Curriculum vitae, work experience, references, skills inventory, resume: all describe a source of information where people can condense the vital information about themselves into a single document for interested parties to examine. The idea is giving people an overview they can sort through in order to weigh your merits and strengths against their needs, as [...]

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Online Brand Building – Do You Need a Social Media Newsroom?

We hand pick a few of the last 7 days’ weird, quirky and just plain funny tech happenings…

Give the people what they want
See what happens when you let the public decide things? Derby’s got its newest road: named after Lara Croft.

The best team meeting ever
Steve Jobs works tirelessly for months on his newest creation, only for this to happen. Golf Club + iPad = predictable result.

Most. Inevitable. Joke. Ever
More iPad joviality: it looks as though all previous iPad/menstruation gags have been top trumped.

All good things…
A call to a tech support helpline doesn’t end as this woman probably hoped. Internet lesson one: it’s not free.

Roll up your virtual sleeves
Some clever soul has spotted something: we’re in a recession, farming’s on the decline, and yet half the world’s addicted to Farmville. Enter and Obvious solution.

Smut on Safari
It’s been a week of conservative censoring for the iPhone, as the Apple App store waved bye-bye to all its sexy apps. Find out why here…

Cold fusion
Warm beer makes even the hardened criminals and war veterans upset. Thankfully our friends at Tech Radar have a USB solution.

The US patent cites the award is for: "dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network".

The development means Facebook could sue Twitter – which is essentially one giant news feed – for copyright infringement.

In fact, analysts point out that the patent is so wide ranging that pretty much all the basic tenets of social media could technically be in breach of copyright.

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More on Facebook:

- Facebook cited in 1 in 5 divorces

- Photos: Facebook winners and losers

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The patent was lodged in 2006 before Twitter and many other social networking sites existed.

Needless to say, the award hasn’t gone down in the social media world:

"Can I start screaming loudly about patent reform now?" tweeted Matt Galligan, who founded a streaming-feeds start-up called Socialthing and eventually sold it to AOL which rebranded it AIM Lifestream.

This news could be shaking up social media in a big way – we’ll keep you up-to-date with all the latest as it happens.

The report by psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos recommends games consoles are sold with parental controls already switched on.

This would mean buyers (parents in the case of children) would have to actively have to choose to ‘unlock’ the console to let it access adult and online content.

Games were only one aspect of Dr Papadopulous’ research into what she calls the ‘pornification’ of society.

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More on video gaming:

- T3’s top 10 gaming consoles

- Five games that corrupted our minds

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She claims girls are pressured into appearing sexually available and ‘hot’ while boys were forced to appear macho and to think about women as sexual objects.

Chief among the report’s targets were lad mags, such as Zoo and Nuts, which it recommends are banned for under-15 year-olds as well as ratings for airbrushed pics of women. It also wants music videos with sexy lyrics only broadcast after the watershed.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson welcomed the report and said the Government would consider its recommendations carefully.

But a spokeswoman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said there were no plans to consider age-restrictions on lads’ magazines or ratings symbols for photographs.

What do you think? Worthwhile insight into a decadent society or pointless nanny state hotair?

Link: Independent

Angelica Mari, Computing, Friday 26 February 2010 at 14:25:00

And technology integration is on track

Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has reduced its yearly IT spend by six per cent to £1.2bn as the financial giant continues to integrate Lloyds TSB and HBOS.

According to the bank’s results released today, the cost reduction of £82m has been achieved through the consolidation of IT operations across the group as well as lower investment spend as project activity was replaced by integration work.

LBG said it is “making good progress” towards integrating the entire organisation, with preparations for data migration in “full flight”.

“Detailed plans are in place, along with testing requirements that are fully commensurate with an integration of this scale,” the bank said in its annual financial statement.

At the bank’s wholesale arm, for example, the initial planning and organisational design stage has been finished, major decisions related to systems have been made and the first product migrations have also been completed.

LBG said that a core focus area for 2010 is planning and execution of additional product migrations and enhancing its risk systems.

However, the taxpayer-supported bank recorded a £6.3bn loss, largely due to a £24bn impairment on legacy HBOS assets.

LBG said that the “overwhelming majority” of its job cuts in 2009 were achieved through re-deployment, “natural turnover” and voluntary redundancy, while a small amount left via compulsory redundancy.

IT workers were among the worst-hit by the cull.

Angelica Mari, Computing, Friday 26 February 2010 at 14:22:00

User’s entire account deactivated following dispute with social media management firm

A Computing blogger has had several hundred videos wiped from his YouTube account after a dispute over footage he posted of an audience at a stand-up comedy show.

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary’s video of an audience waiting for comedian Jimmy Carr to come on stage was considered to be a copyright infringement by Intelligent Conversation, the firm monitoring social media activity about Carr.

Subsequently Kobayashi-Hillary’s entire collection of more than 900 videos was taken offline.

Intelligent Conversation scans YouTube, Blinkx, Vimeo and other sites daily for footage filmed both before and during the comedian’s shows.

“Whilst we are happy to recognise that ‘free is good’, filming shows spoils it for everyone else and also completely nullifies the effect of the jokes: for music fans, songs can be played again and again, but once you’ve heard a joke it totally loses its impact the second time around,” a company representative said in an email to Kobayashi-Hillary.

The representative added that his firm’s action in this case could be seen to be over the top.

“Although I appreciate this might seem overzealous, it’s the only way we can stop footage being spread,” he said.

After numerous attempts by the blogger to contact YouTube’s owner Google, the web giant finally responded with an email earlier today. It states that Kobayashi-Hillary had two other complaints of copyright breach filed against him – both for videos that have since been removed – which has raised the question of whether web site maintains a ‘3 strikes and you’re out’ policy.

“I use YouTube as a business tool – it is an invaluable component of my corporate work. It is just outrageous that [Google] can arbitrarily remove the entire account based on an erroneous copyright infringement,” Kobayashi-Hillary said.

It is not yet known whether, or when the user’s account will be reactivated and if its previously uploaded content will be restored.

Google UK did not respond to calls for comment.

The X90 will cost £329.99 and has a intelligent Zoom function, claimed to boost the focal length to ‘4225mm’.

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More on digital cameras:

- Top 10 SLRs

- Group test: party cameras

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Features included on the 12.1-million-pixel model also include CCD-shift type Shake Reduction, a 2.7in LCD monitor, 1cm Macro mode and an electronic viewfinder (200,000 dot resolution).

The X90 is also capable of delivering HD (1,280,720 pixel) videos, according to Pentax and includes aperture and shutter priority controls.

Link: Amateur Photography

It’s just a rumour, so don’t get too excited, but there’s news afoot that the Appple iPad will retail for £389 when it hits the UK shores.

The base 16GB WiFi iPad is set for a £389 bracket, the 32GB WiFi model will be available for £439 and the 64GB WiFi version is aiming for a salty £489.

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More on the Apple iPad:

- Apple iPad tablet specs officially unveiled

- Apple iPad: 10 things you need to know

- Apple iPad: First photos from San Francisco

- Apple iPad: Read our live blog of the event

- Apple iPad video: Steve Jobs unveils new tablet

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Of course, the cynical among you will be unsurprised to note that this is higher than US pricing – the 16GB Wi-Fi model will cost $499 (£326) stateside, 32GB Wi-Fi at $599 (£392), and the 64GB Wi-Fi at $699 (£457).

Via: GeekyGadgets

Apple’s iTunes Music store, could have earned the company anything up to a whopping £790 million, following news that the 10 billionth song had been downloaded this week.

It’s widely thought that the tech giant retains around 10 per cent of the price of every song sold on the store, although Apple itself has never released any official figures.

- 20 Best Apple accessories from MacWorld 2010

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If correct, (after publishers, artists, record labels and running costs are paid), Apple would retain a 7.9 pence of the 79p pricetag on each of the 10-billion tracks downloaded. That would mean profits of anything up to £790,000,000 since the iTunes Music Store’s inception in April 2003. That’s over £2 million a week!

Competition from online music sites like Amazon MP3, in recent years, has forced iTunes to move from the rigid 79p pricing structure in recent years, however, with tracks now ranging up to 99p, but most songs remain at the standard level.

A spokesperson for the PRS, the body that regulates payments to artists and publishers for the sale of music, explained the breakdown to T3 in a statement this morning, but wouldn’t be drawn on exactly how much money Apple and its competitors pocketed.

The spokesperson said: "PRS for Music which represents the songwriters, composers and music publishers would receive 8% of gross revenue per track downloaded, with a minima level of 4p. For a typical 79p download when VAT is factored in, this would result in the creator of the song receiving between 6p and 7p for each download. Included into the price of a download is also the royalty received by the record label, the costs of marketing and the technology behind the service and then a small profit margin for the owner of the site itself."

Even if the actual revenue for each track is half of what has been quoted on numerous occasions in the past, it still represents a massive bounty for Apple, and a huge reward for its industry-changing vision.

The 10 billionth song download was a Johnny Cash track called "Guess Things Happen That Way" and earned lucky shopper Louie Sulcer from Georgia, USA, a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

Link: Apple

MWC served-up the HTC Desire and the HTC Legend, but we’re still waiting for the official unveiling of the HTC Incredible. We’ve had unofficial pictures leaked and now the guys over at Phandroid have nabbed a hands-on video.

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More on Mobile World Congress, Barcelona 2010

- Hottest phones of MWC: Winners and losers
- Video: MWC Day Two round-up
- Video: MWC Day One round-up
- Best touchscreen phones of MWC 2010
- MWC: Hottest phone rumours

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Rumoured to be announced this month, the Android 2.1 touting handset will allegedly run HTC’s own Sensu UI, sport a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 25MB of RAM. From the video it also looks like it’ll have a 3.7-inch touchscreen and a 5-megapixel camera complete with a flash.

No word on whether we’ll even get it here in the UK, but if you fancy taking a closer look check out the HTC Incredible hands-on video below.
 

Link: HTC (via Phandroid)