Tag: .uk
iTunes UK gets a high definition boost: new TV shows arrive
iTunes stores outside the US have always lagged behind when it comes to new features, but Apple has gradually been adding new video content to the UK store.
Last week’s moderately big news was that high definition episodes of Lost series 5 have made it into the iTunes store. Now, eagle-eyed fans have discovered a range of other titles that have “suddenly hit” the store…
The UK's identity card scheme has one fatal flaw – no one's bought any card READERS yet
EDITOR’S NOTE: Please read this update while playing the theme tune from Benny Hill in the background.
The UK government may well be pushing ahead with its scheme to start rolling out ID cards to airport staff and other key workers in the security sector, but there’s one rather sizeable problem – the card readers. There aren’t any.
The government apparently failed to budget for the thousands upon thousands of card readers that…
Woolworths could live on… online
Break out the cheap party poppers and raise a “Worth It” champagne glass to the news that Woolworths may resurrect itself online.
While its recent demise has seen the shop space sold off, the Shop Direct Group has taken on the company and could be about to turn it into an online retailer.
The old Woolworths already offered online purchasing, but the new scheme would see it more able to compete with the likes of Amazon which sells goods exclusively online…
Sky offers Sky+HD box for under fifty quid as satellite giant pushes high definition
Sky has decided that it’s time to get really aggressive when it comes to high definition in the UK, and to that end has slashed the price of its Sky+HD box to just £49. That’s a third of the price it was early last year (£150) and is the satellite broadcaster’s hope of getting many more subscribers hooked on pay-for-HD.
In fact, thanks to a lot of enticing marketing and the lure of a variety of sports, films and other content in high definition, Sky has just had its best quarter — in the three months to the end of December, 188,000 people signed up for high-def services, taking the total number of subscribers to nearly 800,000…
Internet comes of age – social networks more popular than porn sites in the UK
Times were, back in the old days when the internet was mainly for “hobbyists,” easy access to vast reserves of pornography was the big seller of PCs and, you might argue, was instrumental in the uptake of broadband. It was in my house, at least. But not any more.
Web traffic counter Hitwise reckons traffic to social networking sites out-stripped that of porn providers for the first time in the UK late last year. Hitwise says it’s all women’s fault, with 55% of social net traffic coming from lady browsers uploading photos of cats to Facebook, and, as a result, they’re spending…
Virgin's P2P music service scrapped amidst labels' anti-piracy concerns
A new legal peer-to-peer music sharing service due to be launched by Virgin Media within the next couple of months has been put on hold indefinitely due to last minute whining by a few well-known record labels, according to a report in The Register.
“Virgin Music Unlimited” would have allowed Virgin Media’s broadband subscribers to share music and keep tracks while the company aimed to make money from these P2P users and presumably pass some of that revenue back to the record labels…
That 'friend' of yours who never buys music is safe – UK will not disconnect web access of music pirates
Hooray! The tedious and long-running saga of the UK possibly adopting the ‘three strikes’ system for disconnecting the internet access of music pirates has been dumped, with David Lammy, the Intellectual Property Minister, today saying there are “no plans” to introduce such a scheme.
Last year, everyone thought the French Technique of ordering ISPs to disconnect the harder-core of music pirates was the way to go, with the UK apparently considering adopting the idea.
However, Lammy has just told The Times that the government..
Your phone bill to get marginally less obscene – Competition Commission demands 1.5p per minute cut
There’s been a bit of a tangled web of a technical argument going on between phone regulator Ofcom and the Competition Commission, with the latter investigating the former after BT complained that Ofcom set UK connection prices too high.
The end result is this – your phone calls might be about to get 1.5p per minute cheaper, thanks to the CC agreeing that Ofcom did indeed get it a bit wrong when it capped the networks’ termination fees – the prices phone companies are allowed to charge you for ringing other networks – too high…
UK Lycos/Tripod users: you're unprofitable, get lost
There was a time when the black labrador at Lycos was a fairly common sight, but times change and the RSPCA may have to step in shortly to rescue the poor little mutt.
That is, if Lycos UK does to him what it’s doing to its email and web hosting users.
You see, it’s not very profitable running free email and web hosting services, particularly when there are much bigger (Hotmail) and better (Gmail) ones out there.
From 15th February, users with Lycos Mail or Tripod web hosting accounts will lose all of their data and no longer be able to send or receive emails. While I’ve not visited a Tripod page in about ten years, nor seen anyone in the UK with a Lycos email address for about the same period of time, a little piece of Internet history is slipping away…
Vodafone to trial 21Mbps HSPA+ high speed mobile network
Vodafone has announced that it has been testing technology that could succeed HSPA, successfully having completed trials of 16Mbps “HSPA+” and with plans to test a 21Mbps service in the spring.
With a theoretical top speed of 21Mbps, Vodafone claims real-world download speeds of up to 13Mbps, and at least 4Mbps across its entire network…
