Tech Roundup

After all the recent Developer events and new product launches, this week has felt like a "slow news week" in terms of Technology. Here's a quick run through of the very brief highlights that caught my eye from the past few days;

Apple have mixed fortunes in Patent Wars

Having managed to get the Google Samsung Galaxy Nexus banned from sale in some countries last week, Apple suffered a courtroom setback this week when it was ruled that HTC were not guilty of infringing some of Apples patents here in the UK.

HTC had petitioned to have 4 specific Apple patents declared invalid. These were the slide-to-unlock feature, multi-touch software, alphabet-changing software and photo-management software.

Unfortunately for Apple, the UK hearing only upheld the photo management patent. So a defeat for Apple, but this is unlikely to be the end of the story with the Cupertino giant certain to appeal.

These patent battles become more complex by the day with several disputes spanning multiple countries.

Youview is launched

Youview is a new set top box that connects to both your aerial and your broadband connection. Originally set for release in 2010, the project has had many delays but was finally introduced by Lord Alan Sugar this week.

For those of you who don't want to pay a monthly subscription fee for Sky or Virgin, Youview could be nice alternative. The one off purchase price of £300.00 however will put off many potential customers, although some ISPs are rumoured to be preparing packages that will offer the opportunity to spread the cost.

The service itself looks like it has some nice features actually, although the hardware looks really unappealing and outdated. I sincerely hope Lord Sugars involvement in this project means that Youview is nothing like the awful Amstrad video recorders of the 1980s that used to chew up my tapes however! We will have to wait and see whether Youview takes off!

Internet Doomsday on Monday

Last November, the FBI arrested six Estonians responsible for the DNS changer virus. This horrible piece of malware reroutes DNS requests to specific servers setup by the criminals, and then pushes out advertising to infected machines.

After taking control of these rogue servers, the FBI substituted these with their own so that anyone still infected had a route to the internet. Keeping these servers running however is now costing the FBI way too many dollars so they are planning to shut down the servers permanently on Monday 9th July.

The result of this however, is that an estimated 300,000 computer users worldwide could find themselves without internet access on Monday, due to the fact that they have this virus on their computer and they simply do not know.

McAfee have published a free and easy to use tool that you can quickly use to establish whether or not your computer is infected with the DNS Changer, and if so - there is also a tool for removal.

You can find the McAfee DNS Checker tool here;

http://www.mcafee.com/dnscheck

Well, that's about it for another week folks. Have great weekend!
Peter