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The organisation leading the digital TV switchover in the UK, Digital UK, has speech-enabled its website with a new feature that will allow users to listen to content about the switchover read aloud to them.

Browsealoud is innovative in that its text-to-speech reads online content by also visually highlighting each word as it is spoken to those with dyslexia, literacy difficulties, mild visual impairments and those who speak English as a second language.

The system is provided free of charge to anyone who downloads the software and then can use the application for all websites on the internet.

Ford Ennals, chief executive of Digital UK said: “By incorporating Browsealoud technology on the digitaluk.co.uk website, we are further increasing our ability to give as much help as possible to vulnerable groups in society.”

Mr Ennals explained that the digital switchover will “affect everyone in the UK” and said the tool will help get that message out.

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Trojan malware has been found to be controlling Google ad space by sending users to different websites when they try to click on the search engine’s advertisements.

Romanian-based online security firm BitDefender found the hidden software, Trojan.Qhost.WU, and said that the threat could have a negative impact on both users and businesses.

Attila-Mihaly Balazs, a BitDefender virus analyst, said that users are prone to clicking on links or ads that “may contain malicious code”, while he said webmasters are affected because their valuable ad space is stolen by a third-party vendor and are used to promote someone else’s website.

An anonymous hacker who told siliconrepublic.com about how the malware could be operating said “most anti-virus” programs should pick up on the problem if “if an attempt was made to modify the host file anyway”.

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Help - Cyclone Sidr- Victims in Bangladesh

The Effect of Climate Change Education, Environment and Spirituality

Creative Graphcis and Communications designed the logo and also developed the micro site for the Newhomeland Strategies and Campaigns’ Cyclone Sidr fund raising event.

With our expert help Newhomeland Strategies and Campaigns has been able to collect donnations and also sell tickets for the event on-line.

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Vista comes of age with Service Pack 1: First bundle of fixes could boost take-up of latest Windows version

Microsoft released the first Windows Vista Service Pack (SP1) software upgrade for testing last week, prior to its official launch in the first quarter of next year.

The release candidate (RC) version of SP1 is being offered to hundreds of millions of customers via the Microsoft download centre because the software giant wants to obtain the most extensive feedback possible.

The first service pack is key to galvanising take-up of Vista, according to analysts.

“SP1 is a moderately important technical update for the operating system,” said Gartner vice president Steve Kleynhans.

“But it is a critically important milestone because many organisations use the first service pack as a signal that the operating system has reached a certain level of maturity and is ready for them to start deploying.

“It will also help break the standoff between users and third-party technology vendors – users waiting for full support from vendors, vendors waiting for users to adopt,” he said.

SP1 has three main components – a bundle of fixes already available through the Windows Update service, some less critical patches, and minor tweaks to the way certain parts of the operating system work.

“It is important because after a year there are so many fixes, that it can take a long time to get a new Vista installation fully patched,” said Kleynhans.

Vista’s main attractions are its improved security and the collaboration function with Share-Point and Office 2007.

Nick Argent, IT manager at environmental attraction the Eden Project, said his organisation will be downloading the early SP1 version to run tests.

“Like many companies, we are reluctant to roll out a new operating system until the first service pack is available for bug fixes but we are moving to Vista for our laptops because of its enhanced security,” he said.

Tube Lines, the firm responsible for three London Underground lines, is working on application compatibility ahead of full migration to Vista next year.

“We have 70 sites across London and large-scale engineering projects,” said head of IT Adrian Davey.

“Knowing that staff can work on the same version of a document and any changes are incorporated to create a single source of truth is a big benefit,” he said.

Vista migration to gather pace.

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Lord Digby Jones, minister for trade and investment, has launched a new strategy to market the UK’s IT capability across the globe.

The strategy includes dividing the sector into eight sub-sectors to allow for greater focus on its strengths and to create a board that includes representatives from both business and government to help “drive the strategy forward”.

Speaking at the Institution for Engineering and Technology, Lord Jones said ICT generates around six per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product and added that “its importance to our economy is unquestionable”.

The new strategy - being run by UK Trade and Investment - wants businesses based in the UK to offer input to ensure UK ICT “is given the loudest possible voice on the world stage”.

Lord Jones continued the initiative is the “first step” in deciding on how the UK sells ICT across the world.

Last month, the managing director of the sector group at UK Trade and Investment, Dominic Jeremy, said the marketing strategy would be “designed to come up with compelling messages that the industry can buy into“.

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Amateur animators will now be able to use software that the production teams from the sets of The Lord of the Rings trilogies and the Chronicles of Narnia have used for free.

Antics Technologies has released a downloadable version of its realtime animation software Antics V3 that will allow users to create characters and sets in an easy to use, point-and-click format.

Alastair Woolley, managing director of Antics, said that with “simple techniques like drag-and-drop and a simple user interface, anyone with a story to tell or an interest in filmmaking can now bring their ideas to life in real time.”

Users will still have access to the more complicated actions involving special scenes and camera angles that will allow “cameras to view the action from whatever angle and positions you want”, he added.

The free version of the software has a library of scenes and characters including everything from a Wild West scene to a modern city landscape and for an additional fee, enthusiasts can purchase more scenes, import third party animations and share content with other users in an open forum.

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Microsoft warned companies on Monday that a flaw in the way Windows searches for Web proxies could allow an attacker the ability to reroute traffic through a malicious server.

The security issues occur when a Windows computer attempts to find a proxy server using Microsoft’s Web Proxy Automatic Discovery (WPAD) technology and the organization’s domain name starts at the third level or deeper, such as somecompany.co.jp, the software giant stated in an advisory. The WPAD search first attempts to find the server using the fully-qualified domain name (FQDN), and if it doesn’t find the server will try the next higher level of the domain name. For example, a search for a proxy server in somecompany.co.jp will look for servername.somecompany.co.jp and then move on to servername.co.jp, which could be a malicious server outside the company’s network.

“At this time, we are not aware of attacks attempting to use the reported vulnerability, but we will continue to track this issue,” Tim Rains, a spokesman for the Microsoft Security Response Center, said on the teams’ blog. “The advisory contains several mitigations that customers can use to help protect themselves from attackers.”

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London, 26 November 2007 - Cloudmark Inc., the global leader in carrier-grade messaging security, today announced the results of a survey conducted on its behalf by YouGov, which revealed that public confidence in consumer brands is dramatically affected by phishing attacks, with 42% of people surveyed feeling that their trust in a brand would be greatly reduced if they received a phishing email claiming to be from that company. The survey also showed that the majority of consumers feel that the responsibility for protection against phishing attacks lies with themselves, their service provider and the service provider that transported the phishing emails.

The survey revealed that:

• 42% of respondents surveyed feel that the trust in a brand would be greatly reduced if they received a phishing email claiming to be sent by that brand.
• 41% of those surveyed felt that their trust in a bank would be greatly reduced if they received a phishing email claiming to be from that company, compared to 40% who felt the same for an ISP, 36% for an online shopping site and 33% for a social networking site.
• 26% of those surveyed feel that they are the party most responsible for protecting themselves from phishing attacks, with 23% believing their Internet Service Provider (ISP) or email service provider is the most responsible and 17% thinking that the sender’s ISP and email service provider holds the greatest responsibility.

“Phishing is a highly sophisticated and well orchestrated form of crime. The gangs behind these attacks work to compromise financial information via e-mail scams and then propagate that information into a highly stratified and efficient economy, selling the data on to those who will profit from the accounts,” commented Neil Cook, UK technology chief at Cloudmark. “Earlier this year we conducted research into the effect that phishing has on the individual that found consumers were still extremely concerned about falling victim to such a scam. What is interesting to note from these results is that well-known brands are also suffering, with phishing attacks having a detrimental effect on their reputation. This knock-on effect will be particularly worrying for the banks, who rely on a high degree of trust with their customers.”

In addition to the YouGov survey, Cloudmark’s own research team today released results showing that Natwest Bank was the most phished brand in the UK during October 2007. The research was collected using Cloudmark’s user base, which consists of 260 million mailboxes. Cloudmark’s research also indicates that across Europe, the majority of unique phishing websites are created using the top level domain associated with the United Kingdom, .uk.

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Normally I do not like doing reviews of things as I do not have time to do reviews. Today I am going to try to tell you about something that Web CEO development team probably does not want you to know about.

Web CEO, as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) software that I have been using for a very long time. It has been a while since the version 7.5 came out. Until today I did not need to use it much since I installed the new version. Just to get an idea of how CGC ranked by search engines I decide to give it a go and see what’s new.

First had to wait for some of the updates to download and install. But when restarted I was presented with an error message saying my Knowledge Base is out of date (current date is ‘10 December 2007′; the deadline for the next Knowledge Base update is ‘13 November 2007′).

Just shows how things can be left out even after very detailed quality control process. Hope they fix it soon, because I’d not like to go back a month on any software.

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The web browser leverages the company’s Small Screen Rendering technology.

Opera Software, today announced that its Opera Mini browser is now available on phones enabled with Qualcomm’s BREW platform.

The company boasts of providing an excellent user experience by leveraging the company’s Small Screen Rendering technology to reformat the web page to fit inside the screen width. The company also avers that their new Desktop Mode gives users a wider view of the page, displaying web pages exactly as they appear on the PC. The company states that enhancements such as the Opera Zoom functionality allow users to dive into the page, and dynamically navigate the content, resulting in a more intuitive browsing experience.

The company believes that for operators, a turnkey white-labeled Opera Mini solution increases brand loyalty among users and adds that the Indian telecom operator, Tata Teleservices Ltd, was one of the first to realize the advantages of Opera Mini for their BREW handsets.

“We are excited to provide Opera with the ability to extend the offering onto BREW-enabled devices,” said Bob Briggs, senior vice president and general manager of BREW for Qualcomm Internet Services. “Opera Mini represents another way that customers can have an enhanced user experience with high speed and content rich Web sites right from their BREW phones.”

“Opera consistently aims to improve the quality and performance of mobile Web browsing. By making Opera Mini available on Qualcomm’s BREW platform, we are able to offer a fast and cost efficient Web experience to millions of mobile phone users,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO for Opera Software. “The rapid growth of Opera Mini solidifies Opera’s leadership position in the mobile Web browsing space and is further proof of the value that leading operators, such as TATA Teleservices, are finding in our solutions.”

“By offering Opera Mini on BREW-enabled handsets, we are able to bring innovative data offerings to our users. Opera has once again proven itself as the pioneer in providing rich and full access to the Web,” says Pankaj Sethi, President, VAS & Enterprise Marketing, Tata Teleservices Ltd.

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