BT among seven bidders to enter 4G auction

BT is among seven bidders to enter the race for Britain’s 4G airwaves, fuelling expectations that the Government will secure the £3.5bn windfall it has banked on.              

He telecoms giant will be vying with Britain’s “Big Four” mobile operators - Vodafone, EE, and the owners of O2 and Three - to secure the valuable airwaves, which are needed to deliver superfast fourth generation mobile services. There were also two surprise entrants on the list: Britain’s MLL Telecom, and Hong Kong’s PCCW, both of which sell communications networks to businesses and other organisations.

The auction will play a major role in determining the pecking order of Britain’s mobile businesses over the next decade, although not all of the bidders are chasing the airwaves in order to roll out mobile telephone services.

Instead, BT, MLL and PCCW are thought to be eyeing tranches of low-frequency airwaves which they can use to deliver speedy 4G wi-fi internet services in certain, localised areas. Analysts said they would be likely to offer the faster wi-fi to multinationals and companies on business parks, rather than making it generally available, to help boost their so-called “enterprise” operations serving business customers.

“There is nothing to stop them offering it to consumers as well, but it would have to be on a very local level. There is not enough [low-frequency spectrum, or airwaves] in the auction to offer them across the whole country,” said Matthew Howeet, a telecoms analyst at Ovum.

Although BT is the best placed of the three surprise bidders to launch a full-blown mobile network, it is very unlikely to do so, he added. “It would be a massive shock if any of these three attempted to bid for one of the big chunks [of airwaves needed for 4G mobile]. They would have to acquire a significant amount because they don’t have any as a starting point.”

UK is a nation of data-hungry net shoppers, says survey

Internet shopping is more popular in the UK than in any other major country, a survey from regulator Ofcom suggests.

Consumers in the UK spend an average of £1,083 a year on internet shopping, compared with Australia which spends the second highest at £842, it said.

The UK's fondness for net shopping is, in part, driven by mobile devices.

UK consumers are also downloading more data from their mobiles than any other nation, according to the survey.

The study also indicated that:

• In December 2011 the average UK mobile connection used 424MB (megabytes) of data, higher than Japanese users who averaged 392MBs.
• 16% of all web traffic in the UK was from mobiles, tablets or other connected devices - more than any other European country.
• Four in ten UK adults now access Facebook, Twitter and others social networks via their mobiles.
• For 18 to 24-year-olds the figures is even higher, at 62%.

The findings form part of Ofcom's seventh International Communications Market Report, which looks at the take-up, availability, price and use of broadband, landlines, mobiles, TV and radio across 17 major countries.

Brits are also the most likely to watch TV-on-demand and use digital video recorders, the report suggests.

Big TVs

UK consumers are embracing the new generation of internet-enabled TVs with 15% owning such a set, compared to 10% in the US.

Our TVs are also getting bigger - more than a third of TVs sold in the first quarter of 2012 were between 33in (84cm) and 44in (112cm).

The UK remains the cheapest place to buy communication services, although the gap is narrowing.

Ofcom said a basket of communication services - including fixed-line telephone, mobile calls and texts and fixed and mobile broadband and TV - costs on average £146 in the UK.

That was £32 cheaper than in France, £101 cheaper than Italy and £168 cheaper than the US.

Apple could make bid for map firm Tom-Tom, analyst says

A Netherlands-based analyst says there's a 30 percent chance that Apple will attempt to acquire the GPS and mapping company.

Apple could make a bid for GPS and mapping company Tom-Tom, according to an analyst.

In a note to investors today, Hans Slob, a Netherlands-based analyst at Rabobank International, said he believes there's a 30 percent chance of Apple offering to acquire Tom-Tom  The move, he said, would be designed to quickly handle any troubles Apple could be facing with its Maps iOS application.

"Tom-Tom needs the cash from Apple, and Apple needs the know-how of Tom-Tom," Slob said,according to Bloomberg, which was first to report on the story.

It's not clear if Slob was simply making a bold prediction or has some knowledge of Apple's plans.

Apple's Maps application was hit hard earlier this year when it launched in iOS 6. The application, which is a replacement for Google Maps in iOS, was criticized for a wide array of flaws, including inaccurate information. Apple quickly apologized for the issue and said that it would improve the program in the coming months.

If Apple decided to acquire a mapping company to help it improve Maps, Tom-Tom wouldn't be such a bad choice: the company is one of the main providers of mapping data for Apple's Maps, along with Waze, Yelp, and NASA.

Exactly how much Apple would be willing to pay for Tom-Tom, however, is unknown. The company's shares today closed at 4.06 euros ($5.32), pushing its market capitalization -- a measure of the value of a public company -- to 900.9 million euros ($1.18 billion). In other words, even if Apple pays a premium to acquire Tom-Tom, the iPhone maker probably won't even notice a dent in its more than $100 billion in cash on hand.

Apple Maps not fully at fault over Australian Mildura confusion

Apple Maps not fully at fault over Australian Mildura confusion.

Australian government's official gazeteer includes area called 'Mildura Rural City' at location previously shown on iPhones      

    Apple wasn't completely wrong in directing Australians who searched for "Mildura" to the midst of the Murray-Sunset National Park – at least according to the Australian government's official gazetteer, which includes a location called "Mildura Rural City" at the place where Mildura was previously marked on iPhone maps.

As first noted by The Register news website, the official gazetteer – which is the authoritative reference for the names and locations of 384,104 places, objects and towns in the continent – contains an entry at the precise place to which Apple was directing hapless drivers until making a hurried correction on Monday.

Police in Mildura had warned that using Apple's iOS 6 maps could lead drivers astray and leave them stranded in the Murray-Sunset park, which at this time of year sees temperatures of up to 47C and has no water and poor phone reception. One man was stranded for 24 hours last week after navigating to the location, which is 44 miles (70km) from the actual town of 30,000.

However Apple's source for its misleading data is unimpeachable: the gazetteer is the official reference. It contains 36 entries for "Mildura", including the fateful one for Mildura Rural City – which has "official" status and is listed as a "district" (comprising an "agricultural area, county, district, local government area, parish or region").

According to Wikipedia, Mildura Rural City is in fact an area of over 22,000 sq km in the northwestern part of Victoria state – but a gazetteer has to locate every entry at a point, and Geoscience Australia chose one in the middle of the park, rather than in the town.

Apple's mistake though was to ignore another entry for Mildura, which the gazetteer records as having the class of "POPL" – that is, a population centre, even though the gazetter's explanatory index doesn't explain that.

The problem highlights an observation made by Ed Parsons, one of the chief geoscientists at Google, and formerly chief technology officer at the UK's Ordnance Survey. Writing on his personal blog after Apple dropped Google from providing its maps product in September, but before the problems in Australia, Parsons wrote: "Making maps work well on a phone is not actually a cartography problem … yes you can use poor maps or conflate content from various sources without care producing a poor map, and people might get lost … but the reason we all use maps on out phones is that they help us find stuff – maps on smartphones are interfaces to local search … To be fair to our friends in Cupertino the maps are not that bad, all maps have some mistakes, but the bigger issue is the lack of a true geocoded search index of places and the search algorithms that sit around it."

Microsoft’s Windows RT could evolve into just ‘Surface’

When it comes to getting a name right for any device it’s just as important as getting thehardware precise, get it wrong and this could have a series effect on the future of whatever product you are trying to become the next big thing. This is something that Microsoft could soon face, as it has recently been discussed that in order for them to make their tablet a success they need to drop the name Microsoft Windows RT and evolve it to just ‘Surface’.

                                                                                              

An interesting article has been looking at why Paul Thurrott believes that the best way for Microsoft to move forward with its Windows 8 mobile OS business is to re-brand it, and much of what he says is correct – although some fans would disagree. For many fans they believe that even the name Windows 8 is boring when compared to just Android or iOS, but there are still those who believe that the name is mature.

This is a worry for Microsoft because they are uncertain just how many consumers are on the side of the name Microsoft Windows RT; maybe most of them would just like the name Surface because it just rolls off the tongue? The biggest issue that Microsoft would have to face, putting cost aside, is how people don’t like change. If the Redmond company had just gone with the simpler name in the first place then all well and good, but trying to persuade consumers to drop a name now is going to be a tough call.

The Windows RT device was created for tablets running the ARM processor, which has a desktop mode, but most consumers don’t even look at their Windows tablet that way and just refer to it as a Surface tablet, which could be seen as yet another sign to drop the long and awkward name. The differences between the RT and the Pro can be better explained in our recent article.

If Microsoft were to make a change then maybe they should not go as drastic as a complete name change for Windows 8, although Surface OS has a nice ring to it, but they should consider dropping the name Windows RT as it just doesn’t sound right.

How to shutdown other computer

How to shutdown other computer.

1. start menu search CMD press ok
2. type shutdown -i and press enter                  
3. put computer IP address or full name you want to shutdown./ if you are in school or college you can browse it. 
4. choose option want to do computer like shutdown, restart, log off. 

5. choose plan or not and write comment in box any thing you want.
6. click on ok than wait CMD will send your request if you are success or not.

hope you guys understand and enjoy it plz don't forget to comment and post yours ideas.

UK government condemned on net address shift

A body set up to get the UK moving to the net's new addressing system has been shut down in protest at official indifference to its work.

6UK was set up to advise ISPs and firms about the move from version 4 of the addressing scheme to version 6.

But 6UK has been wound up after its board realised its work was futile without official backing.

The indifference means the UK is among the nations that have done the least to move to V6, it said.

Tech evangelism

"The biggest organisation we needed to join 6UK was the government," said Philip Sheldrake, former director of the non-profit body.

Although the UK government handed over £20,000 ($32,000) to get 6UK going in 2010, said Mr Sheldrake, support had been scant ever since. For instance, he said, nothing had been done to change official procurement rules to mandate the new protocol which would have had a significant effect on adoption.

"There's no material incentive for any organisation to go for IPv6," he said.

The internet grew up using an addressing scheme called IP Version 4 (IPv4).

In the 1970s when the net was being built the 4.3 billion IP addresses allowed by IPv4 were thought to be enough. However, the net's rapid growth has quickly exhausted this pool and led to the creation of IPv6 which has an effectively limitless store of addresses to call on. Europe effectively ran out of IPv4 addresses in September 2012.

Disrupt services

Official indifference was revealed, said Mr Sheldrake, by the fact that no government website sat on an IPv6 address.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We will continue to explore with industry and other partners the need for IPv6 and relevant ways in which we may be able to assist”

Government spokeswoman

By contrast, said Mr Sheldrake, countries such as the US had boosted adoption by mandating IPv6 compliance in contracts to force suppliers to work with it. The one factor that made a difference to a nation's adoption of V6 was government involvement, he said.

UK businesses and competitiveness would suffer, he said, as the world moved on with IPv6 but Britain stuck with V4. It was possible to translate between the two protocols, said Mr Sheldrake, but this could disrupt many services, such as Skype, that rely on using the same protocol across the entire net.

Government involvement with IPv6 sat at odds, he said, with its enthusiasm for other digital initiatives such as Tech City.

"If you were going to evangelise Tech City and the UK as a digital hub to the world you probably want to be building that on the modern internet protocol," he said.

A government spokeswoman said the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and the Department of Culture "remain committed to the development of an open internet and regard the use of IPv6 as one of the technologies that is likely to make this possible".

She added: "The expectation was that it would be able to find wider funding and create a central point for the stimulation of IPv6 in the UK.

"We regret that this has not happened. We will continue to explore with industry and other partners the need for IPv6 and relevant ways in which we may be able to assist."