Archive for December, 2011
New Year honours list: knighthoods for academics and Nobel laureates
A knighthood for the Oxford church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of landmark works on Thomas Cranmer and the Reformation but perhaps best-known for his television series on the history of Christianity, comes as something of a rebuke to the Church of England. Macculloch turned to an academic career instead of his original intention of ordination [...]
Read moreBoot up: why HP couldn’t sell webOS, Microsoft’s 2012, Google’s tablet and more
A burst of 9 links – the last of the year! – for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team Tough negotiator: HP wanted $1.2B for webOS and Palm’s assets (exclusive) | VentureBeat “$1.2bn. That’s how much HP paid for Palm last year, and it’s also how much the company was trying [...]
Read moreForecast for 2012: Google engineer predicts hi-tech boost to UK high street
David Singleton, a lead engineer at Google, marks a mammoth year for the internet giant’s social ambitions, and looks ahead to a year when the internet will help out the ailing high street. • What will 2011 be remembered for? The year that each one of us started to take control of what we post online [...]
Read moreMobile Miscellany: week of December 26, 2011
This week may not have been incredibly packed with news in the mobile world, but it was still easy to miss a few stories here and there. Here’s some of the other stuff that happened in the wide world of wireless for the week of December 26, 2011: US Cellular prepping for Samsung Galaxy Tab [...]
Read moreCan our family escape the tyranny of the screen?
Dad, I’ve had a really good idea.” Delivered rather cagily to me and my partner Fiona over breakfast a few months ago, our son Finn’s announcement offered few clues that it might herald something altogether more profound. Ten-year-old boys have a lot of “really good ideas”, few of which would bear scrutiny in Dragon’s Den. I [...]
Read moreMyspace Tom to Google+: don’t become a cesspool that no one wants to visit
Concerns have been raised that Google+ could become “a cesspool that no one wants to visit … sorta like Myspace” – by none other than the founder of Myspace. Tom Anderson, who co-founded Myspace in 2003, issued the warning during a wide-ranging debate about censorship on Google’s various platforms, a debate started after TechCrunch columnist [...]
Read moreSexual harassment claims return to haunt former Hewlett-Packard boss Mark Hurd
Mark Hurd, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, is accused in a letter made public on Thursday of using company funds to hire a former star of erotic thrillers as a contractor, and pressing her for sex during a two-year campaign of harassment. It is alleged he repeatedly invited her to spend the night with him and [...]
Read moreGoodbye, Lumia 800: it didn’t work out
At the beginning of December, I blogged about buying a Lumia to see if I could make it my main phone. We’re a month down the line – are we all expecting that it went well? Umm … it did not. Does anyone want to buy a hardly-used Lumia? Design Physically, the Lumia is a [...]
Read moreCalls for tougher curbs on roaming charges
Accessing the internet from a mobile phone will remain hundreds of times more expensive abroad than at home for the next 10 years under proposed European commission rules, politicians warn. The European parliament is to vote in the summer on new caps limiting the amount mobile phone operators can charge travellers. Costs remain astronomical, with [...]
Read moreCamera theft victims given online lifeline
When Kevin Hayes’s treasured camera was stolen while he was on a business trip in Canberra in March 2009, he didn’t hold out much hope of getting it back. The theft was galling both because the camera was a birthday present from his wife four weeks before – and that its A$5,200 (£3,400) value wasn’t [...]
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