The Original Sims

BBC News Online Last Updated: Monday, 29 October 2007, 19:10 GMT

The laptop was designed to be used in developing countries The first official order for the so-called "$100 laptop" has been placed by the government of Uruguay.

BBC News Online Tuesday, 30 October 2007, 10:34 GMT

Vint Cerf is one of the founding fathers of the net Internet Service Providers urgently need to roll out the next generation of net addresses for online devices, internet pioneer Vint Cerf has said. Every device that goes online is allocated a unique IP address but the pool of numbers is finite and due to run out around 2010.

Huffington Post
Posted October 29, 2007 09:09 AM (EST)

….. No matter how you slice it, this new trend of ISP discrimination should send a chill draft up the spine of anyone who wants the Internet to fulfill its democratic promise of equal opportunity communication.
To do this we have to ensure that companies aren’t left to stifle our basic freedoms at their whim. Free and open communications must be guaranteed, right now, before content stifling technology becomes the Internet norm

Taken from Paul Robinson’s Media Guardian feature 29 October 2007

The continuing build-up of listeners to DAB digital radio services - both commercial and BBC - is also impressive, with the weekly reach (proportion of the population) who now listen to digital radio up to a new record high of 28.4%. The largest growth is coming from DAB digital radio which has shown a 15% increase in the past 12 months.
The total number of hours of listening each week by UK radio listeners is now 153m, which represents nearly one sixth of all weekly listening. We are a long way from approaching analogue switch-off, and unlike with television there is no date or timetable for the transition to digital. There is also, in an analogous way to TV, the challenge of multiple radio sets - the average UK household has five each - and there is no converter "set-top box" that will make an analogue radio capable of receiving DAB digital radio.
But the audience growth of many of the digital networks is a cause for optimism. BBC 6Music and BBC7 have achieved record audiences this quarter (of 485,000 and 795,000 respectively), and more than half the commercial national digital networks have also hit new record Rajar audience numbers.
The biggest gains year-on-year are by the Magic Network, up 395,000, The Hits 312,000, Kiss UK 207, 000, Choice UK 186,000, and Planet Rock 126,000.
Other smaller gains and new all-time records have been notched up by Sunrise, Virgin Radio Classic Rock, Real Radio UK, Galaxy and Heat.

Media Guardian
Leigh Holmwood and Owen Gibson The Guardian Monday October 29 2007

The BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, is to launch a further 30 channels internationally, as well as a high-definition outlet and an on-demand service in the United States, as part of the next stage of its aggressive expansion plan.
The launches, which will be based on four thematic brands - BBC Entertainment, with shows such as Doctor Who; BBC Knowledge, featuring programmes such as Top Gear; BBC Lifestyle, with What Not To Wear; and children’s outlet CBeebies, featuring the Teletubbies - come on top of 21 channels it already plans to launch before the end of this financial year.
There will also be a mixed-genre high-definition channel, while Worldwide also looks after the distribution of BBC World, the international news channel, which is due to relaunch next year. The 30 new channels will launch over two years from the beginning of April. They will join existing brands such as BBC America and BBC Canada to take Worldwide’s channel count to nearly 70 in more than 160 countries.