Losing Ground, BlackBerry Resets
Research In Motion Ltd. said it will cut 2,000 jobs, almost 11% of its work force, the latest move in a make-or-break scramble to resuscitate its products and keep the company that essentially invented the smartphone from becoming an also-ran. The BlackBerry maker has struggled to stanch its shrinking share of North American smartphone sales in the face of an onslaught led by Apple Inc.'s iPhone and products run on Google Inc.'s Android operating system. The company's long-time co-chiefs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, have promised to revamp their own devices
WSJ

Microsoft releases Avatar Kinect
Microsoft’s Avatar Kinect, trailed way back at the start of the year and talked up at E3, has finally gone live. The new service allows users to have virtual meet-ups, with the Kinect camera tracking facial expressions to make chats realistic.What’s more users can record their virtual chats and see themselves as their avatar on what the Big M is calling its 3D stages. There are 24 different themed 3D stages where users can hang out.
T3

Virgin Media successfully trials up to 1.5Gb broadband speeds
It is touted to be 240 times faster than the national average. UK based broadband provider Virgin Media has successfully trialled cable broadband speeds of up to 1.5Gb, which is touted to be 240 times faster than the national average. Users around London's Old Street, an area known as 'Silicon Roundabout', including by members at TechHub, a community and workspace for technology entrepreneurs are getting broadband speeds of up to 1.5Gb by using Virgin Media's cable network.
CBR Online

Zuckerberg beats Jobs and Murdoch to top of media personality list
THE FOUNDER AND CEO of the social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has been given the top spot in The Guardian's list of the 100 top media people, ahead of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Zuckerberg earned the number one slot on the basis of the immense success of Facebook, which only four years ago ranked 100 on The Guardian's list of media companies. Zuckerberg's personal rank last year was seventh, which suggests that he must have done something right to come out on top in this year's list.
The Inquirer

Fake Apple Store crackdown begins in China
The fake Apple shops were highlighted last week by a blogger who writes under the name BirdAbroad. She said that there were three fake Apple shops in the city in southeastern China. Officials have closed two of the stores because they were selling Apple products without authorisation. However, Reuters reports that the shop highlighted by BirdAbroad was not closed because it is applying for a reseller’s licence. “Some overseas media has made it appear the stores sold fake Apple products,” Chang Puyun, a spokesman for the Kunming government’s business bureau, told Reuters.
The Telegraph

Google Ceases Support For Firefox Toolbar
Google says that future versions of Mozilla’s Firefox browser will not support its the Google toolbar. Google’s announcement, that Firefox 5 and forthcoming versions of the Mozilla browser will not support the Google toolbar, has been met with a dismayed reaction from users. In a blog post dated 19 July, Google said that innovation in the browser space in recent years has made the toolbar redundant.“For Firefox users, many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser,” the company stated. “Therefore, while Google Toolbar for Firefox works on versions up to and including Firefox 4 only, it will not be supported on Firefox 5 and future versions.”
Eweek Europe

Hague promises Foreign Office cyber confab in London
Foreign Secretary William Hague is hosting a cybersecurity conference later this year.
The two-day event will be held on 1 and 2 November and more than 80 organisations have been invited to attend. Hague said international cooperation was vital to ensure that cyberspace "remains a safe and trusted environment in which to operate." Chatham House and the International Chamber of Commerce will work with the FCO to arrange the shindig.
The Register

Google reveals new face recognition technology
Google has bought a specialist face scanning technology company called Pitt Patt, which could well soon change the way we use the web in a fundamental way.Pittsburgh-based Pitt Patt was founded in 2004 by a bunch of scientists from Carnegie Mellon University.Pitt Patt's tech can identify users from their faces and track the movement of people and objects in front of the webcam. "We are happy to announce that Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition has been acquired by Google!" reads a notice on the company's website this week.
Tech Radar

Mozilla launches mobile operating system for web apps
Mozilla has launched a new project to build an operating system for mobile devices that will run applications primarily on the web."We want to ... find the gaps that keep web developers from being able to build apps that are, in every way, the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android and WP7," a group of Mozilla developers wrote on a new wiki page about the project.They call the project Boot to Gecko (B2G) and say the plan is to build a "complete, standalone operating system for the open web."
Tech World

US cyber boss slides away
Anyone looking for a challenging role in the US federal government could consider applying for the post of Director of the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team. That role was vacated at the end of last week when the brilliantly named Randy Vickers upped and resigned for no apparent reason.We say no apparent reason but the US government has been under increasing attack for the last few months, and not least of all from Anonymous, Lulzsec and the Antisec movement.How much of a bearing this has had we can't be sure as for now we can only rely on a Reuters report.
The Inquirer