NTL and Telewest join up for broadband campaign

Arch rivals NTL and Telewest have announced a joint marketing campaign to educate the UK about broadband. The two cable companies provide very similar cable modem services through their existing networks for about ?25 a month all in, compared to the ?40 to ?50 charge for ADSL through BT's wholesale product. Around five per cent of Internet users connect through cable, as opposed to around two per cent through ADSL. ...more

Silver surfing, stage 2

Age Concern continues its quest for silver surfing, encouraging Britain's older people to turn 'techie' and get their hands on new technologies. Along with Barclays Bank, which is funding the 'Web aware' initiative, the charity Age Concern has been surveying the elderly in their use of the Internet. For men aged 55+, it seems, pursuing hobbies and tracking down information was the most popular use of the Net (for 78 per cent). ...more

Printer 'fingerprints' to collar counterfeiters

Scientists in the US are developing a technology that will enable law enforcement agencies to track down the laser or inkjet printer used to produce forged and counterfeit documents. Software installed on printers would embed a unique band in the printed image which would be invisible to the eye but detectable using image analysis techniques. The technology is a consequence of two separate sets of research. ...more

Auction-only Sun Workstations

Here's a collector's piece: one of the first five Sun Blade 1000 Workstations. The serial number, written in CEO Scott McNealy's fair hand, will adorn the first quintet of the 600 MHz workstations. But the auctioning of Sun hardware does not end there; the ties between Sun and eBay go further. ...more

Intel goes lead free and IBM goes green

The computing industry might not have the greenest of images, but Intel and IBM are working on it - Intel has announced intentions to go lead free with microprocessors and IMB is launching a 'Project Big Green'. Intel states that its future processors are going to be 100 percent lead-free, beginning with its family of 45nm high-k metal gate (Hi-k) processors, which include Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and Xeon models. The company is due to begin such 45nm Hi-k production in the 'second half of this year', it says. ...more