Estonia fines man for 'cyber war'

A 20-year-old ethnic Russian man is the first person to be convicted for taking part in a "cyber war" against Estonia. Dmitri Galushkevich was fined 17,500 kroons (£830) for an attack which blocked the website of the Reform Party of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip. The assault, between 25 April and 4 May 2007, was one of a series by hackers on Estonian institutions and businesses more...

Tesla Roadster to be a one-speed car

The engineers at Tesla Motors have designed a new single-speed transmission for its sports car that will let it hit the promised zero to 60 mph in four seconds. The transmission won't come out on the first Tesla Roadsters coming off the line, the company said in a press release. Those early production cars will have a two-speed transmission that will only let the car get to 60 mph in 5.7 seconds more...

Wii and DS drive Nintendo profits

Profits at video games giant Nintendo have soared, boosted by booming sales of the Wii games machine. Nintendo reported a third-quarter net profit of 126.5bn yen ($1.18bn, £604m), up 63% on last year. Nintendo's Wii outsold rival machines from Microsoft and Sony in 2007 and the company raised its sales forecast for the current financial year more...

Google and Publicis announce link-up

Google and Publicis Groupe, the owner of ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, are working together on new advertising technology. This is the first such announcement that Google has made with one of the major advertising groups and shows that the company - labelled a "frenemy" by the WPP chief executive, Sir Martin Sorrell - is aiming to improve an often tense relationship with an agency world wary of its objectives more...

Police suspect internet link to suicides

Police in south Wales are investigating the possibility of an internet "suicide chain" after the apparent copycat deaths of seven young people over the past year. The latest victim, Natasha Randall, 17, was found dead at her family home in Blaengarw, near Bridgend last week. Two other teenage girls who knew her attempted to harm themselves the following day. Last night, one of them was still on a life support machine in hospital, while the second girl was discharged from hospital more...

UK homes to get super-fast fibre

The UK's first "fibre town" could go online in the autumn, delivering speeds of about 100Mbps (megabits per second) to consumers' homes. Fibre firm H20 provides super-fast broadband via the sewers and either Bournemouth, Northampton or Dundee will be offered the service first more...

Britons' ID cards 'to be delayed'

Plans for a wider roll-out of identity cards to British nationals appear to have been delayed for two years. Foreign nationals will have ID cards this year and it was intended to introduce them in "significant volumes" for UK citizens from 2010 more...

Fans fight for Scrabulous future

The threat to the hugely popular Scrabulous game has galvanised Facebook members into mounting a vigorous defence campaign. In little more than a day more than 13,000 people have signed up to a Save Scrabulous group on Facebook. Many have signed a petition asking Mattel and Hasbro to back down from their threat to have the game removed more...

Npower smart meter trial to begin this spring

Npower is to start an 18-month trial of real-time gas and electricity metering technology in 5,000 homes this spring. Participating customers will receive up-to-the-minute information on their energy use through networked display units and text messaging services. The aim is to find out how customers will want to use the technology more...

Apple announces ultra-thin laptop

Apple boss Steve Jobs has unveiled the world's thinnest laptop, called the MacBook Air.
The computer, which is 0.76 inches (1.93cm) at its thickest point, was unveiled at an event in San Francisco. The Apple head also launched online film rentals for iTunes users in the US from almost every major film studio, including Disney and Fox more...

'One Click Away from Danger'

The BBC recently ran a programme about the dangers of Social Networking Sites, which can view using their new iPlayer by clicking here.

EU launches new Microsoft probes

The European Commission is launching two new anti-competition investigations against US computer giant Microsoft. The first will look at whether Microsoft unfairly ties its Explorer internet browser to its Windows operating system. In a parallel probe, the Commission will look at the interoperability of Microsoft software with rival products more...

BBC iPlayer bursts through user target

More than 3.5 million programmes were viewed on the BBC's iPlayer catch-up TV service over the Christmas period, according to the first figures released by the corporation. The research found that around 1 million people visited bbc.co.uk/iplayer between Christmas Day and January 7, and revealed that the most watched programmes on the iPlayer during this period were the Doctor Who and Extras Christmas specials more...

Is Apple readying a wireless announcement? Maybe not

A banner at the Moscone Center in San Francisco where Apple will host its annual Macworld conference has many in the technology sector buzzing about a possible wireless announcement coming from CEO Steve Jobs' keynote on Tuesday. The banner that reads "There's something in the Air" has prompted much speculation that Apple is readying itself for another big wireless announcement. The most persistent rumor is that Apple will include Wimax on Apple notebooks more...

Foreign Office to court youth on YouTube

The Foreign Office is to launch a public relations offensive in the spring targeted at British and foreign youth, with the help of a redesigned website and its own YouTube video channel. The Foreign Office channel has been functioning experimentally since September, broadcasting the off-the-cuff thoughts of the foreign secretary, David Miliband, observations from ambassadors and junior staffers alike and vivid travel advisories for would-be tourists more...

The BBC at the CES

Although we were not privileged to attend the CES you can view all the videos from the BBC webiste by clicking here.

One Laptop to set up US project

The One Laptop Per Child project is turning its attention to children in the United States.
The XO laptop developed by the OLPC was conceived to boost educational efforts in developing nations. Now the OLPC has set up a US office and has begun talking to state governments about ways to get the laptop into the hands of the poorest American children more...

Computer brings science up a gear

One of the largest and most powerful computers in the country has been unveiled in Edinburgh.
Hector (High End Computing Terascale Resources) is capable of 63 million million calculations a second and is four times faster than its predecessor. It represents the equivalent of approximately 12,000 desktop systems. The £113m project will run for six years and will enable scientists to develop life-saving drugs and model climate change and epidemic patterns more...

Biometric visa scheme goes global

All UK visa applications across the world now include fingerprint biometrics, three months ahead of schedule, according to immigration minister Liam Byrne. Prints from applicants from 133 countries are checked against government databases to prevent fraud and nearly 500 cases of identity swapping have already been found more..

Near-final Vista SP1 goes public

Microsoft has made Vista's Service Pack 1 near-final "release candidate" available for download to the general public, after initially choosing to restrict it to 15,000 beta testers when it debuted last week. According to a blog by ZDNet.com's Mary Jo Foley, a Microsoft representative said the build contained a "number of bugs that testers encountered in previous prerelease versions of SP1." more...

Future television switches on

Alongside a raft of new high definition LCD displays was the world's largest plasma display - a 150in behemoth from Panasonic - the world's thinnest commercial screen - just 3mm thick - and the world's first laser television. The latter was debuted by Mitsubishi, a company that has claimed a number of television firsts including the first true high definition sets more...

Fujitsu's 'Corn' PC

It's actually the third generation of the Biblo PC from Fujitsu, which showed off the laptop at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The inside is a normal PC, but the outside casing is made out of material that's 50 percent plant-based materials, and 50 percent regular plastics. To make it, they take regular ears of corn, process it down to corn starch, and turn that into a polymer alloy. Fujitsu says it cuts down on carbon dioxide emissions during the manufacturing process by 15 percent. Unfortunately, the PCs are only on sale in Japan more...

Ultra-mobile future beckons for PCs

The desktop PC's days of dominance could be numbered as laptops and ultra-mobile PCs begin to reap the benefit of ever greater, and more efficient, computing power. "We want to be mobile and not tethered to our desks anymore - we can take our computing power with us," said Mooly Eden, general manager of the mobile platform group at Intel more...

Studios still searching for best way to do video online

Studios know how to make money in the traditional way--in the theater, via broadcast television. But the Internet still has them slightly flummoxed. True, most of the major film and television studios are embracing the Web. But the exact formula for distributing their content while still making money remains somewhat up in the air more...

Video game classics score Emmy honors at CES

A group of video game giants who changed the way people play in the 80s, 90s and 2000s were honored with technology and engineering Emmy Awards during a ceremony in Las Vegas Monday night, according to a release from Sony Online Entertainment. The awards were handed out in two categories more...

Bus operator sprints ahead with mobile ticketing

Bus operator Go North East is introducing a cashless and paperless fare system that will allow customers to order and receive tickets via a mobile phone. Passengers using 'txt2go' can place their order by text and will then receive a message with the ticket information which can be shown to the driver as they board the bus more...

Blu-ray supporters scent victory

The backers of the Blu-ray high definition DVD system are predicting victory in the format wars with HD DVD. The two rival camps have divided consumers since the two incompatible systems were launched more...

Yahoo! plans fightback against Google

Internet giant Yahoo! must be ready to reclaim its position as the world's leading dotcom company, according to chief executive Jerry Yang. In a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday, Yang explained his vision of returning the company to its prime, and outlined plans to help Yahoo! recover from a series of setbacks that have left its reputation severely dented more...

Festive PS3 sales in US pass 1m

Sales of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console in the US reached 1.2 million over the Christmas shopping period, its Japanese owner Sony has confirmed. The figure covers the period between 23 November and 31 December and accounts for about two thirds of last year's sales, research firm NPD Group said more...

Teachers 'put pupil data at risk'

Sensitive information on school pupils is being put at risk by staff who take it home with them, an IT firm says. Teachers in nearly half of England's primary schools back up pupil data on CDs and memory sticks, which they then take out of school, research suggests more...

Warner backs Sony Blu-ray format

Warner Brothers is to release high definition films only in Sony's Blu-ray format, in what is seen as a blow to Toshiba in the long-running format war. Warner was the only major studio still releasing films both in Blu-ray and Toshiba's rival HD DVD format more...