We’ve just had notice that the UK side of Sky’s operation, British Sky Broadcasting Group plc, are raising around $600 million through a private Bond issue.
They’ll be paying 9.5% interest, it will mature in 2018 and they hope it to close on or about 24 November 2008.
The full statement is below.
Europeans can now can legitimately order their own One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO Laptop.
The XO Laptop has been available for around a year in the US under two schemes – buying one to donate and Give One. Get One, which for double the price of a machine the purchaser would feel good for giving one away as well as receiving one themselves.
It’s the Give One. Get One. scheme that will be operating in Europe.
Continue reading OLPC XO Laptop: European Orders Being Taken
Internet users are being advised to batten down the hatches, set phasers to stun and retire to their bunkers next week with Monday, 24th November being predicted as the worst day the year for computer attacks.
Over the weekend we had chance to play with Blackberry’s first touchscreen model, the much-hyped Blackberry Storm.
The first impressions were very positive: the handset is a great size and feels very solid indeed. The back panel looked like it would survive a drop or two, and the battery door had none of that soon-break flimsiness seen on many phones.
Continue reading Blackberry Storm Review: Quick Hands-On (83%)
We can’t say its looks are doing much to get our hearts going a-thumpa-thumpa, but the Asus P565 specs are sure doing something to our techie glands.
The big taking point is that this Windows Mobile professional smartphone packs a mighty Marvell TavorP 800 Mhz processor, which Asus claims makes it twice as powerful as any other competing products in its class.
The P565 comes with HSDPA 3.6Mbps, UMTS 2100, EDGE/GPRS/GSM 900/1800/1900 connectivity, plus WLAN 802.11b+g , USB v1.1(FS) and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR.
Continue reading Asus P565 WM handset Claims “World’s Fastest” Crown
Despite endless hand wringing from City suits and Private Fraser pronouncements of impending dooooom, the European PC market grew faster than expected in this year’s third quarter, pushed along by healthy sales of netbooks.
According to research bods Gartner, the European market swelled by an impressive 24.3% to shift 17.2 million units in the third quarter, with Dell hanging on to the top spot in the UK market, flogging 708,000 units to earn a 20.6% market share.
Continue reading Acer Hit #1 In Europe Boosted By Netbooks Sales
Freshly minted in their busy Nordic factories is Nokia’s new E63, a rather natty looking handset sporting a full QWERTY keyboard in an attractively slim package.
Hoping to mesmerise the messaging masses with a pre-tax, pre-subsidy price of just €199, the Symbian S60 E63 packs a fair armful of functionality into its lithe 113 x 59 x 13-mm frame, which weighs in at a pocket-untroubling 126g form factor.
The all-encompassing entity known as Google continues its onslaught into our lives with the launch of voice and video chat inside their popular Gmail email service.
To get your browser buzzing with all that juicy chat/video action, it’s simply a case of pointing your browser here and downloading the free (Windows XP or later only – Mac coming later) plug.
Continue reading Gmail Introduces GMail Voice And Video Chat
If you like your MP3 players small and reasonably priced and you don’t fancy signing up to the Apple Borg Collective, then Sandisk’s new 8GB Sansa Clip MP3 Player may be worth a look.
Continue reading Sandisk 8GB Sansa Clip Pint Sized MP3 Player
Self-crowned by Opera as the most popular mobile browser in the known universe, the latest update, Opera Mini 4.2, has now been released in beta.
The Java-powered browser attempts to give mobile users something akin to a desktop surfing experience by displaying a small image of the full web page which can then be scrolled and zoomed into.