Adobe, HP and Kodak endorse new image format

Adobe, Hewlett-Packard and Kodak have announced their endorsement for the new Exif file format for digital images. Currently digital cameras capture images as compressed JPEG files. Exif (Exchangeable Image File Format) adds a series of tags to the standard JPEG header that encodes information such as exposure time, contrast, white balance and colour saturation. ...more

Verisign named Internet Villain in UK ISP awards

US domain name registry Verisign picked up the Internet Villain gong at last night's Internet Service Providers' Association awards ceremony. The judges said it deserved the award for presuming to own the Internet and for the domain name hijacking scandal. It beat many attendees' favourite, the Recording Industry Association of America - nominated for 'threatening to involve a 12 year old girl in court action'. ...more

LLU reaches half a million

The UK now has more than half a million unbundled phone and Internet connections, according to BT Openreach. After a faltering start local loop unbundling is now proceeding at a rate of 20,00 lines a week, with customers attracted by cheaper and faster broadband connections and low price telephone calls, afforded to some extent by BT's recent wholesale price cuts. 'Hitting this half million milestone confirms that the LLU market in the UK is truly coming into its own,' said Openreach's Anne Heal. ...more

Intel rings 27 July for 'Conroe' chips

Intel is expected to launch its dual-core Core 2 Duo processors - aimed at desktop machines - on the 27th of this month. The new range of Pentium-replacements is slated to be unveiled at a company event. Based on Intel's Core Microarchitecture, the 'Conroe' chips are earmarked to replace the company's existing Pentium D family and take on AMD's Athlon 64 X2 chips in the affections of gamers and high-end PC users. ...more

Analysis: Printing's secret service

According to US counterfeiting experts: 'Globalisation of counterfeiting is the biggest problem we face today,' but does that justify technology that enables secret snooping on just about every colour laser printer owner in the world? The digital rights campaigner Electronic Freedom Frontier (EFF) recently cracked a secret code embedded in pages printed on Xerox's high-end DocuColor laser printer, confirming the suspicion that technology companies were working alongside governments to track the way we use technology. 'We've found that the dots from at least one line of printers encode the date and time your document was printed, as well as the serial number of the printer,' said EFF technologist Seth David Schoen. 'So far, we've only broken the code for Xerox DocuColor printers, but we believe that other models from other manufacturers include the same personally identifiable information in their tracking dots. ...more