News of Green, Mobile, IT and Data Centre Technology - at eWEEK Europe UK
Groups + Beta + Week
Twitter Rolls Out Lists Beta
[...] Twitter has this week made live a beta of Twitter Lists, a new feature to let users organise their contacts into various groups. [...] Twitter users now have the ability to organise their contacts into various groups, after the beta of Twitter Lists went live this week. [...] First off, sign in to Twitter and if you see this message when you go to your Twitter homepage, you're ready to use it. New. Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts. (BETA) . [...]
Tandberg Unveils Another SMB Telepresence Product
[...] Throughout the past few weeks, as the Cisco deal churned, Tandberg has aggressively rolled out new products. Last week it unveiled a new addition to its Total Telepresence line, the T1, also aimed at smaller groups. [...] Earlier this month Cisco offered to buy Tandberg for $3 billion, but the bid was rejected by a group of shareholders as too low. Analysts said Tandberg would be a good fit for Cisco, and have predicted that the networking giant will increase its bid. [...] The Gerson Lehrman Group consulting firm for example has said that it makes sense for Cisco to up the bid, given that the company has the money (about $44 billion in current assets) and that buying Tandberg is the fastest way for Cisco to reach its goal of getting $1 billion in revenue in its telepresence business in three years. [...]
Microsoft Ballmer: Google Biggest Opponent To Yahoo Deal
[...] Google isn't the only one that might have concerns. The Center for Digital Democracy told eWEEK last week that Microsoft and Yahoo should expect privacy and consumer groups to vigorously press regulators to closely examine the deal. [...] We look forward to moving forward very quickly to provide information to the antitrust authorities in Washington and in Brussels and in other places around the world. We've been working together. We expect to start the filing process in Washington, D.C., next week. [...]
Online Retailers Offered Carbon Offset Service
[...] However interest in carbon offsetting schemes could receive a boost following the announcement late last week by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that green house gases including carbon dioxide pose a threat to human health - the first time the EPA has made such a ruling despite calls from environmental groups. [...] Announced late last week by start-up GreenWorld, the ShopGreen application is aimed at retailers who want to offer consumers the opportunity to offset the delivery of items purchased online. The application is only available to sites based in the US at the moment but there are plans to expand it internationally. [...]
UK Communities Awarded Free Wi-Fi Access
[...] In a statement released this week, Freerunner announced that it will use a combination of broadband, satellite and 3G technology to provide wireless access to communities that currently have limited Internet access. The decision to provide the access for free was based on a competition launched in September which received around 500 entries from deserving groups around the UK. [...] Some wireless technologies will struggle, said BT's group strategy director Dr Tim Whitley. [...]
$100 Laptop Project Recruiting Haiti Volunteers
[...] The OLPC organisation announced this week that it looking for university students and young adults to take part in its 2010 Corps and Intern programmes which involve deployments to a variety of developing areas. [...] Earlier this week, the OLPC scheme announced that it is working with several other tech companies to dispatch communication equipment to help aid efforts in Haiti. We want free ruggedized XO Laptops running Linux (with Wi-Fi, browser, kids' learning activities and a whole lot more) to go to to aid/reconstruction groups who quickly explain to us their need, the organisation stated. [...]
Green Grid and BCS Warn About “Risky” UK Carbon Rules
[...] According to the BCS data centre specialist group chairman, the UK's Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) is especially risky as it is a new and potentially punitive approach to regulating carbon, which could impact data centre owners and operators. [...] Commenting on a presentation he gave this week, Green Grid's Tuccillo said that few UK organisations he spoke with seemed prepared for the impact of the CRC. In a presentation I just gave - I asked for a show of hands of data centre owner operators, he said. [...] Speaking to eWeek Europe UK this week as part of a wider partnership between the two groups, John Tuccillo, chairman of the board for international data centre energy specialist The Green Grid, and Zhal Limbuwala, chair of the BCS data centre specialist group, warned that although the UK may be progressing faster than the US with environmental legislation, it isn't necessarily doing it in the right way. [...]
UK Uses Web To Gather Nanotech Intelligence
[...] While nanotechnology offers opportunities for society, it also involves profound social and environmental risks, not only because it is an enabling technology to the biotech industry, but also because it involves atomic manipulation and will make possible the fusing of the biological world and the mechanical, the group states. [...] While the potential of nanotechnology has a lot of industry groups excited - particularly in IT world where it is being used to investigate the potential of smaller computer chips for example - there is also a substantial opposition to the technology. Anti-nanotech campaigners such as ETC Group based in Canada, warn that if left to develop unchecked nanotechnology poises a significant risk to human and environmental health. [...] In a statement released this week, the science and innovation minister, and chair of the Ministerial Group on Nanotechnologies Lord Drayson called on industry and interested groups to get involved in shaping the UK's strategy for nanotech. [...]
Layoffs to Continue at IBM, Sources Say
[...] According to a Wall Street Journal account of the layoffs, It couldn't easily be determined what percentage of workers in the two groups was affected. But one large category software engineers suffered layoffs of 839 out of 9,784, or about 8.6 percent, according to a tally by one person who received a notice. . [...] IBM has laid off some 2,800 employees, with more to come, according to the Alliance@IBM organisation. Big Blue has had job cuts in both its Software Group and its sales and distribution group, with more to come in the company's Systems and Technology Group, sources said. [...] Layoffs continue at IBM, particularly in the company's software and sales and distribution groups, where more than 2,800 people have been let go over the last week, with several more expected to be laid off over the next several days in other parts of the company, sources said. [...]
Ditch Microsoft, Save £269m Says Hungarian Open Source Group
[...] But according to the statement by the OSOR, the crux of the problem with the slow adoption of open source in Hungary is that the KSZF takes a two percent cut of every public sector procurement contract. The groups say this motivates KSZF to sign expensive licence deals and to favour proprietary over open source software, the OSOR stated. [...] According to a statement on the EU Open Source Observatory and Repository for European public administrations (OSOR) - a site for information exchange about community developed software - five open source groups including the Hungarian Open Document Format Alliance (ODFA) are petitioning the Hungarian government to disclose how much it spends on proprietary software licences. [...] But with Microsoft and other IT vendors equally keen to maintain lucrative government contracts as the private sector continues to keep costs down, open source groups in countries such as Switzerland and Hungary are asking hard questions about why the software is not even being considered as an option for some public sector departments. [...]
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