Author: Duncan Geere
UK Government donates a thousand old PCs to charity
Fancy a bit of a feel-good story for Friday afternoon? The UK Government’s Department for International Development has decided to ship a thousand laptops that it doesn’t use any more to Africa. It’s all being done through charity Computer Aid, who we’ve covered before.
The laptops, previously in use by civil servants, aren’t OLPCs or any other low-cost, low-spec machines – they’re proper full-on laptops. They’re going to organizations like the Prof. Iya Abubakar Community Resource Center in Nigeria, which helps local people start their own businesses.
Rumours that each laptop is chock-full of confidential documents and databases are so far unsubstantiated.
Windows 7 gets laundry list of changes
Have you been testing out the Windows 7 beta, and clicking that little ‘feedback’ button in the top right of every Window? Well, Microsoft has been listening, and they’ve just announced a massive list of the changes they’ve made as a result of the feedback.
The full list is here, but there’s a few highlights that I’ll share with you if you can’t be bothered to read the whole thing. Firstly, there’s plenty of functionality for making things more obvious on the taskbar, along with keyboard shortcuts. There’s also a multi-touch onscreen keyboard (so you can shift-tap stuff).
There’s better format support too, and anything that can’t be played will be filtered out of Windows Media Player, so it doesn’t bother you. There’s also resuming video from sleep with actual files, like you would with a DVD, and some changes to what the Windows team call ‘needy windows’ – so you can see when a program wants your attention.
The full list is worth a look, because it’s got a lot more detail in. Most of this stuff we’re unlikely to see until release, though. Are you looking forward to it? Is there anything missing that you think needs changing? Let us know in the comments.
Apple PowerBook explodes in London office
Laptops don’t explode much. When they do, it’s usually rather on the spectacular side. Rather spectacular, therefore, were the scenes in the London office of an unnamed marketing company the other day, when an Apple Powerbook went KABOOM.
First, it started smoking, and the laptop’s user called the IT manager. It stopped, and he picked it up, but when he put it back down again it suddenly went BANG, caught fire and started shooting sparks everywhere. After evacuating the office, he returned to the laptop to find six-foot flames shooting out of it. He hit the fire alarm, and legged it.
After a fire marshall showed up, he used most of a fire extinguisher on the burning wreck, which calmed it down temporarily, but as soon as he stopped, it started flaming again, just as vigorously as before, with the inside red hot and glowing. They then waited for the fire department to show up.
Apple is checking the serial number to see whether it was part of the series whose batteries were recalled a few years back. If not, it could prompt another recall, but it’s just as well that this was in an office. In an empty flat, or a car or plane, things could have been a lot worse.
(via the Inquirer, who have plenty of good pictures)
Facebook gets democratic – encourages voting on terms of service
Following last week’s kerfuffle involving Facebook, its terms of service update and the subsequent rolling back of said update, the site’s been very careful about how it communicates with the public. On CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s blog today, he’s announced a new approach to how the site is run.
First of all he’s published two documents. There’s a set of Facebook Principles, and a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, the latter of which will replace the existing terms of service document. However, they’re not in force yet.
Zuckerberg wants you, if you’re a Facebook user, to go through and read both documents and comment on the changes. Any controversial sections will go up for a vote. It’s an interesting approach for the site, which has been stung by criticism in the past for not listening to its users.
Hopefully the community can come to some kind of agreement with the site’s lawyers, and a compromise can be found. The worst case scenario here is that no agreement gets reached, and the site is stuck with its existing ToS. That wouldn’t be good for anyone.
Cod eats phone, fisherman catches cod, phone returned to owner
Andrew Cheatle is a lucky chap. He lost his phone on a beach a couple of weeks back and assumed it’d been lost at sea. On a shopping trip to replace the handset, however, his girlfriend’s phone rang. She handed it to him, saying it was some guy going on about a cod.
On the end of the line was fisherman Glen Kerley. He’d found a handset in the belly of a cod, and figured he’d try and return it to its owner. After going to meet him, he was reunited with his (rather battered) handset, and after it dried out, he was amazed to find it worked perfectly.
So what was the handset that survived a week in a fish? I wasn’t sure, so I consulted the masses on Twitter. The wonderful @lovelychaos was first with the answer – it’s a Nokia 1600 – a handset designed for use in developing countries. Well, I guess it’s proved its worth!
BBC teams up with ITV and BT for "Project Canvas"
Following the utter failure of Kangaroo, BBC and ITV bosses have put their heads together and come up with a different strategy. They’re launching a public consultation on a proposal for a IPTV service that they’re calling Project Canvas.
There’s not a whole lot of detail available yet, but it appears that the companies want to put together a set-top box service that’ll deliver television (in HD), a PVR service, internet access (to YouTube and other sites), and some sort of electronic program guide to it all. Sounds messy, but then so did Kangaroo.
The partners hope that it would cost in the region of £100-200 for the consumer, and a 2010 launch is aimed at. The BBC says it’ll contribute £6 million to the project over the next five years, out of a total of £16.6 million that it’ll need.
Don’t know about you, but I’m perfectly happy just plugging in a PC to my TV and using that to watch YouTube or iPlayer as necessary. Why would I need a set-top-box to do the same thing? As with many things, I think the key will be in the implementation. If it’s done as well as iPlayer, it’ll be wonderful. If not, it’ll be an expensive waste of time.
Microsoft announces improvements to Xbox Live
Microsoft today announced plans to extend the services offered on Xbox live, pushing the console even further from being a pure games machine to include movies too. There’s also plenty of content for existing games, and a gameshow.
Starting with the movies, Microsoft has done a deal with NBC Universal, which means that a limited selection of films will be offered for people to buy using Microsoft points, in both standard and high definition. Average price is £3 – £5, depending on which format you want, and how new the film is.
Then there’s a selection of bonus content for a variety of games. More content for Gears of War 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Fallout 3, Tomb Raider, Fable 2, Lips, Rock Band, Guitar Hero World Tour and Scene It will be available, all of which will be exclusive to the Xbox 360 platform.
Lastly, there’s going to be some sort of weird quiz show thing called 1 vs 100. Over to Microsoft to explain it: “a completely exclusive, completely interactive television quiz show game giving gamers the chance to compete against each other and win real prizes”. Is anyone even remotely excited about that?
Overall, it’s a decent upgrade to the system and a ‘thankyou’ to owners, but I don’t think it’s going to be selling any new consoles over this. Especially when the company is banning people who identify themselves as a lesbian.
Nuke your enemies with a mashup
I hate Gary Cutlack. I don’t actually hate him, but for the purposes of this article, let’s assume I do. Let’s assume I wanted to drop a nuclear bomb on his head, as in the picture to the right. How would I go about doing that?
I could enter into shady negotiations with North Korea or a breakaway Russian republic, but it’s much quicker and easier to just use this Google Maps mashup instead. Simply search for your target, pick a bomb, and you can see exactly how far away people will be affected by the thermal effects of the explosion.
Interestingly, if someone nuked Covent Garden, the inhabitants of Regents Park would be fine. Well, fine until the fallout began, anyway. An asteroid strike, on the other hand, would annihilate everything down to the Sahara. Ouch.
Who would you nuke and why? Let us know in the comments.
(via io9)
O2 sells 1 million iPhones in the UK
O2 has just released a statement on its Digital News Centre announcing that more than a million iPhones have now been sold in the UK. I can attest to that personally, I was in a pub the other day, and the three other table inhabitants ALL had iPhones. I would have felt left out if I didn’t love my N95 so much.
The company’s also announced that it’s signed up 1.1 million new customers over the last year, with 390,000 of those joining O2 between Oct and Dec 08. That’s a lot. Good work, O2.
RUMOUR: PSP2 won't use UMDs, and will be out in the Autumn
Didn’t Acclaim’s chief creative officer, David Perry, pay any attention to the World War II aphorism “Loose Lips Sink Ships”? He’s been mouthing off about the PSP. He reckons it’ll come out in the autumn:
“I spoke to a developer who is working on it right now, I know this developer is already working on it, so that means they have a prototype. That would sound like a fall release to me.”
Also of interest is that the device would be free of the PSP’s proprietary UMD disc format, and would instead rely on digital downloads and connectivity with your PC for games. There’ll be space for a memory card, though, so retailers could sell games pre-loaded onto those.
It’s expected that all current PSP titles would appear on an online store, much like Nintendo’s download channel. The idea makes a lot of sense, but consoles are primarily marketed by their games. What will happen if Sony lose all the shelf space currently dedicated to the PSP?
(via Kotaku)
