Tumblr and Google App Engine down as US traffic plummets The sky is falling!

Updated  There are a fair few people cursing their displays and tablets this morning after a series of outages took down Google’s App Engine, as well as the Tumblr blogging site and a host of smaller operators.…

Inventor sues Google Wallet over NFC loyalty patent More than one billygoat headed across that bridge, though

Loyalty scheme pioneer Peter Sprogis is taking Google to court, claiming that the search engine’s NFC Wallet infringes his 2007 patent on adding loyalty to pay-by-bonk apps.…

4G: Bad coverage, crap battery life – but at least it’s really expensive Bonus feature: Can’t handle voice calls

Comment  Six weeks ago Everything Everywhere EE announced the UK’s …

Can a new TCP scheme give wireless a 16-fold boost? Understanding MIT’s latest save-the-wireless-world technology

A group of MIT researchers is touting a change to TCP – the transmission control protocol – that it says can yield sixteenfold and better improvements in performance in lossy networks.…

Consumer group urges Aussies to spoof IP addresses Legally dodgy, but great for the hip pocket given down under price premium

The official organ of the Australian Consumers Association (ACA), the nation’s main consumer lobby group, has offered advice on how Australians can avoid geo-blocking regimes.…

NBN Co awards satellite station contracts to locals Ten sites for regional satellites ready to roll

NBN Co has selected two local Australian construction companies, Perkins and Cockram, to build ten satellite …

Lenovo snaps up ex-Moto staff in mobile push Scores defect to Chinese PC giant

In a sign of its growing ambition in the mobile device space, Lenovo has recruited scores of ex-Motorola employees made redundant after Google’s decision to close down the firm’s R&D plant in Nanjing.…

Nokia flings low-end Lumia at developing world WinPho 7.5 for all

Nokia has officially unveiled the Lumia 510, a budget Windows Phone handset unlikely to excite enthusiasts of the latest tech.…

Everything Everywhere prices up UK 4G Big-ticket speeding

Everything Everywhere has announced what it will charge for 4G mobile broadband today. Prices for the snappy connection starting at £36 a month.…

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Hong Kong’s lucky mobile number hawkers revealed Superstitious Chinese snap up auspicious digits

It takes just a few minutes and a handful of metro stops to travel from Hong Kong Island to the Kowloon neighbourhood Sham Shui Po (SSP), but the journey takes you to a different world.…

Samsung quits as Apple LCD supplier Blames prices, not lawsuits

Samsung Display has announced that its LCDs will no longer be part of the Apple ecosystem.…

BT and Virgin sue over £10m state-funded Birmingham broadband Telcos: ‘New broadband service is a dangerous precedent’

BT and Virgin Media have thrown another legal block in front of a £10m investment in Birmingham’s broadband infrastructure.…

British sheep falling behind Continental sheep in broadbaaaand race Fork out, for …

Alcatel Lucent battles unions in bid to slash 5,500 jobs Low cost threat from China looms large

Ailing telecoms kit maker Alcatel Lucent is facing a typically robust response from French unions as it tries to slash costs, and over 5,000 jobs, in a bid to compete better – especially against low-cost rivals from China.…

Samsung’s Japanese iPhone block bid fails Fruity phone remains on sale in Japan as court dismisses patent infringement claims

Apple’s global patent dispute with Samsung took another twist at the weekend after it was revealed a Tokyo court rejected a request by the Korean electronics giant for an injunction to stop all iPhone sales in Japan.…

Google touts map APIs for enterprise Your very own travelling salesman

Google has …

Majority of humans still don’t have a mobile Hello? HELLO?

The world still has some way to go before it is fully mobile, with global subscriber penetration standing at just 45 per cent despite the huge strides made in countries such as China and India, according to a new report from industry body The GSMA.…

New Oz road rules forbid touching mobes Can we cash in on the hands free rules, Siri?

Motorists in Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, will not be permitted to even touch their mobile phones while their car engine is running, under new laws to take effect on November 1st.…

Alt root user suing ICANN over dot-Web ION has wanted the gTLD since 2000

A company called Image …

Man files FCC complaint over AT&T FaceTime blocking Fist shaken vigorously

A San Francisco man has filed a complaint against AT&T with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over the carrier’s decision to charge customers extra to use Apple’s FaceTime video conferencing on its 3G and 4G networks.…

Caltech shrinks optical accelerometers A light alternative to tracking mobes

The practical limit to tracking a smartphone-owner’s movements in real time – beneath the resolution of GPS and associated location-tracking technologies – is the sensitivity of the motion sensor. Researchers at Caltech say they’ve taken a step towards very fine motion sensors, using nano-scale waveguides.…

Facebook opens mobile apps advertising for all Expect more news feed spam ads

Facebook is looking to make more money from …

Google releases ‘Disavow links’ tool to fix SEO spam Use with care Google warns

Google has used the PubCon conference in Las Vegas to release a “Disavow Links” tool, allowing webmasters dump links into their site that are hurting search rankings.…

China to get 20,000 4G base stations … just for starters China Mobile trusts ZTE, even if the Americans don’t

China Mobile has gone domestic and awarded ZTE the contract to deploy 20,000 TD-LTE base stations, putting the company at the leading edge of TD-LTE development.…

‘Hypersensitive’ Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES Damn you and your evidence-based science

Veteran Campaigner Against Stuff Arthur Firstenberg won a case last week, and lost one too, but there won’t be much celebrating as …

Study finds file sharers buy more music American Assembly research also finds copies of friends’ tunes rivals piracy

A preview of research conducted by The American Assembly, a “national, non-partisan public affairs forum” attached to Columbia University, has found that file sharers who acquire music also pay for more tunes than their non-freeloading brethren.…

Investors shovel another $10m of ‘fuel’ onto the SkyFire Whose side are you on? Server side?

Cloud-optimised browsing company SkyFire has landed another $10m investment, on top of the $30m it has already spent, to push its mobile browsing solution into Europe and Asia.…

Femto fail: Vodafone’s Sure Signal gets a bit shaky again Requires occasional square-wave in power supply, says Voda

Vodafone’s femtocell offering, Sure Signal, is up the …

US wireless downloads hit 1.1 trillion MB/year 37% increase in smartphones helps wireless subscriptions top US population

There are now more wireless subscriptions in the USA than there are citizens, according to the latest data from The Wireless Association (CTIA).…

Protestors target Google over that video Thousands insist YouTube should take down offensive film

Google’s London office was barricaded on Sunday, after thousands of protestors marched in protest against youTube’s continued hosting of the controversial film, The Innocence of Muslims.…

Taken from The Register