Vodafone Scoops Up Spanish And Italian Broadband Firm

Vodafone adds Spanish and Italian broadbandMobile mega-company Vodafone has waved its enormous wad in the direction of Europe and acquired the Italian and Spanish assets of telecoms firm Tele2 AB for an eye-watering £537 million.

The Swedish-owned Tele2 enjoys a big presence in Italy, offering fixed-line and Internet services to more than 2.6 million users, including 400,000 broadband customers.
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Wiinstrument: Wii Drumming On Mac: Video & Podcast

Wiinstrument: Wii Druming On Mac: Video and PodcastWe’ve all see Wii-motes being used for all sort of strange purposes, well this one is useful.

A bunch of students at University of Potsdam, Germany have written a programme that lets you use your Wiimote and nunchuck to trigger sounds, such as drums and cymbals on a Mac. It’s not just drums that can be triggered, but any MIDI sound.

The accelerometer in the Wii-mote senses how hard the drums are being played, varying the loudness and harshness of the sound. It’s wire-free as it uses Bluetooth to connect.
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Charlatans To Give Away Their Single

Charlatans To Give Away Their SingleThe Charlatans plan to give away their forthcoming single.

If the news from earlier in the week about Radiohead letting their fans choose how much to pay for their next album didn’t make you sit up, you could well spit out your coffee when you hear what Alan McGee and the Charlatans are planning to do.
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CampaignTV Launched By Labour Friends

CampaignTV LaunchesWith rumours of a possible election in the UK, we wonder if there’s a co-incidence that one of the Labour parties media strategist has launched a Web site called CampaignTV.org, whose major focus is on politics.

Don’t expect too much balance in the politics on offer, but they’re not hiding that away either. In their words, “CampaignTV is the first free to view, independently-owned Labour-supporting internet TV channel.” That’s fair enough, as there’s plenty of pro-Conservative Web site around.
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Palm Increases Smartphone Sales, But Profits Slide

Palm Increases Smartphone Sales, But Profits SlidePalm is still battling to regain lost ground with the company posting a quarterly net loss of $840,000, a hefty slump down from the S$16.5 million net income notched up for the same period last year.

The company’s downward slide has been mainly caused by the decline of their traditional PDA (personal digital assistants) market, although their well regarded Treo phones continue to do reasonable business, shifting 689,000 units during the quarter, up 21 percent from last year.
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T-Mobile MDA Vario III Hits The UK

T-Mobile MDA Vario III Hits The UKExpected to be shimmying onto T-Mobile’s shelves as your peepers traverse this line of text is the new MDA Vario III smartphone (also known as the HTC Kaiser).

Veritably bulging with functionality, the Windows Mobile 6 powered PocketPC packs a built-in GPS receiver, Wi-Fi and three megapixel camera.
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Radiohead Tell Fans: “Pay What You Want”

Radiohead Tell Fans: Pay What You WantRadiohead have long been known as a band who like to do things differently, and their approach to selling their long-awaited seventh studio album certainly breaks new ground, with fans invited to pay whatever they like.
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EU Slashes Mobile Charges

EU Slashes Mobile ChargesThanks to the European Commission, mobile phone calls within the EU have just got a whole load cheaper.

The Commission has wielded its mighty powers to establish limits on how much mobile phone operators can charge their customers, with calls now costing no more than 34 pence a minute, while incoming calls are now pegged at a 17p/minute rate.
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4 Gigapixel Picture: The Devil’s Tower

When we first saw the photographic results of a 4 gigapixel camera a couple of years ago, we nearly exploded.

Some clever clogs in the US had taken an ex-Cold War satellite and started snapping shots with it.

4 Gigapixel Picture: The Devil's Tower

The amazing thing was the resolution – 4,000 pixels per inch. Yes, you read that right. See why we had such a strong reaction, eh?
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