WordPress has become the de facto blogging platform: particularly for blogs that are to be self-hosted. On first installation, however, it’s like a blob of plasticine – formless and blank, waiting to be morphed into, er, Morph. Design is part of this, of course, and Wordpress benefits from tens of thousands of themes, most available [...]

As if the iPad wasn’t enough for Maclovers, rumours are abound of a Macbook Pro with equipped with Intel’s Core i7chip.
 

Wired reports that visitors to MacRumors.com will have seen Geekbench benchmark results for a Macbook Pro armed with Intel’s latest 2.66GHz mobile processor.

Some scepticism is warranted though, as Wired points out, Apple employees aren’t renowned for posting tests in public.
 

But  Apple do typically upgrade their MacBook Pro family every six or seven months and the last refresh was in July 2009, so it does make sense that a Core i7 machine could soon be here.

Link: Wired

 

Nicola Brittain, Computing, Monday 8 February 2010 at 17:04:00

Five-year contract notice will be for £25m

English Heritage has served a contract notice of £25m for IT infrastructure management, support and services. The duration of the contract is five years.

The supplier will provide fixed-line and mobile telephony support and data communications to 2,400 staff, according to the organisation.

The winning bidder will also provide service management, desktop support and datacentre services, as well as ISP, network management and technology refresh services.

The supplier may host a small number of English Heritage’s 170 servers, including associated applications and services.

After the initial five-year period the deal includes the option for a one-year extension.

Nexus One’s days as top Android phone could be numbered if an early glimpse of the new HTC Incredible is anything to go by.

Pocketnow has got its hands on leaked photos of the upcoming model along with news that it will run HTC’s Sense interface over Android 2.1.

The Incredible will apparenly be powered with a Snapdragon processor with 256MB of RAM and has a 3.5-3.7" OLED screen with WGVA resolution.

There’s also likely to be a 5MP camera and LED flash.

Like the Nexus One it appears to lack a physical keyboard but it’s stylistically different with a flat black face and a layered back side. 

The person who originally leaked specs of the Incredible believes it become the Taiwanese company’s flagship model.

Although there’s no UK release date it will be offered on the Verizon network in the States.

Link/pic credit: Pocketnow.com

 

 

 

 

Nicola Brittain, Computing, Monday 8 February 2010 at 16:23:00

But telecoms giant claims this is not a response to Tory plans

BT has said it will open up its cable ducts, allowing rivals to run their own high-speed broadband networks through the former incumbent’s infrastructure.

This will mean rivals will not have to dig up roads to lay their own cables, which will reduce the cost to them of providing broadband services to rival BT’s services.

This follows increasing media and political pressure on BT, with the Court of Appeal just last week finding in favour of tax rates that see Vtesse and other ISPs taxed up to 20 times as much as BT owing to a particular accounting method.

There has also been intense criticism from the Conservatives over the government’s plans to divert much of the 50p phone levy to the rollout of broadband via BT.

More recently though there has been criticism from the Tories regarding BT’s closed ducts, and the party pledged last month that it would legislate to force BT to open them, which would stimulate market-led investment in broadband rollout.

BT denies that the decision to open its ducts is a response to the Conservative proposals.

Parliamentary reporter, Computing, Monday 8 February 2010 at 15:40:00

Plan could see Parliament debating e-petitions where there are enough signatures

Commons leader Harriet Harman has decided to back a limited experiment with e-democracy after the general election.

This could result in Parliament being required to debate e-petitions if there is support above a minimum threshold.

She has put down a series of orders arguing that this will prepare the way for “a trial of debates in Westminster Hall, in the next session of Parliament, subject to the presentation of petitions of sufficient significance.”

The move resembles work done by the Commons Reform Committee, which breathed new life into apparently moribund proposals from an earlier committee that Harman kicked into the long grass largely on grounds of cost.

They call for the preparation of a “revised” scheme to be considered after the election, with “revised” almost certainly meaning “cheaper”.

Harman also backs the idea of a trial and calls for e-petitions to have “a slightly enhanced status”, meaning they would appear on the Commons agenda papers and be formally presented in the chamber.

Government ministers including Ms Harman have been wary about progressing a formal e-petitions system for Parliament after 1.8 million motorists, angry over road charging plans, signed one to 10 Downing Street, effectively killing off the policy for a generation.

The committee proposed a threshold similar to the five per cent required for local e-petitions to be considered by local authorities, arguing that on a national scale this would require several million signatures. However, the committee warned: “Numbers alone, especially in an electronic age and easily mobilised by organised groups, should not be enough to guarantee attention.”

This “deliberative democracy” – that is, democracy that requires a debate – was viewed as “difficult but possible”.

‘Babel fish’ simultaneous language translation on phones could be here very soon according to Google.

The search giant already offers a online text translator and  voice recognition software but combining the two by translating languages over a phone would be a potentially mind-boggling historic advance.

Think the Babel Fish in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the need never to learn foreign languages.

The feature could also become a major selling point for the Android mobile phone operating system.

Speaking to the Times, Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, said:

"We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time.

Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on.

If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently."

He added that, just as the Google search engine learns user patterns, the next generation of phones could start to learn voice patterns, thereby making existing problems concerning pitch and accents largely irrelevant.

Link: Times Online

 

Tom Young, Computing, Monday 8 February 2010 at 14:59:00

Internal audits will be easier with new software

Lancashire police force has introduced a monitoring and audit system to comply with new data security regulations.

The Information Systems Community Security Policy is mandated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) from next month and requires forces to monitor users’ activity.

The force will use the software to help it investigate potential corruption-related issues involving police staff’s use of force computer systems.

“It will provide us with the ability to resolve allegations of systems misuse more quickly and with more certainty, and allow the public additional confidence that systems are in place to protect data,” said detective superintendent Martyn Leveridge.

The system will monitor all data input on Lancashire Constabulary’s network, including mobile and portable terminals.

Recent reports by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary have recommended that all internal police computer systems should be auditable in order to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive information.

Previously, the force’s auditing capabilities were application-based, meaning that it could not monitor file transfers, printing, screen captures and copying onto external data devices.

The system comes from vendor 3ami.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Monday 8 February 2010 at 14:48:00

Software giant will be led by two top board executives

SAP chief executive officer Leo Apotheker resigned over the weekend by “mutual consent” after a 20-year career at the software firm.

Apotheker will be replaced by head of field organisation Bill McDermott and head of product development Jim Hagemann Snabe. Both managers already held board positions.

The resignation is effective immediately, but Apotheker’s contract was to expire at the end of 2010.

According to the Financial Times, one of the reasons for the resignation is the company’s delay in the introduction of a new online-based platform for small and medium-sized companies.

Last month, SAP reported fourth-quarter revenue from software and software-related services down 28 per cent to €2.48bn (£2.17bn) year on year, with total revenue down eight per cent to 10.7 per cent.

The company underperformed in its second and third fiscal quarters and expectations were lowered in the fourth quarter to reflect difficult market conditions.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Monday 8 February 2010 at 14:44:00

Increase in applications to study tech subjects at higher education on last year

University application service Ucas has reported a rise in applications for technology-related subjects as general demand for higher education has skyrocketed.

The service received a total of 570,556 applications for full-time undergraduate study for 2010/11 by 22 January, a rise of 106,389 or 22.9 per cent over last year’s figures.

Subjects such as computer science received 47,249 applications, an increase of 18.9 per cent on 2009, information systems attracted 12,180 candidates (up 26.5 per cent), while 6,393 hopefuls applied for software engineering careers, an increase of 27.7 per cent on last year’s numbers.

Last week, business secretary Lord Mandelson announced £10m in extra funding to support universities “shift the balance” towards the teaching of technology, science and maths, which the government is now keen to promote.