Mobile phones come to the pulpit

In a bid to increase revenue, the Church of England invited 16,000 parish churches in England and Wales to offer their church towers, spires and flagpoles as telecommunications masts to mobile operators. A list of interested churches will be published in January, with preferred bidders being announced in April, reported the Financial Times today. Revenues from the initial bids will go to the Church of England to cover the costs of organising the tenders, but individual churches will receive around ?5,000 a month in rent. ...more

Fujifilm announces first 4G CCD digicams

With the PMAI (Photo Marketing Association International) show coming up in March, the camera manufacturers are rolling out new devices in preparation. Fujifilm will be showing off cameras based on its fourth-generation Super CCDs and has announced details of the F410 Zoom and F700 - the first to incorporate the new CCDs. With its 3. ...more

Anti-piracy campaign looks at P2P log files for copyright abusers

The US movie industry has found a new method for identifying unauthorised file sharers. For the first time, the Motion Picture Association of America has used P2P operators' own log files to discover who has been swapping films on the Internet. Most of the information came from websites connecting users of BitTorrent software. ...more

Vodafone badges the Blackberry 7100v

Mobile phone giant Vodafone has added a new Blackberry enabled model to its range. The Blackberry 7100v is 'exclusively' available through Vodafone and will be marketed throughout Europe and Australasia. The device is fitted with a colour LCD screen, quad-band radio, Bluetooth support, 32MB of Flash memory and 4MB of SRAM. ...more

UK authorities file 439,000 surveillance requests

UK law enforcement and security agencies filed 439,000 requests for details of phone calls and Internet activity in the 15 months to 31 March 2006, the latest report from the Communications Commissioner has revealed. Of those requests 2,243 were for warrants permitting the interception of communications. Such warrants require the approval of a Government minister and under the terms of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) grant powers that could result in the bugging of an entire premises. ...more