SamKnows

Lord Carter says around ninety per cent of the journalists writing about Digital Britain just aren’t on the same page as him - in fact, he thinks they haven’t read his report at all.

As everyone knows, this week has been dominated by the final Digital Britain report. Unsurprisingly, Media Guardian has dedicated the lion’s share of this week’s podcast to the Government’s proposals, rightly seeing the 50 pence levy on landlines as unfair. We’ve weighed in with some in-depth analysis about NGA as well as the universal service

It may sound like a leaf out of the Book of Obama, but Gordon Brown says broadband is as important to Britain’s future as railways have been to its past. The Prime Minister’s been setting out his stall ahead of the final Digital Britain report being published.

Today’s the day (rumours abound that there may be a slight delay while a BBC Worldwide/Channel 4 Deal is finalised) that Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report comes out. Hurrah, about bloody time too, etc etc. We’ve been speculating about what’s going to be in there and, while not quite going so far as printing Digital

If you live in a notspot and were hoping that mobile broadband could be the answer to your prayers, then think again. According to an Epitiro study, the average download speed is closer to 1Mbits/sec, not the supersonic speeds advertised by some of the companies — 7.2 Mbits/sec, anyone?

BT Broadband has told Ministers it can put high-speed broadband within reach of ninety-three per cent of the UK population just by making inexpensive modifications to its current network. The firm’s currently in talks with Lord Carter ahead of the final Digital Britain report being published later this month.

Another Friday, another round-up — so, let’s see what you might have missed on the intartubez this week.
Biggest happening this week was E3, aka Valhalla for Gamers, in L.A. Microsoft launched its Project Natal, a controller-free system. Best place to go for all the news is Gizmodo, where you can see the Giz writers testing

Good afternoon campers, and welcome to this week’s round-up. Let’s start with the news that Wikipedia is banning Scientologists — or at least any contributors from all IP addresses owned by the Church of Scientology and its associates. Does that mean Tom Cruise won’t be able to update his wiki page? In other movie-related news,

Microsoft’s unveiled its new baby and it’s a Bing after all. While Google’s still calling itself a “search engine” - and doing pretty well from it - and Wolfram Alpha thinks of itself as a “computational engine,” MS is marketing its latest offering as being a “decision engine.” And, finally, it’s announced the launch date for good measure.

We take a look beyond the hype and emotive campaign slogans to see what speed broadband is necessary for everyday activities.

YouTube is having to take down thousands of sexually explicit videos after it was targeted by pranksters on what’s being dubbed “Porn Day.” While most of the clips have already been deleted, others could be up for days.

Today SamKnows is kicking off a weekly round-up of all the tech and Internet news stories that didn’t warrant their own post but we just can’t let slip under the radar. This week’s mainly about Craigslist and Google, both of which have been racking up more than their fair share of headlines.

Most of us are used to living in three dimensions - or four, if we have the time - but researchers in Australia have created what they’re calling a “five-dimensional” storage medium. Their new optical technology could produce discs the same size as DVDs but hold three hundred times as much data.

Spotify’s announced plans for streaming over mobile phone networks, social networking integration and finally reach out to our friends across the pond. The Swedish music service, which currently has over a million UK users, is seen in some quarters as the music industry’s potential saviour.

Wolfram Alpha has been heralded as the next Google by technology writers and bloggers around the world. It’s due to launch later today – but what’s all the fuss about?

With a concerted push from Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, the net piracy bill has found its way onto the French statute books. After the lower house voted on Tuesday night, the Senate passed the Creation and Internet bill by 189 votes to 14. The three strikes law is known as the Hadopi law — the name

The best known classified ads website in the United States is closing down its “erotic services” section following pressure from state authorities after a woman who advertised on the site was murdered. Craigslist will replace it with an “adult services” section - and manually check every ad posted within it.

Virgin Media are proposing to marginally increase the coverage of their cable broadband network and to increase daily traffic allowances.

The world’s most popular BitTorrent site is blocking off content that infringes copyright ahead of its forthcoming court appearance. MiniNova, which reached the “eight billion downloads” milestone last month, is testing a third party filtering system that stops users getting their hands on hit TV shows and films.

AOL is relaunching its home page as the only place where UK surfers can check their mail and log on to multiple social networks automatically from one location.
Curiously, the new homepage is not yet available to all visitors, despite today’s announcement. It is instead being rolled out so that within a couple of weeks all