Four in five UK homes ready for digital switchover - Ofcom

Almost 80 per cent of homes had some form of digital television at the end of 2006, with the popular Freeview service leading the sales, Ofcom said on Wednesday. Freeview proved the front runner. In total, 2. ...more

IT terrorism threat grows

The government believes the Internet will soon be used by terrorist organisations to sabotage UK businesses and is concerned that global e-crime fighting capabilities are weak. The UK's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) was established in April 2001, and the organisation claims to have made good progress in setting up the infrastructure to deal with the growing threat of cyber-crime. However, it's concerned that police forces in other countries aren't doing enough to protect the Web. ...more

Belkin boosts Bluetooth hands-free headset

A new Bluetooth headset lets you leave your mobile in your bag The Bluetooth Hands-Free Headset from Belkin has an answer and end button on the ear piece so that you can answer calls from up to 10m away from your (Bluetooth-enabled) mobile. It also supports voice dialling (if your phone does) so that you can make calls too. However, it will also work with any Bluetooth device that can benefit from a wireless headset, such as computers and PDAs, for activities such as Internet phoning and chat, speech recognition and games. ...more

France ponders Office Document Format requirements

France might be about to follow Massachusetts in insisting that all French administration computer files are saved in the open standard Office Document Format (ODF). The country's General Repository for Interoperability (RGI) is proposing ODF as the recommended format for semi-structured office documents, such as word processing files presentations and spreadsheets, but wants to make it mandatory for exchanging those documents. Standblog notes that at present these are nothing more than proposals that can expect to meet resistance. ...more

Wii proves gamer's choice in next-gen console war

The anticipated battle between Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 for the console crown has become a sideshow to the unprecedented rise of Nintendo's Wii as the next-generation gaming hardware of choice. Once a dark-horse contender, the Wii has outsold both its competitors in recent months. According to sales data from the NPD Group, the Wii sold 335,000 units in February to the Xbox 360's 228,000 and the PS3's 127,000. ...more