A new European satellite is due to be launched into space this week. Its mission will be to map minute variations in the pull of gravity across the planet.
However, what is different about this satellite to the many thousands of others in space is the attention to detail that has been paid to the design and the ‘look’ of the satellite.
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With the concerns of rising obesity in children, the Government has released an advert suggesting that many children might be facing a shorter life expectancy due to the large amount of time they spend playing computer games rather than doing something more physically active.
The games industry have lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority stating that this broadbrush statement is inaccurate and that playing computer games is not the main cause of overweight and sedentary children.
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YouTube has decided to stand by its sudden and unexpected decision to remove access to all premium music videos in the UK.
This will be a blow to many of us, especially our students, who have probably spent many happy hours trawling through the thousands of music videos from established and up-and-coming stars.
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It is hard to imagine losing your sight and then being totally blind for 30 years. Doing even the simplest of tasks, such as matching your socks, becomes a daily problem to tackle.
However, there is now hope for the 25,000 people in the UK who have lost their sight through a degenerative disease called retinitis pigmentosa. A company called Second Sight have been developing bionic eyes which help to restore partial vision. Although the new technology is still undergoing trials, three people in the UK have been fitted with a ‘bionic eye’ at London’s Moorfield’s eye hospital.
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There has been a huge amount of controversy over the past few months about Phorm and the use of behavioural advertising.
BT kicked of the debate by secretly collecting information about websites visited by its customers. Since then, privacy advocates have had a field day warning us about our impending loss of privacy.
This week, the online advertising industry has launched a new set of guidelines which makes it look like behavioural advertising is here to stay.
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There have been a number of headlines this week about a Droitwich consulting company that has allegedly collected and provided information about job applicants.
It seems that a number of construction companies who subscribed to the ‘service’ would provide the company with descriptions of employees such as, ‘ex-shop steward’ in return for information about people they planned to interview.
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Many of us have tried and swear by some of the open source packages that are available. I for one wouldn’t dream of using any browser at home other than Firefox and when it came to selecting a VLE to use at my school, my vote went to Moodle. I’m even dabbling with Linux and Open Office on some of our departmental laptops.
Why then, if there is so much high quality open source software available and money in the public arena is so restricted, have the government insisted until now, that we use commercial software? I was really pleased to see the news report this week which states that the UK government will start to ‘accelerate the use of open source software in public services.’
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Experts have warned that hackers and fraudsters are becoming ever more adept at developing ways to trick us into downloading trojans and fake anti-virus software. It seems that no matter how many sites are closed down by the authorities, many more quickly spring up to take their place. One expert has said that this is, “the biggest threat facing computer users today.”
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We all know that computer games and consoles can be blamed for many things but did you ever think that they might be responsible for a new disease?
Recently a ten-year old girl in Switzerland went to her doctor with painful red, sore lumps on the palms of her hands. After ruling out many possible causes it seems that the problem appeared following many hours of playing on her new PlayStation without any breaks. It has since been named, ‘PlayStation palmar hidradenitis’. This new problem follows closely on the tail of a number of people presenting with acute tendonitis, otherwise dubbed as ‘Wiitis’.
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For many of us, email is such an integral part of our daily lives that to be without it, even for a short period of time, would be unimaginable. However, this is just what happened to almost 113 million Google Mail users this week when a technical problem caused the Gmail service to go offline for between 2-4 hours.
Google Mail is the third most popular web mail service with many personal and business users being reliant on its availability. Indeed Google’s own press office couldn’t email out to inform customers and journalists about the problem.
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