We met with Mark Taylor, President of the Open Source Consortium (OSC) last night, directly after his meeting with the BBC to discuss opening-up the iPlayer to run on more platforms than just the Microsoft browser.
It appears that the meetings were positive and boiled down to two points, the BBC feels they haven’t communicated their desires for iPlayer properly and that they want the iPlayer to run on an open platform.
Continue reading iPlayer: BBC DOES Want Open Platform: OSC
The UK Post Office is joining the ever increasing number of organisations that is offering broadband to the UK public.
To make their offering different they’re planning to leverage their 14,000 post offices (currently at this level, but reducing each time they close one), to take cash for the broadband service – claiming to be the first UK provider to do this.
Continue reading UK Post Office Launches Broadband
Fast food customers keen to enjoy Wi-Fi access while consuming their McSludge and McProcessed Meat Of Uncertain Heritage will be pleased to learn that McDonald’s is about to roll out a free Wi-Fi service across its 1,200 outlets.
Continue reading McDonalds Offers Free Wi-Fi And Fries
Mobile 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.
Continue reading Vodafone Scoops Up Spanish And Italian Broadband Firm
When it comes to Wi-Fi, London is the big cheese of wireless connectivity according to mobile services firm iPass.
iPass’s new research found that London had the highest level of hotspot use by business folks, with four times as many besuited Wi-Fi sessions than the number two and three cities, New York and Chicago.
Continue reading London Rules The Business Wi-Fi Charts
The ITU claims there were nearly four billion phone subscribers worldwide by the end of 2006.
In their “Trends in Telecomm- unication Reforms” report, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said this figure was made up of fixed and mobile connections, with the largest growth in mobile.
Continue reading 4 Billion Phone Subs Worldwide
Today Ofcom have released their yearly Communications Market report, covering fixed and mobile telecoms, TV, radio and Internet use.
It’s a massive collection of information and statistics running to 332 pages, covering the habits and preferences of the UK population during 2006.
Continue reading Ofcom Report: Internet & Mobile Usage Up. TV, Radio & Phone Down
It’s been a busy time for Solwise of late. Near the start of this week their high-speed HomePlug, the AV 200Mbps / PL-200AV, passed the HomePlug AV certification testing at the recent PlugFest in France, giving them the right to display the “HomePlug AV Certified” logo.
Continue reading Solwise HomePlug AV Price Drop & Certification
iPhone’s appear to be taking out chunks of the wireless network at Duke University in the US.
We won’t get all technical on you by delving in to the tech-laden reasons as to why it _might_ be happening – they still don’t know how it is happening for sure – but the upshot of it is they think the iPhones are generating up to 18,000 requests per second.
Barrages like this are crippling the WLAN kit, as it tries to deal with and make sense of each of them.
Duke have been in touch with Apple about the problem, but so far the communication with Apple has been “one-way.”
Given the number of tech mad loonies that have bought iPhones in the US, it is a little strange that no other sites have recorded the same problem.
For the details on the story, trot over to Network World
We nearly fell off our chairs when we saw the Independent reporting that Virgin-backed games company, A World Of My Own (AWOMO) were hoping to list for $1Bn in London and Frankfurt.
The Big Idea is that people will use the 3D world of AWOMO to download their games.
Continue reading AWOMO, Virgin Games Company To Float For $1Bn?