Month: August 2007

Lenovo Announces Linux ThinkPads And £100 PCs

Lenovo Announces Linux ThinkPads And £100 PCsFollowing in Dell’s footsteps, Lenovo has announced that it will start selling its ThinkPad notebooks with the open source Linux operating system preloaded.

Commercial buyers and individual customers will now be able to specify SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 from Novell on Lenovo’s range of notebooks from the fourth quarter of 2007 – including those in the popular ThinkPad T Series.
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iPlayer: BBC To Enter Computer Games Market?

BBC To Enter Computer Games Market?The BBC is set to unveil a “significant” move into the videogames market, according to a report in The Scotsman.

The Corporation – still smarting from the humiliation of being caught out ripping off viewers taking part in TV phone-ins – is expected to unveil their new gaming strategy next week at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival.
Continue reading iPlayer: BBC To Enter Computer Games Market?

O2 i-Mode Scrapped, Bursting Their Bubble

O2 i-Mode Scrapped, Bursting Their BubbleThe UK’s number one mobile company O2 has dumped its flagship i-mode mobile Internet service after failing to attract enough customers – just two years after launching the service.

The ‘umbling turnaround came about after the company revealed that it had only managed to woo 546,000 customers to sign up to their i-mode service in the UK and Ireland. That may sound quite a respectable figure, but it only adds up to just 3 per cent of their 18 million customer base.

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Fujitsu Creates A Colossal 231″ Screen

Fujitsu Creates A Colossal 231Not that long ago, a 24″ CRT TV screen sat in your living room would mark you out as a well-wedged consumer, drawing envy from lesser mortals squinting at bedsit portables or bog standard 20″ units hired out from the once mighty Radio Rentals.

Come the 90s, impressively well dimensioned Plasma and LCD screens started to take a hold in upmarket homes, with the slimline, stylish goggleboxes expanding to wall filling screen sizes of 37″, 42″ and upwards.
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Google Car License Plate: Sweden

Google Car License Plate: SwedenNews reaches us from Helsingborg, on the gorgeous west coast of Sweden, that some sneaky chap has registered their car license plate as G O O G L E.

Joakim Jardenberg, the clever fellow who thought up the jolly wheeze, has also blogged the adventure (for those of you who read Swedish!).

He raises some interesting points about brands and by extension, individuals registering trade marks as car registrations, while pointing out that “one of the highest valued brands in the world, Google, is now my number plate.”

Anyone for “adPlate or plateSense,” japes Joakim, who is a development manager at the newspaper, Helsingborgs Dagblad (who have the super cool short domain name hd.se).

Google Car License Plate: SwedenWhat’s Google reaction?
Rather amusingly, Joakim’s been on to Google Sweden and has had a response from Maria Göth, their PR manager.

Google have made a statement about … not making a statement, which reads

We cannot make a statement before we know exactly what has happened. The persons at “Vägverket” (The authority which is responsible for the roads and car regulations) who handles personal number plates is on vacation but we shall contact them on Monday.

We await further news with bated breath …

Many thanks to Anders Olausson, long time chum on Digital-Lifestyles for the pointer.