The Canadian government is planning to set up a new online auction site, in some ways similar to auction icon eBay, to sell off its constant stream of surplus goods and equipment. Word has it that the current CGSurplus site will be massively revamped, making it easier for buyers to find what they’re looking for [...]

The electric toaster turns 100 this year.  As the UK’s Daily Express newspaper notes, General Electric technician Frank Schailor built a prototype, on a hunch, back in 1909 — 20 years before someone else invented pre-sliced bread! Schailor’s idea was to provide a way for people to make stale bread palatable again. It worked. It [...]

Internet security giant McAfee is treating the Conficker worm’s potential April 1 trigger date as a serious threat, even if other observers are taking a wait-and-see stance and still others are saying that the trigger date embedded in variant ‘C’ of the bug is, itself a hoax to distract researchers around the world who are [...]

Pioneering consumer Internet phone (VoIP) service provider Skype is available on the iPhone today. “The number-one request we get from customers is to make Skype available on iPhone. There’s a pent-up demand,” Skype CEP Scott Durchslag told Reuters news service at the CTIA annual mobile showcase in Las Vegas. Skype already offers versions of its [...]

Call it a practical application of social engineering technology… Professor James Murray of Oxford University has devised a mathematical formula which he says is 94 per cent successful in predicting which newly-wed couples will eventually divorce. Murray and his research team filmed more than 700 newlywed couples discussing issues deemed likely to cause stress, such [...]

Microsoft (MS) usually never responds to Apple Inc.’s taunts (in its own advertising), about the quality, security or ease of use of MS’s Windows operating system. But MS is now fighting back on the one issue where it can blow Apple and it’s Macs out of the water: Price. The first of a new series [...]

Cell phone sales are expected to drop by more than eight per cent this year, over last, according to a new IDC thinktank survey. That’s bad news for the major cell handset makers, who are already feeling a major pinch from sagging sales last year. Motorola, Ericsson and other have already announced production cutbacks and [...]

Apple has finally released a promised graphics firmware update for its 17 in. MacBook Pro portable. The 17 in. MacBook Pro — recently released. The patch, announced at Macword back in January, addresses stability issues with the computer’s display. A sigificant number of users reported seeing vertical lines disrupting their screens, after the new 17 [...]

Earth Hour will be celebrated tonight, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. local time, all around the world. People everywhere are being asked to turn off their lights for one hour to dramatize the link between global warming and energy use. A spectator in space viewing Earth from its dark side would, ideally, see a rolling [...]

A major curriculum revamp for British schools reportedly institutes requirements for digital literacy while stripping out traditional requirements for cornerstone subjects including science, history and geography. The proposals, leaked recently to the Guardian newspaper, would dramatically alter not only what British primary school children are taught but how they learn. Instead of learning about the [...]

The Conficker worm, which has been circulating for several months, now, has sparked a major global effort by cyber exterminators to track down the infection and help the owners of the estimated five to ten million infected computers worldwide protect themselves from digital harm. . But the clock is ticking. Conficker is one of those [...]

Nintendo yesterday announced it has sold more than 50 million Wii game consoles since the device launched. The company recently announced that sales of its popular DS portable game console had passed the 100 million mark. The Wii has distinguished itself from the ‘bigger’ consoles both by keeping its price well below the (US)$400 range, [...]