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internet

BT Infinity – Superfast Optic Fibre Broadband Comes to 4 Million UK Homes

by Jay Garrett on January 22, 2010

BT has hopped onto the fibre-optic super highway!

BT Inifinity is aiming to nibble at Virgin Media’s pie with the launch of its first super-fast broadband service which is set to arrive early next week.

BT Infinity will offer 40Mb per second speed broadband from a choice of two different price plans.

The cheapest Infinity package prices in at £19.99 a month plus a £11.54 line rental – but then there’s a rather ouchy £50 connection charge! Lumme!

That package will get you 2Mbps upload speed, and a rather tiresome capped usage of 20GB. BOOOOO! :(

For 24.99 you get free installation, upload speeds of 10Mb a second and, from what I can tell, no usage cut-off – Rah!! :)

BT is naturally making a big song-and-dance of the fact that its cheapest plan is £7.47 less a month than Virgin’s 50Mb super-fast service.

But now Virgin Media has hit back by reminding consumers that its service is actually faster at 50Mb per second.

A Virgin Media spokesman said, “We’re not sure why people in the UK would want to wait for BT’s 40Mb service which hasn’t launched yet, when they can already get Virgin Media’s great value 50Mb service.”

OooOooOoOo! Handbags! :p

There’s also the point that Virgin Media’s 50Mb service does not have a monthly usage cap at all.

BT says the 40Mb broadband service ‘will be made available to 4 million homes and businesses by the end of December’. So you have plenty of time for the battle to continue and see who’s best value once the dust settles.

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Boxee Box – Possibly the Funkiest HD Network Media Streamer

by Jay Garrett on December 9, 2009

boxee_boxI’ve been messing around with the cool n quirky Boxee software and am digging how it works and does its thing.

I know it’s been out for a while but the reason for this interest is the equally funky looking custom media player that they’ve just unleashed.

What this Boxee Box will do, apart from being great at playing internet video from the likes of BBC iPlayer, CNN, The Onion, YouTube and MTV as well as your downloaded content, is to allow both the company and the users to sidestep the need to have a PC or Mac puter anywhere near their telebox.

The company has partnered with network heavyweights, D-Link, to create the box.

What the D-Link hardware will offer is access to that easy-to-use and good-looking Boxee interface, playback practically all video types (you can even grab subtitles if needed) as well as access to the cool social network interaction. I’ve got my Boxee software linked into my Twitter feed for example ;)

I’m really tempted to get the Boxee Box as it is ticking all the boxees (sorry): It has HDMI, dual USB sockets and optical audio out as well as an SD-card socket and an Ethernet jack for networking.

I can’t find out if it has Wi-Fi but I’m taking the risk of assuming that it will have as it would be more than a bit daft having D-Link on-board and not bothering with Wi-Fi.

Unfortunately there’s no clear indication whether or not the UK will get the Boxee Box – word on the interweblogosphere is that it’ll retail for $200 (£120 before Brit Tax).

I bet Popcorn Hour are watching this very closely.

Get your free Boxee software and try it for yourselves – click here!

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Crunchpad Released as Joojoo – Fusion Garage Dismiss Techcrunch as “Just a blog”

December 8, 2009 Click to read more →
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There’s been a lot of “it’s on” and then “it’s off” articles regarding the fate of the fabled Crunchpad.
Unlike a lot of my fellow bloggers, I have resisted in reporting on every twisty-turny-onny-offy rumour about Michael Arrington’s much-hyped internet tablet.
But, as this talked-about tablet has just been unveiled at a press conference by developers Fusion [...]

First Wi-Fi Town in UK is Swindon – Well Connected With Free Interweb Access

November 17, 2009 Click to read more →
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The Wiltshire town of Swindon has another claim to fame – other than being the birthplace of Diana Dors (hence the photo).
Swindon is also now to be crowned as the UK’s first Wi-Fi town – this means offering ‘free’ public Wi-Fi to all 186,000 residents.
By April 2010 the Wi-Fi “Signal” service will be in place [...]

Happy 5th Birthday Firefox! Mozilla Browser Keeps Growing

November 10, 2009 Click to read more →
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It’s hard to believe that 5 years has flown by.
But it was back in 2004 when the not-for-profit Mozilla, then with 12 employees and a handful of volunteers decided to take on Microsoft in the battle of the browsers.
Flash-forward to now and that same company has a 23% worldwide market share and has even [...]

UK Gets its First Gamer Rehab Clinic – 12 Steps in Somerset

November 4, 2009 Click to read more →
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After reporting about the internet addiction clinic opening in the States in August it’s the turn of the Brits.
Yup – we are now the proud owners of our first rehab clinic targeting addicted gamers.
The Broadway Lodge, a residential rehabilitation unit in Weston-super-Mare, treats around 400 addicts a year for a range of issues and will [...]

Brag About Your Weight Loss on Internet and iPhone Connected Scales

September 30, 2009 Click to read more →
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If you’ve had friends that have been on diets you’ll know how eager they are to tell you how many ounces they’ve managed to shed.
The “WiFi Body Scale” from French company Withings will be right up their food supplementing alleys.
It records your weight and BMI and automatically uploads it to a secure website – kinda [...]

Take The Internet Addiction Quiz – You May Need a Session at reStart

August 21, 2009 Click to read more →
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I have to admit – sometimes I think I spend too much time on the puter – when I’m not on the puter I’m checking stuff on my iPhone.
Am I addicted?
Well, if I’m unsure, I can take the following questionnaire set up by reStart.
reStart is the first internet addiction treatment center of it’s kind in [...]

BT Sharing Fibre Optic Internet With all the UK

July 10, 2009 Click to read more →
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Here’s some good news for everyone as it’s Friday!
BT is bringing the high-speed lovin as it plans to install super-fast optic-fibre broadband throughout Britain!
British Telecom promise that over 1.5 million homes and businesses will have access to the connections by 2010.
Just in case the other ISPs feel a bit left out – BT [...]

Five Allows Legal Sharing of Programmes – Leaves iPlayer Behind

June 17, 2009 Click to read more →
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Bless Five.
The TV channel has just got with the share-love and has inked a deal with online video platform ‘Brightcove‘.  This deal let viewers embed and share its content on any website – just like you can do with a YouTube video!
 
This leaves BBC iPlayer a bit behind which is odd as iPlayer has been the groundbreaker thus far.
As [...]

Naim Uniti – Classy All-in-One Audio Player

May 18, 2009 Click to read more →
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If you’re looking for an all-in-one stereo then this from Naim Audio will probably fit the bill.
Naim has announced the launch of the new “NaimUniti”.
The NaimUniti is an all-in-one audio player with an integrated amplifier, CD player, DAB/FM tuner, internet radio player, iPod and MP3 dock, digital to analogue converter, USB and network-stored music file [...]

TEAC Reference 600 – A Compact Hi-Fi For Audiophiles?

May 6, 2009 Click to read more →
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TEAC has tried its hand at alchemy once more and unveiled their new compact Reference 600 series Hi-Fi.
With a proud boast that they have reached their 50 year ambition to achieve the ultimate in sound quality.
All that from a compact? I can imagine a number of audiophiles already falling on the floor, holding their sides [...]

Chumby Squidges into UK

April 22, 2009 Click to read more →
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Chumby has finally been launched here in the UK.
The whaty-waht-what?
The Chumby is a hackable, Wi-Fi-enabled, widget-loving, media-playing squishy gadget with a touchscreen.
Ah………..great……….
Put another way.  The Chumby connects to the interweb and can be personalised with over 1200 widgets available on stuff including news, sports, weather, podcasts, internet radio as well as the option to share photos and [...]

Free Google Post Delivered Research – Answers on a Postcard

April 1, 2009 Click to read more →
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For those of you that can remember pre-interweb research – you know, books and stuff then this might trigger memories.
For competitions and such back in the day the usual format of “send a postcard or self-addressed envelope to……” was a regular feature on most tv programmes.
Also when removing medical notes (I worked for 13 years [...]

Mintpass Mintpad Tiny PMP / MID For Under £100

March 24, 2009 Click to read more →

Before you dismiss the Mintpass Mintpad MID (Mobile Internet Device) as another PMP (Portable Media Playerthat’s gonna go and enter a saturated market this one has a few twists and it’s about to go on sale outside of its native South Korea!
Pocketables has knowledge that the 2.8inch touchscreen, Windows CE 5.0 Wi-Fi device is being [...]

Mobile Internet Twice As Nice Since 2008

March 16, 2009 Click to read more →

We know that Brits love mobile internet.
But comScore worked out that the number of people accessing news and information on their mobile device has more than doubled in a year.
In January 2008 around 36,870,000 US users accessed the internet on a mobile phone. This figure rose to over 63,000,000 in January 2009.
Out of that 63.2 [...]

British Search Engine Takes on Google – Wolfram Alpha

March 9, 2009 Click to read more →

Mention searching the interweb and chances are that Google will come up in the conversation.
Well, Wolfram Alpha may have a few choice words of its own on that score.
When you ‘Google’, those search terms that you’ve typed in are checked against all the documents stored on the Google servers.
These are then ranked – the best [...]

Winki – MSI Internet Device With Odd Name

March 3, 2009 Click to read more →

MSI have announced a new internet device called, of all things, MSI Winki.
Stop that sniggering!
I would say that we’d get used to the name but, lets face it, playing with someone’s Wii still cracks a smile.
MSI says that the Winki is a new internet interactive device without an operating system.
The Winki seems to be based on the good [...]

Viliv S5 iTunes Playing MID Coming to Europe and USA

February 13, 2009 Click to read more →

You may or may not have heard about the Viliv S5.
It’s a Windows XP based MID (Mobile Internet Device) and will be ready for pre-order on the 24th February with shipping starting on the 3rd March in Korea .
Even folks in Europe and the States will get a version. 
This $649 (505 Euros) iteration will be packing a 4.8-inch touchscreen, a 60GB hard disk, Intel [...]

O2 Dongle Gets All Fashionable – Henry Holland Helps

February 9, 2009 Click to read more →

O2 reckons that “this season’s must-have accessory” isn’t a ’statement handbag’ or even some costume jewelry – they’re saying that a limited edition polka dot mobile broadband modem designed by Henry Holland under his House of Holland label is the way to get gasps of kudos.
Available for a limited time only, the Holland-designed skin will [...]

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