iPhone iWork screenshots leaked?
You may question the question mark in our headline. You may ask yourself why it is there. Well, we'll tell you. It's because, although these leaked screenshots of Apple's own iWork in action on the iPhone look real, some sceptics have branded 9 to 5 Mac's efforts as fake. And we don't want our beloved readers getting all over excited (can you get over excited about a productivity suite?) only for them to turn out to be phony.
Pocket Lint

Google to Push Android Deeper into Asia
Google (GOOG) plans to push its Android mobile software in India and China, and is exploring ways for developers to make more money from applications, stepping up competition with Apple (AAPL) and Nokia (NOK).  To attract programmers to its Android operating system, Google may offer tools that help them sell subscriptions, virtual goods, and other items from within applications on mobile phones, Andy Rubin, vice-president of engineering at Google, says in an interview.
Business Week 

Orange mislead punters on coverage claim
THE UK'S Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that the Orange mobile network misled punters when it said that it had the broadest coverage in Blighty.  The advertising watchdog barked that a long-running £4 million advertising campaign by Orange "had not been substantiated" and "was likely to mislead". Orange put up shedloads of posters claiming to have the country's "biggest 3G network covering more people than any other".
The Inquirer

Foursquare raises $20m in 2nd round funding
Foursquare, the fashionable mobile social networking service says that it has closed on a $20 million Series B round with Union Square Ventures, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and new investor, Andreessen Horowitz, which is backed by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. With this new round of financing, the company said that its main priority will be to expand the organization to supplement the core team. The new investment capital will also help fund the infrastructure needed to house the new staff and support a growing audience of nearly 2 million users.
Cellular News

Telefonica ups bid for Vivo stake to 7.15bn
Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica SA has raised its offer for a stake in Brazil's Vivo Participacioes SA to EUR7.15 billion, in a last-ditch attempt to convince shareholders of Portugal Telecom SGPS S/A reluctant to exit the coveted Brazilian market. Both companies have been locked in a power struggle over Vivo, which the two Iberian telecoms control through a 50-50 joint venture in the investment vehicle Brasilcel, which owns 60% of the Brazilian mobile phone company.
Total Telecom 

Russian spy ring bust uncovers tech toolkit
The FBI's case against an alleged deep cover Russian spy ring relies heavily on surveillance of their use of ad hoc Wi-Fi networks, bespoke software, encryption and the web. After a counter-espionage operation lasting several years, 10 people were accused on Monday of being covert agents of the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service. An 11th alleged member of the network - dubbed the "Illegals" programme by investigators - remains at large. The criminal complaints against the group highlight their dependence on internet technologies. Testimony from FBI agents describes how 28-year-old Anna Chapman (pictured) allegedly kept discreet appointments with a Russian government official at Manahattan coffee and book shops. Without making overt contact, she would allegedly communicate with her handler over an ad hoc Wi-Fi network. "Russian Government Official #1 was across the street from the book store, carrying a briefcase," an unnamed FBI agent says in the complaint.
The Register

Facebook status: hosed in the divorce
Forgot to de-friend your wife on Facebook while posting vacation shots of your mistress? Her divorce lawyer will be thrilled. Oversharing on social networks has led to an overabundance of evidence in divorce cases. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers says 81 percent of its members have used or faced evidence plucked from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites, including YouTube and LinkedIn, over the last five years. "Oh, I've had some fun ones," said Linda Lea Viken, president-elect of the 1,600-member group. "It's very, very common in my new cases." Facebook is the unrivaled leader for turning virtual reality into real-life divorce drama, Viken said. Sixty-six percent of the lawyers surveyed cited Facebook foibles as the source of online evidence, she said. MySpace followed with 15 percent, followed by Twitter at 5 percent. About one in five adults uses Facebook for flirting, according to a 2008 report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. But it's not just kissy pix with the manstress or mistress that show up as evidence. Think of Dad forcing son to de-friend mom, bolstering her alienation of affection claim against him. "This sort of evidence has gone from nothing to a large percentage of my cases coming in, and it's pretty darn easy," Viken said. "It's like, 'Are you kidding me?'"
SkunkPost

Internet survives World Cup traffic surge
The English and US football teams found the World Cup a struggle but can the Internet itself hold up under the huge traffic demands imposed by the first ever 'online' tournament? According to a new analysis by Arbor Networks, predictions of disaster have proved, so far, wide of the mark. While World Cup data has caused unusual traffic patterns and a surge in backbone packet volume of up to 30 percent, the company reports, the Internet is more than holding its own under the load.Analysing traffic through major ISPs using its Atlas traffic system, Arbor found that between 11 June, the day the World Cup kicked off, and 18 June, Flash video traffic streaming through 55 randomly-chosen European and US ISPs showed marked surges, especially during the Brazil v North Korea match on 15 June. Peak flows reached up to 1Tbit/s, more than double the normal 400Gbit/s. On any match day, Flash video showed clear peaks that corresponded to game times.
TechWorld

Google tries new approach in China
Google today sought to placate the Chinese authorities by ending the automatic redirection of mainland users to its uncensored Hong Kong site, saying officials had warned they would otherwise refuse to renew the firm's licence. Several industry analysts suggested the last-ditch move made only a day before Google's permit to provide content expires signalled the end for the google.cn service following the search giant's battle with the censors. The company began diverting users of the site to google.com.hk in March, having said it was no longer willing to censor search results as required under Chinese law. Today, it said it had introduced an extra step, redirecting users to a landing page with a link to the Hong Kong site. In a post on the Google blog, the company's chief legal officer, David Drummond, wrote: "This redirect [to Hong Kong], which offers unfiltered search in simplified Chinese, has been working well for our users and for Google.
Guardian 

How Microsoft Crowdsourced the Making of Office 2010
For several years, Denise Carlevato has studied millions of mouse clicks and keystrokes made by anonymous computer users from all over the world. Her objective: to make Microsoft Office better fit the way millions of people work. Months before Microsoft rolled out the latest version of its productivity suite, Office 2010, 9 million people downloaded its beta version to test the software and provide feedback. As part of the program, Microsoft collected 2 million comments from beta testers. An additional 600 people participated in Microsoft’s Virtual Research Lab, where Carlevato and her colleagues could observe how people were using new features. In a sense, it was a massive, controlled crowdsourcing project. That’s just what you have to do to cater to as broad an audience as possible, says Carlevato, who has worked as a Microsoft usability engineer for 10 years.
Wired 

Pirate Bay founder says: 'filesharers shouldn't feel ashamed'
Earlier this month the Swedish-based pro-piracy group that helped to set up controversial file-sharing site The Pirate Bay disbanded. Swedish anti-copyright group Piratbyran (which means "piracy bureau" in English), originally created The Pirate Bay, then later moved away from being associated with the notorious file-sharing site.
Tech Radar

3 UK tries to spark price war over iPhone 4
Trust the UK’s smallest mobile operator, 3 UK, to try to start a price war over the latest Apple device to hit the shelves. We say ‘try’ to start a price war because it’s become apparent that the UK has sold out of iPhone 4s, at least for now anyway. Still, 3 is allowing users to register their interest on site, and will let consumers known as soon as it has devices in stock. On paper, the pricing looks like it will be attractive to consumers and may even spark a price war in the UK, given that almost every carrier is now offering the iPhone 4.
Telecoms.com

Microsoft makes a 'kin price cut
It looks like Microsoft's 'kin phones are not exactly jumping off the shelves and it appears that ISPs have ordered a price cut. Despite being a reasonable phone, and having a huge TV advertising campaign, the 'Kin has not got much attention from the great unwashed. It has faced stiff competition from the iPhone and other smartphones, which don't cost any more per month and offer the ability to run thousands more applications. This left US telcos with shedloads of inventory which does not look like it will shift any time soon. The 'Kin One fell from $49 to $29, while the Kin Two went from $99 to $49 which is 'kin cheap even if you have to sign your soul away for a two-year contract and agree to a $29 or higher monthly data plan.
Tech Eye

Researchers develop method for 1,000 times faster net speeds
Researchers at MIT have developed a new way of organising optical networks which could make internet speeds up to 1,000 times faster, according to RedOrbit. The new approach from the MIT research team led by Vincent Chan, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is called Optical Flow Switching (OFS), which allows the establishment of a dedicated path between locations in a network that does not require optical signals to be converted to electrical signals.
Tech Eye

Google tries new approach in China
Google's conflict with Chinese censors took a fresh twist today as the search engine added an extra step for mainland users wishing to access its homepage, in an effort to placate the country's internet authorities. The company began diverting google.cn users to its Hong Kong site google.com.hk in March after saying it was no longer willing to censor search results as required under Chinese law. But today it said users were now being redirected to a holding page with a link to the Hong Kong search service, after officials made it clear it could not renew its licence on the mainland if it continued with its current model.
The Guardian

Currys pays up for Lampard's World Cup 'goal'
Currys has stated that it will recognise England's 'goal that wasn't' in their game against Germany as part of its pre-World Cup Cash for Goals offer.  Currys offered £10 back for each England goal if you spent more than £599 on a telly at the store, and certainly didn't rue the decision when England failed to fire. After three perfectly legitimate goals, Frank Lampard's effort should have added a fourth and made the first half score 2-2 against Germany, but was not given because of myopic officials and Sepp Blatter's ludicrous Fifa mandate not to look at goal-line technology.
Tech Radar

IT pros still leave security to chance
As threats to corporate data grow, and the cost of breaches increase, a survey of alleged security conscious professionals has remarkably revealed that over half of respondents (52 per cent), who admit to carrying company data on a USB stick, do not encrypt it. Remarkably, 11 per cent of this savvy audience, who really should know better, ‘protect’ their devices with passwords alone, an insufficient defence that is widely understood to be easily breached. The study, sponsored by Credant Technologies, provider of endpoint data protection solutions, questioned 277 IT security professionals who, theoretically, view security seriously enough to spend time attending InfoSecurity Europe. The type of unprotected data being carried would have serious repercussions to the organisation should it be misplaced, from intellectual property(67 per cent), customer data (40 per cent) and employee details (26 per cent).
Mobile Business Magazine 

It May Take 10 Years, But Obama Agrees To Increase Wireless Broadband
President Barack Obama signed a presidential memorandum today that is expected to double the amount of spectrum available for wireless broadband networks. The action is in line with the new National Broadband Plan unveiled in March, which identified a spectrum crunch based on Americans increasing demand for using data on mobile phones. While this signing is a critical step to fulfilling that need, the plan could take up to 10 years to complete and many carriers feel there is already a shortage today. By signing the memorandum, Obama is making 500 megahertz of spectrum available for auction. For comparison, all of the U.S. carriers use a combined 450 megahertz of spectrum today.
mocoNews

Germany voices concerns over iPhone data gathering
Germany has echoed US concerns about the data Apple collects about the users of its iPhones. German justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger has asked Apple to reveal the kind of data the company is collecting, according to the New York Times. The move comes after US congressmen Edward Markey and Joe Barton sent a letter to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs about the same issue. They asked for an explanation of recent changes in the company's privacy policy. They also expressed concern about the impact of collecting geo-location data on iPhone users' privacy.
ComputerWeekly

EU agrees to share banking data with US
The European Union has reached an agreement with the US to continue sharing European bank data to help fight terrorism, after initially rejecting a proposal to extend information sharing because of privacy concerns. Liberal members of the European Parliament insisted on stronger privacy guarantees before supporting the five-year agreement, according to the Washington Post. The agreement, scheduled to come into effect on 1 August, allows US officials to request European financial data relevant to a specific terrorist investigation if they substantiate the need for the data.
ComputerWeekly

Web traffic surges as England scrape through
England's 1-0 victory over Slovenia prompted a dramatic surge in internet traffic as desk-bound workers headed online in their droves to watch the drama unfold. Easynet Connect reported a 226 per cent rise in traffic during the game, which equated to a 73 per cent increase in download traffic compared to the previous week. "The data from our own network shows that streaming the game at work was a popular choice this afternoon, pushing many business connections to their limits," said Easynet Connect managing director Chris Stening. Recently rebranded ISP Demon, meanwhile, saw a 55 per cent rise that peaked at 3pm and then dropped to a 40 per cent increase at 3.30pm.
V3

Technology firms 'more trusted than traditional media'
According to the new study, the majority of people rated online privacy as one of their major concerns when using the internet after both Google and Facebook were hit by rows over people's private details being disclosed on the web. The study, of more than 2100 people, found nearly half they trusted the big three technology firms Apple, Google and Microsoft" completely" or "a lot. This was compared to eight per cent trusting Twitter and 13 per cent saying they had more faith in Facebook. But all of the companies rated higher than traditional media, the research concluded. One in five young adults, aged between 18 and 29, said they had higher trust levels in Facebook. Meanwhile, 15 per cent of young people said they trusted Twitter.
The Telegraph

Windows Phone 7's October release casually mentioned in Microsoft ad presentation
"I'm gonna ask rock star Kostas... to come on. And Kostas has brought with him Windows Phone 7, which we launch this October." So sayeth Microsoft VP for Marketing Mich Mathews in introducing GM of Live Labs' Kostas Mallios, who was at the Cannes Lions advertising conference to show off the advertising capabilities of the upcoming smartphone platform. Of course, last we heard, the official company line on WP7's release was "holiday 2010," so this would definitely narrow the launch window quite a bit, as well as corroborates earlier Telstra roadmap leaks.
Engadget

Top 10 trailers From E3’s hottest games
The Electronic Entertainment Expo is one big dog-and-pony show. The annual high-profile come-on is an expensive, over-the-top attempt on the part of gamemakers to woo and wow fans all over the world with their latest games. Trailers are a major part of this process. Even (or especially) if there’s no playable demo on the E3 show floor, a well-directed snippet of video can get the fanboy arteries pumping. Last week, game publishers unleashed a slew of promo clips meant to surprise, invigorate and tantalize us. Here are Game|Life’s picks for the 10 best trailers of the show.
Wired

Twitter extends ties with Facebook and LinkedIn
"One of our most frequent requests from users is how they can find and follow the people they are connected to on their social networks," said Josh Elman, a product manager at Twitter, in a blog post. "Today, we're improving our Find Friends section to make it easier to follow people you already know. "Our Facebook app now shows which of your Facebook friends are on Twitter and lets you follow them instantly and save them to a list. The app also lets you post your tweets to your Facebook profile and pages." Elman explained that the Tweets application on LinkedIn allows users to see which connections are on Twitter and follow the ones they choose right from the app.
V3

Why I Hate DRM (Example 147,000,000)
I am really late to the party, but since I saw my first series in 2007, I've been crazy about Doctor Who. My Netflix queue is almost entirely old Tom Baker stories, and all four New Who series. (The remainder is mostly MST3K, if anyone was wondering what kind of stuff I like to watch in my spare time.) I'm still working my way through the New Who, and since I don't have nearly as much free time as I'd like, I'm only up to Gridlock in Series Three, which I've been watching through my Roku whenever I get the chance. Because I knew it would be a few weeks or even months until I was ready to watch them, I programmed my DVR to catch and record all the new episodes of the Fifth Series, set it to hold them until I deleted them and then accidentally deleted them.
Techland

Visa's payclick takes on PayPal for micropayments
Credit card giant Visa has entered the micropayment processing space with payclick, a pre-paid hosted  service aimed at teenagers purchasing online line content such as music and games. Like PayPal, payclick is an online money repository that people can pay into with a bank account, credit card (Visa or MasterCard) or BPay and use the funds to purchase products online. No PayPal integration yet.Developed in Australia, payclick is available for use from today and content online businesses including Telstra’s’ BigPond and Apple iTunes are offering the payment option. According to analyst firm Investment Trends, the market for online micropayments where the transaction is less than $20 is about $646 million this year and will rise to more than $1 billion in 2012. Payclick general manager, Greg Storey, said the service targets an un-met sector of the community and it has features to enable parents to control online payments made by their children. People under 18 need to have their parent’s 'sponsor' their account, and money can be shared among family members only, not other payclick accounts. Visa will do an integrated marketing campaign across online and cinemas to launch payclick.
TechWorld

Sending data via SMS
Earl Oliver at at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, has an unusual phone bill. Unlimited texting plan or no, most of us would take a few years to send 80,000 messages. Oliver did it in just a few months. Rather than being victim to an unusual obsession, though, Oliver is attempting to bring better communications to rural parts of the developing world -- by developing a protocol to send data packed into series of SMS messages. In rural areas of India, Africa and China, use of SMS has skyrocketed in recent years, as cellphone towers have brought the first reliable telecommunications to previously unconnected areas. "SMS is ubiquitous, reliable and mostly low cost," says Oliver, while data services are expensive and patchy. Oliver's huge messaging spree was visited on Canadian carrier Rogers, and included tests to probe what happens when you send huge batches of messages, and a data transfer system he built informed by the results. Oliver had to make his system resilient to the fact that his bulk sending tests showed that around 3 percent of messages arrived out of order, thanks to the variable delay between messages.
Technology Review

SanDisk's SD card can store data for 100 years
SanDisk on Wednesday announced a Secure Digital card that can store data for 100 years, but can be written on only once.The WORM (write once, read many) card is "tamper proof" and data cannot be altered or deleted, SanDisk said in a statement. The card is designed for long-time preservation of crucial data like legal documents, medical files and forensic evidence, SanDisk said. The media comes with capacity of only 1GB. SanDisk determined the media's 100-year data-retention lifespan based on internal tests conducted at normal room temperatures. To draw comparisons, the card is like DVD-write only media, but much smaller and with a much longer life span. SD cards typically slot into portable devices like digital cameras and mobile phones to store or move images, video or other data. The WORM works like conventional SD media, but only with compatible devices, SanDisk said. The company said it is shipping the media in volume to the Japanese police force to archive images as an alternative to film, SanDisk said. The company is working with a number of consumer electronics companies including camera vendors to support the media.
Computer World
 
iPhone 4: Perfect for everyone, except humans
Apple's new iPhone doesn't seem to like being touched much, and the beautiful (if easily discoloured) screen scratches too. Dear dear. To be fair, the scratching issue only affects the more-clumsy user, and there are only a couple of reports about discolouration in the corner of the screen, but it seems that the majority of iPhone 4s do have an aversion to being touched as sticky fingers are causing huge drops in signal strength. Since then tech blog Gizmodo has been canvassing early-adopters and accumulated a bundle of examples showing, in almost every case, that touching the bottom of the phone leads to around three bars being dropped off the indicated signal strength (which runs up to five).
The Register

iPhone 4 displays having discoloration issues, poor reception, and don’t drop them either

According to some users over at Mac Rumors, and still more at the Apple discussion forums, it looks like their new gadgets are showing some discoloration in the Retina Display. It’s not the most obvious thing in the world, but you don’t have to look all that hard to see the yellow pigmentation “burned” into the screen. Perhaps not while in use it wouldn’t even be noticeable, but we could see where this would be a troublesome situation while actually using the device.

SlashGear

Internet Explorer 9: Uses your GPU for faster browsing 

Internet Explorer 9 announced new features today, to “break the glass ceiling of browsing” in the words of Windows 7 head honcho Leila Martine, by using your computer’s GPU to improve IE9’s performance. The IE9 demo we saw today will support the HTML5 video tag and canvas drawing, and will use your hardware’s GPU for browsing, means snappier browsing, with pages will load quicker and be faster, with better performance, for example, the fps animations can be pushed to can be as much as double other browsers, as was demonstrated via the medium of an animated aquarium of fish. 

Electric Pig 

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook 'almost guaranteed' to reach 1 billion users

Facebook's global dominance is almost complete with just Russia, Japan, China and Japan yet to be converted and the social networking giant aiming to reach 1 billion users, founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed today. Zuckerberg, who said he had recently met Prime Minister David Cameron "for just a minute [when] he was busy rolling out the budget", also admitted that one day he could see Facebook floating on the stockmarket – just not anytime soon. He added that there was "no chance" Facebook, which has cracked the 500 million user mark, would hit 1 billion this year but argued that "it is almost a guarantee that it will happen".

The Guardian 

Cisco to invest cash in Russia tech

Cisco Systems has said it will invest US $1billion to help foster hi-tech innovation in Russia. Cisco cheif executive John Chambers made the commitment at a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The president was visiting the computer networking equipment manufacturer's San Jose headquarters as part of a tour of Silicon Valley.

MSN Tech  

Motorola launches DROID X with 1GHz OMAP chip

US smartphone maker Motorola has followed in the footsteps of the HTC HD2 in testing the boundary of what can be considered a pocket-sized device, with the launch of the DROID X and its 4.3 inch screen. In order to power this large screen, Motorola has announced a 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP SoC. It hasn't specified the model number, but given that the OMAP 3430 found in the Milestone is only designed to clock to 600MHz, we must assume it's a 3640. This is still based on the ARM Cortex A8 CPU design and Imagination Technologies SGX530 graphics, but TI has tweaked it to higher frequencies.

Hexus 

Mozilla: Our browser will not run native code

Mozilla vice president of products Jay Sullivan says that unlike Google, the open source outfit has no intention of bundling Firefox with Adobe Flash —– or with a plug-in that runs native code inside the browser. Mozilla, Sullivan says, believes that the future of online applications lies with web standards, including HTML5. Google likes to say the same thing. But then it rolls Flash into its Chrome browser and brews a Chrome-based "operating system" that embraces a native code plug-in. Asked if Mozilla intends to go native or bundle Flash, Sullivan is unequivocal.

The Register 

Google defeats Viacom in $1billion copyright spat

Google has won its long-running court case against Viacom, in which the snooping giant’s YouTube was accused of massive copyright infringement. Viacom brought the case seeking $1 billion in damages. It said it will appeal the ruling. U.S. District Court Judge, Louis Stanton’s decided Google was protected by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects YouTube, which grants "safe harbour" to service providers who act to remove copyright violations when they are informed about them.

Thinq  

Femto World Summit is all smiles (mostly)

The femtocell industry's third annual event in London is taking place, and the sector's rapid shift from interesting concept to real world commercial market is highlighted by the wide range of vendors and carriers pledging support. Global femtocell deployments have more than doubled in the past nine months, according to a report from Informa, which counts 16 operator commitments including 13 commercial launches - up from eight commitments last November. Informa expects the femtocell market to hit the 49m unit mark by 2014, supporting 114m mobile users. Femto unit sales would reach 25m in 2014 alone.

The Register 

ATI.com isn't dead says AMD

Silicon underdog AMD has denied that it's killed off the ati.com domain as part of a scheme to dispose of the ATI brand. Web surfers using the old ATI URL have recently been greeted by an error message on AMD's website, saying that the page cannot be found. The error message (below), reads "Oops! We apologize. The page you are trying to reach cannot be found." It then suggests that the page may have been moved or deleted, or you may have typed in the URL incorrectly.  

Thinq 

Google 'activating 160,000 Android phones a day'

Google is now activating 160,000 mobile phones using its Android software a day, equivalent to 4.8m a month, according to the company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt. The number is also accelerating, having been put at 100,000 a day in the third week of May during Google's annual I/O conference, Schmidt said – indicating sales growth of 60% per month.

The Guardian 

Volkswagen raises brand awareness with rich media ad campaign
Volkswagen is running a rich-media mobile advertising campaign to raise brand awareness for its new CC model sedan. The automotive company teamed with Crisp Wireless to place the mobile banner ads in applications and on the mobile Web sites of CBS and CNN. The campaign works on iPhones and integrates fixed-placement expandable ad units to deliver a more engaging experience for consumers.
Mobile Marketer

Vodafone launches major reward scheme
Vodafone UK is launching a major new reward scheme Vodafone VIP, giving its customers access to music festivals, the British Grand Prix, and the London Fashion Weekend, which it is to headline sponsor.As competition in the mobile market intensifies, Vodafone has announced a new partnership with music promoter Live Nation that will give Vodafone access to tickets for 10 music festivals across the UK. Festivals throughout the summer include Leeds, Reading and T in the Park.
Marketing Magazine
 

Can wireless networks handle World Cup fever on mobile video?
There are few events on the world stage that have the ability to shine a spotlight on technology and innovation. Over the last several years, mobile phone technology has been at the center of many of these global events.Certainly, the Beijing and Vancouver Olympics, as well as the 2008 political elections in the United States have generated much attention around the potential that mobile messaging and mobile content can have on shaping public opinion. This month’s World Cup in South Africa is another great example.
Mobile Marketer 

UK operators link arms to deal with mobile video
Sharing the burden: new technology could help UK operators collectively handle mobile video. A coalition of mobile operators in the UK are looking into a new standard for broadcasting TV and video to mobile. Called Integrated Mobile Broadcast (IMB), the technology could potentially allow networks to create a true mobile TV and video network at a comparatively tiny cost.
GoMo News

'Broadband levy' scrapped in emergency budget
Labour plan to fund broadband investment by levying a tax on landline phone connections scrapped in George Osborne's budget plan. Chancellor George Osborne said that the government plans to scrap a plan to fund investment in 'superfast' broadband infrastructure with a tax on 'landline' phone connections.
Information Age

Mobile phone firms test TV broadcast service
O2, Orange, and Vodafone have teamed up to test a TV broadcast service which would allow British mobile phone users the chance to watch TV channels on their handsets.  The three companies, who control the bulk of the UK mobile phone market, are testing technology which would enable them to provide broadcast TV over their existing 3G mobile phone spectrum, without clogging up their networks, which are being used by smartphone users to access the web and send emails.
The Guardian

Microsoft launches personal health record site
Microsoft has launched its HealthVault cloud-based health-organiser platform in the UK, nearly three years after its US launch in October 2007.  The platform is designed to allow organisations to develop applications that let individuals monitor various aspects of their physiological performance, based on user-supplied data such as body mass index, blood pressure and heart rate.  "HealthVault is aimed at the 13 percent of the UK population who are actively engaged in monitoring their wellness," Dave Coplin, Microsoft's national technology officer, told ZDNet UK. "We wanted the right kind of data store."
ZD Net

Brits are bored with mobile broadband
UK mobile broadband sales are tumbling as consumers have figured out that the technology does not live up to its billing. So says Broadband Expert, which notes a 57 per cent drop in the number of people signing up for mobile broadband via the price comparison site. Sales sank from 3000-ish in May 2009 to 1,300 in May 2010.
The Register

BPI sends 'cease and desist' order to Google
The BPI is taking on Google in the fight for banishing illegal downloads, sending a cease-and-desist order to the search giant.BPI's music woes centre on a number of 'one-click' upload sites which offer illegal downloads of music. The sites include Megaupload, Mediafire, 4shared and Sendspace
Tech Radar  

Enterprise software makers taking cues from Facebook, Twitter
Salesforce becomes latest to jump on social networking bandwagon with launch of Chatter.  Software makers are trying to make enterprise applications as popular as Facebook.com. Companies are developing collaborative applications that borrow a host of features from social-networking websites such as those run by Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. The features let employees post status updates on projects or follow documents and other staff members.
Total Telecom  

Windows Live Messenger comes to iPhone
It's certainly not the first app Microsoft has crafted for the iPhone -- the Bing app has been alive and well for a while now, among others -- but you could argue that this is a pretty important one. Windows Live Messenger has just launched for iOS, and it's quite a bit more than your basic IM app with support for some manner of social service aggregation, media-rich status messages, Hotmail integration, and even built-in photo effects. Many folks will want an IM client that can span a bunch of services at once -- but if you're a Windows Live fanatic stuck in an iPhone world, this should be just what the doctor ordered.
Engadget imobile

A Google paid-content system for publishers may be coming by year-end
Google, which had hinted for nearly a year now that it was working on building some sort of paid content system for publishers, is reportedly set to launch such a system by year-end. According to a report in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Google is now reaching out to publishers to get them to sign up for the system, which it is calling Newspass.
The Guardian

PM takes time out to meet Facebook founder
Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, met up with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today at Number 10, with the Prime Minister popping in to say hello. Zuckerberg, who is visiting London for the Facebook Developer Garage, met up with Hunt who used Twitter to say that he had met with the Facebook boss, noting "Just met Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook. Really smart guy with some good ideas on improvement digital engagement in policy making."
Tech Radar

IBM accused of fraud
A case started in a Pennsylvania district court in which IBM and several of its employees are accused of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act. The case was brought by Devon IT and its European subsidiary and alleges that IBM's hardware division, known as the System Technology Group (STG) defrauded the company of $12 million it had invested in blade technology. Individuals named along with IBM in the case are Thomas Bradidich, Bernard Meyerson, James Gargan and Rodney Adkins.
Tech Eye

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Now Available for Mobile Platform Partners
One of the bigger features of the upcoming Android release, 2.2 (better known as Froyo), is the fact that there’s integrated Flash Player. While many think that Flash isn’t optimized for proper mobile use, Adobe begs to differ, as they point out in the first paragraph of their press release that 10.0 for mobile devices has been redesigned from the ground up, with performance in mind, which also includes mobile-specific features. It’s already available on desktop clients, like Linux, PC, and Mac, but we’re all waiting for the official release on mobile devices. Now that we have the official announcement from Adobe, 35 companies ready to jump on board, we don’t expect it will be much longer to wait.
SlashGear

Femtos win more support in US
On Monday, Mosaic, which provides telecoms services, including 3G, to a large portion of northwestern Wisconsin, contracted Nokia Siemens Networks to roll out a standards compliant 3G femtocell solution using kit from Airvana. The deal means subscribers to Mosaic will be able to enjoy guaranteed access to 3G services around their homes and offices. One of the main selling points of this deployment being that in the past, femtocell deployments have been based on proprietary solutions, while this deployment is based on 3GPP Release 8 standards.
Telecoms.com

FT wooed by Kenyan fiber contracts
France Telecom brought the curtain down on a long-running battle with the Kenyan government over Telekom Kenya after securing lucrative fiber network management contracts in the country, according to local press reports. Telekom Kenya will take over the running of the government’s stake in local fiber firm Teams, in a deal said to be worth millions of dollars to France Telecom, which holds a 51% stake in the carrier, The East African said.
Telecoms Europe

Screen shortage scuppers iPhone 4 sales
Apple faces a component shortage that will cut monthly shipments of its iPhone 4 in half, an analyst has warned.  Production of the IPS-based Retina display used in the new device won’t ramp to the four million units per month Apple needs to hit its targets until the supplier – South Korea’s LG Display – increases production capacity late summer, Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar said Friday.
Telecoms Europe

BT announces unlimited Openzone Wi-Fi
As every other telco in the world moves the goalposts to restrict access to mobile data, BT is bucking the trend by offering uncapped usage of its 1.5 million BT Fon and Openzone hotspots throughout the UK to existing customers. Until now BT customers had time limits set on their out-and-about use of access points based in pubs, airports and other public buildings, but the company now says "recognising the growing need for Internet access on the move, BT has now decided to offer unlimited Wi-Fi access across all BT Total Broadband options, to further consolidate as the UK’s most complete broadband."
Thinq

Intel and FTC discuss settlement
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Intel, the world's biggest chip maker, have filed a joint motion to suspend trial proceedings in the matter of FTC's complaint against Intel, which alleges it indulged in all sorts of anti-competitive shenanigans. The pair said they are taking a month off  to consider a potential settlement of the case which the FTC filed against Intel on December 16, 2009.
Thinq

Sony Ericsson launches some new phones and discovers Android 2.1
Sony Ericsson is presumably acutely aware of this and, while still not exactly leading from the front, has announced that its Xperia X10 range will get a 2.1 upgrade before the end of the year. For reference, our Motorola Milestone got one automatically weeks ago. Another, more novel, upgrade to the X10 in Q4 will allow users to display content on their TVs, wirelessly, from their phone. On top of that, SE has launched no less than three new handsets today. The Xperia X8 is positioned as an entry level (under €200) Android (1.6) phone, with a three inch touch screen and 3.2MP camera. It will be available in Q3 in a bunch of different colours.
Hexus

Mobile operators may look to exit voice business, says consultancy
The provision of data access is now the most important part of a mobile operator’s business and some may decide in the future that offering voice services does not make economic sense. So says industry consultancy Northstream in a recently released white paper. In the paper, entitled ‘LTE – The Bigger Picture’, Northstream says that, as GSM networks come to the end of their life, and operator are faced with investment in solutions designed to enable voice over LTE, some may opt to relinquish voice provision. “Wireless data is the core business of a mobile operator,” the firm says.
Telecoms.com

Demand for Apple's iPhone 4 crashes ordering websites in US and UK
Apple has reported overwhelming demand for its new iPhone 4 model, selling more than 600,000 in a single day on Tuesday which saw ordering websites crash in the US and UK. In Germany, demand for the new model, which was only unveiled by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs at the start of the month, is running 10 times ahead of that for last year's model, the iPhone 3GS, reported Deutsche Telekom. By comparison, when the iPhone 3GS went on sale last year, 1m were sold in its first three days. But that debuted in eight countries, whereas the iPhone 4 has gone on sale only in five.
The Guardian

HP and Dell forced away from Windows
Microsoft's chums HP and Dell are being forced away from the software giant because the outfit is not quick enough adapting its Windows 7 software for a tablet gizmo.
According to an IDC report the hardware makers have found that Redmond's Windows 7 is too unwieldy for a tablet. David Daoud, an analyst at IDC, said that that although a lighter edition was planned it will not be in the shops until the end of the year giving Apple almost a year's head start.
Tech Eye

Javascripters promise Jobs-free HTML5 for iPad
Javascripters who slammed Apple and Google for hyping HTML5 are offering a claimed frustration-free answer to coding for iPads, iPhones and Androids. Ext JS is today expected to unveil the beta of a programming framework for building rich, web and touch-based applications and that draws on the HTML5 family of specs. Ext JS, which claims one million developers on its Javascript frameworks to-date, is also changing its name to Sencha Labs and committing to support open-source projects JQTouch - an AJAX mobile framework - and the Raphaël SVG library. Sencha said this'll provide wider access to technologies for standards-based web development.
The Register

AOL set to sell Bebo to private investors
Web giant AOL is set to sell the social network site Bebo to a private investment firm this month.AOL is planning to offload the social network business, selling it to investment firm Criterion Capital Partners, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Tech Radar

San Francisco will tell the world about mobile phone radiation
Mobile phone users in the UK and EU will soon be able to tell if their mobile gadget is more or less likely to be toasting their brain cells.
A law passed in San Francisco will require mobile phone companies to post how much radiation they are pouring into your ear everytime you ring someone up to say, "I am on the train".
The Inquirer

BBC iPlayer viewer numbers reach 130m in May
The TV-on-demand player was visited by an average of 1.4m people a day in May, matching its February figures, driven by the new series of Doctor Who and General Election coverage. The broadcaster revealed the average time spent watching TV programmes on the iPlayer was 73 minutes per person, while time spent listening to radio was 178 minutes.
New Media Age

Broadband brands drop ‘unlimited’ claims
Fixed and mobile broadband providers are bracing themselves for a sterner regulatory regime regarding how they can advertise their services as regulators prepare a crackdown on service claims.The move has been prompted by the increased popularity of devices like the iPhone and services like the BBC iPlayer, which are squeezing network operators’ ability to keep up with demand.
New Media Age

Online to outstrip papers in ad revenue
The internet is poised to overtake newspapers as the second-largest US advertising medium by revenue behind television, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' Global Entertainment and Media Outlook for 2010 to 2014.It predicts that the online ad business, excluding mobile ads, will expand to $34.4bn (£23.3m) in 2014 from $24.2bn (£16.5m) in 2009.
The Guardian