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Auto Hop has content industry hopping mad

In the latest episode of the US ad-skipping saga, Dish Networks is facing the wrath of broadcasters such as NBC and Fox, but winning praise from customers and no doubt causing a little churn among competitors. That at least is the intention of the Dish PVR ad skipping feature called Auto Hop, with the company gambling that the gain in subscription revenue will make the pain of having to defend a possibly protracted case against it from broadcasters worthwhile.…

Computer said no: New attempt expected on Tuesday

The Falcon 9 rocket from private space company SpaceX, intended to launch this morning and send a Dragon capsule loaded with supplies to the International Space Station, has failed to take off. The rocket's computer aborted the launch automatically at almost the final possible moment, when its engines had already ignited but the vehicle had not yet been released from the pad.…

Pushy types

Product round-up As the speedy texter generation grows longer in the Bluetooth and touchscreen technologies improve, the range of Qwerty phones on offer gets smaller by the day. But for many, they wouldn't use anything else. Indeed, for RIM, Qwerty keys have been the hallmark of it BlackBerry handsets.…

Unofficial APIs are the new fruit of temptation

Microsoft has urged developers to only use approved Windows 8 software interfaces to avoid spoiling the launch of its new operating system with dodgy code.…

Under new management: First revamp passes one million downloads

Details have emerged about the security fixes that came bundled with Apache OpenOffice 3.4.0, the latest version of the open-source productivity suite.…

Round and round she goes, where she stops....

Facebook's shares debuted on the Nasdaq today at $42 and immediately skidded downwards to the original IPO price of $38.…

EMC World is not enough - time to live and let Flash die

What news will be revealed to the 13,000 people attending EMC World in Las Vegas next Monday?…

18 months' porridge for banking malware-spreader

A Brit who distributed a Trojan horse that posed as a patch for popular shoot-em-up game Call of Duty has been jailed for 18 months.…

Digital Dunkirk spirit

The second incarnation of CloudStore has floated, but don’t get too excited.…

Plus: Sky TV accounts for most of UK's 'space sector'

Analysis Everyone knows about Britain's soaraway space sector. It turns over £8bn a year – the same sort of money as the remaining automotive industry – it employs tens of thousands of people, and it's growing faster than the Chinese economy. And, famously, it has done all this without any significant government help.…

May refresh time unaffected by 3PAR buy

It's May and an time for HP to refresh its evergreen EVA storage line. HP said it would keep investing in the EVA when it bought 3PAR and has kept its promise, with two new models being announced, with larger drive support and better management SW.…

Duo dump Nokia to end SIM war with Apple - report

RIM and Motorola reportedly hope to break the deadlock over the design of future SIM cards by offering a blueprint that'll either appease every party or alienate all sides equally.…

Business not so good

Ethernet sales slumped a bit and caused Brocade's second 2012 quarter results to stumble.…

Plans to wait for user complaints as the law comes into effect

Amid criticism that hardly any UK government websites comply with the new EU-mandated "Cookie Law" that comes into force on 27 May, the ICO has announced that it will be sending out some letters, and then waiting for people to complain.…

And there'll be tech contracts for the kids when they grow up, honest

The UK government denied today that it was dropping IT entirely from the national curriculum while adding that tech contracts would be more bite-sized and flexible at some point soon.…

But plenty of caveats apply

The number of prosecutions under the UK's computer hacking laws may have declined over recent years, according to the latest available government figures.…

Homeless move into digital downloads

Glasgow-based INSP, which represents magazines distributed by the homeless, is planning to go digital - assuming it can raise enough cash to pay for some trials.…

2012 clean date stated

Apple is flying the green flag on the North Carolina data centre that will power iCloud – the very same one that was slammed by Greenpeace for being dirty.…

State unhappy that 'Persian Gulf' name is gone

Iran's Foreign Ministry has threatened to take legal action against Google because the web firm removed the name Persian Gulf from its Maps and left the stretch of water nameless.…

Just how do we fire that LOHAN rocket motor?

It's fair to say that the question of just how we fire the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) Vulture 2 spaceplane rocket motor is a touch thorny.…