The federal government has decided to set a price of $AU900 million on the 700 MHz spectrum that remained unsold after auctions earlier this year, and in the process has closed off any chance that the spectrum would be given to the country's public safety agencies.…
For many of us, our earliest encounters with computing will have involved bending our uncultivated minds around word processing software, either in school or at work, but the days when Clippy and comic sans were novelties are long gone. New software created by Bret Taylor, the former Facebook CTO, and Kevin Gibbs, previously of Google, seems to breathing fresh air into the humdrum world of word processing though.
Quip is a multi-platform cloud-based word processing app that promises to make word processing seamless and efficient across mobile and desktop platforms. The app is optimised for different screen sizes and can adapt the document depending on the device you're viewing or editing on.
By: Katie Collins,
Business people using mobile devices are securing them with easy-to-crack PINs rather than more difficult passwords, a survey has found.…
Instead of being drenched by Amazon's cloud, cloud infrastructure biz ProfitBricks is trying to get out in front of the hardbacks'n'hosting monolith and lower its prices before Bezos & Co initiate another price drop.…
Google Glass wearers will have to get used to privacy-conscious people telling them to get lost - but a new map app from Mercedes for the techno-goggles may make that impossible.…
"Nothing happens. Nothing happens. And then everything happens," says Laura Lewis, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.
"Our results are highly preliminary but we have found signatures of layering in the materials we have made." This is significant, she says, because the layering of iron and nickel suggests that the nanomaterial they are trying to make can become a "supermagnet". It is designed to be a synthetic form of tetrataenite, a rare magnetic extra-terrestrial iron-nickel alloy found only in meteorites.
Lewis is leading a $3.3m (£2.2m) fast-track Department of Energy research project to synthesise new supermagnetic materials and then work out how to mass-produce them for a market that is worth $20bn (£13bn) a year.
By: Mark Piesing,
A neighbourhood-watch scheme usually demands boots on the ground, but you could automate things with an ad-hoc notification system based on video cameras. Here's how.
By: James Floyd Kelly,
It can be useful in defending yourself from assailants, but what if you accidentally spray yourself with capsaicin? Fight back the pain with these hot tips.
By: Leila Johnston,
By: Kim Zetter,
Today, the last Freeview transmitters will be relocated out of the bands that were sold off for 4G telephony earlier this year. The whole shift has happened ahead of schedule, which means that by the beginning of autumn, EE's monopoly on next-generation telecoms will come to an end.…
Microsoft has tweaked the Word web app it offers with its SkyDrive cloud storage service, adding developer-friendly tools and the ability to work with JavaScript, CSS and HTML and other code files.…
Internet foghorn Robert Scoble has come out booming against claims that open source cloud project OpenStack should implement features found in major cloud provider Amazon Web Services.…
Dutch regulators have cleared Amazon's cloud for consumption by financial institutions within the country, validating the Amazon Web Services infrastructure for use even in tightly regulated industries.…
A Russian politician is trying to amend an internet censorship law so that it bans swearing on the web.
State Duma Deputy Yelena Mizulina, who is chairperson of Russia's Committee for Family, Women, and Children, has proposed the changes, which would affect social networks, social media and forums. If offending material is not deleted within 24 hours, the page would then be blocked and added to a blacklist.
Just like David Cameron's recent proposals for introducing stricter internet filtering in the UK, the aim of the legislation would be to protect children from encountering unsuitable content. The amendment would be to a law entitled 'On the protection of children from information harmful to their health and development', which came into effect in September 2012 and introduced a huge blacklist of sites covering topics such as drugs, suicide and child pornography.
A similar proposal to Mizulina's was put forward on 25 July by United Russia deputy Vitaly Milonov, who wants to tighten controls over social networks and enforce a rule whereby to sign up for a dating site you have to do so using your passport. Milonov is the same politician who last year was behind a bill that banned "promoting sodomy, lesbianism, bisexualism and transgenderism to minors".
By: Katie Collins,
Chip designer Qualcomm has taken a share in telecoms gear maker Alcatel-Lucent as the pair collaborate on Small Cells - despite the architectural differences of opinion.…
Chip designer Qualcomm has taken a share in telecoms gear maker Alcatel-Lucent as the pair collaborate on Small Cells - despite the architectural differences of opinion.…
The evolution of channel surfing risks sidelining public service broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV, and has prompted the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (aka the Ministry of Fun) to work out how much a prominent position on our Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs) is worth.…
BT's soon-to-be new boss Gavin Patterson made the first big management decision of his reign today - and split the telecom giant's retail division into two distinct wings: consumer and business.…
Emulex has appointed a senior vice-president for operations, signalling new CEO Jeff Benck's intention to have his company survive as a viable business.…
Google Reader alternative The Old Reader has told all of its new members to go away in two weeks.…
Amazon has launched two edge locations for technology services within India, indicating that colocation giant Equinix may soon open facilities in the sub-continent.…
According to Mr Du, he was playing a quick game of Love Machine on his Galaxy S4 when it exploded into flame, causing him to cast it onto the alarmingly flammable sofa and thus gutting his whole house.…
Another round of coffee* shops are being fitted for wireless charging; this time in Silicon Valley, as the third wireless charging standard grabs a little more retail estate.…
IT capacity company 6fusion has developed a tool that helps Amazon Web Services developers assess the performance of the cloud relative to their own on-premises infrastructure.…
A man has been arrested after a feminist campaigner was deluged with rape threats and graphic abuse on Twitter.
Caroline Criado-Perez, who had successfully campaigned for Jane Austen to be depicted on future ten pound English banknotes, revealed late last week that her achievement had been overshadowed by hostile and misogynistic messages from a number of Twitter users.
At 5.57pm on 28 July, Ms Criado-Perez tweeted that an arrest had been made. The Metropolitan police later confirmed to Wired.co.uk that a 21-year-old man had indeed been arrested in the Manchester area on suspicion of harassment offences in connection with "an allegation of malicious communications".
By: Chris Baraniuk,
Britain's advertising watchdog has spotted the blindingly obvious: kids are giving false ages to allow them to sign up to Facebook and other social media sites.…
Ofcom has kicked off a two-year study to map out digital TV and radio reception in the UK - asking for input on whether signal quality can be improved, and who should be paid to do it.…
A high court judge has ruled that a computer scientist cannot publish an academic paper over fears it could lead to vehicle theft.
Flavio Garcia, from the University of Birmingham, has cracked the algorithm behind Megamos Crypto -- a system used by several luxury car brands to verify the identity of keys used to start the ignition. He was intending to present his results at the Usenix Security Symposium.
By: Duncan Geere,
Algoriddim, the team behind enormously-popular iPad DJ app Djay has released a significant update for it, adding a stack of new features.
The app, which won a 2011 Apple Design Award, has long been a favourite of tablet DJs for its simplicity and power. However, it had begun to fall behind high-profile competitors like Native Instruments' Traktor in terms of features.
By: Duncan Geere,
Fourth-ranked US wireless carrier T-Mobile has hit back at its competitors' phone-upgrade plans with a new summer promotion that does away with down payments on all new devices.…
By: Katie Collins,
Would you like your genome shone 30-40 kilometres into the atmosphere from the middle of the desert with a giant laser? What are we saying, of course you do. And if you're planning on being at Burning Man this year in the northern Nevada desert, where temperatures regularly hit the high 30s in dry and dusty Black Rock City, you can.
By: Liat Clark,
One in five O2 and Be broadband subscribers abandoned the home internet service after it was bought up BSkyB - according to figures shown to the City this morning.…
Two thirds of IT directors admit their company's wireless network was rolled out without any kind of plan despite their businesses being dependent on it - resulting in inefficient and overloaded networks.…
When a peacock fans his plumage and struts his stuff, it's an impressive sight. Or so it appears to us humans. What really matters, of course, is what the female he's trying to impress makes of it. In a new study, scientists mounted tiny eye-tracking cameras on the heads of peahens to try to get inside their minds as they watched males' courtship displays.
The findings suggest that what a female pays attention to when she sizes up a potential mate isn't what some researchers had thought.
All those dramatic eyespots? Meh. But the width of his feather train? She's definitely checking that out. And when he turns around and shakes his tail feathers? That's totally hot.
By: Greg Miller,
For the next month anyone with an NFC-equipped Android or Blackberry handset is invited to enjoy a free pint of the black stuff, in exchange for a quick bonk on the bar.…
The Wikimedia Foundation has flicked the switch on its mobile editing feature, allowing anyone with an account to edit Wikipedia articles on just about any mobile device capable of rendering HTML.…
Amazon's cloud division has contributed to over $1.6 billion in revenue in the e-retailer's nebulous "Other" category this year, as Bezos & Co.'s cloud continues its vertiginous rise.…
A new update pushed out today means that the 4oD app now supports on-demand catch-up downloads on both Android and iOS devices. Version 3.0 of the app on iOS, and version 2.0 on Android allows you to download 30-day catch-up content to your phone and tablet to then watch offline or abroad.
Similar functionality has been available on the iOS version of the BBC's iPlayer app for a while, but 4oD has leapfrogged the BBC when it comes to making this feature available to its Android users.
By: Katie Collins,
It's the stuff that 90s kids' dreams are made of: popular children's TV show Knightmare is being resurrected for online audiences in a one-off special episode for YouTube's Geek Week.
Geek Week will be a weeklong celebration of geek culture from 4-11 August, in which Knightmare will feature alongside a Doctor Who celebration, anime and attempts by YouTube gamers to break Guinness World Records. Knightmare was a popular medieval game show that used blue screen chroma key to enable virtual reality interactive gameplay. It ran for seven years, finishing in 1994, and achieved cult status among its fans.
By: Katie Collins,
Listen this week for an entertaining 30-minute look at the most interesting technology and science stories from the last seven days, with Wired.co.uk's Nate Lanxon, Olivia Solon and Liat Clark.
By: Nate Lanxon,
Microsoft has vowed Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 will be the “best” platform for running Linux in the cloud.…
The past few weeks over at BT Towers have been busy, fraught and disruptive. But there was no ray of sunshine in the telecom giant's latest financial results out today.…
O2 has shut down its foray into health monitoring, quietly dropping Help at Hand and Health at Home and offering refunds to the few who had signed up to the services.…
Early iPhones last significantly longer before being accidentally destroyed than later models, according to a new survey - but nobody knows why.…
Google Maps can't find the Cambodian village of Prek Toal. Bing Maps is similarly clueless about the community of 6,000 nestled near the north-western end of Lake Tonle Sap.…
The grey market for mobile phones is forecast to slump by 12 per cent this year, ironically because handset makers can’t compete against an increasingly vibrant trade in counterfeit products, according to market watcher IHS iSuppli.…
Swisscom has appointed an interim CEO, after announcing that 49-year-old Carsten Scholter was found dead in his flat in Fribourg on July 23.…
Microsoft and Azul Systems have hoisted the open source Java implementation OpenJDK onto the Redmond's Azure cloud, giving developers access to the language on Azure's Windows-based cloud services.…
Google finally unveiled Android 4.3 at today's breakfast event with Android and Chrome head Sundar Pichai. Still dubbed Jelly Bean, this update follows in the footsteps of versions 4.1 and 4.2: it introduces a couple of major features and a handful of smaller ones without drastically altering the Android experience introduced back in version 4.0.
By: Andrew Cunningham,
Google announced a new device, dubbed Chromecast, at a press event today. The tiny dongle plugs into an HDMI input on a TV and connects to Wi-Fi, allowing users to stream video directly to their TVs from other devices -- without requiring matching operating systems.
Interfaces will now present a "cast" button that, when clicked, will send the video from a PC, tablet, or smartphone to the television. Playback can then be controlled by the device sending the video.
By: Casey Johnston,
EE has signed up 687,000 4G customers, and is in track to hit a million by year's end, but average revenue per user (ARPU) and total customer numbers are both a shade down as its 4G monopoly comes to an end.…
The US Department of Defense has estimated at $3.5bn the costs of clearing military ops out of 25MHz of radio spectrum to make way for mobe operators – except it doesn't want to march off entirely, demanding instead that the band's new owners share nicely.…
The original designer of EA's successful sports franchise Madden NFL has been awarded over $11 million (£7.2 million) by a court in the Northern District of California.
Robin Antonick, the original designer and developer of the football games, alleged that he signed a series of publishing and development contracts with EA including a 1986 agreement wherein EA would pay royalties on any derivative works related to the original EA Madden as well as prohibiting use of his confidential information.
By: Philippa Warr,
Since the start of this year it has become clear that the government was shifting away from its hands-off approach to censoring content online by leaving ISPs to work out an agreed code that would prevent regulatory intervention.…
The internet of things is taking over our cities. Here are five examples of how its shaping the urban environment
By: Victoria Turk,
Virgin Media plans to get mobile operators to pay for free Birmingham-wide Wi-Fi in a deal which could see every traffic light in the city turned unto a 4G cell base station.…
Amazon is changing its delivery charges policy so that customers in the UK spending under £10 might now have to pay a small fee, rather than getting their goods sent to them for free.
Amazon's Super Saver delivery option used to mean there was no minimum spend necessary to guarantee free delivery, but as of 23 July, customers will have to pay for delivery of some items. Those items don't include books, DVDs, Blu-rays, music, video games and software products.
By: Katie Collins,
After months of big bets on open source and cloud computing technologies, IBM just can't stay away from the gambling table, and on Wednesday came back to slam down a ton of chips on Cloud Foundry, a platform cloud technology developed by VMware spinoff Pivotal.…
The Darwinian derby to determine which RSS-reading service would replace Google Reader as the world's dominant feed-wrangler may just have produced its first extinction event, after theoldreader.com choked on its recently-enlarged database and crashed.…
Akamai's latest State or the Internet report shows that the US is making little headway in becoming a top-ranked broadband nation, and is being outpaced by Asia and Europe based on traffic analysis from the first quarter of the year.…
Public safety users need broadband radio access and should be allocated 20 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band, according to an Australian parliamentary report.…
Google has introduced a feature that lets administrators locate their cloud data next to their rented servers to reduce latency, bringing the Chocolate Factory's cloud closer to its rivals in terms of capability.…
Police in Germany are going to print their own 3D guns in order to discover whether they can be easily smuggled through airport security, or even used by their own officers.
Designs for a crude 3D-printed gun called the Liberator were posted by a US man named Cody WIlson back in May. Despite being removed by the US government, the designs were quickly posted all over the internet by file-sharing sites beyond the reach of authorities, raising the question as to how much of a threat this kind of weaponry poses.
By: Katie Collins,
Cisco has dug deep and found $2.7bn for intrusion prevention security player Sourcefire.…
All hail the descendant of the choose-your-own-adventure book. This is the Choosatron, a digital storytelling platform in a cardboard box, which fuses arcade gaming with interactive fiction.
When building version one of the Choosatron in May 2012, Minneapolis-based software developer Jerry Belich shunned all digital outputs: "Otherwise, why not make an app?" Belich, 30, knew he'd found the perfect antithesis to LCDs when he discovered a thermal printer on a maker site. "It just clicked that if it printed as you played, by the time you finished you would have this complete transcript of your story."
By: David Cornish,
Circumstance, it seems, has forced SAP to abandon its beloved dual-chief-executive model.…
Following EE's Android-based wallet, the iPhone has finally got into the Near Field Communications bonking game with a sled from Device Fidelity and a service from Moneto, bringing the joy of bonking to all.…
EMC Cloud Czar Mike Feinberg has left the Hopkinton-based storage biz after a rejig of product lines, El Reg can reveal.…
Where would we be without the Smiths? Well, Earth would have been overrun by aliens, enslaved by robot squid and mourning the steampunk-spider-induced death of Ulysses S Grant -- that's where.
By: Jordan Crucchiola,
From late 2007 until March 2011, if you were an identity thief or credit card fraud artist in need of a fake ID, your best bet was "Celtic's Novelty ID Service." From its base in Las Vegas, the online storefront manufactured driver's licenses for 13 states and shipped them to buyers around the world. No questions asked.
With a reputation for quality and the fastest turnaround in the industry, Celtic was a no-nonsense player in a global underworld benighted by drama and infighting. On the Russian-led criminal forum Carder.su, his primary home, he accumulated scores of glowing reviews from satisfied customers. "You can trust him," wrote Oink Oink. "This guy doesn't fuck around. Great shit, great communication and bends over backwards to help you out."
By: Kevin Poulsen,
Microsoft has detailed, in a blog post just how SkyDrive will behave under Windows 8.1.…
Data to and from Google's servers now accounts for a quarter of all US internet traffic, according to the latest network analysis by monitoring firm DeepField, with over 60 per cent of all end users and their devices having some business with the Chocolate Factory every day.…
It has been three years since the techies at NASA and Rackspace Hosting mashed up their respective cloudy compute and storage software to create OpenStack.…
Death may be a fact of life, but it hasn't stopped enterprising minds throughout the centuries from trying to bend the rules. But the right techniques always seemed to slip through their fingers -- much like their unfortunate patients.
By: Frank Swain,
Prime Minister David Cameron will today gaily announce that Brit adults will be forced to ask their ISP for permission to view web grumble flicks.…
Two Google Play apps that use the so-called "MasterKey" vulnerability, albeit harmlessly, have been detected, security researchers have announced.…
By: Duncan Geere,
Researchers at Disney have created a vortex-firing, 3D-printed feedback device that will let Kinect and Wii gamers feel the effects of their gestures.
The Aireal feedback device fires loops of compressed air -- invisible "smoke" rings -- that can create tactile effects ranging from the sensation of a butterfly resting on your arm, to a swatting a ball during a tennis match.
Developed by Disney Research in Pittsburgh, the device is due to be unveiled at an international conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques in Califronia from 21-25 July.
By: Kadhim Shubber,
An intelligent surgical knife has been developed that can detect cancerous tissue as it cuts through it in less than three seconds. The iKnife has been developed by researchers at Imperial College London, and uses smoke from tissue to sense whether or not it is cancerous.
The smoke, which is usually extracted away, is caused by heat from electrosurgical knives that vaporise the tissue as they cut through it. Imperial's Dr Zoltan Takats realised this smoke would be rich in the biological information and so connected an electromagnetic knife to a device which can sense the chemicals that hold information about the state of the tissue.
By: Katie Collins,
Porn aficionados, sex bloggers and perverts are up in arms after Tumblr wiped all naughty content from its search facilty - neatly erasing at least half of the cats'n'porn site's raison d'être.…
Google Glass has been in the hands of developers on Google's Explorer program for a while now, but some of those who have got their hands on the high-tech specs have been pushing the boundaries of what Google wants them to do.
One hacker has successfully managed to get facial recognition technology to run on Glass, despite Google explicitly stating in its developer policy that this isn't allowed. Stephen Balaban, founder of Lambda Labs in San Francisco, is challenging Google and hoping that others will do the same, actively encouraging people to use the hashtag #ihackglass on Twitter.
By: Katie Collins,
It is time for your reminder to review, test and otherwise care about backups. Today's twist is probing the cloud to see if we need to worry about cloudy backup ourselves. If so, how exactly do we do it?…
Facebook has bought Monoidics, a UK-based firm that develops software that checks other software for bugs. Financial terms of the deal, announced Thursday and subject to unspecified closing conditions, were undisclosed.…
Creating a cloud server takes just a few minutes and cost peanuts, but a chap in the USA has decided it takes too long and created a site that spawns a free Amazon Web Services EC2 micro-instance in seconds and then offers you the chance to open a terminal window to drive it.…
Amazon has gussied up its Elastic Beanstalk service by polishing the web GUI as it puts pressure on other platform clouds built atop its platform.…
Self-described “wise old bird of the industry, or at least, a bird that doesn't have much hair left”, Simon Hackett, has suggested to a Sydney conference that the fibre NBN could be delivered for close to a copper budget, if the design is revisited and reviewed.…
Listen this week for an entertaining 30-minute look at the most interesting technology and science stories from the last seven days, with Wired.co.uk's Nate Lanxon, Olivia Solon and Liat Clark.
By: Nate Lanxon,
The British government has said it will inspect the operations of a UK-based cybersecurity centre run by Huawei in order to allay fears over security threats.
Following a recommendation by parliament's intelligence and security committee in June, the government has decided that it will conduct a review of the site in Oxfordshire, where Huawei employees check equipment for vulnerabilities before it's connected to national telecoms infrastructure.
By: Katie Collins,
On 11 July, Edward Noel and three of his Exeter University mates won $50,000 (£33,000) at Microsoft-sponsored Imagine Cup finals in St Petersberg. Their invention, an app called SoundSYNK, allows people to hook mobile and tablet devices and stream music over all the devices simultaneously.
But Noel and his teammates -- Robert Parker, Alexander Bochenski and Jonathan Neumann -- have loftier ambitions than simply this innovative mobile surround sound system: they want to transform the way people share data.
"We're creating something called the Impromptu Social Network," says Noel, speaking from Atlanta where the team have been flown out to present at Microsoft's annual Global Exchange conference. "It's the ability to connect an unlimited number of people together in your area".
By: Kadhim Shubber,
On a street tucked down the side of Paddington station, a group of people mill about, squinting into the early evening glare. Some murmur frantically, some emit gleeful giggles, others remain silent and dumbfounded.
It's no surprise that they're looking startled and disorientated, for like Lucy returning from Narnia, they've arrived back in this spot after slipping through a portal and spending the three hours prior in another world. They've been wandering alone through a vast desert wilderness, a seedy movie studio, a dimly lit forest and a maze of more than a hundred rooms that you'd never know were hidden behind the tall red corrugated doors of this old London sorting office.
It's a world created by Felix Barrett and his Punchdrunk team who have a reputation for building unnerving immersive theatrical experiences. The Drowned Man, which is the company's first large-scale London production for several years, is based around Woyzeck, Büchner's unfinished masterpiece about poverty, wealth, status and jealousy.
By: Katie Collins,
An app dealing with the civil war in Syria and which was banned from the app store by Apple has provided thefoundations for a children's game about a bear in charge of a theatre company.
Endgame: Syria was rejected by Apple over its political content. Apple has a history of shying away from contentious content and the rejection came thanks to a clause forbidding apps which "solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity."
By: Philippa Warr,
Web-hosting biz and domain-name registrar Network Solutions was pummelled offline by attackers last night - and took its customers' websites down with it.…
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has published its bi-ennial Communications Outlook and suggested the communications industry – and governments that regulate it – still have plenty of work to do in order to secure growth and serve customers.…
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has taken the first steps towards standardising G.fast, the next major DSL-based standard which vendors hope will provide a “fibre-like” experience without having to drag the glass all the way into homes.…
Google has added a dedicated memache service to its platform cloud, giving the company's technology more of the characteristics of clouds operated by Amazon and Microsoft.…
BT's policy supremo was mauled this afternoon by MPs demanding to know why the telecom giant's investment in the UK's government-subsidised broadband deployment had dramatically shrunk.…
Apple has revamped and released Logic Pro X, a major new version of the company's professional audio and music production software suite.
This new edition includes a "virtual session drummer" for automating the creation of percussion tracks. Called Drummer, Apple claims it "automatically plays along with your song in a wide variety of drumming styles". We are yet to test how this drummer digests the complex polyrhythms and bizarre time signatures inherent to technical death metal, but we will.
By: Nate Lanxon,
According to Lynette Jones, a senior research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, your skin has about as many sensory receptors as your eyeballs, making it a hugely underutilised medium for receiving information. The problem with skin, though, is that those receptors are spread out over 1.8 square metres, and we don't currently have a very good idea of how sensitive a given patch of epidermis is going to be. We can feel a phone vibrating through our pants, sure. But could we tell if it was buzzing in a particular pattern? Or just vibrating its left side, as opposed to the right? These are the questions Jones is trying to answer, with an eye towards next-gen devices that don't just pump info into our eyes and ears, but directly onto our hides, too.
Jones' most recent work focuses on dense haptic displays, and how they might be able to give us spatial cues about the world around us. Think of something like a back brace that could guide you noiselessly through a corn maze, just by buzzing. Recently, Jones built a crude version of that general concept -- a wearable array, decked out with a series of motors and a handful of accelerometers for measuring how those motors' vibrations traveled through the skin -- and tested it out on eight subjects.
By: Kyle Vanhemert,
