Mobile Stew

Over the last couple of weeks the rate at which I receive invites to link up on LinkedIn has increased, partly because lots of my ntl:Telewest colleagues are sending me invites because they are not sure who will be staying and going as part of the merger.

For those of you who don't know what LinkedIn is, it's a social networking site which allows users to build and maintain a
network of professional contacts. 
Linked In allows users to register their professional contact
information and send it to their contacts, as well as keeping contact
information up to date. The company offers free, advertiser-supported
services but makes the lion's share of its money from premium services,
which run from $5 to $200 per month. Job listings cost $95. 

 My network ...

The BBC claims that Carphonewarehouse is planning on offering free broadband access in the UK to users of its land line Talk Talk service.

This would be quite an interesting approach.  I don't imagine it will be a very fast service if it does appear, and it could cause quite a stir in the market.  I think other operators want to position broadband access as the premium product, not the giveaway.

More: BBC NEWS

ntl:Telewest have finally reached agreement with Virgin Mobile over the
terms of a takeover offer, which values the mobile operator at £962.4m
($1.62bn), together with an agreement to re-brand all consumer operations with the Virgin brand in the future.  The combined company will have revenues of over £3.9bn which will put it on a par with Sky and Vodafone UK.

The new company, Virgin Broadband(??) will be the first company in the UK to offer quadruple play to customers - Broadband, TV, fixed and mobile telephony.  I really think that fourplay combined with the Virgin brand will reshape the way consumers think about communications and entertainment.  Telewest had great success with its tripleplay (TV, broadband and mobile) '3 for £30' campaign.  Imagine how successful a strong fourplay offer will be, ...

Movielink and CinemaNow have both signed download-to-own
deals with major Hollywood studios such as Universal Pictures, Warner
Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox.  Previously only rentals were available but now full movies will be available to download and own at the same time as the DVD becomes available.

I think this is a great move.  The item I find most exciting about this service is not so much that the latest releases will be available, but also back catalogues.  I'm not sure what format they will be using, but even if they supply the raw DVD on a 10Mb connection it will only take around 45-60 mins for movie to arrive.  If they opt for something like DivX that time should be halved - just enough time to make some popcorn.

I've never really understood how an Apple could be a trademark, but Apple Computer Inc and Apple Corps Ltd are due to face off in the
courtroom in a case involving Apple's iTunes music store, which
violates an agreement intended to keep the U.S.-based computer company
out of the music business.

Apple Corps is owned by the former Beatles and their heirs,
and still owns the licensing rights to Beatles’ products. It is claiming
that the introduction of iTunes broke a $26 million settlement under
which Apple Computer agreed to steer clear of the music business, for
which the Beatles’ company retains the famous trademark. It is the

I've been thinking recently about getting a hardware firewall as in my mind it should offer a better level of protection for my home network (currently I have 2 PCs, a Xbox 360 and 2 Modded Xboxs running XBMC connected to a Netgear WPN-824 router), whilst freeing up resources on my PCs. 

It just seems to make more sense to stop attacks at the 'edge' of my network rather than letting them through to PCs.  I also wouldn't have to fiddle around with setting up firewall rules on each PC, instead just setting rules at a network level.

Has anybody else done this or considered this?  Can you recommend any devices?

For those of you who didn't get an invite you can see for yourselves what all the fuss was about as the Windows Live Messenger Beta is now a public one. 

I predict that a lot of you will be disappointed as IMHO it's not that exciting.

It's been so long since I've used Outlook Express I overlooked the fact that Microsofy haven't been updating it.  This week Microsoft announced that it is to release a new email client for
public beta testing. The new email client to be called the Windows Live
Mail Desktop beta will become a free replacement for the current
Outlook Express currently bundled with Windows XP.

The new mail client will incorporate much of the new functionality
that has emerged since Outlook Express was released in 2001,
principally areas such as RSS feeds and blogs.

The client will double as an RSS reader with the ability to read and
forward RSS feeds within the standard client window. All the usual
features expected in an RSS reader will be present such as drag ...

The Chicago Tribune says it has compiled a list of 2,653 CIA employees, just by searching the Internet.  The newspaper said it gathered the information from
online services that compile public data, that any fee-paying
subscriber can access.  It did not publish the names, at the CIA's request. Many
of the agents are believed to be covert. The paper also located two
dozen "secret" facilities.

It's scary how much info is available on the net.  Whenever I meet someone new I tend to 'Google' their name first to see what I can learn.  This backfired on me a few years ago though when I agreed to take a friend of a friend from the US I'd never met before to a party.  When I googled her I found a picture ...

Zopa, an online service that matches personal borrowers with lenders typically resulting in lower interest rates than high-street banks, turned one year old last week. 

The service seems to be doing quite well, with over 50,000 registered users and the supply/demand equation is currently in the right place with more people wanting to borrow than there are people wanting to lend.

Things have got so bad that Zopa are paying an additional 2% to any new lenders i.e. even if a borrower is only paying 4.9%, Zopa will pay the lender an additional 2% giving a total payment of 6.9%. 

I'm toying with putting some cash in next month to see how the system works and also because one of my old colleagues is one of the founders.  In ...