Parliamentary reporter, Computing, Monday 15 June 2009 at 13:34:00 New home secretary Alan Johnson wants to examine all major policy decisions The Home Office has dismissed reports that a "first principles review" of all major departmental policy decisions requested by new home secretary Alan Johnson means he has doubts about the government's ID Card programme. A spokesman said that the review involved was no more than "background briefings" on what was a manifesto pledge by Labour supported by legislation in 2006. But Johnson faces the need to plan substantial spending cuts, estimated by some at around...Read More »

Tom Young, Computing, Monday 15 June 2009 at 13:14:00 Central Office of Information has appointed ABCe to independently validate figures to ensure value for money The government is assessing the popularity of its own web sites as part of a programme to ensure taxpayers are receiving value for money. The Central Office of Information (COI) has appointed media audit firm ABCe to independently validate the figures generated by audits. COI will publish comprehensive figures on the cost, quality and use of government web sites by June 2010, said board dDirector for interactive services Alex Butler....Read More »

Google steps up its privacy protection, including new safeguards over its image blurring technology. Full published article at: Read More »

Dave Bailey, Computing, Monday 15 June 2009 at 12:55:00 IDC predictions downgraded as regional GDP drops faster than expected The European IT services market is expected to decline this year as the regional economy shrinks, according to research by analyst IDC. The latest figure for GDP growth in Europe shows a decline of 4.0 per cent, down from the 2.5 per cent slump predicted in March, which has caused IDC to downgrade its annual IT services forecast from growth of 0.6 per cent to a fall of 0.6 per cent. "Companies are rethinking their top priorities,...Read More »

Publishers will donate 50 pence from every sale to the home of historic computing efforts during WWII. Full published article at: Read More »

The case for running Android -- an OS developed for smartphones -- on cheap, ultra-portable laptops has yet to be made. However, that hasn't stopped manufacturers from tinkering with the idea as demonstrated by the broad range of Android "smartbooks" running on ARM-based (be it Snapdragon, Tegra, or Freescale) architectures at Computex. Now Gartner, the guiding force for many corporate CIOs, has issued a research note that puts Atom-based netbooks running Windows 7 on notice while giving credence to the emerging smartbook category of ultra-portables. Analysts Christian Heidarson and Ben Lee said the...Read More »

Twitter users lambast major news outlets as they fail to provide timely coverage of Iran election protests. Full published article at: Read More »

999 system developed to locate net phones Phone companies are developing a system to allow 999 operators to pinpoint the location of VoIP callers, amid concerns that the increasing use of VoIP could mean police, paramedics and fire crews are unable to attend emergencies promptly.… Full published article at: Read More »

Tom Young, Computing, Monday 15 June 2009 at 12:25:00 Hundreds of ac.uk and gov.uk web sites have had links posted on them to pornography and illegal drug sites Hundreds of public sector web sites have been hacked into to include links and references to illegal web sites selling pornography and drugs online. The links can appear in Google searches before web users have even arrived at a web site – potentially putting them off visiting. Hackers exploit weaknesses in sites' security and use them to post links to their own web sites, according to Ritchie Fiddes,...Read More »

The sun rises, seasons change, CPUs get faster, and Intel's plans get leaked. That's the way it works, so while this report from Digitimes listing out Intel's chip releases through the beginning of next year should be taken with a grain of salt, feel free to make it a small one. Apparently there's a new line of celery-packing Celeron processors coming in Q3 called E3000, starting with the 2.4GHz E3200 and the 2.5GHz E3300. Both feature 1MB of L2 cache, 800MHz FSB, 65W power consumption, and hardware virtualization, meaning either can take you to XP-on-Win7...Read More »