eReader adoptees who miss the nostalgic niff of real paper books, can now coat their Kindles and Nooks in Paper Passion, a perfume that bottles the very scent of bookshops. The Paper Passion fragrance captures the odour of a freshly printed book, its maker claims, so if you share the late Ray Bradbury’s sentiments that Read more

While I’m happy to join in the general outrage about intrusions on our privacy, the metaphorical 72-point front-page headlines about Google and Apple display a deep ignorance about the existing, common, mundane uses of aerial imaging. When people add the words “military”, “grade”, “spy” and “imaging” into a story also containing the words “Google” and Read more

A vulnerability in F5 kit first announced in February may be in the wild, with code posted to Github purporting to be an exploit. The original advisory stated that vulnerable installations of F5’s BigIP and other systems allowed an attacker to log in as root, because the vulnerability exposed the device’s SSH private key. F5 Read more

CCWF2012 A European Commission director has said that it shouldn’t really matter where Europe’s data is stored, as long as it’s secure and protected. Megan Richards, acting deputy director general of Information Society and Media and also part of the Converged Networks and Services directorate, said it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if European data Read more

The Purdue University team which in March published a paper identifying how rogue apps and user-tracking can sap Android batteries has followed up with research into detecting and fixing the “wakelock” bugs. The new study is to be presented at the MobiSys conference in the UK later this month. The researchers have extended their profiling Read more

Legislation relating to communications data will be yanked out of the existing Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and brought under a new regulatory framework if the Home Office’s plans to step up the monitoring of internet traffic passes through Parliament. Home Secretary Theresa May unveiled her proposals for the UK’s rehashed internet super-snoop law Read more

Apple has hit back at Kodak’s attempts to get the firms’ patent issues sorted out in bankruptcy court, filing a motion in district court asking the judge to move the row there. Kodak has accused Apple of “frivolous” claims to its patents, saying that Cupertino’s only purpose is to delay the camera company’s sale of Read more

On the fourth day of a IT systems choke-up that has left customers unable to access money and in some cases unable to buy food or travel, Natwest and RBS – which both belong to the RBS group – still have no idea when the issues will be fixed. A spokesperson said the banking group had Read more

Something for the weekend, Sir? When I first got into this journalism lark in the late 1980s, the exploding nature of the personal computer market would force the hand of IT companies to reveal products far in advance of their intended launch date. Such was the race to give the appearance of being cutting-edge, they Read more

Seattle is expected to go into lockdown this weekend, as fears grow that a gang of rogue leprechauns is on the loose and attacking locals. Komonews.com reports that police were called to reports of a street fight last Saturday. When they arrived they saw a number of people run from the scene, before finding a Read more