Billed as the ‘UK’s biggest ever upgrade,’ Virgin Media has announced that it will putting all its 2Mb broadband customers into the fast line, ad hooking them up to to a 10Mb line.
Self-proclaimed as a move that will continue ‘its role as the pacesetter for high-speed broadband,’ Virgin say that the upgrade comes courtesy of some nifty leveraging of increased network capacity to ensure that all its lower level customers can bathe in the speedy glory of a 10Mb line (or thereabouts).
The Mobile Data Association (MDA) has been running wild over towering mountains of raw data, skipping gaily through meadows of mobile traffic reports and splashing in streams of SMS statistics to being you their latest quarterly report on mobile phone usage in the UK.
Covering mobile activity from October 2008 – January 2009, the study looked at text messaging (SMS) and picture and video messaging (MMS) traffic and discovered that UK phone owners sent 78.9 billion text messages in 2008, up an RSI-inducing 20 billion texts on 2007.
We’ve already commented about how the photographers rights in the UK were rapidly being eroded by aggressive cops, but things look set to take a turn for the worse with the introduction of section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008 today.
There’s been a lot of concern in the UK about members of the public and journalists being restricted in where and what they can take photographs of in public places.
Where previously there hasn’t been any significant limitations, there is now much concern that the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 contains a clause that allows for the arrest of people taking photos “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”
A definition that broad could lead to any photographer being arrested.
The NUJ arranged a mass-photo taking this morning outside New Scotland Yard, our man Mike was down there and will be reporting back shortly. has now published his Section 76 Photographers Scotland Yard Protest: Report.
Photo: Alberto OG
Unless you’ve been living under a cyber-rock for the past month or two, you’ll know that Twitter has become the most talked about service on the web, and its growing popularity has been reflected by the site shimmying its way into the top 100 UK website listings.
Project Kangaroo, which was to offer video from a number of UK broadcasters, delivered over the Internet, has been blocked by the UK Competition Commission (CC).
Kangaroo was a joint venture with the BBC through BBC Worldwide, ITV plc and Channel Four Television Corporation.
In the UK, it usually only takes about a nano-centimetre of snow to have the headlines blaring, “OMG! SNOW CHAOS!!!,” but in the last 24 hours parts of the country have suffered major snowfalls.
Several travel websites buckled under the strain this morning as anxious commuters tried to find out if their train or bus was running (if you did manage to get through, the answer was generally: “it’s not”).
@StephenFry, UK TV broadcaster and now unofficial poster child/ marketing marvel for Twitter, has passed over 100,000 followers on the service today.
Only a week ago, we joked that Stephen Fry’s appearance at the London Apple Store might cause a riot, because he had 65,000 users at that point. He’s gained over 35,000 followers in a week! (BTW – the Apple event is now off)
His 100,000th follower is Hayley Elliot (@amellioh).
Fry is also the third most followed on the whole of Twitter, easily being the most popular in the UK. only about 25k more and he’ll be threatening cnnbrk’s position.
Another day, another use of Twitter. Today it’s being used to report the levels of snow falls around the UK.
All very useful individually, but the power of a mass of people reporting this information is when it’s brought together.
Spock-ear-toting sci-fi fans should be happier than a tribble in a cargo bay after Virgin Media announced the launch of its new Sci-fi & Fantasy area of its TV ‘on demand’ section.
With up to 150 hours of programming from Warner TV, FX UK, ContentFilm and Virgin Media TV in orbit, there should be enough juicy sci-fi treats in there to set users’ phasers to ‘moisten.’