London Regional ICT Champion

Blame it on the early May Bank Holiday, but we’re back after a break with another round-up of ICT news for you to check out.

Web 2.0 and social networking:

• Last week it was Facebook and MySpace, this week it’s Google with Friend Connect.  Google reckons 99% of web sites are not socially networked and  Friend Connect enables any website owner to add a snippet of code to their site and get social features up and running right away without any complicated programming. More on Friend Connect here.

• Checkout MySpace’s “Data Availability” initiative, and “Facebook Connect” here.

• Interested in creating your own social networking applications? Check out Google’s Open Social

Legal:

• Don’t leave your laptop in the pub – the Government has made “reckless data loss” a civil offence, it says here.

Mobile working:

• Check your tariff – according to Channel 4′s Dispatches, the cost of texting for UK punters is at least four times more expensive than transmitting data from Nasa’s Hubble telescope. See here.

• Vodaphone is extending its high speed mobile broadband network to Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Reading by the Autumn, it says here.

• Apple’s iPhone sold out in UK, here.

• Research In Motion’s iPhone killer, the Blackberry Bold is launched in the US, here.

Greener computing:

• Scientists say that carbon dioxide levels are at their highest levels for 650,000 years.

• Time to start using IT in a more environmentally friendly way – check out IBM’s Green Hub.

Hardware:

• Good news – Microsoft is cutting the cost of putting Windows XP on low cost laptops, here.

Software:

• Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Office 2008 for Mac, designed to add stability, security, and performance enhancements to the suite of office applications.  More at Macworld.

• More good news – Mars may be poised to resurrect the Marathon chocolate bar 18 years after it was Americanised to Snickers.