online. It follows a series of death threats which have forced her to cancel a public appearance and suspend her blog more...

Retrial for Microsoft piracy case

A Russian court has ordered a retrial of a case against a rural head teacher accused of using pirated Microsoft software in his school. Last month a lower court in Perm, some 1,000km (620 miles) east of Moscow, dismissed the case as "trivial" more...

Not all territories to get PS3 Store, says Sony

Sony has admitted that the Store element of the PlayStation 3's online service is unavailable in several countries, adding that some won't receive access to it at all more...

PS3 for under GBP 400

Just days after the European launch of PlayStation 3, UK retailer Aria.co.uk has slashed the price of the console to under GBP 400 - more than GBP 25 below the recommended retail price more...

More X360 'Elite' speculation

New evidence has emerged to support rumours that Microsoft has a black Xbox 360 with an HDMI port and 120GB hard drive in development. Forum members of website TGFC have posted pictures of what appears to be the black units lined up in a factory. The date on the snaps points back to Valentines day, suggesting that an April launch might not be that far-fetched more...

Sony Win

165,000 is certainly more PlayStation 3s than I expected to be sold in the UK this past weekend. It’s remains too expensive given the lack of essential titles, but I have to hand it to Sony, it has sold well. Indeed, it’s the UK’s fastest selling home console ever (EVER!), ahead of the Wii’s 105,000, Xbox 360’s 70,000 and GameCube’s 69,000. It also beats the Nintendo DS’s 87,000, but falls short of Sony’s 185,000 PSPs shifted over that launch weekend more...

Scottish Life halves operating costs with system upgrade

UK pensions provider Scottish Life, part of the Royal London Group, has halved its IT operating costs by completely refreshing its IT infrastructure. The firm has migrated its core legacy applications from a proprietary Unisys Clearpath mainframe to a more open hardware and software environment and modernised its infrastructure to improve application speed and customer service more...

Teens to get free mobile calls - with a catch

This summer, Britain's teenagers will be able to stop badgering their parents to pay off their mobile phone bills, with the launch of a new service that offers free calls and texts provided users are willing to receive adverts on their phones more...

First vulnerability in Vista's Windows Mail discovered

The successor to Outlook Express links seamlessly with its predecessor's dubious reputation in matters of security. Just a few months after its official release, the first significant security problem has been uncovered: under certain circumstances, simply clicking on a link in an email can cause a program to be launched on the local computer more...

Many Americans don’t care about the Internet :survey

Popular websites likes YouTube, eBay and MySpace are visited daily by millions of Americans, but according to a new survey released by Parks Associates, many American households could care less about the Internet. The annual National Technology Scan survey showed that many households don’t have Internet access and that an even larger percentage aren’t even interested with the Web more...

20 Million Copies of Vista Reported Sold

Microsoft said on Monday that it sold 20 million consumer copies of the new Windows Vista operating system worldwide in February, but analysts said the data shed little light on the program’s popularity during its first month on the market. By comparison, Windows XP, Vista’s predecessor, sold 17 million copies in the two months after its 2001 release, Microsoft said more...

Estate agent offers online viewings

Property investment firm David Stanley Redfern is offering clients online viewing of global properties in real time. The firm’s web site will use Google Earth's interactive programme to allow visitors access to the company’s portfolio of property in over 40 locations worldwide more...

Google's expansion is coming at a price: it's losing its popularity

Is Google becoming the new Microsoft? On one level, the question is preposterous, as the two companies do different things. Google is the most widely used internet search engine and dominates online advertising. Microsoft rules the world of computer operating systems: its ubiquitous Windows powers most of the world's personal computers. In addition, Microsoft has a commanding position in basic office software, such as word-processing and spreadsheet more...

Marks and Spencer revamps online presence

High-street retailer Marks & Spencer has unveiled a new web site which it hopes to use to increase online sales from £100m to £250m. The site has been developed by M&S’ in-house e-commerce team in partnership with Amazon, and will be integrated with telephone and shop sales. Features pioneered by Amazon, such as a list of recently viewed items, wish list and one click settings, have been included more...

Brisk trade for Sony PS3, but no sell-out

For a moment it appeared that the first PlayStation 3 to be sold in Britain would not sell at all.
The cash register at the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street, London, initially refused to accept the card of Ritatsu Thomas, 17, who had queued for more than 36 hours for the long-awaited Sony console more...

Microsoft keeps quiet on Xbox 'elite'

Microsoft Australia will on Wednesday make a "major announcement" to coincide with the first birthday of the Xbox 360. While unconfirmed, all signs suggest Microsoft will introduce a revamped "Elite" version of the games console, with new features such as a larger hard disk drive and a built-in HDMI connector more...

Researchers track down a plague of phony web pages

Tens of thousands of junk web pages, created only to lure search-engine users to advertisements, are proliferating like billboards strung along freeways. Now Microsoft researchers say they have traced the companies and techniques behind them more...

The future looks quite interesting

Google Apps (formerly, Google Apps for Your Domain) is an integrated suite of Google applications that includes an email program, a WYSIWYG webpage editor, online calendar, instant messaging client with voice capabilities and a web-based word processor cum spreadsheet software more...

Many net users 'not safety-aware'

Fewer than half of the UK's 29m adult internet users believe they are responsible for protecting personal information online, a survey suggests. One in six of the 2,441 people surveyed felt responsibility rested with banks more...

Apple TV released in bid to become television iPod

The Apple TV box is finally on sale and has met with mixed reviews. It generally attempts to do for video what the iPod has done for music, but no more. Nevertheless its interface sets new standards for a media extender more...