Don't kill FM for broadband: Build a new internet

There's not much sign that big ideas are on the agenda yet. According to The Wall Street Journal, Ofcom is considering liberating the radio spectrum that carries FM stations and giving it over to broadband. The thinking goes that with the move to digital radio, up to 50 percent of the band between 88 and 108MHz could carry wireless data; the frequencies are good at going long distances and penetrating buildings, making them especially suitable for rural areas.

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Google’s Six-Front War

While the tech world is buzzing about the launch and implications of Google’s new social network, Google+, it’s worth noting that Google isn’t just in a war with Facebook, it’s at war with multiple companies across multiple industries. In fact, Google is fighting a multi-front war with a host of tech giants for control over some of the most valuable pieces of real estate in technology. Whether it’s social, mobile, browsing, local, enterprise, or even search, Google is being attacked from all angles. And make no mistake about it, they are fighting back and fighting back, hard. Entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist Ben Horowitz laid the groundwork for this in his post Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO, saying Larry Page “seems to have determined that Google is moving into war and he clearly intends to be a wartime CEO. This will be a profound change for Google and the entire high-tech industry.” Horowitz is exactly right.

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LulzSec hackers claim CIA website shutdown

The hacker group Lulz Security has claimed it has brought down the public-facing website of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

The alleged hack on CIA.gov occurred on the same day the group opened a telephone request line so its fans could suggest potential targets.

On its Twitter feed, the group wrote: "Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz".

The CIA website was inaccessible at times on Wednesday but the hack claim could not immediately be verified.

It was unclear if the outage was due to LulzSec's efforts or to the large number of internet users trying to check the site.

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Windows 8: What You Need to Know

Microsoft showed its first public demo of Windows 8 on Wednesday, and it's not at all like the Windows operating systems you've come to know over the past 25 years. The next version of Microsoft's operating system ("Windows 8" is just a codename) is a radical departure, designed around touch screens

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Launch of Apple's iCloud predicted to cause 'collateral damage' on RIM

The anticipated ability of Apple's iCloud network to take some processing and traffic burdens from wireless carriers' networks has been predicted by one analyst to cause "collateral damage" for rival handset maker Research in Motion.

Shaw Wu with Sterne Agee issued to investors Friday in which he declared that iCloud will make it even tougher for companies to compete with Apple. He reiterated his belief that iCloud will "change the game" in the highly competitive mobile space.

In his view, iCloud will make iTunes even more powerful and useful for end users. That would be a huge blow to RIM, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, all of which have struggled to compete with iTunes in its current form.

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DroidDream Returns, Dozens of Infected Apps Pulled From Android Market

Researchers have identified a second large batch of apps in the Android Market that have been infected with the DroidDream malware, estimating that upwards of 30,000 users have downloaded at least one of the more than 30 infected apps. Google has removed the apps from the market.

There are at least 34 applications that researchers have found in the Android Market in the last few days that had a version of the DroidDream malware dropped into them. Once a user installs one of the infected applications, the malicious component, which researchers have dubbed DroidDream Light, will kick in once the user receives an incoming call. The malware then gathers some identifying information from the phone, including its IMEI number, IMSI number, packages installed and other data, and then sends it off to a pre-configured remote server.

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Tech mogul pays bright minds not to go to college

SAN FRANCISCO – Instead of paying attention in high school, Nick Cammarata preferred to read books on whatever interested him. He also has a gift for coding that got him into Carnegie Mellon University's esteemed computer science program despite his grades.

But the 18-year-old programmer won't be going to college this fall. Or maybe ever.

Cammarata is one of two dozen winners of a scholarship just awarded by San Francisco tech tycoon Peter Thiel that comes with a unique catch: The recipients are being paid not to go to college.

Instead, these teenagers and 20-year-olds are getting $100,000 each to chase their entrepreneurial dreams for the next two years.

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Apple Steals Microsoft Employee to Run Mysterious Data Center

More bad news for Microsoft as one of its employees jumped ship and joined Apple to work on their data centers. Kevin Timmons, known for building efficient Internet-scale data centers on a budget, left Microsoft to work for Apple.

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Google, Facebook tangle with latest tweak

(Reuters) - Google Inc will begin allowing users to personally endorse search results and Web pages, its latest attempt to stave off rival Facebook Inc while trying to jump onboard a social networking boom.

The so-called "+1" button will start to appear alongside Google search results for select users from Wednesday, letting people recommend specific search results to friends and contacts by clicking on that button.

Eventually, the feature may begin to influence the ranking of search results, though that is only under consideration. Results are now ranked via a closely guarded algorithm.

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Nokia deal to 'rocket Windows Phone 7 past iPhone'

By 2015, Windows Phone 7 will power 37 per cent more smartphones than Apple's iPhone, according to the prognosticators at International Data Corporation (IDC).

"Up until the launch of Windows Phone 7 last year, Microsoft has steadily lost market share while other operating systems have brought forth new and appealing experiences," said IDC analyst Ramon Llamas in a press release accompanying his company's latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, released Tuesday.

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