A volcano in Iceland erupted yesterday, spewing a gigantic cloud of dust in the air, and with the wind blowing from the northwest, it brought air traffic in the northern parts of Europe to a halt. Jet engines can be severely damaged by the glassy silicate in that volcanic dust, leading authorities to close airports and airspace in Britain, France, and most of northern Europe. Such clouds can flame out jet engines, because those silicates have a melting point of between 600 and 800°C, while jet engine temperatures in flight are higher than 1,000°C. The tiny particles melt when they encounter [...]

Continue Reading...

The expected call of a general election in the UK this week could delay plans to liberalise the UK airwaves, causing a potential ‘capacity crunch’ in Britain’s mobile phone broadband network, rendering smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone and BlackBerries almost useless. This week’s expected call of a general election may send plans to liberalise the UK airwaves back to the drawing board, according to latest reports. A serious headache The Guardian warns that any delay to the liberalisation of the UK’s airwaves “or sale of a new spectrum would leave mobile [...]

Continue Reading...

Asian Women are no doubt the most beautiful in world. But do you wonder, who are the most beautiful among them? Leading Asian newspaper from Britain,  Eastern Eye annually compiles a list of the 50 sexiest Asian women. Here are ranking for 2009. 50. Hard Kaur : is an Indian rapper and hip hop singer, as well as playback singer in Hindi films. 50 Photos Total 49. Shruti Haasan: is an Indian singer and actress. She is daughter of Kamal Haasan and Sarika. 48. Konnie Huq: is an English television presenter of Bangladeshi descent, best known for being the longest-serving female presenter [...]

Continue Reading...

The long-standing ‘Terminate the Rate’ campaign, which aims to make things cheaper for the consumer, has been given the green light from Ofcom. The campaign sees BT and 3, among others, call for changes to mobile termination rates – which are the fees levied by a network to allow other networks to connect to its users. The new proposals from Ofcom will mean these wholesale rates would fall from around 4.3p per minute today, to 0.5p per minute by 2015. Kevin Russell, CEO of 3UK said: “Low mobile termination rates are great news for the UK consumer. This change is overdue and [...]

Continue Reading...

Broadband celebrates its tenth birthday in Britain this week. Britain’s first broadband customer, single parent Mark Bush, was NTL’s first customer for broadband testing back in March 2000 (NTL is now Virgin Media). Prior to having broadband, Bush was spending £300 a month on a dial-up connection. Remember those? Surfing the pipe Mr Bush told BBC news: “It was pretty impressive in the early days, having the whole pipe to myself.” Mr Bush had set up a website about combat flight which soon developed into a flight simulation game with 1.2m visitors a month at its [...]

Continue Reading...

Staying up to date with everything that’s going on in PCs and tech is almost impossible, so these are the ten technologies that you should be most aware of, as they’re the ones that’ll make the biggest difference to your life. 1. 3D gaming The fact that to get any kind of 3D image from a 2D screen means wearing a pair of sunglasses or worse means that three dimensional gaming isn’t quite as convincing as multitouch and natural user interfaces, even though the two have been commoditised at almost the same time. An Acer Aspire 5738 laptop with a 3D display costs about [...]

Continue Reading...

‘Designed in Britain’, says the literature for the Astin Trew AT2000Plus – though construction is actually Chinese. Wherever it was put together, though, this amp offers some impressive material value for money. Indeed, it seems to tick an unusually large number of boxes. Valves, multiroom capability, front-panel MP3 input, balanced input and output, high-grade coupling capacitors (along with some fancy cable, contributing to the ‘plus’ bit of the model name). If Astin Trew wants this to look like the amp for everyone, its doing well so far. As always, the big question [...]

Continue Reading...

Alistair Darling in his budget report has announced that tax relief is finally coming to the UK videogames industry. The move means that those who make videogames in the UK will be given tax breaks. This is a bid to bring games design back to the UK, which has been dominated by countries such as Canada. Helping gamers In his speech Darling explained: “I will help the computer games sector… we need to keep British talent in this country.” He also noted that the tax breaks would be “similar to that of British film industry.” Currently, if you make a film under £20 million [...]

Continue Reading...

Following recent concerns that Microsoft’s Project Natal motion control technology would require an extra large play-space in your lounge, the company has issued a response to assure gamers that the tech will work fine in any given space. TechRadar reported earlier that a Microsoft rep had commented on how Natal would require at least 13 feet of free space in order to work properly, sparking concern in Britain and Japan because very few of us actually have that amount of space in our living quarters! Little lounges compatible Techflash was the source of the reports, with the Microsoft rep [...]

Continue Reading...

A new government website which vows to cut through the bureaucracy that makes managing things like tax credits and pensions a pain has been announced. MyGov is a customisable site, created using the wonders of open source, which allows everyone in the UK to fashion a homepage for their own needs. A successor to DirectGov, MyGov allows you to do things like sort out a doctor’s appointment, apply for a school or get a new passport quicker and easier. According to Gordon Brown, who outlined the site in his Building Britain’s Digital Future speech, “MyGov marks the end of the one-size-fits-all, [...]

Continue Reading...