As Phishing attacks wax, viruses wane

According to new figures, phishing attacks are on the increase again, with virus activity declining. Research from IT security company Fortinet found that phishing attacks, such as BankFraud.E and Phishbank. ...more

Mozilla betas Thunderbird 2

Mozilla has released a first beta of Thunderbird 2, the next generation of its standalone email client. A redesigned visual theme introduces the new Message Tags features - custom tags that can be added to messages and combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organise email - as well as numerous improvements to existing features. The changes involve: Session History Navigation (back and forward buttons allow navigation through message history); extensions support (extensions can now add custom columns to the message list pane in addition to storing custom message data in the mail database); and notification alerts (new mail alerts include information such as the subject, sender and message text); and find as you type. ...more

Geeks go to charm school

The above headline is not the title of a possible 80s comedy starring Steve Guttenberg, but a real initiative started up by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A report in the New York Times highlights the social problems being faced by the current generation of geeks, and the solution being presented takes the form of a charm school. It seems that every year MIT offers this one-day event to get their high-powered students up to speed socially and it has been running for eight years. ...more

BT previews research projects at Adastral Park [part 2]

We continue our peak at future projects under development at BT's research campus, Adastral Park. See BT previews research projects at Adastral Park [part 1] Having looked at projects involving nature-inspired computing, pervasive gaming and virtual reality systems, our next stop on the tour involved telecare systems. Specifically, the BT Exact Centre for Care in the Community. ...more

New products @ Macworld expo [4]

The deluge of new products continues in San Francisco, so the daily digest returns. There's lots of high-profile stuff today, from FileMaker, Macromedia, Formac, and the makers of Toast and Disk Warrior. FileMaker demonstrated the Carbonised (OS X compatible) version of its database application FileMaker Pro, which is 90 per cent complete, and announced that its entire product range will be ported to OS X. ...more