Record Breaking Growth For UK Internet Sales

Record Breaking Growth For UK Internet SalesWith shoppers driven indoors and online by the miserable weather, UK online sales soared past £4bn in a month for the first time ever, according to latest figures from IMRG.

The online retail body reported that Internet sales have exploded over the last year, with this July’s figure of £4.2bn up a hefty 80 per cent from £2.34bn in July 2006.
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Silver Surfers Take To The Web

Silver Surfers Take To The WebNew research has revealed that over two thirds of all European silver surfers use broadband as their main Internet connection and that broadband adoption amongst the old ‘uns is growing faster than average European Internet users (26% year on year growth compared to 14%).

According to the research from the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA), the growth in broadband penetration is having a big impact on how the old folks are communicating and spending their leisure time, with one in four logging on to the Internet in a typical week. Weekend use was recorded as growing at a rate of 19% year on year.
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Worldwide PC Sales Up 12%, HP Rule

Worldwide PC Sales Up 12%, HP RuleThe world still can’t get enough of computers as second quarter sales figures reveal a mighty 12 percent hike from the same time last year.

The wriggling bag o’stats from research firm Gartner and IDC put Hewlett-Packard at the front of the sales pack, grabbing the biggest share of the world’s PC market with unit shipments soaring by 37 percent.
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Mobile Search Business To Hit $2.4 billion by 2011

Mobile Search Business To Hit $2.4 billion by 2011The Telecom and Internet industries are squaring up for a right old fist fight over who rules the consumer mobile search business.

According to market research firm eMarketer, the battle looks set to resemble a full on pub brawl, with telecom carriers, handset makers, publishers, directory and yellow pages outfits, Silicon Valley big boys and a load of start-ups all looking to grab a piece of the mobile search action.
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Video Gamers Do Less Reading And Homework

Video Gamers Do Less Reading And HomeworkKids playing video games on school days spend up to a third less time doing homework than those who do play games.

Figures from a study in America revealed thath video gamers spending far less time reading and doing homework, with fragging boys found to spend 30 percent less time reading, with the girls registering a 34 per cent reduction in homework.
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Apple iPhone 2 Spotted

Apple iPhone 2 SpottedOn the eve of the most hysterical launch known to mankind – the Apple iPhone (exceeding even the heavily spent-on Windows XP launch), we have an exclusive the Apple iPhone II.

I know it sounds crazy, but we just stumbled over it while at the RCA 2007 show.

While looking at the work of Alan Outten, we came across one of his projects, No Robots Please!
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RCA 2007 Show Review: The Great Exhibition

The Great Exhibition: RCA 2007 Show ReviewWe attended the end of year show for the Royal College of Art (RCA) and were highly impressed with a lot of it.

While I personally thought that the fine art side of the exhibition was too safe and ultimately unexciting – it felt like they were all being too conscious of trying to ‘make it’ – the work in the Great Exhibition tent was very stimulating – bright minds tackling issues that are just ahead of current issues, and a few, a long way off.
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Search Engines Disagree On Top Matches

Search Engines Disagree On Top MatchesThe most popular search engines rarely agree with each other when it comes to the top results for identical queries – and the differences are growing yearly.

In a study involving 19,332 queries typed (presumably not by hand) into Google, Yahoo, Windows Live and Ask, the same top result only popped up on all four search engines 3.6 percent of the time.
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One Billion PCs In Use By The End Of 2008

One Billion PCs In Use By The End Of 2008The number of personal computers in use around the world will exceed one billion by the end of next year and grow to a mighty two billion by the year 2015, according to a report by a leading market research firm.

Forrester Research’s new paper, “Worldwide PC Adoption Forecast, 2007 To 2015,” calculates that the world will be clattering along to the sound of a billion computer keyboards by the end of 2008, hitting two billion in 2015.
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Mobile Users Drop £342m Of Phones Down The Pan

Mobile Users Drop £342m Of Phones Down The PanAn astonishing 855,000 handsets are flushed away every year in the UK, totting up to an annual £342 million’s worth of phones flying around the u-bend.

The rather startling figure comes from the price comparison and switching service, SimplySwitch, who claim that 4.5m handsets are lost or damaged every year, with many enjoying a rather bizarre demise.

It seems that phones are particularly prone to falling down the loo as a result of falling out of pockets or being knocked off the toilet roll holder (or, we expect, slipping out of the hands of drunk blokes feebly failing to multitask after a skinful of Super-lager).
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