Archive for July, 2009

Just noticed that Wikipedia is down. Looks like a server issue, well they’re saying it is,

‘Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes.’

So that’s another significant bit of downtime for a major site. This of course coming hot on the heels of the many Gmail, Facebook, MySpace outages earlier in the year. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for an explanation. When I know, you’ll know.

Conservative malcontent, David Davis has hit out at his own party’s plans to move NHS health records onto Google, going so far as to describe the proposed policy as ‘dangerous.’ Davis, who is a former shadow home secretary and stood against current Conservative leader David Cameron at the last leadership election, described the plan as;

“Both dangerous in its own right, and hazardous to the public acceptability of necessary reforms to the state’s handling of our private information.”

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By the end of the year many MySpace users will have their very own ‘@myspace.com’ email address. The launch, scheduled for late 2009, will be low key and initially limited only to the USA. The scheme is intended to be rolled out to the rest of the world, though a plan for this is yet to be drafted. Sources within the popular social networking site have called the email plan the ‘logical extension’ of the brand and its existing ‘instant messaging tool.’

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Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz has angrily asked the media to stop talking about the £47.5 billion dollar Microsoft buyout rejected by her predecessor late last year. The head of the number two search engine is apparently tired of hearing about the deal, stating…

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Today Microsoft announced their plans to test a version of productivity suite that will be compatible with a new range of web based office applications, you’ve guessed it, just like Google. The Microsoft Web suite will apparently be available to more than 400 million Windows Live consumers for free, though it will also be available on a subscription basis to Microsoft volume licensing consumers.

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A survey has been released today stating that almost 60 percent of IT managers have no plans to implement Windows 7 for their companies when it becomes available late this year/early next. This will come as a huge blow to Microsoft’s hopes that Windows 7 would be the silver bullet to get them back on track in the fight with Apple and Google.

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Sir John Sawers, the new head of MI6 , has become embroiled in an embarrassing security breach after it emerged that his wife, Shelley uploaded several pieces of compromising information about him to her Facebook page. The postings included holiday photographs of Sir John as well as information about the couple’s children, their friends and most troubling of all, their home address.

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As anyone who’s ever had to undergo an even vaguely serious medical procedure can tell you, it’s a scary time. The first impulse of people put into this position can be to hit the internet immediately and search for ‘the facts,’ what to expect, how to prepare, etc. The problem with this is that you find yourself trawling through a huge amount of information, a lot of it contradictory and from people who perhaps don’t know the full facts or have no personal experience. These web searchers can often end up even more scared and confused than they were before.

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George Hotz, the teenage hacker who managed to unlock the original iPhone, claims to have done it again. According to reports, his new program, Purplera1N, allows users to install third party software onto iPhones, completely bypassing Apple’s quality control and security processes.

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