Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

As earlier reported work has commenced on repairing the severed cables in the Mediterranean but it seems we are no closer to knowing why three cables were cut within four days of each other last week.

The initial assumption that a Tanker got into trouble and had to drop anchor was initially rejected by the shipping company, and seems to have been dismissed now totally. As you can imagine conspiracy theorists and experts are having a great time trying to get to the bottom of this.

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A UN report has stated that because of mobile phones and internet access the gulf between rich and poor nations is narrowing, with 58% of cell phone subscribers world wide coming from the developing nations.

This should only be seen as the green shots of recovery though as while technology is credited with boosting development in poorer countries, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), it also warned that the digital divide still meant the gap between the rich and the poor is still a big divide.

Examples in the report include:

• In Africa, where the increase in terms of the number of mobile phone subscribers and penetration has been greatest, this technology can improve the economic life of the population as a whole.
• In rural communities in Uganda, and the small vendors in South Africa, Senegal and Kenya mobile phones were helping traders get better prices, ensure less went to waste and sell goods faster.
• A study of Thai manufacturing firms showed that a 10% increase in computer literate staff produced a 3.5% productivity gain.

This all seems like good encouraging progress to me.

Via [BBC]

• Technology for the homeless; cellphones on the streets of Washington DC
• Gadgetell introduces a new show: InterrupTech
• Get Swype For the Droid

Remember the Million Dollar Home Page where you could buy small slices of advertising and become part of something much bigger, well a Canadian film maker is seeking 100,000 investors at $10 a go for a film that isn’t even finished yet. In return you get a slice of any future profit.

The similarity seems to be that he is planning to sell off individual frames for $10 (Canadian) that will last 0.04 seconds on screen. In addition you get to display an image or video on the films website. With a total of 144,000 frames in the movie he is looking for $1.44 million (Canadian) for the film which is entitled Free For All ... But You that “tells the story of a man who falls for a woman but is rebuffed because she is already committed to an “eight-sided relationship”, meaning that she can have guiltless sex with seven other people.”

With 11 minutes and 23 seconds sold to date of My Million Dollar Movie, the real question is which of the seven people have got lucky yet?

Read [My Million Dollar Movie] Via [The Times]

As I was in Dubai last week when the Internet went down due to the severed cable I was interested to read that work has started on repairing it in the Mediterranean Sea. Add to that the fact that looking at the map it feels like I should be able to see them working from my study window and it all seems very personal.

Flag Telecom are stating that it will take about a week to get fixed, and will involve a total of 50 people including navigation experts and cable engineers. Worryingly the cause of the problem that severely disrupted the Middle East and India last week is still not known.

In case you didn’t catch it, the level of disruption was amazing:

• There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption.
• Disruption also occurred in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
• In Dubai, at least two internet service providers (ISPs) were affected.

Latest speculation is that an anchor from a Tanker was to blame, but this has been denied by the Egyptian communications ministry.

Via [BBC]

Microsoft have recently announced deals with Sony BMG and MTV Networks that will significantly increase the amount of professional content on its European video sites. The drive behind this is an attempt to capture more of the online video advertising market, which experts predict will be the fastest growing segment for some time to come.

So what does the new deal mean in real terms for people in Europe? Well viewers of MSN in UK, France and Germany will be able to access a large amount of Sony BMG’s catalog, including videos from artists such as Avril Lavigne, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, and Justin Timberlake. So not all good news then!

To date Microsoft has been a small player in the online video market, and they will be hoping to change that with this deal, but somehow it doesn’t have “breakthrough” written all over it to me!

Via [The Times]

• Xbox Live Update for the week of March 14 through March 20, 2010
• Spring 2010 Xbox 360 update adds USB flash drive support
• Internet Explorer 9 embraces HTML5, ditches Windows XP

Intel has launched the first chip to include two billion transistors. Known as the Tukwilla (why you may ask!) it isn’t likely to find its way into your home computer as it has been designed for high-end servers. Operating at 2GHz it isn’t a revolutionary step forward, but it does mark another milestone:

“It’s not revolutionary, it’s another evolutionary step,” said Malcolm Penn, an analyst at Future Horizons, of Tukwila, (so that would be where the name came from)

The first chip to carry 1 billion transistors was built in 2006, and in 2004 the equivalent chip contained 592 million switches.

Via [BBC]

• Intel introduces next generation Classmate PC
• Google looking to expand into TV?
• Moblin and Maemo merge to form MeeGo

If you thought tidying your 200+ address book entries was painful enough try and imagine what it must be like to be overhauling the whole internet code addressing system!

That is what has just started as the “master address books for the net are being updated to include records prepared in a new format known as IP version 6”, which long term means an end to the shortage of addresses that sites can be given. The current version (IPv4) is expected to exhaust the still unallocated addresses by 2011.

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I am not exactly sure how I feel about the news that eBay is going to ban sellers from leaving negative comments about buyers? You see I got a really negative comment once. I left feedback saying that I thought the postage was excessive and not clear, but that the product was fine. The seller came back with something along the lines of ‘terrible buyer, never do business with them’, and of course followed this up with a email offering to jointly remove our negative comments. I declined as I reckoned that anyone reading all the other positive comments wouldn’t be put off and I wasn’t going to be bullied.

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First, we shouldn’t endorse hackers. Second, we shouldn’t express views on religion or politics. Third, this story just made me laugh out load - so apologies if it offends!

Looks like Internet hackers have targeted the Church of Scientology in a pretty big way, first by carrying out a denial of service on the international web site of the church, which is sort of funny but not very clever, and secondly by “Google bombing” that is manipulating the way the internet search engine works to ensure that the Church of Scientology is returned as the first hit whenever anyone enters the search string “dangerous cult”. Again not very nice, but pretty clever and sort of funny!

The background to this is the main reason for the post though. It seems that this all stems from the removal of the Tom Cruise “blast” video from You Tube, which many believe was forced on You Tube by the Church, which once again goes to show the ‘power’ of the consumer on the internet. In reality it does seem better to ‘put up and shut up’ rather than draw attention to things that you may disapprove of.

Via [Telegraph]

• iPhone 2.0 firmware caught on video
• Severed cable that offers 2GB of built-in storage
• Amazon Kindle gets hacked, ebook DRM is able to be stripped

Not sure where to begin with this post to be honest as it seems so way out in left field that I find it hard to believe, but researchers at the University of Washington “have developed a contact lens with the potential to project a telephone display directly on to the retina.” That means that in the future rather than pick up a text message of your mobile phone you could just “stare intently at a projected image in front of your eyes.”

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