By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco
By 2015 more than 12 billion devices will be capable of connecting to 500 billion hours of TV and video content, says chip giant Intel.
It said its vision of TV everywhere will be more personal, social, ubiquitous and informative.
“TV is out of the box and off the wall,” Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer, told BBC News.
“TV will remain at the centre of our lives and you will be able to watch what you want where you want.”
Mr Rattner said: …

America is poised to loosen its control over cyberspace
FORTY years ago this month American academics sent the first message over the ARPANET, a military network that was the precursor of today’s internet. A legacy of those efforts is that the American government continues to control the internet’s underlying technology—notably the system of allocating addresses. This is about to change, albeit slightly.
For the past decade America has delegated some of its authority over the internet to a non-profit organisation called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—an arrangement other …

The internet giant seeks new ways to foster innovation
FEW companies are as creative as Google, which serves up innovations almost as fast as its popular search-engine serves up results. This week the firm unveiled a new version of its Chrome web browser and launched Fast Flip, which lets users scroll through the contents of an online newspaper in much the same way that they leaf through its pages in print. On September 30th the company will roll out another fledgling product, Google Wave, for a test involving some 100,000 people. …

By Maggie Shiels
Mobile providers have said that US proposals to ensure all traffic on the internet is treated equally should not be applied to wireless traffic.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants rules to prevent providers blocking or slowing down bandwidth-heavy usage such as streaming video.
Providers claim a two-tiered system is essential for the future vitality of the net.
Mobile operators said any regulation would damage innovation.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said doing nothing was not an option.
In his first major speech since his appointment earlier in the summer, he told an …

ISLAMABAD: Despite the fact that dumping old computers in developing countries has been declared as violation of international law, Pakistan was being used as dumping ground for over 50,000 tons of e-waste that hurts local industry and also creates environmental and health hazards.
Despite being a signatory to the Basel Convention that restricted importing used/old computers, more than 500,000 used computers are finding ways into Pakistani computer market each year.
These concerns were voiced at a discussion ‘Cost effective or technology defective’ held here on Tuesday.
The speakers from both public and private …

Netbooks and the New Open Source Movement Converts
Saad Sarwar Muhammad
The Open Source Movement (OSM) has come a long way since the inception of the concept by computer geeks and programmers as an alternative to proprietary software where intellectual property rights are not impugned with the use and free distribution of the software. The virtual monopolization of system software by Microsoft led these revolutionaries to alter the market space through the introduction of Linux, an Open Source system software. The software also proved more reliable as compared to Microsoft Windows with …

Open-source software firms are flourishing, but are also becoming less distinctive
MANY technology firms are floundering amid the recession. But many of the ones that offer services tied to open-source software—free programs written by volunteers who collaborate online—are boasting double-digit growth. Sales at Red Hat, the world’s biggest independent open-source firm with annual revenues of $653m, grew by 18% year-on-year in the first quarter. More and more firms, particularly in Europe, seem prepared to embrace open source (see chart). “Budgets are tight and we think that is good for open source,” …

Data collection: Mobile phones provide new ways to gather information, both manually and automatically, over wide areas
IF YOUR mobile phone could talk, it could reveal a great deal. Obviously it would know many of your innermost secrets, being privy to your calls and text messages, and possibly your e-mail and diary, too. It also knows where you have been, how you get to work, where you like to go for lunch, what time you got home, and where you like to go at the weekend. Now imagine being able to …

By Maggie Shiels
Twelve million computers have been hijacked by cyber-criminals and detected by security vendor McAfee since January, the firm has said.
It reports there has been a 50% increase in the number of detected so-called “zombie” computers since 2008.
The true number of newly hijacked PCs is likely to be higher than those detected by McAfee alone.
The figures come as a report from Deloitte said a global approach to cyber-security was needed.
“Doing nothing is not an option,” said Deloitte’s Greg Pellegrino.
Everything that depended on cyberspace face unprecedented risks, said Deloitte Touche …

This Islamic country, located in the mountainous region neighboring to the Central Asia and the Middle East, is the sixth most populous country in the world and has the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. That is Pakistan. The country is listed among the “Next Eleven” economies that means it’s among eleven countries, such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, The Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, and Vietnam, identified by Goldman Sachs investment bank as having a high potential of becoming the world’s largest economies in …