Tesco picks C&W Worldwide for online bank network
Tesco Bank has chosen Cable & Wireless Worldwide to provide managed datacentre services and hosted voice services to support its banking and insurance customer service centres in Newcastle and Glasgow. C&W Worldwide will provide a range of solutions to ensure that calls from the bank's 6.5 million customers are routed to the right person, with enough information to settle the issue quickly and efficiently, the company said in a statement. The service will use C&W Worldwide's global, high-speed next generation network. The network touches more than 400 towns and cities in the UK, with 802 unbundled exchanges covering 55% of the population. Internationally, the network stretches more than 500,000km, including interests in 69 global cable systems, and provides connectivity in 153 countries.
ComputerWeekly
 
Google’s new Android phone aims to replace credit cards
Google's Eric Schmidt has announced a new Android mobile phone that will power mobile payments
Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, showed off the company’s next Android-powered phone, which will contain a chip that will allow people to make payments via their handsets. Opening this year’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Schmidt showed off the new phone, which had the manufacturer’s label deliberately covered up, but is assumed to be the next Nexus device, following the Nexus One, and will contain a Near Field Communication chip, that will allow people to use their phones like credit cards.
The Telegraph
 
Fix the Web campaign aims to address Internet accessibility
When it comes to real life, the disabled are considered with measures such as wheelchair ramps alongside stairs. But the online virtual world is something which often fails to take disability into account, and a new campaign has been launched to do something about this.
Fix the Web aims to highlight lack of accessibility where it crops up on the net. The idea is that disabled people can report a problem to the site, which volunteers can assess and take forward to the webmaster in question, hopefully reaching a solution. There are some six million disabled and older folks who have difficulty accessing the majority of content on the Internet, according to a BBC report.
Techwatch
 
Twitter and the bomb joke that's blown justice to bits
He sat behind reinforced glass panels, flanked by two security guards, in the dock at Doncaster Crown Court last week. Trainee accountant Paul ¬Chambers was arrested in January under the Terrorism Act (remember that?) when police turned up at his office and hauled him away for  questioning about a threat to blow up a British airport. mCould there be a more unlikely ‘bomber'?‘When they [the officers] arrived for me I thought one of my family might have been in an accident,’ he said after leaving court. ‘I thought it was a joke that would be resolved in a few minutes.’ Understandably, in the circumstances. In fact, the joke lasted nearly a year, and cost him his job, not to mention thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money bringing him to ‘justice’.
Mail Online
 
Amazon launches 'Black Friday' sale in the UK
November discounts include 60% off consoles and half price Sony TVs. E-tail giant Amazon is set to bring the ‘Black Friday’ sale day to the UK, in what was formerly a US only discount day following Thanksgiving. On Monday November 22nd, Amazon will kick off ‘Black Friday Deals Week’ with over 200 discounts on a range of products including game consoles, TVs, Canon cameras, toys and Blue-ray movies.For many years, shoppers in the US have enjoyed massive savings on great products as a result of the 'Black Friday' phenomenon," said Amazon UK boss Brian McBride.
PCR

British Consumers Feel Little Loyalty to Mobile Operators
Nearly half of British consumers (45%) would leave their current mobile operator if they did not sell the handset they desired when seeking a replacement model, reports a survey by Art Technology Group (ATG). The research also demonstrates that a large proportion of consumers across Europe don't feel loyalty to their current mobile operators, with 31 per cent of those surveyed saying they have been with two mobile operators in the last five years. A further 10 per cent of consumers reported they have been with three or more mobile networks in the last five years.
Cellular News  

Wholesale App Community signs Sharp and Sony Ericsson
The Wholesale Application Community (WAC) is the telecoms industries response to the massively powerful application stores of Apple and Android. The alliance of operators, device manufacturers and other telecoms companies aims to create an open platform that they can all use to sell applications to their customers (see our report). Today, it announces the addition of nine new members, including two significant OEMs, bringing the total membership of the Community to 57. WAC does not have an easy job ahead of it. To really compete with iTunes and the Android Market, it has to work perfectly all over the world. It needs to create a single platform that every single member can use to develop, store, manage and sell applications through.
GoMo News
 
Handset market ships 346.2 million in third quarter
The mobile handset market is set for a stellar performance in 2010. The third quarter of 2010 notched up 346.2 million in handset shipments. For the first three quarters of the year, year on year growth has been hovering around 20%. This is a remarkable feat, irrespective of the rebound effect following the deferred handset purchases during the economic recession, said Jake Saunders, VP for forecasting at ABI Research. Layer on ‘smartphone-envy’ and you have a recipe for high handset volumes. This rebound is having some interesting consequences, said Saunders. He noted that component manufacturers have never had it so good. Nokia in particular reported a hardware crunch, especially with displays (such as AMOLED) and semiconductor components for low cost handsets.
Mobile Business Magazine

Kinect sells 1m units in 10 days
Microsoft's Kinect motion control accessory for the Xbox 360 has shifted 1m units in 10 days on sale. Not bad going considering the relatively high price and proof that motion control is here to stay. Microsoft have said they plan to sell 5m units before the end of the year. Just imagine how many more they could sell if, say, one of the fitness games was replaced by the Star Wars lightsaber game. Games for more hardcore gamers  like the Star Wars title  will start trickling through in 2011. For now, though, the Kinect is aimed firmly at the mass market.
Guardian
 
Google chief says TV industry is ‘wrong’
The search giant’s new TV service, which recently launched in the US and is expected to launch in the UK next year, integrates applications and the internet directly into televisions. It brings basic elements such as search or web browsing and goes as far as combining both web and TV simultaneously. However, at the end of last month, several major US broadcasters, including ABC, CBS and NBC, blocked some of their most popular television programmes from being accessible through Google’s new television service. Speaking at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Schmidt said: The concern [from the TV executives] is that this enormous revenue stream will be affected negatively by this browser I disagree. I think people will watch more TV.
Telegraph