Stories by Tom Jowitt

Faster boot-up breakthrough claimed

Defragmentation specialist Diskeeper claims it is on the verge of a "major technical breakthrough", which will speed up the boot times of machines running the Windows operating system by an average of 20%.

Millions of UK homes get less than 2Mbit/s

Research has discovered that around 3 million, or 15 percent of homes in the United Kingdom, have broadband speeds of less than 2Mbit/s, starkly illustrating the scale of the Government's task to guarantee a minimum of 2Mbit/s broadband for all UK households.

Clampdown urged on staff flouting security rules

Businesses are being urged to clamp down on staff who are flouting security rules, after a survey found that too many companies are vulnerable to ignorant or careless behaviour from their workforce.

Security needs to be 'baked in' say experts

A panel of security experts agreed that security needs to thought of a lot earlier in the software development lifecycle, and that the IT industry needs to start shipping "hardened" products, especially with the advent of the cloud and visualisation making the location of sensitive data even more difficult to locate.

Ancient IBM drive rescues Apollo moon data

Valuable mission data gathered by NASA's Apollo missions to the moon forty years ago looks like it may be recovered thanks to a donation of an ancient IBM tape drive by a Sydney computer society.

Big names flock to HSPA mobile broadband

Sixteen big name mobile operators and PC makers have publicly backed the use of HSPA embedded in notebooks, after promising to deliver devices containing the mobile broadband technology.

NZ to see touch-screen Blackberry Storm

Research In Motion (RIM) is continuing to confront the encroachment of Apple's iPhone into its traditional business arena, with a second iPhone killer device, this time featuring a touch screen.
The device, which it is expected Vodafone New Zealand will announce this afternoon, will be officially available exclusively to Vodafone subscribers in Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand, and Verizon Wireless subscribers in the United States soon.

Companies struggle to keep data safe

A staggering 94 percent of companies admit that they are powerless to prevent confidential data from leaving their company by e-mail, according to a new study from Mimecast.

Study finds huge rise in malware this year

Malware has risen by a staggering 278 percent in the first half of 2008, thanks in part to the large number of websites comprised last month, so says a new study by ScanSafe. And it warns that things are only going to get worse, especially after Dan Kaminsky goes public with details about his 20 year-old DNS vulnerability.

Tibco boosts BI with Insightful buy

Tibco Software is to boost its business optimization portfolio after announcing last week that it would purchase data mining specialist Insightful in a deal worth nearly US$25 million.

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