Scam sites increasingly masquerading as Facebook, MySpace
Cybercriminals are tapping into the popularity of social networking to more effectively craft their scams. Increasingly, scam sites have domains that include the names Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, with no connection to the real sites. By using this tactic, called "domain-name cloning," cybercriminals are making their scam sites appear to be affiliated with these popular social networking sites
SC Magazine
MMA adds execs from Nielsen, Vibes Media and others to its Board
The Mobile Marketing Association announced its 2009 North American Board of Directors today. New to the board this year are amongst others: The Nielsen Co.'s Julia Resnick, VP of mobile media solutions, Millennial Media president/CEO Paul Palmieri and Sprint-Nextel's Lisa-Anne Uhrmacher.
DM News
IBM launches System S stream computing
IBM on Wednesday officially launched System S, a software platform built following five years of research into the real-time analysis of large amounts of unstructured business or scientific data. IBM calls the resulting technology "stream computing", because the software deals with streams of data.
Zdnet
Google owns up to service outage
Google is blaming an error in its traffic routing system for causing a service outage that lasted several hours on Thursday. The company said that at 3:48pm GMT an error in its servers caused several Google services to begin routing all traffic through its servers in Asia. The resulting crush of traffic caused a slowdown in such services as Gmail, YouTube and Google search. Some users were completely unable to access the sites.
VNUnet
ISP Tiscali UK Broadband Subscribers Decline to 1.7 Million
ISP Tiscali UK has reported its latest set of quarterly results to 31st March 2009 (Q1), which shows a continued decline in broadband (ADSL) subscribers from 1.768m in Q4-2008 to 1.7m at the end of Q1-2009.
ISP review
Sony poised to return to breakeven despite bleak sales prospects
Sony is primed to claw its way back to breakeven point at the operating level this year, despite revealing record losses of 228 billion yen (£1.6 billion) for 2008 and warning of persistent bleakness on the consumer front. The better than expected results come amid deepening confusion over whether consumer spending will improve this year, and if it does, how well Sony is equipped to benefit. Citigroup analysts said that the company’s growth drivers remain unconvincing. With the environment more unpredictable than before, Sir Howard Stringer, the group’s president and chairman, recently admitted that "we can no longer say that we are right and our customers are wrong"
Times
PS3 maker faces pressure to step up its game against rivals
Walkman music players down 10 per cent, Handycam video cameras down 15 per cent, Bravia televisions flat at 15m screens - the message from Sony’s unit sales forecasts is that, this year, market share is to be sacrificed for the sake of profitability. Yet there was one exception. Shipments of the PlayStation 3 video game console are expected to rise 29 per cent to 13m, even as the games division posts another loss, signalling that Sony may cut the console’s price to boost sales. As a product that connects to the internet and sells software on the back of Sony hardware, the PlayStation fits the strategy of Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s chairman and chief executive. The division is also at the centre of Sony in another way after its leader, Kazuo Hirai, took on responsibility for a swathe of Sony’s other "networked" businesses - such as Vaio laptops - in a recent management reshuffle.
FT
Fujitsu arm shuts final salary scheme
Fujitsu Services, the UK arm of the Japanese technology company, is to be the first large employer in nearly two years to close its defined benefit pension scheme to existing workers, a trend that pensions experts say is likely to accelerate as the recession drags on. While more than 70 per cent of final salary pension schemes have been closed to new workers during the past decade, limiting the benefits of long-term employees has been much more controversial and one that employers have been reluctant to take. So far, only a handful of large employers, including Rentokil Initial, Debenhams and WH Smith have done so. Alex Waite, partner at actuary firm Lane Clark & Peacock and head of the division that advises employers on their schemes, said it was a trend likely to pick up steam in the months ahead.
FT
Defining moments for TV
I was beginning to think that HDTV image quality could not get much better - at least not perceptibly. I may have to change my mind. Samsung Electronics has launched a family of HDTV sets with several innovations that could raise the bar for the competition. When paired with the latest Blu-ray players, Samsung’s 7000 Series LED (light emitting diode) TVs deliver stunningly good pictures and are so thin (they measure just 1.2in thick) that they cry out to be hung on the wall. They also consume 40 per cent less energy than the conventional LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs that Samsung and other manufacturers sold last year and, as an extra bonus, hook up to broadband internet to deliver select online content directly to the screen.
FT
Ex-BT boss Ben Verwaayen in firing line over losses
BT's management have rallied around chief executive Ian Livingston and defended him against any suggestion that he was asleep at the wheel during his time as finance director, a period that saw the Global Services unit to career out of control. Instead, BT has argued that the £1.6bn write-off in the value of the unit was a result of poor execution. Yet the implication is clear that the company's previous management team, led by former chief executive Ben Verwaayen, should carry the can. Francois Barrault, the former head of Global Services who "agreed" to leave BT earlier this year, is also in the firing line.
Telegraph
BT cuts thousands of jobs after £1.3bn loss
Ian Livingston, chief executive, said the company had been dragged down by the "unacceptable" performance of its Global Services division, which provides IT infrastructure to multinational companies and government departments. The writedowns of contracts - believed to be with Reuters, the global financial data provider, and the NHS - plunged BT to a £1.28bn loss in the first three months of the year. The telecoms giant revealed plans to cut a further 15,000 jobs this year as it collapsed to its first full-year loss since 2001 and only its second since it was privatised in 1984. The company said it would the jobs on top of 15,000 cut last year, in a desperate attempt to cut costs as it fell to a £134m annual loss, compared to a £2bn profit last year.
Telegraph
Subscribe