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21/09/11
Windows 8 will ship with a number of small but important security tweaks Microsoft hopes will make it a harder target for the viruses, worms and Trojans that were able to subvert older versions of the operating system.
Most of the security features mentioned by Windows president Steven Sinofsky at this week's Build conference extend design features that appeared in Vista and Windows 7 and have gradually been added through updates.
These include Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), which will be used more extensively in Windows 8, as will a new feature that protects the core of the OS from what are called 'kernel-mode NULL dereference vulnerability', basically a way for an attacker to elevate privileges once on the system.
Windows 8 will also make extensive use of memory heap randomisaiton, another technique tried on Windows 7, which makes it difficult for malware programmers to 'overrun' the space given to an application for malicious purposes.
Probably the biggest security addition is Windows 8's support for UEFI 2.3.1 secured boot technology (which requires BIOS support), which stops early-booting malware from interfering with antivirus products before they load into memory.
None of these changes are particularly radical but they continue the design policy of restricting as far as possible what applications can do on the platform without upsetting the OS. Of course, in the Web 2.0 world, what an application can do is increasingly governed by software interfaces other than those looked after the OS.
Sinofsky did however remind developers of the importance of the company's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), the coding, testing and design system it came up with to avoid the security oversight that causes so many problems for Windows XP a decade ago.
"Some malware is as complex as commercial applications," said Sinofsky notes in a blog on the environment in which Windows 8 will be operating.
Microsoft has also spotted an interesting clue as to why a sizable minority of PCs seem to lack adequate antivirus protection - people use free antivirus that comes with a new PC but then fail to re-subscribe after trial periods expire.
"Shortly after Windows 7 general availability in October 2009, our telemetry data showed nearly all Windows 7 PCs had up-to-date antimalware software," said Sinofsky.
"A year later, at least 24 percent of Windows 7 PCs did not have current antimalware protection. Our data also shows that PCs that become unprotected tend to stay in this unprotected state for long periods of time."
Microsoft's biggest security challenge with Windows 8 remains the same one the company had with Windows 7 - a core of stubborn users refuses to upgrade from older operating systems, especially XP. This, critics might point out, is largely Microsoft's fault for shipping five versions of the operating system since the year 2000, a marketing approach that left some users unsure as to the value of paying for a new version.
20/09/11
Facebook is set to launch an ambitious campaign offering free advertising to small businesses.
Facebook is set to unveil an ambitious plan to attract more small businesses to set up shop on the social network. It plans to offer $50 in free advertising to as many as 200,000 small businesses to demonstrate the power of marketing on Facebook.
Sheryl Sandberg is bringing the experience she gained from helping to build the Google online ads empire to Facebook, and she has a strategy to establish Facebook as the de facto place to be. With 750 million members, Facebook represents an audience that can't be ignored, and this campaign is designed to help businesses understand how to take advantage of that audience.
Many small businesses do not have a website. Setting up a website involves buying a domain, and finding a hosting service, and developing and maintaining the site itself. The costs for these things is marginal in most cases, but the skills and effort involved are daunting to many business owners who just want to focus on their customers and building their business.
Facebook makes it easier--both to set up shop and to reach customers. Establishing a Facebook Page is a turnkey, fill-in-the-blanks approach to setting up a presence on the Web, and it doesn't cost a dime. It provides the business owner with a platform for sharing and engaging with customers. If this Facebook campaign achieves its goal, it will also give those businesses a cost-effective means of targeting ads to customers.
When a prospective customer clicks on a Facebook ad, the business ends up paying some set price for that click--like 5 cents. The actual cost of the clicks will vary depending on the size and scope of the audience. The more precisely the ad is targeted, the more it is likely to cost. But, precision targeting should also yield a higher rate of success, so it all works out.
When the dot.com rush hit, businesses raced to set up websites just for the sake of being on the Web. Now, Facebook is almost a Web of its own within the Web, and businesses feel compelled to set up a presence on the social network even if they don't really know why, or what they're supposed to do with it.
If it is successful, this campaign will help jumpstart small businesses on the "why" and "how" so they can make the most of their investment of time and effort in social media--and at the same time generate revenue for Facebook.
20/09/11
The launch of the iPad 3 will help Apple’s iOS maintain tablet dominance in 2012, but Google Android tablets are forecast to gain market share, reaching 34 percent in 2012, according to IDC.
Android gains will be stimulated by further expansion in product availability and available routes to market, with the telco operator channel expected to become more involved.
Tablets are seen as a major opportunity for businesses, which are looking seriously into deploying tablets in the near future.
And, according to a recent IDC survey about tablets in the enterprise, Windows is top of the list when it comes to commercial tablets.
With a completely redesigned user interface based on the Metro design language developed for Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating systems will likely be able to make a strong impact not just in the commercial segment but in the consumer segment as well, further intensifying the OS battle.
There will also be additional competition from the BlackBerry Tablet OS (currently used in the BlackBerry Playbook tablet), which is expected to make further inroads across both consumer and commercial segments.
IDC remains very optimistic about the outlook for media tablets and projects EMEA shipments to reach 33 million units in 2012, an increase of 53 percent, representing a value of €13.1 billion, up 44 percent compared with 2011.
Media tablet shipments in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) reached close to 4.4 million units in the second quarter of 2011, ahead of forecast at 3.7 million, representing an increase of 394 percent compared with the same quarter last year and up 82 percent compared with 1Q11.
17/03/11
A new phishing scam that targets bank and PayPal passwords and other consumer data that criminals use to loot private accounts is designed to beat security built into Firefox and Chrome web browsers.
As part of their security packages, these browsers receive URLs of known phishing sites and won't go to them unless users specifically permit them to. But a technique discovered by M86 Security Labs gets around this 'blacklist' protection.
The new ploy doesn't require victims to visit phoney websites to fill out forms that appear legitimate and reveal passwords, account numbers and the like. Instead, spammers send the forms as HTML attachments to emails. When victims fill out the forms and click to submit them, the data is sent through the browser via a POST request to PHP web servers that have been hacked.
"While the POST request sends information to the phisher's remote web server, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox did not detect any malicious activity," the blog says. "Months-old phishing campaigns remain undetected, so it seems this tactic is quite effective."
The browsers don't pick up on this activity as malicious, partly because not many compromised PHP servers get reported so their URLs don't make the blacklists. Most users aren't sophisticated enough to discern the URL from the PHP submission, M86 says in a blog.
Also, because the PHP script doesn't show any HTML code to the browser, the URLs that the data is sent to are hard to verify as phishing sites, the blog says.
In a specific case that M86 describes, the PHP server involved had been installed on a compromised Frito-Lay web page. After grabbing the victim's data, the PHP script redirects the browser to the legitimate company the victim thought it was dealing with.
17/03/11
As Japan counts the human cost of the earthquake, manufacturers are struggling to continue production. Continue reading the main story
Technology firms are facing major disruption to supplies in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami which have devastated parts of Japan.
The country is home to several of the world's major high tech manufacturers.
Many of them have had to stop production to carry out safety checks and the prospect of rolling blackouts means further interruptions are likely over the coming weeks.
Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and Canon are among the companies affected.
Panasonic Corp said ongoing aftershocks had prevented it from inspecting two factories in northern Japan.
Sony confirmed that it had voluntarily suspended operations at seven manufacturing plants, while the country assesses the state of its power grid.
The company's Sendai Technology Centre in Tagajo, Miyagi Prefecture has also been closed due to earthquake damage.
Rolling blackouts
Shin-Etsu Chemical, which makes the silicon wafers used in semiconductors, suspended operations at three factories. Two of which have now resumed production.
The firm said operations at its Gunma complex will be affected if the Tokyo Electric Power Company implements rolling blackouts.
Toshiba, which makes around a third of the world's NAND memory chips - found in devices such as Apple's iPad - said on Monday that it was restarting a chip factory in Iwate, northern Japan.
Even so, spot prices for 16-gigabit NAND flash memory chips rose sharply - up 12.5% from the close on 11 March, according to DRAMeXchange, Asia's largest spot market for chips.
Damage to sub sea cables could have disrupted the global internet Elsewhere, Canon said three of its plants had sustained serious damage in the earthquake. The factories make LCD screens, lenses and inkjet printers.
Internet hub
While the Japanese high tech industry is struggling to get back on its feet, much of the fixed communications infrastructure has survived remarkably intact.
The seas around Japan are a major hub for undersea telecoms cables, forming a critical part of the global internet.
According to Stephan Beckert, an analyst with telecoms research group TeleGeography, several sub sea cables have been damaged as a result of the earthquake.
"All of the outages appear to be on cable segments that land in the Ajigaura or Kitaibaraki landing stations, approximately halfway between Tokyo and Sendai," he told BBC News.
"Fortunately, most of Japan's cable landing stations are well to the South of Tokyo, or on other side of the sheltered inlet that becomes Tokyo Bay," he added.
That has meant that internet services have been largely unaffected by the disaster.
"There is no significant impact on overall traffic volumes in or through the region," said Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at internet monitoring firm Arbor Networks.
Nevertheless, other parts of Japan's communication infrastructure have been damaged.
Telephone operator NTT East Japan said 879,000 telephony lines were out of service, as well as 475,400 fibre-optic lines.
Meanwhile, more than 11,000 wireless base stations belonging to DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank were also out of service as of Sunday morning, Telegeography reported.
14/02/11
Net firms must do a better job of telling customers about broadband speeds or face stiffer regulation, Ofcom has warned.
The warning came out of research the telecoms watchdog carried out on how ISPs sell broadband.
It revealed that 74% of customers were not told that the maximum speed on their line was likely to be higher than the speed they would actually get.
Ofcom wants to make improvements to how broadband is sold later this year.
Slow down
The regulator used mystery shoppers to find out what different ISPs say when customers are about to sign up.
It found that while 85% were told what the speed on their line would be, 42% had to prompt sales staff to tell them this information.
The mystery shoppers also found that ISPs often gave very wide estimates of broadband speed and sometimes gave different estimates for the same line. Ofcom put this down to the separate testing methods used by ISPs.
The voluntary code of practice on broadband selling introduced in December 2008 says ISPs must tell customers what speed they might enjoy and spell out any problems that might slow down data.
Ofcom now proposes working with ISPs to ensure testing regimes are consistent and to amend the code of practice to make sure speeds are mentioned early on in sales conversations with customers.
It will also talk to ISPs about whether it is feasible for customers to leave a contract if the speed they get is substantially lower than the estimate they got at sign up.
"We will work with the internet service providers to ensure consumers receive the best quality information and amend the existing code accordingly," said Ed Richards, Ofcom chief executive in a statement. "We will continue to monitor and assess performance against the code in the coming months."
If the further testing of sales procedures reveals are still not adhering to the code of practice, Ofcom will consider introducing regulations that make accurate speed disclosure mandatory.
31/12/10
The PC Crew are pleased to announce a move into website design.
This is an area they have been involved in for many years but this is the 1st time they have offered the service to its PC customers
For more information, please click here.
28/10/10
Virgin Media is set to turn up the dial on its cable network, offering users speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second).
It aims to provide the service to over 50% of the UK by mid-2012, beginning in December with 200,000 homes in London, the Home Counties and West Yorkshire.
It is the latest move in the race to bring super-fast broadband services to the UK.
It will give new impetus to rival BT's super-fast broadband rollout.
Left behind
Neil Berkett, chief executive of Virgin Media described the service as "a significant milestone".
"The world of possibilities that broadband will enable is set to explode," he said.
The first towns earmarked for the super-fast service are Chelmsford, Farnborough and Heckmondwike in West Yorkshire.
The service will be available as part of a telephone or TV bundle for £35 a month or £45 for a standalone broadband product.
"It will be interesting to see whether the British public will be tempted away from their compulsion for cheap deals," said Michael Phillips, product director of comparison website broadbandchoices.
"So far only a small proportion of Virgin Media's four million broadband customers have signed up to its 50Mbps service," he added.
Mr Berkett said Virgin Media had seen "a massive uptake" in the number of customers watching video-rich services and using bandwidth-hungry applications.
"We are now in a world where people want the best connectivity with whatever screen they are using and those service providers that aren't able to deliver this will simply be left behind," he said.
BT is Virgin Media's chief rival in the super-fast broadband race and is planning to offer fibre optic broadband to around 70% of the UK by 2012.
It questions Virgin's prices.
"Their new service is more than twice the price of BT's fibre product and we are surprised by the high price when most family budgets are tight," said a statement from BT.
It also questioned why Virgin Media has not been required to open its network to other operators in the same way as Ofcom requires of BT.
The majority of BT's next-generation broadband roll-out consists of so-called fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), which is initially delivering top speeds of around 40Mbps (megabits per second).
The faster fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology, which can offer speeds to compete with Virgin's network, will only be available to a quarter of the total.
Experts argue that FTTH is a more future-proofed technology because it offers much faster upload speeds for services such as high-definition video conferencing which are becoming more popular.
Virgin's 100Mbps service will offer upload speeds of 10Mbps.
"This will be of particular interest to those who are sharing content online, and may help drive wider use of cloud-based applications," said Sebastien Lahtinen, co-founder of broadband news site ThinkBroadband.
League table
Prime minister David Cameron welcomed the Virgin Media roll-out.
"We want to see superfast broadband brought to peoples' homes and businesses right across the country and this exciting news takes us a step closer towards reaching that goal," he said.
Despite the government's determination to make the UK the fastest broadband nation in Europe by 2015, Britain is currently ranked 18th in the global broadband ratings.
It has also failed to make it on to super-fast broadband rankings released by the Fibre to the Home Council for Europe at this week's World Broadband Forum in Paris.
The league tables show that some 18 million homes in Europe can get FTTH, with Eastern European countries dominating the rankings.
In many cases this is because of poor existing infrastructure meaning fibre optics make good economic sense while the high proportion of people living in flats mean more homes can be reached via such technology.
Chris Holden, president of the FTTH Council for Europe said Eastern Europe could become a more attractive place to do business.
"Businesses will go where the bandwidth is. It is disappointing that countries such as Italy and France are at the bottom of the rankings while the UK, Germany and Spain aren't even on it," he said.
He said that despite a flurry of recent activity it would be "very difficult" for the UK to catch up.
No money
The European Union wants to see half of Europe's homes benefiting from 100Mbps broadband by 2020. By the same date it wants 100% of homes to have broadband speeds of at least 30Mbps.
Charlie Ponsonby, chief executive of broadband comparison service Simplifydigital, said it was hard to see where the money will come from for such an ambitious roll-out.
"The UK's broadband infrastructure is much like the railway infrastructure - getting better, but by no means up there with the world leaders. The trouble is, it is likely to cost about £2.5bn to bring us in line with the best in the world," he said.
Last week the government announced that the BBC would fund super-fast broadband roll-outs in rural areas.
At the World Broadband Forum, companies have been busy showing off their net wares, including a glut of companies offering cheaper solutions to fibre optics.
Some firms are offering ethernet solutions for the so-called last mile of connection between the telephone exchange and peoples' homes which would offer 100Mbps at a fraction of the cost of FTTH.
Network firm Adtran has ongoing trials of its Ultra Broadband Ethernet technology and is on the verge of signing deals with several European telcos.
At the other end of the scale, a device to boost the speeds of broadband in rural areas was also being shown off.
The WiBE gadget connects to the 3G network, creating a web hotspot where phones and dongles have no signals.
Although its average speed is just 2.8Mbps it could be a lifeline for remote areas languishing on dial-up speeds.
The gadget goes on sale in the UK from next week.
The UK government has put back the timetable to offer a minimum 2Mbps broadband connection to every home from 2012 to 2015.
18/10/10
Being online can save you money is one of the key messages of the campaign A major drive to get more people to use the internet has started, with the aim of persuading reluctant users that the web can save them money and time.
The BBC will be involved in the Get Online campaign, which will see some celebrities going online for the first time.
More than nine million Britons have never used the internet, and they tend to be more elderly and less well-off.
Web training
BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones says the campaign will hammer home a simple message, that the internet can save you money.
Research by UK Online Centres, which was set up by the government to provide public access to computers, found that a third of new internet users reckoned they had already saved more than £100 by being online.
Among the events, companies including Google and McDonalds will descend on Bridlington in Yorkshire to offer free web training in a town where one in four people are not online.
BBC programmes will also take part, with Sir Terry Wogan acting as a web ambassador and a character in Radio 4's The Archers having their first computer lesson.
06/10/10
Rogue applications post hoax status updates
Facebook users are being warned about a scam that claims they can get their hands on a free iPhone.
According to security firm Sophos, a number of social networkers have reported their status being updated automatically with phrases such as "Just testing Facebook for iPhone out :P Received my free iPhone today, so happy lol... If anyone else wants one go here" with a link to a Facebook app.
Sophos says the updates are being posted by rogue applications and any Facebook user that clicks on the link are asked if they want to 'allow' the app access to their Facebook profile. They are then directed to a webpage which will earn commission for the spammers behind the scam. Subsequently, the rogue app then has access to a user's profile and can post a similar status update on their Facebook page automatically
"If you've fallen for this trick, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a new iPhone," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"Facebook users need to learn to think before they 'like' and 'share' suspicious pages on Facebook. Just because something appears on a friend's wall, it doesn't mean that it is from a reliable source, and by giving unknown applications access to your Facebook page, you could unknowingly continue to help to spread scams and earn cash for the spammers."
30/09/10
It is the latest tablet computer to enter a highly competitive market
Blackberry has announced its answer to Apple's iPad with a device called the Playbook.
The company unveiled its tablet computer to much anticipation at its developer conference, Devcon, in San Francisco.
It is one of the first business-centric devices in the tablet market.
Analysts said that the release was a clever move by the Blackberry maker Research In Motion whose smartphones dominate the business sector.
'Cutting edge'
"This is one of the most exciting times in our history," said Mike Lazaridis, RIM chief executive officer.
"RIM set out to engineer the best professional-grade tablet in the industry with cutting-edge hardware features and one of the world's most robust and flexible operating systems," added Mr Lazaridis.
Mr Lazaridis says it is an "exciting time" for RIM Analysts have said the Playbook will give RIM an opportunity to dominate in a market it is familiar with and where it enjoys a solid reputation.
"RIM's Blackberry Playbook tablet looks to be a real challenger to Apple's iPad, playing on its business credentials, rather than being just another joy machine'," Stuart Miles, editor of mobile technology website Pocket-Lint told BBC News.
"Whether RIM can deliver what it promises in the business environment with a selection of new apps on yet another operating system will be the real test though. Either way, it's clear that the battle of the tablets is now full steam ahead."
The Playbook will have Bluetooth and WiFi. The Playbook will have a 7-inch (18cm) screen with front and rear facing cameras to enable video conferencing, an important feature that will appeal to the business market.
The operating system will not use the new Blackberry OS 6 but has instead opted for QNX software, which was recently acquired by RIM and has extensive expertise in embedded systems for the car.
The new OS is designed specifically for the tablet size computer and will avoid the difficulties that come from adjusting a smartphone OS to the tablet platform.
The Playbook will have Bluetooth and wi-fi. It will have no 3G capabilities but will enable a data connection by tethering to a Blackberry smartphone.
Analysts at research firm CCS Insight said that this may "hamper acceptance by operators" who will not be able to charge for a separate data connection for the device.
'Exciting'
RIM expects to ship the device to corporate customers and developers in October.
It will become commercially available early in 2011.
RIM has yet to set an exact price but says it will fall in the lower range of prices for consumer tablets already in the suddenly congested market.
"It's by far the most exciting thing we've seen from BlackBerry for a while and for once the buzz seems to have been justified," said Kate Solomon of mobile news and views site Recombu.com.
What remains to be seen is whether RIM can keep the price realistic for everyday users - despite all the high quality features, a high price tag will put a lot of people off and convince them that a tablet is a superfluous gadget that they don't really need."
Tablet market
The launch of the Playbook comes as the tablet market becomes an increasingly competitive and crowded field, energised in no small part by the iPad.
Since its April launch, the iPad has dominated the space with research firm iSuppli predicting sales of 12 million by the end of the year.
Another research firm, UBS, put iPad sales at 28 million by 2011.
One contender looking to put a dent in the iPad's lead is HP.
At a nearby conference called TechCrunch Disrupt, Todd Bradley, the company's executive vice president for the personal systems group said tablets are going to be a huge market.
Mr Bradley told attendees that he estimates that in the next few years tablets will be a $40bn market.
Samsung recently introduced its Galaxy tablet as did Dell with the 5 inch Streak. Other companies waiting in the wings with their versions include Lenovo, Asus, HTC, and Acer as well as Google and Microsoft.
A possible contender for the business customer is likely to come in the form of Cisco's Cius tablet.
19/09/10
XP exclusion kicks out most Windows users
Microsoft may have a tough time building significant market share for its new Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) browser because eligible users are in the minority.
Several analysts agreed that Microsoft has its work cut out for it, at least in the short term, because IE9 won't run on Windows XP, the aged-but-still-dominant operating system.
Microsoft omitted the still-popular XP from the supported OS list because, among other things, IE 9 speeds up page rendering and composition by tapping the graphics processor in newer PCs. Windows XP lacks support for the Direct2D API, which IE9 uses to accelerate content rendering.
The decision means that only a subset of machines will be able to run IE9, either in its preview or final form, until those systems and Windows XP are replaced by new hardware and Windows 7.
"That's an issue in terms of growth, at least for the next 12 to 18 months as more companies and consumers migrate to Windows 7," said Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC. For that reason and others, Hilwa said not to expect a "tidal wave change in browser share. Microsoft's battle is not to lose much more share."
Worldwide, Windows XP PCs outnumber all other Windows-equipped machines by two to one, according to the most recent statistics from Web metrics company Net Applications.
In August, Windows XP powered 66.7% of the globe's Windows systems that went online in the month, while the three-year-old Vista accounted for 15.3% and 2009's Windows 7 for 17.4%.
Older versions of Windows, including Windows 2000, Windows 98 and Windows Millennium, made up the small remainder.
Even in the U.S., where Windows XP has a smaller slice of the Windows pie, the aging operating system remains in the majority. But its margin is much narrower. Here, Windows XP ran on 52.1% of all Windows PCs used to browse the Web last month, while Vista accounted for 27% and Windows 7 for 20.8%.
Windows' total share in the US. is significantly lower than its global share - 83.5% for the US, 91.3% worldwide - in part because Apple's Mac OS X is more popular in the United States than in most other countries. Net Applications, for example, pegged Mac OS X with a global share of 5% in August, but a U.S. share of 11.2%.
Other experts agreed with Hilwa that leaving out Windows XP is a problem for Microsoft's IE9 plans.
"This is a major shortcoming of the IE9 strategy," said Ray Valdes of Gartner in an interview Wednesday after the launch of the browser's beta. "And it's an opportunity for competitors to continue to chip away from IE's share."
Al Gillen, a colleague of Hilwa's at IDC seconded that. "The short term potential for IE9 is limited," Gillen said, noting that the new browser's numbers should pick up when Microsoft eventually offers it to Vista and Windows 7 users via Windows Update.
Microsoft has not set a final release for IE9, and Wednesday again declined to put a firm date on the final. Speculation has centered on an April 2011 release, which would coincide with MIX, the company's annual Web conference that's scheduled to run April 12-14, 2011, in Las Vegas.
Browser rivals have used IE9's no-XP policy as marketing ammunition. New versions from Mozilla and Google, for example, are to land later this year with limited hardware acceleration under XP.
"Firefox accelerates for Windows XP users too, something Microsoft says they can't do," said Aza Dotzler, Mozilla's lead technology evangelist, last week. "If Mozilla can accelerate browsing for the hundreds of millions of PC users on Microsoft's Windows XP, why can't Microsoft?"
Chrome will also feature partial hardware acceleration for Windows XP with version 7, which should be in users' hands in two months or less.
IE8, which debuted in March 2009 and currently has a 31.4% share, will be the most modern Microsoft browser available to Windows XP users through the operating system's support cut-off in April 2014.
19/09/10
Stunt held to highlight poor performance of rural net connection
Carrier pigeons proved to be faster than rural broadband in a race held by business ISP, Timico.
The ISP held the race to see which method was fastest for transferring a 300MB video file. Ten Pigeons carrying USB keys containing the file were released from a farm in Beverley, Yorkshire at the same time as a download of the video-file was started.
When the pigeons reached Skegness, their destination 75 miles away, an hour and a quarter later, less than a quarter of the file had been downloaded. The download had all been re-set once in that time.
The stunt was designed to highlight that broadband in some locations in the UK is still "not fit for purpose".
"The farm we are using has a connection of around 100 to 200 Kbps (kilobits per second)," Tref Davies from Timico told the BBC.
"This is the UK. It should be well-connected but around a third of homes still can't get broadband."
A similar race took place in Durban, South Africa last year. A carrier pigeon completed a 96km journey within two hours. However, just four percent of a 4GB file had been downloaded in the same period.
19/09/10
The service allows users to see where friends are, near and far Facebook has launched its location-based Places service in the UK.
It allows people to "check in" wherever they are and see who among their friends and other Facebook users is - or has been - at the same location.
The service also lists nearby businesses and attractions, and Facebook will target the locations it lists to each Places user.
It has numerous privacy controls in place to control the amount of location information that is shared.
Places is available in the US and now the UK for the iPhone and select other smartphones through Facebook's mobile site, with other countries to come.
Michael Sharon, product manager for Places, said that the firm was working on developing the application for Blackberry and devices running the Android operating system.
He added that the firm has made Places' API - the software that allows other programs to interface with it - available, so that Places will be able to integrate with existing location-aware services such as Foursquare.
Places allows users to "tag" friends with them, prompting privacy concerns Mr Sharon stressed that there were also a number of security features in place for minors; for example, only a minor user's friends will be able to see check-ins.
Josh Feldberg, a digital consultant attending the UK launch, told BBC News that the sheer size of Facebook's user base would make it more successful than other location-aware services such as Gowalla and Foursquare.
"It makes my location check-ins more useful; Foursquare's a bit of fun but only a couple of times has it led to actual offline meetups; with Facebook, the people on there are more my close friends and family."
Advertisements will not be linked to Place pages, but rather targeted at specific users; Mr Feldberg said the location-aware service could offer new types of content.
"It could help with their advertising revenue but their ads are already quite targeted; from a marketing point of view for businesses it offers interesting opportunities. You could do reward schemes for people who check in at a certain business, for example."
Rik Ferguson of security firm Trend Micro, trialled the service as it was launched on Friday. He raised a number of concerns about the functionality that allows users to check in their friends at a given location.
"One of the major issues is the way that Facebook have implemented his functionality," Mr Ferguson told BBC News.
"By default, users are opted in to the ability to be tagged by their friends, they are opted in to allowing their friends' Facebook apps to access their location information, and they are opted in to allowing 'non-friends' checked-in to the same place to see their whereabouts.
"This is all backwards - this should be deployed on a purely opt-in basis and no information about my whereabouts should be posted without my explicit consent, every single time a post is made."
14/07/10
Microsoft has integrated Facebook into its Outlook e-mail system in its latest move towards the social web.
Users of Outlook will be able to see the Facebook profile photos of their e-mail contacts, plus their news feeds, status updates, pictures uploads and wall posts.
Currently people will only be able to view Facebook pages rather than update them via their e-mail account.
The move follows an integration between Outlook and business network LinkedIn.
Not spectacular
The add-on to Microsoft Outlook's Social Connector is available for download immediately.
Chris Adams, Microsoft's Office 2010 product manager said: "The Outlook Social Connector and providers from partners such as Facebook makes it easy and convenient for busy people to stay in touch with the people they care about."
Microsoft has long seen pulling the social web into its suite of products as a key part of its strategy.
Last year it launched Outlook Social Connector as part of its new Office 2010 software which went on sale in June.
Nate Elliott, a principal analyst with research firm Forr
ester, said the news would have more impact for the companies involved than for consumers.
"I'm not convinced it is a huge deal from the consumers' point of view as it doesn't really change the social media experience," he said.
"Pulling in a photo of someone in your contacts list isn't that spectacular. It does allow you to add people to your Facebook account but that is a relatively minor piece of functionality," he added.
For Microsoft though it is an acknowledgement that the social web is here to stay, thinks Mr Elliott.
"Microsoft has always maintained that it has its own social network in Windows Messeger so it is pretty notable that it is reaching beyond its own products," he said.
And for Facebook, the more integration it gets in other key software products the more likely it is to maintain its dominance of the social web.
"A few years ago Facebook took over from MySpace but the threat of people switching away from Facebook still exists," said Mr Elliott.
To avoid the privacy issue that blew up when Google integrated its social network Buzz into GMail, Microsoft has made sure that only Outlook e-mail addresses linked to Facebook accounts will be drawn into the system.
Gartner predicts that by 2014 social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for communication for 20% of business users.
12/07/10
Facebook has announced it is to launch a "panic button" application on its social networking site.
The button, aimed at children and teenagers, will report abuse to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) and Facebook.
The application will also appear on their homepage to say that "they are in control online".
The launch follows months of negotiation between Ceop and Facebook, which initially resisted the idea.
Ceop, the government law enforcement agency tasked with tracking down online sex offenders, called for a panic button to be installed on social networking sites last November.
Bebo became the first network to add the button with MySpace following suit, but Facebook resisted the change, saying its own reporting systems were sufficient.
Pressure mounted on Facebook following the rape and murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall by a 33-year-old convicted sex offender, posing as a teenage boy, who she met on Facebook.
Forty-four police chiefs in England, Wales and Scotland, signed a letter backing Ceop's call for a panic button on every Facebook page.
'Reassurance for parents'
The agreement to launch a child safety application is the culmination of months of negotiation between Ceop and Facebook.
Jim Gamble, Ceop's chief executive, said in a statement: "Our dialogue with Facebook about adopting the ClickCeop button is well documented - today however is a good day for child protection.
"By adding this application, Facebook users will have direct access to all the services that sit behind our ClickCeop button which should provide reassurance to every parent with teenagers on the site."
Facebook's head of communications in the UK, Sophy Silver, told BBC News that the new app would integrate reporting into both Facebook and Ceop's systems.
"Both sides are happy of where we have got to," she said.
"We still have the Facebook reporting system and by having a pre-packaged application that users play an active part in, you not only help keep them safe, it makes all of their friends aware too, and acts as a viral awareness campaign.
"Ultimately though, this makes for a safer environment for users and that's the most important part," she added.
In addition to the online reporting application, a new Facebook/Ceop page is being set up, with a range of topics that, it is hoped, will be of interest to teenagers - such as celebrities, music and exams - and will link these subjects to questions about online safety.
09/06/10
Public beta of Service Pack 1 coming in July
Microsoft has announced that the first Service Pack for Windows 7 will be available as a public beta next month.
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) won’t introduce any major new features but will include the combination of updates already available through Windows Update and additional hotfixes based on customer feedback.
A first service pack for Windows is important because many businesses won't widely deploy a new edition of Windows until that milestone has been reached. Service packs are also relatively rare: Windows XP, which was launched in October 2001, has had only three.
“Customers can feel confident about deploying Windows 7 now,” said Gavriella Schuster on the Windows for your Business blog.
The software giant said it has sold more than 100 million Windows 7 licences since it went on sale last year.
According to some reports, it’s already overtaken Windows Vista as the operating system of choice. Last month Janco Associates reported that more computers were running Windows 7 than Vista, with the newer OS accounting for approximately 14.6 percent of all operating systems in use. Vista's share of the market was said to have fallen to 12.6 percent.
09/06/10
Social networks made up 11.88% of all UK web visits in May
Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, are more popular than search engines with Brits surfing the web, says Experian Hitwise.
The web metrics firm revealed that during May social networks accounted for 11.88 percent of all UK internet visit, while search engines made up 11.33 percent.
Experian Hitwise said Facebook was the most popular social network with Brits, accounting for 55 percent of all UK internet visit to a social network, almost three times as many as the next most popular social network, YouTube.
Twitter was the third most popular social network in the UK.
Google was the search engine favoured by most Brits and together Google.co.uk and Google.com accounted for nine in every ten web searches carried out in the UK during May.
Despite its popularity, Facebook didn't manage to topple Google when it comes to the most visited website in the UK. During May, Google UK accounted for 9.29 percent of all UK web visits.
Facebook was the second most visited website in the UK and accounted for 7.04 percent of all UK web visits in the same month.
"Social networks are a key part of the online landscape in the UK, and their popularity continues to grow," said Robin Goad, research director for Experian Hitwise.
"Although social networks and search engines perform different functions, they both act as gateways to the wider internet. This data perfectly illustrates the key role that social media now plays in so much online behaviour."
09/06/10
Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt said he realised fast broadband was "increasingly essential" The UK's culture secretary has been talking tough on broadband in his first major speech on the issue.
Jeremy Hunt said that the previous government's commitment to a "paltry 2Mbps" (megabits per second) universal net speed was "pitifullly unambitious".
He added that it was "a scandal" that nearly three million households cannot access even this speed.
He said that his goal was to provide Britain with the "best superfast broadband network in Europe".
Details on how this would be achieved were scant but could include new regulation to force water, gas and electricity companies to open up their ducts.
"The biggest cost involved in rolling out new fibre optic networks is digging up the roads," he said.
"Cut these costs and, straight away, investing in superfast broadband becomes a substantially more attractive proposition," he added.
To use a football metaphor, Mr Hunt is in the position of the manager of West Ham, promising to win the Premier League within five years, without a big budget for new players
He welcomed Ofcom's proposals to open up access to BT's ducts and telegraph poles.
Mr Hunt acknowledged that fast, reliable broadband is "increasingly essential".
He said that a national superfast network could add £18bn to the GDP and create at least 60,000 new jobs.
21/04/10
Brits are being urged to back-up their digital music files after Moneysupermarket.com revealed that just three out of the UK's ten most popular insurance companies cover digital content.
According to research by the comparison website, on average Brits have around £1,200 worth of paid-for music and movie downloads on their PC. Four percent have more than £5,000 worth of content stored on home computers.
Are you digital downloads covered by your insurance policy?
"Whether it's Beyonce or The Beatles, people don't associate the same value to an MP3 player full of music as they do to a wall full of CDs or vinyl, but it is just as - if not more - valuable in terms of money, so people need to ensure they are appropriately insured," said Julie Owens, head of home insurance at moneysupermarket.com.
"Should you lose your downloaded content, some insurers will advise you to contact the site you purchasedit from, however, the seller won't always agree to let you re-download your purchase so you need to check your policy covers this type of content.
Moneysupermarket.com advises web users to check their policy and either consider cover from a specialist digital content provider, such as Hiscox, or ensure you back-up your files on a regular basis
20/04/10
Some of the latest security updates for Windows XP will not be installed on machines infected with a rootkit virus.
A rootkit is sneaky malware that buries itself deep inside the Windows operating system to avoid detection.
Microsoft said it had taken the action because similar updates issued in February made machines infected with the Alureon rootkit crash endlessly.
The latest updates can spot if a system is compromised by the Alureon rootkit and halt installation.
Find and fix
The latest batch of updates for Windows was released on 16 April and some of them fix vulnerabilities in the core, or kernel, of Windows. This is the same place that rootkits try to take up residence.
When Alureon is present it monitors net traffic and plucks out user names, passwords and credit card numbers. It also gives attackers a back door into infected machines.
The virus first appeared in 2008 and has been spread via discussion forums, hacked websites and bogus pay-per-click affiliate schemes.
FREE ANTI-ROOTKIT TOOLS
Notes for the security patch explained which "abnormal conditions" would prevent XP users applying the updates.
"These abnormal conditions on a system could be the result of an infection with a computer virus that modifies some operating system files, which renders the infected computer incompatible with the kernel update," read the statement.
By not applying the patch, Microsoft hopes to avoid a repeat of events in February which left many people struggling to get their computer working again.
Microsoft also wants to avoid a situation in which people become wary of updates because they provoke a crash.
It is not yet clear how many people have been left without the updates.
Microsoft urged those who are infected to ensure their machine is cleaned of the rootkit. It recommended using its malware removal tool or using rootkit detectors from other security companies.
Many modern security packages have them built in and will find rootkits when a machine is scanned.
20/04/10
Hi-tech criminals are racking up more than 100 attacks a second on the world's computers, a survey suggests.
While most of these attacks cause no trouble, the Symantec report suggests that one attack every 4.5 seconds does affect a PC.
The wave of attacks was driven by a steep rise in malicious software in circulation, said the annual report.
The number of malware (malicious software) samples that Symantec saw in 2009 was 71% higher than in 2008.
Crime family
This meant, said Symantec, that 51% of all the viruses, trojans and other malicious programs it has ever seen were logged during 2009. In total, Symantec identified almost 2.9 million items of malicious code during that 12 month period.
The steep rise in malware was driven largely by the growing popularity of easy to use toolkits that novice cyber criminals are using to turn out their own malware, said Tony Osborne, a technology manager for the public sector at Symantec.
Some of the kits were available for free, said Mr Osborne but others cost a lot of money. One, called Zeus, was available for around $700 (£458) and many had become so successful that their creators now offer telephone support for those who cannot get them to work.
STAYING SAFE ONLINE
During 2009, Symnatec say more than 90,000 variants of the Zeus kit and it was responsible for the growth of one of the most prolific malware families during the year.
Zeus relies on spam to lure people to websites where victims will be tricked into installing malicious code or which sneaks on to a computer via a known vulnerability.
Often, said the report, this can help criminals set up botnets - networks of hijacked home PCs that can be used to send spam or plundered for lucrative personal data. In 2009, Symantec saw almost seven million distinct PCs that were members of botnets.
There was one very simple reason that novices bought and used the kits, said Mr Osborne.
"It's all about money," he said.
Established gangs were also showing no signs of holding back in their attempts to steal saleable information.
"Why would they?" he said. "It's easy money and it's very hard to catch people."
"It's become a day job for a lot of people," he said.
There was evidence, suggests the report, that professional cyber criminals were tuning their tactics to try and get better results. Many now scour social network pages for details about employees inside companies and craft their spam and other messages to capitalise on the details they can gather.
The continuing growth of hi-tech crime meant that many developing nations were starting to suffer significant numbers of attacks. Brazil and India were becoming hot spots of cyber crime, said Mr Osborne.
This was because, he said, the infrastructure in those nations was rapidly improving as people move to broadband and use the web for more and more of their daily lives.
"Those are the places where education and understanding about security are taking a while to catch up," he said.
08/04/10
The broadband tax has been scrapped in the last-minute scramble to rush key legislation through before Parliament is dissolved next week.
The tax was a key part of Labour's strategy to ensure all parts of the country get super-fast broadband.
The Conservatives have always opposed the tax, preferring to allow the market more time to roll out services before government intervention.
The levy was among three taxes in the Finance Bill to be dropped.
The 10% tax increase on cider and tax relief on holiday homes were also scrapped.
The 50p-a-month broadband tax would have been applied to all households with a landline telephone. It is estimated that it would have raised about £170m a year to help fund broadband roll-out.
It was aimed at the final third of the country where experts say it would be too expensive for commercial players such as BT and Virgin Media to roll out fibre services.
But the tax proved controversial and the Conservatives had vowed to scrap it if it had become law and they had won the election.
If funding is needed to roll broadband out to rural areas, the Conservatives plans to use some of the TV licence fee set aside for digital switch-over. That would not be available until 2012.
The cross-party Business Innovation and Skills committee of MPs had labelled the tax unfair, because most of those who would pay it would not benefit from it.
It is likely to be reinstated if Labour is re-elected in the 6 May general election.
Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband news website Thinkbroadband, said it made the future of fast broadband uncertain.
"Dropping of the 50p per month tax will be welcomed by those that thought it was unfair, but it throws the current plan Labour plans to have next generation broadband to 90% of homes by 2017 in disarray," he said.
Malcolm Corbett, chief executive of the Independent Networks Co-operative Association (Inca), was more pragmatic.
"The government will have to raise money by other means, perhaps by getting the private sector and the communities themselves involved. With them on board, you have a fighting chance of achieving universal access," he said.
29/03/10
Net firms must do a better job of telling customers about broadband speeds or face stiffer regulation, Ofcom has warned.
The warning came out of research the telecoms watchdog carried out on how ISPs sell broadband.
It revealed that 74% of customers were not told that the maximum speed on their line was likely to be higher than the speed they would actually get.
Ofcom wants to make improvements to how broadband is sold later this year.
Slow down
The regulator used mystery shoppers to find out what different ISPs say when customers are about to sign up.
It found that while 85% were told what the speed on their line would be, 42% had to prompt sales staff to tell them this information.
The mystery shoppers also found that ISPs often gave very wide estimates of broadband speed and sometimes gave different estimates for the same line. Ofcom put this down to the separate testing methods used by ISPs.
The voluntary code of practice on broadband selling introduced in December 2008 says ISPs must tell customers what speed they might enjoy and spell out any problems that might slow down data.
Ofcom now proposes working with ISPs to ensure testing regimes are consistent and to amend the code of practice to make sure speeds are mentioned early on in sales conversations with customers.
It will also talk to ISPs about whether it is feasible for customers to leave a contract if the speed they get is substantially lower than the estimate they got at sign up.
"We will work with the internet service providers to ensure consumers receive the best quality information and amend the existing code accordingly," said Ed Richards, Ofcom chief executive in a statement. "We will continue to monitor and assess performance against the code in the coming months."
If the further testing of sales procedures reveals are still not adhering to the code of practice, Ofcom will consider introducing regulations that make accurate speed disclosure mandatory.
25/03/10
Chancellor Alistair Darling reiterated the government's commitment to making Britain a digital world leader, with plans for a major broadband roll out.
He announced super-fast broadband for 90% of homes by 2017, funded by a £6 annual tax on landline phones.
The Conservatives have vowed to scrap the tax if they win the next election.
Fast net services will create "hundreds of thousands" of new jobs while putting services online will lower the cost of public spending, the chancellor said.
He also promised more tax breaks for the UK's computer games industry.
"The UK has the potential to be a digital world leader. It needs high-speed broadband for rural areas as well as urban, it must not be limited to the well-off," the chancellor said in his budget speech.
The broadband tax has proved controversial. The proposal is to charge people with fixed lines 50p a month to help fund super-fast broadband, although it is not clear if those who use cable services will be included.
It has been branded unfair by an all-party group of MPs who say that most people who pay it won't reap the benefits.
It is aimed at the so-called final third of the country that is unlikely to be included in commercial plans to roll out expensive fibre optic services.
Some experts were surprised that the chancellor did not reiterate Gordon Brown's commitment to bring super-fast broadband to 100% of the UK by 2020.
"We are disappointed that the budget has simply repeated the government's previous target of 90% coverage by 2017," said Sebastien Lahtinen, co-founder of broadband site ThinkBroadband.
Election issue
In a speech made earlier this week, Mr Brown signalled how seriously the government is talking its digital commitments when he described high-speed web access as "the electricity of the digital age".
Broadband is increasingly becoming a hot election issue with some key differences between the parties.
The Conservatives believe that government intervention to ensure super-fast broadband reaches the whole country is not yet necessary.
It favours leaving the roll out of such services to the industry, although it would consider government assistance in 2012, when funds are freed up by the digital switchover.
The broadband tax is one of the measures in the government's Digital Economy Bill.
The bill has attracted controversy and some of those opposed will gather in front of parliament on Wednesday evening to protest against government plans to allow web blocking and to cut illegal file-sharers off from the net.
09/03/10
Hard drives are about to undergo one of the biggest format shifts in 30 years.
By early 2011 all hard drives will use an "advanced format" that changes how they go about saving the data people store on them.
The move to the advanced format will make it easier for hard drive makers to produce bigger drives that use less power and are more reliable. However, it might mean problems for Windows XP users who swap an old drive for one using the changed format.
Error codes
Since the days of the venerable DOS operating system, the space on a hard drive has been formatted into blocks 512 bytes in size. The 512 byte sector became standardised thanks to IBM which used it on floppy disks. While 512 bytes was useful when hard drives were only a few megabytes in size, it makes less sense when drives can hold a terabyte (1000 gigabytes), or more of data.
The 512 byte format dates from the days of the floppy "The technology has changed but that fundamental building block of formatting has not," said David Burks, a product marketing manager for storage firm Seagate.
This fine resolution on hard drives is causing a problem, he said, because of the wasted space associated with each tiny block.
Each 512 byte sector has a marker showing where it begins and an area dedicated to storing error correction codes. In addition a tiny gap has to be left between each sector. In large drives this wasted space where data cannot be stored can take up a significant proportion of the drive.
Moving to an advanced format of 4K sectors means about eight times less wasted space but will allow drives to devote twice as much space per block to error correction.
"You can get yourself into a corner where you cannot squeeze much more onto the disk," said Steve Perkins, a technical consultant for Western Digital.
This shift also allows manufacturers to make more efficient use of the real estate on a hard drive.
"We can put more data on the disk," he said. "It's about 7-11% more efficient as a format."
Slow down
Through the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (Idema) all hard drive makers have committed to adopting the 4K advanced format by the end of January 2011.
Hard drive makers have begun an education and awareness campaign to let people know about the advanced format and to warn about the problems it could inflict on users of older operating systems such as Windows XP.
This is because Windows XP was released before the 4K format was decided upon.
"The 512 byte sector assumption is ensconced into a lot of the aspects of computer architecture," said Mr Burks from Seagate.
By contrast, Windows 7, Vista, OS X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and versions of the Linux kernel released after September 2009 are all 4K aware.
To help Windows XP cope, advanced format drives will be able to pretend they still use sectors 512 bytes in size.
When reading data from a drive this emulation will go unnoticed. However, said Mr Burks, in some situations writing data could hit performance.
In some cases the drive will take two steps to write data rather than one and introduce a delay of about 5 milliseconds.
"All other things being equal you will have a noticeable hard drive reduction in performance," said Mr Burks, adding that, in some circumstances, it could make a drive 10% slower.
In a bid to limit the misalignment, hard drive makers are producing software that ensures 512 sectors line up with 4K ones.
Those most likely to see the performance problems are those building their own computers or swapping out an old drive for one that uses the new format.
01/03/10
The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) is lobbying the government to provide grants for rural homes unable to get broadband.
Charles Trotman from the CLA will announce the plans at the Digital Dales colloquium on 26 February.
The event is aimed at those involved with community broadband projects in rural areas.
According to the Broadbandspeedchecker website, up to 1.5 million homes in the UK cannot get adequate broadband.
"The CLA is lobbying the government to introduce a series of broadband grants for rural areas at parish level," Mr Trotman told BBC News.
"We are currently developing proposals and hope to send them to Stephen Timms (Digital Britain Minister) in the next two to three weeks."
Self help
In the meantime both communities and individuals are already taking matters into their own hands.
In the village of Wray in Lancashire, a project developed by Lancaster University has seen the town provided with wireless broadband.
A higher speed system is due to be trialled in the next few months but with 180 registered properties on a single 2 megabits per second (Mbps feed), usage has to be rationed.
Locals have set up a similar network for local businesses in nearby Wennington.
"Wennington is a commercial network, for businesses like farms and other rural businesses," said local cattle farmer Chris Conder.
There's no gaming, no YouTube and iPlayer until after 5pm when the businesses have closed for the day
"There's a rule there - an agreement that we all sign. So the kids know there's no gaming, no YouTube and iPlayer until after 5pm when the businesses have closed for the day and then it's a free for all. "Some nights it can go slow... but it's the best we can do at the moment."
Farmers rely on the internet to adhere to the regulations of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, she added.
Mrs Conder gets a wireless feed from a broadband mast on a hill opposite her farm. A Locustworld meshbox in her barn receives the signal.
She dug and laid a kilometre of fibreoptic cable to connect her neighbour when tree growth meant that the nearest property to the farm was no longer able to receive the wireless signal.
"We've got another cluster of eight properties that we want to fibre up," she explained.
"And slowly but surely we'll fibre up all the network and take the wireless element out of it but it's slow because we have to pay for it ourselves."
Satellite solution
Paul Camilli's satellite was subsidised by the Scottish government.
In Scotland Paul Camilli is ferryman for the Isle of Raasay, east of Skye. Eighteen months ago he decided to install satellite broadband. Prior to that he relied on a dial-up connection.
"It isn't by any means perfect, connection occasionally drops out and upload speeds can be pretty grim, but compared with what I was used to it's fantastic really," Mr Camilli said.
"Communication's always been a problem. For many years I didn't even have a phone," he added.
Mr Camilli now keeps a photo-led blog depicting life on the island.
Satellite broadband is a more expensive alternative to landline-based connections, costing around £600 for the dish and installation. Packages vary from £34 - £115 per month depending on usage.
David Williams, chief executive of Avanti Communications operates a satellite broadband service to 5000 customers in the UK and in Europe.
He said the Avanti service would improve dramatically in the summer of 2010 when the company launches its own KA band satellite, developed over three years at a cost of £120m.
"At the moment we're providing a limited service using rented capacity on a TV satellite," he said.
"Our satellite will be eight times more powerful. It's designed to provide 10 Mbps service during bad weather."
He hopes it will both bring down the cost to consumers and put Avanti into the FTSE 100.
"The satellite business is weird - it's a bit like oil exploration. You have to spend a huge amount of money to get the kit but once you've done that the money flows in."
18/02/10
A website called PleaseRobMe claims to reveal the location of empty homes based on what people post online.
The Dutch developers told BBC News the site was designed to prove a point about the dangers of sharing precise location information on the internet.
The site scrutinises players of online game Foursquare, which is based on a person's location in the real world.
PleaseRobMe extracts information from players who have chosen to post their whereabouts automatically onto Twitter.
"It started with me and a friend looking at our Twitter feeds and seeing more and more Foursquare posts," said Boy Van Amstel, one of PleaseRobMe's developers.
"People were checking in at their house, or their girlfriend's or friend's house, and sharing the address - I don't think they were aware of how much they were sharing."
Mr Van Amstel, Frank Groeneveld and Barry Borsboom realised that not only were people sharing detailed location information about themselves and their friends, they were also by default broadcasting when they were away from their own home.
Simple search
The website took just four hours to create.
"It's basically a Twitter search - nothing new," said Mr Van Amstel. "Anyone who can do HTML and javascript can do this. You could almost laugh at how easy it is."
He said that the site would remain live but stressed it was not created to encourage crime.
"The website is not a tool for burglary," he said. "The point we're getting at is that not long ago it was questionable to share your full name on the internet. We've gone past that point by 1000 miles."
Mr Van Amstel added that in practice it would be "very difficult" to use the information on the website to carry out a burglary.
Charity Crimestoppers advises people to think carefully about the information they choose to share on the internet.
"We urge users of Twitter, Facebook or other social networks to stop and think before posting personal details online that could leave them vulnerable to crimes including burglary and identity theft," said a spokesperson.
"Details posted online are available for the world to see; you wouldn't hang a sign on your door saying you're out, so why would you post it online?"
03/02/10
Developers claim the browser is 'holding back' the web
A Downing Street petition is calling for the UK government to drop Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and move to a more modern browser.The petition says that IE6 has security flaws and uses outdated technology, creating a burden for developers.
The petition comes as the Department of Health advised the NHS to move away from the old browser.
Other government departments - and many firms - still use the software, which was first released in 2001.
"Most creative and software development companies are forced by government department clients to build websites for IE6 when most of the industry has moved on," the petition reads.
"Upgrading would be a massive task for government, but if the public is encouraged to lead the way and the government follows, that would create the momentum needed."
The petition was set up by Dan Frydman of web firm Inigo.
A campaign in the US, called ie6nomore, is supported by more than 70 web firms and claims the software is "holding the web back".
Microsoft has released two more versions of its web browser since IE6, but some firms and government departments still use systems that require it.
'Threat defence'
It is the latest move in a campaign to do away with the old browser, which gained momentum recently when Google revealed that the browser had been the weak link in a cyber attack on the firm.
Google threatened to withdraw from China following the "sophisticated and targeted" attacks, which it said originated in the country.
Google has said that it will withdraw support for IE6 on 1March
The move prompted the French and German governments to advise their citizens to switch to a different browser - such as Firefox or Google Chrome - until the hole had been closed. The UK government initially downplayed the threat.
Its view was reinforced by Lord West of Spithead, following a question tabled by Lord Avebury in the House of Lords as to whether the government would encourage public sector users to switch to another web browser.
"There is no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure," said Lord West.
"Regular software patching and updating will help defend against the latest threats." However, the Department of Health Informatics Directorate has issued a statement saying that NHS computers should be upgraded to IE7 as soon as possible. Microsoft patched the hole in IE6 in January, three weeks ahead of its normal security updates.
'Holding back'
It is the latest blow to the venerable old browser. In late January, Google said that it would begin to phase out support for IE6. The firm said from 1 March some of its services, such as Google Docs and Google Sites, would not work "properly" with the browser. The search giant has said that it will then phase out support for the browser with some of its other services, such as Gmail.
Microsoft has said that it will support the browser until 2014. New figures suggest that IE6 is beginning to lose market share and is no longer the world's most popular browser. Analytics firm Net Applications says that IE6 has now been overtaken by the latest version of the software, IE8, as the most popular browser in terms of market share.
IE6 now accounts for 20.07% of the browser market compared to IE8's 22.31%.
27/01/10
Video-on-demand service SeeSaw has begun a beta trial with a view to launching fully in March 2010.
The service is based on technology developed for Project Kangaroo, a BBC-led project that was blocked by the Competition Commission in 2009.
SeeSaw has signed a content deal with BBC Worldwide which includes on-demand access to classic Doctor Who episodes.
It is also in negotiation with Channel 4 and Five and American broadcasters for other shows.
Ultimately the site will run offer both free and pay-per-view services.
SeeSaw is owned by broadcast technology company Arqiva which purchased the technology behind and assets behind Kangaroo in 2009.
After the project was blocked, the BBC began work on an internet TV service known as Project Canvas.
The service, which gained provisional approval from the BBC Trust in December 2009, is a collaboration between BBC, ITV, BT, Five, Channel 4 and TalkTalk.
It would enable viewers to watch, pause and rewind live broadcasts as well as accessing catch-up services.
26/01/10
BT has launched a broadband service that offers speeds of up to 40 megabits per second (mbps).
Based around fibre optic cables, BT said the Infinity service could change the way that people use broadband.
It will give some customers an upload speed of up to 10 mbps.
Trials have been held in London's Muswell Hill, Whitchurch and Glasgow.
BT said 4 million homes and businesses would be able to get it by 2011.
The current highest speed service from BT available to homes is 20 megabits per second (mbps), though not all homes can get this headline speed.
BT Retail said the basic 40mbps service will be offered for £19.99 per month on an 18 month contract. It will also charge an installation fee of £50 for those on the lowest tariff.
Only those who opt for BT's most expensive tariff, £24.99 per month, will get the 10mbps upload speed. With the basic package upload speed is up to 2mbps.
BT said the higher speed would make it easier to share broadband among multiple computers and improve video streaming and net TV services.
As with lower speed services only those closest to the street cabinets that the fibre connects to are likely to get the full 40mbps.
A spokesman for Virgin Media wondered why anyone would buy a service from BT that has yet to launch when it could get higher speeds via cable already.
He said Virgin was already trialling future technology that could see cable speeds reach 200mbps.
24/01/10
Microsoft has released a fix for a hole in Internet Explorer that was the weak link in a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack on Google.
Microsoft recommends that customers install the update as soon as possible or update to the latest version of the web browser for "improved security".
Microsoft normally issues patches monthly but the high-profile nature of the attacks led it to act more quickly.
The patch - MS10-002 - was released worldwide at 1000 PST (1800 GMT).
"It addresses the vulnerability related to recent attacks against Google and small subset of corporations, as well as several other vulnerabilities," the firm said.
"Once applied, customers are protected against the known attacks that have been widely publicised."
Microsoft has admitted that it has known about the vulnerability since "since early September" 2009 and had planned to patch it in February.
Trojan Horse
Google threatened to withdraw from the Chinese market following attacks on its infrastructure.
The hacks - thought to have originated in China - targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.
Following Microsoft's revelation that Explorer had been used in the attacks, the French and German governments advised their citizens to switch to a different browser until the hole had been closed.
The UK government downplayed the threat and said there was "no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure".
However, Microsoft has taken the unusual step of patching the hole nearly three weeks ahead of its regular security update.
The new patch is available via the Microsoft Update site and will also be fed out to those who have their machines set to update automatically. All versions of Internet Explorer will receive the update.
Malicious code exploiting the weakness is known to be circulating on the web, said security experts.
If a web user were to visit a compromised site using a vulnerable browser, they could become infected with a "trojan horse", allowing a hacker to take control of the computer and potentially steal sensitive information.
Microsoft said on 18 January that the firm had only seen malicious code that targeted the older version of its browser, IE6 and that there were "very few" infected sites on the web.
22/01/10
20% plan to find love online
Half of web users plan to use the internet to try new things this year, says TalkTalk.
Research by the ISP revealed that two thirds of Brits intend to use the web to shop for better deals this year when its comes to technology, while 37 percent plan to use the web to better manage their finances.
Furthermore 20 percent want to use the web to find love in 2010 and one in five believe the net will have a bigger impact on their lives this year, compared to in 2009.
"When you ask people how they plan to improve their lives it's clear that the internet is now a major enabler," said Mark Schmid from TalkTalk.
"When you see that the best deals and money saving techniques are online it emphasises the importance of getting fast broadband to homes, regardless of geography and income."
29/12/09
Microsoft is having to strip a feature from Word to avoid having the software removed from sale, after losing a long-running patent battle.
The world's largest software company made the announcement shortly after a US court of appeals upheld a $290 million jury verdict against it for infringing a patent held by a small Canadian software firm, i4i.
The court also affirmed an injunction that prevents Microsoft from selling versions of Word that contain the offending software, set to take effect on 11 January 2010. Older versions of Word are not affected.
Microsoft says it's taking steps to remove the feature from Word 2007 and Office 2007 put on sale from that date.
The disputed patent feature relates to the use of customised XML in the 2007 versions of Word. Microsoft has described it as a "little-used feature".
However, the company isn't ruling out further appeals. "While we are moving quickly to address the injunction issue, we are also considering our legal options," claims Kevin Kutz, a Microsoft spokesman. That could include a request for a rehearing by a full panel of judges at the appeals court, or a request for a review by the US Supreme Court.
04/12/09
Brits spend just under three full days (68 hours) online every month, according to Moneysupermarket.com.
The comparison website said this equates to 34 days a year. Furthermore, Brits spend seven hours a month on their mobile phone, which totals three and a half days every year.
Nearly a third of Brits said they would find it difficult to stay in contact with friends and family if they didn't have internet access or a mobile phone, while a quarter admitted they fear they will miss out on things if they don't have the internet or mobile phones.
Julie Owens, broadband and mobiles spokesperson at moneysupermarket.com, said: "Mobile phones and the internet have become a way of life for millions of people and it is clear from this research that without these essential items, people would find it hard to contact friends and family and would worry about missing out on things".
02/12/09
Microsoft today confirmed that it is looking into reports that November's security updates have triggered a black screen on some Windows users' PCs.
"Microsoft is investigating reports that its latest release of security updates is resulting in system issues for some customers," said a company spokesman in an e-mail Monday. "Once we complete our investigation, we will provide detailed guidance on how to prevent or address these issues."
If you experience these or any errors after updates, contact one of our local engineers - click here
01/12/09
Over four million web users have had their Wi-Fi connection hijacked in the last year, says Moneysupermarket.com.
According to research by the comparison website, 19 percent of Brits don't password-protect their internet access at home. Furthermore, 24 percent said they didn't know Wi-Fi hijacking was possible.
Moneysupermarket.com said 15 percent of web users admitted to using someone else's web connection. The comparison website said Wi-Fi hijackers were most likely to use someone else's internet access to surf the web, although emailing, downloading large files and streaming content using service such as Spotify or the BBC iPlayer were also popular activities.
James Parker, broadband manager at moneysupermarket.com, said "It's bad enough your neighbours can use your internet connection freely, but this becomes far more threatening if someone uses your connection for criminal or improper activity".
He added, "If people aren't careful, they could unwittingly find a huge bill landing on their doorstep for going over the download cap imposed by their provider. More and more providers offer routers with broadband packages and the range of the signal is increasing. People need to be aware just how important protection is and the best way to go about it."
The PC Crew offer a full range of security measures. For more information click here to contact an engineer near you
01/11/09
The PC Crew are pleased to announce their new website. In the coming months we shall be introducing new modules that will further enhance the site. These will include:
• Tutorials on how to get the most from your PC
• Downloads of free useful software
• Remote assistance
• A regular e-zine full of useful news and information
We hope you will enjoy surfing the site. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome, either through the site's "Feedback" facility or directly to info@thepccrew.co.uk
29/10/09
New Anti Virus Partnership
The PC Crew are delighted to announce a new partnership with Bit Defende Anti Virus
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Since its inception in 2001, BitDefender® has continued to raise the bar to set new standards in proactive threat prevention.
BitDefender has garnered many awards and accolades since its inception in 2001. From the prestigious European IST Prize, to the #1 Best Buy ranking from PC World, and most recently, the PC World "Best 100 Products of 2006," the Company is enjoying worldwide recognition for its superior technology and product offering.
To order Bit Defender or find out more click here to find your nearest engineer/reseller