Hail a cab by phone

The company that makes London's black cabs has unveiled a new service that allows you to hail the nearest taxi through your mobile phone. Zingo, as the service is known, matches your location to the nearest cab, and then directs your call direct to the driver. The system uses the phone operator's network to work out your location and then uses GPS to find the nearest cab. ...more

BMW crashes its Google ranking

BMW and other manufacturers face delisting from Google's index for their shabby web activities. Google engineer Matt Cutts writes in his blog that BMW's German website was somewhat duplicitous, presenting different pages to Google's search bot than it does to actual viewers. Cutts alleges that Google's bot leafing through the BMW site would see pages filled with car-related keywords. ...more

American Express to reduce online fraud

American Express is set to launch a disposable credit card number scheme for shopping on the Internet. The system will allow existing cardholders to access a secure Web site and obtain a card number that can be used only once. It is hoped that this plan will alleviate customers' fears of their details being stolen through their use on the Internet. ...more

DTI broadens wireless broadband options

The DTI is forging ahead with its vision for a Broadband Britain, announcing the deregulation of more areas of the radio spectrum. The new rules will open up the 5GHz and 58GHz parts of the radio spectrum to commercial networks and other users from 12 February. E-Commerce Minister Stephen Timms said: 'Broadband is surging ahead in the UK, and this initiative will make it more widely available. ...more

New light archives old recordings

Light could come to the rescue of the vast archive of recorded material currently stored on fragile disks and cylinders. A research project at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Physics Division in California has found a way to map the grooves on a record's surface using a beam of light and consequently digitise the content. Currently the only way to create a computer archive of these old recordings was to play them and record the output. ...more