She'll be back Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman has reportedly cleared the way for taking a pop at Arnold Schwarzenegger's job of California governor in 2010.…

Saved by a giant head Macworld Expo Microsoft wants you to know that it's not just the Mac that's holding a 25th birthday party: 2009 marks the 25th year that Redmond has developed software for Apple's quarter-centarian computer.…

Repeats download model The secret to business according to Sun Microsystems' chief executive Jonathan Schwartz is to first build volume and then figure out how to make money from the audience you've created.…

Q4 takes a bit of a haircut The economic meltdown has put a damper on a lot of things, but it seems to have been less of a wet blanket for investors in startups in the green technology and renewable energy in 2008 - if you exclude the final quarter o...

Xbox beats PS3 to second slot Nintendo may have cleaned up in console sales in 2008, but more US gamers spent their free time time playing Sony's "last-gen" Playstation 2, according to Nielsen Media Research.…

Doesn't virtualization fix this? The religion of virtualization may be all over the IT trade press, but apparently the data centers of the world haven't heard the good news yet and have been buying up PCs, servers, and storage gear like crazy to supp...

Dot-com crash a 'cake walk' Compared to the current job market, IT professionals should recall the collapse of the dot-com bubble with a fondness for the good ol' days.…

Watch out Windows and Solaris, says Zemlin With the new year under way and all of the problems in the old year still largely unsolved, people in the IT sector are looking around for a little good news and some prospects for growth. There are a lot of...

Curse of the ROMmon A researcher has discovered a way to reliably exploit a known security vulnerability in a wide class of Cisco System routers, a finding that for the first time allows attackers to hijack millions of devices with a single piece of...

Suggests OS X adoption Use of Apple's Safari browser grew in December to 7.93 per cent, up from 7.13 per cent in November, suggesting a parallel growth in adoption of Mac OS X, according to browser-usage figures released today by internet-analyst Net...

Backs up PCs and plays digital media files Iomega has announced a home storage and media server that backs up files on connected PCs and plays digital media content to connected output devices.…

Last orders at the Missile Defence saloon? Rumour suggests that some parts at least of the controversial US missile-defence programme are doomed, with the axe set to fall as soon as President-Elect Obama takes office. Nonetheless, the last days of 20...

First tech casualty of 2009? UIQ has finally thrown in the towel and reportedly applied for bankruptcy in the Swedish courts.…

Letter explains hormone imbalance Ever since Steve Jobs said he would not be giving the keynote speech at MacWorld, there have been lurid rumours that his health had taken a serious turn for the worse - but the Apple bigwig has finally had a go at pu...

There's no such thing as a free, chummy lunch Friends Reunited could see its carrying value slashed by ITV when the television channel releases its year-end review of past acquisitions.…

No change to police rules...yet The Home Office has denied it has made any change to rules governing how police can remotely snoop on people's computers.…

Big IT bill sweeps through - or does it? Chaos in India’s Parliament – the Lok Sabha - shortly before Christmas saw the passage, without debate, of a major new bill designed to sweep up a number of outstanding IT issues from cybercrime to online...

Or NASA-ise the military President-Elect Barack Obama may seek to save money and advance America's space presence by promoting closer cooperation between the US military space programme and NASA, according to reports.…

New clampdown on 'vulgar' content China has announced a new clampdown on websites accused of "threatening morals by spreading pornography and vulgarity" - including Baidu, Google and Sina.com.…

4 Corfe Close also for the off Lewes District Council has attracted the attention of the Daily Mail with a proposed new street naming and numbering policy which, if agreed tomorrow, could see the end of "names which encourage defacing name plates", s...

Redmond working on seawater-proof product key sticker The Royal Navy's plan to fit most of its fleet with command systems based on Windows boxes continues, with the commencement last week of a programme intended to replace the existing commandware of...

Have a heart for your hardware Those among you who are prone to vocal outbursts of rage at cantankerous kit should be aware that hardware has feelings too, and directing your ire at disk drives can provoke "unusually high disk I/O latency".…

Cancer corral considered Aussie nature-boffins have a new scheme to prevent the extinction of the Tasmanian Devil by the simple means of a great big fence.…

Plans to ship CE3100 with Flash Lite support by mid-2009 Adobe has teamed up with Intel to port the software giant’s Flash platform to Chipzilla’s Media Processor CE 3100.…

But Cabinet minister goes for individual title Ministry of Defence staff are responsible for the vast majority of security passes that have gone AWOL since 2001, research by the LibDems has revealed.…

Flip-flop fiddling NEC has announced the development of a memory circuit element that, it claims, will allow chips to consume no power when they're put in stand-by mode.…

Zero chance of WD buying Fujitsu's hard drive business Fujitsu did not give Western Digital a Christmas present - in fact it said 'No deal'.…

Cyber Range Pandora's Box goes live in '10 Pentagon plans to develop a Matrix-style simulated computer world in which to try out the cyber WMDs of tomorrow appear to be moving forward. Reports indicate that the ambitious plans for a "National Cyber R...

Opportunity and Spirit demonstrate the right stuff NASA's Mars rover Spirit last Saturday passed the fifth anniversary of its arrival on the Red Planet on 3 January 2004 - an achievement which will be matched on 24 January by its twin Opportunity.…

Matt Smith handed keys to Tardis The BBC has announced that 26-year-old Matt Smith will be the 11th Doctor Who, hitting screens in the fifth series in 2010 as the youngest actor* to tackle the role.…

Snapping up SourceLabs? Update Storage giant EMC is rumoured to have bought SourceLabs, a Seattle-based open source startup with nifty software technology for identifying developer problems and finding answers, for its Decho 'digital echo' business u...

Government flies kite Communications minister Lord Carter is to free BT from its universal service obligations - its legal duty to run a phone line to every home in the country, as well as provide payphones and other basic services available at a rea...

Lotus doing it for itself, for a change 'Leccy Tech British sports car makers Lotus and Ginetta have both announced they are to build road-going electric cars. As announcements go, we reckon there are worse ways to start a new year.…

A DSLR and an HD camcorder Review Life can be a confusing business. You’ve got mobile phones that double up as cameras, and cameras that record video. Well, prepare to be even more confused as cameras begin to capture HD video. Nikon’s D90 proudl...

Step one, inflate the size of the problem Comment The British Government plans to make it illegal to have sex with a prostitute if said tart has been trafficked, or is being controlled. Nor will this crime will be limited to offences committed in the...

But it's a beta As promised, the intrepid iPhone Dev Team released its iPhone 3G unlocking utility, yellowsn0w, on the first of this year.…

Wales' personal begging earns last $2m A personal plea for cash by Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has melted enough hearts to keep the ubiquitous online encyclopedia running for another fiscal year – and then some.…

"Pull my finger" has a whole new meaning The US Patent and Trademark Office yesterday released Apple's most recent application, in which the company files for patent protection for ... wait for it ... a glove.…

Now looking to book Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes Virgin Galactic has signed with the state of New Mexico to build the nation's first rocketplane spaceport for flinging wealthy customers out of Earth's atmosphere.…

Numbers are bad, but they've been a lot worse Chip sales took it on the chin in November, according to a new report by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), with sales dipping 9.9 per cent worldwide when compared to November of 2007.…

The passengers are revolting As Sodor wakes to a new year, Thomas and his friends notice some very disturbing things...…

How much would you bid for a bid? I have never expected much out of a Silicon Valley startup with a name that sounds like a baby word, but Swoopo is a rare exception. It's an online auction site with a dastardly twist.…

Management reshuffle expected Chinese computer maker Lenovo looks set to axe 200 jobs at the firm’s headquarters in Beijing.…

Antonio de Carli, come on down The voting has not yet closed, but kamikaze ballooning Brazilian priest Antonio de Carli looks a dead cert to secure the 2008 Darwin Awards crown for the most impressive contribution to improving the gene pool by removi...

First ISS lifter comes together at Cape Canaveral SpaceX has announced that it's completed assembly of its first Falcon 9 rocket - destined to deliver cargo to the ISS following a recently inked supply deal with NASA.…

Not a word, so far Comment Did you have a quiet Christmas? What about New Year? While New Years Eve is the busiest time for text messages, maybe you didn’t get any. And if you're a Nokia user, there may be a reason for that.…

US viewers get SpongeBob Savedpants Time Warner Cable customers have been saved - they'll still be able to watch SpongeBob Squarepants and other shows from Viacom.…

If we build it they will come Microsoft is set to release the first beta of its upcoming operating system Windows 7 at some point this month, but ahead of that release the trial version has already – unsurprisingly – landed on BitTorrent sites.â€...

A very wobbly framework Almost one in ten records within the Inland Revenue's frameworks database contain errors, the government has admitted.…

Broads-based giveaway The Department for Children, Schools and Families has given Norfolk County Council £310,000 to purchase laptops for more than 400 children.…