The computers don't work

Another publicly-funded computer system bites the dust, as a ?77m Home Office system is scraped. The system, for the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), was intended to process applications for asylum - there is an existing backlog of 66,000 applications - but it hasn't proved up to the job since its installation in 1998. Instead, hundreds of extra workers have been taken on to do the paper work manually. ...more

Recycling printer cartridges to aid charity

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is putting its weight behind the recycling of printer cartridges. The funds raised will be used to fight heart disease, which it describes as the UK's biggest killer. Working with the recyclers LaserXchange, BHF will receive ?1 for every ink cartridge and ?2. ...more

Computers uncover shreds of history

German scientists are turning to technology to reassemble documents destroyed by the East German secret police. They have developed a new computer-based technique for piecing together shredded paper documents. It is part of an effort to recover the contents of 16,250 sacks of files that were shredded by the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, as the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. ...more

Citizen journos go pro

Industry insiders blogging in their free time may find their efforts rewarded by more than AdWords revenue - a new service called ScooptWords seeks to commercialise that editorial, making it available to publishers for a licence fee. Scoopt.com already operates a citizen journalism photo agency, where happy snappers can offer their pictorial take on the stories of the day to the publishing industry for a fee. ...more

Report: Beyond the Backlash - Part 2

Yesterday saw a meeting of representatives from industry, NGOs and government bodies to discuss the state of technology, the Internet and society, and how to innovate it in what is something of a hiatus following dot-com collapse and all those broken promises of the Internet's potential. In a series of plenary sessions and workshops, a range of issues came up for hot debate, from the perennial thorn of broadband, to how should the Web be governed and crime dealt with, and how best we can assimilate this new space into our culture. What became clear throughout all the sessions is that technology and the Internet is all things to all people. ...more