Met Office: Invest in supercomputing to tackle climate change

The UK Met Office has called for increased investment in its computing infrastructure to enable it to maintain its leading role in climate change research. The weather and climate monitoring organisation's research formed a large part of the recent Stern Report, which projected a calamitous economic impact if climate change is not tackled. But, the Met Office says, much more work is needed if it is to fully answer the questions that policy makers and the public are now asking about climate change. ...more

Acer leads European notebook sales

HP may be the world leader in notebook sales but it faces stiff competition from contenders like European leader Acer, according to research from analyst DisplaySearch. Acer has stolen the computer giant's thunder when it comes to European demand. It also stands in good company by beating the market's overall year-on-year growth with its own healthy figures alongside other smaller and newer, rather than the bigger old favourites, While HP's market share for the third quarter of 2006 stood at 17. ...more

Google's neighbourhood watch to push local ads

Advertisers who use the Google adwords programme will now be able to target potential customers by UK location. The regional targeting will allow advertisers to identify customers within a 20 mile radius of a city or by latitude/longitude point. This initiative is being rolled out in eight countries in North America and Europe including the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands as well as Britain. ...more

Adobe reports record revenues

Adobe has reported record revenues of $423.3mn for the last financial quarter, with year-on-year growth of 43 per cent. The revenues exceeded expectations and as a result quarterly profit was also a record. ...more

UPDATED: BT sets stage for broadband price cuts

BT has begun a significant overhaul of its broadband pricing structure which should result in more competition, lower prices and a wider variety of services. The telco is planning to cut the cost of Local Loop Unbundling by up to 70 per cent, whilst realigning the costs for its Datastream and IPStream broadband services. As well as enabling ISPs to increase the number of different ADSL packages they offer - in terms of bandwidth, contention ratios and maximum traffic capacity - it will create scope for price cuts, most notably at faster speeds. ...more