Category Archives: news

“Mobile devices will deliver a more personal internet” says Intel

The BBC reports from CES that Intel see mobile devices as core to the future use of the internet.

Mobile devices will deliver a more personal internet within five years, using chips with the power of today’s desktop PCs, Intel’s head has said.

Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show, Paul Otellini predicted mobile devices could soon “augment reality” by pulling data from the net in real time.

He said the industry was on the verge of creating a “new level of capability and usefulness to the internet”

An open source rival to Google?

Today sees the launch of Wikia Search.

An open source rival to Google?

Wikia is a new search engine and unlike the closed Google system, the results are “created” by a community of users.

Wikia’s search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.

As Wikia comes from Jimmy Wales (one of the names behind Wikipedia) you will have an understanding of the philosophy behind this new search engine.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Doesn’t surprise me…

What with HMRC losing personal data, along with others, it doesn’t surprise me that next to be looked at is education.

Doesn’t surprise me…

The BBC is reporting how an IT firm believes that:

Sensitive information on school pupils is being put at risk by staff who take it home with them.

How often are teaching staff in your institution given proper training on how to deal with sensitive data?

This is an issue which doesn’t just affect schools, colleges and universities also have data protection policies, though a policy is only a statement, practice is another matter entirely.

If you take a computer from work home, you have to ask yourself is the data secure?

BBC, ITV and Channel 4 form on-demand service

There is Channel 4’s 4oD service, BBC’s iPlayer, now we have plans for a new on-demand service for television.

TV

The BBC is reporting how the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are going to work together to provide a new on-demand service for viewers.

The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are to launch a joint on-demand service, which will bring together hundreds of hours of television programmes in one place.

The service is set to go live in 2008 and will offer viewers access to current shows and archive material.

Read more and photo source.

Amazon sells out of its new digital book reader

Despite a lot of scepticism and negative coverage about Amazon’s new digital book reader, the device has sold out according to the BBC.

Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader has sold out despite scepticism about whether the device will prove popular. A notice on the Kindle pages on the Amazon web store said “heavy customer demand” for the device meant it would be out of stock until 3 December. Since its launch on 19 November the device has been widely examined but opinions about it are mixed.

Looks like people are interested in this digital book reader. Is this the device for e-books what the iPod was for digital music? We will have to wait and see.

T-Mobile to open up iPhone sales

BBC reports that T-Mobile to open up iPhone sales.

T-Mobile is to start allowing German customers to buy Apple’s iPhone without a contract to its network, as it moves to comply with a court injunction. 

However this is in Germany only and the iPhone will be twice as expensive as the contract version.

Legislation in the UK allows for locked phones, but you could import iPhones from Germany and then avoid the two year contract making it available for testing and usability.

90% of internet connections are broadband

The BBC is reporting that nine out of ten internet connections are broadband connections.

Almost nine out of 10 UK net users are connecting via broadband services, official figures reveal.

Information gathered by National Statistics (ONS) for September show that 88.4% of Britons are choosing to use broadband rather than dial-up.

This means that delivering e-learning content does not need to rely on the assumption that learners are on dial-up.

broadband

With broadband often cheaper than dial-up now, if learners wish to access e-learning from home rather than in college (or in their local library) then more than likely they will be choosing broadband.

Photo source