IBLOG SPACE

Pirates are rampant all around the world online. They stream music, movies, and TV shows and generally raise the ire of any association that seeks to protect copyright and get consumers to pay to view the content. Generally, when we talk pirates and legal battles we are talking about the US. Today there is some pirate stomping action going on in the UK. The UK High court has ordered BT to block access to a pirate website. The website in question is Newzbin2 where unlawful copies of films and TV shows are made and distributed to users that download them. The site also offers pirated games and music as well with all the illegal traffic continuing despite a previous court order to stop. BT has said that the judgment of the High Court is helpful and provides clarity on a complex issue. ISPs like BT have long fought having to police the content shared on their networks. The High Court previously told Newzbin to stop sharing the content. The original Newzbin site closed and went into adminis

Before you even ask, Binnenkort Leverbaar means COMING SOON in Dutch. And what is coming soon, you might ask? Why, the HTC Ignite, of course! In an email from a source at a European retailer we’ve been assured that the rumors that the next HTC handset would be the Nexus-branded device to come after the legendaryNexus S and be the hero device for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, are untrue, and that instead HTC would be releasing the phone you see in the screen grab below. Furthermore, similar to what’s been occurring with HTC devices for some time now, this device will be released in Europe before the United States. From the looks of it, this device appears to be very similar to our good friend the HTC Sensation. Of course the HTC Sensation, carried at the moment by T-Mobile in the USA, has a dual-core Snapdragon MSM8660 1.2GHz processor, this making us feel like a dual-core processor of at least that size being standard in this HTC Ignite device. The Ignite has a very similar look to t

The folks at the company formerly known as Pixazza, if you’ve ever heard of them of course, have rebranded themselves as “Luminate”, launching today a brand new platform that’ll allow web-based images to act as mini-applications. What this will do, essentially, is if you take a look at the image below this paragraph, you’ll see several elements that, if you were looking at them in a real-world setting, you’d be able to touch and get a reaction out of. What Luminate intends to do is make that situation a reality inside the web browser with minimal effort on the part of the developer or webmaster who wishes to have said functionality. One of the already-functional elements involved in this project is a mouseover situation in which should the mouse be on top of a pair of shoes in an image, information would pop up pertaining to those shoes, etcetera. This sort of functionality has been in the web for many years, that being made possible with what’s called an “Image Map,” but this solution

UK police have reportedly arrested Lulzsec spokesperson Topiary, in a snatch that saw the unnamed 19 year old detained at a residential address in the Shetland Islands. The arrest was made by the Police Central e-Crime Unit, the Metropolitan Police has announced, after an “intelligence-led operation.” Details of the arrest and of the investigation that led to it are currently sparse, though British police are also questioning a 17 year old male under caution, and who is yet to be formally arrested. The man believed to be Topiary is being transported to London. Earlier today, Lulzsec and fellowing hacking group Anonymous made calls for a boycott of payments service PayPal, after the eBay-owned company cooperated with the FBI and other agencies following a DDoS attack. The service’s refusal to process donations to the WikiLeaks project was also cited as justification.

The Nokia N9 has been dated for its Swiss release, with carrier Orange confirming that the MeeGo smartphone is expected to go on sale on September 19. Pricing for the 3.9-inch touchscreen handset is yet to be announced, though the assumption is that it will be reasonably affordable on-contract. The mid-September launch is a little earlier than previous dates we’ve heard. Sweden is expected to get the N9 on September 23 via carrier Three. So far, though, Nokia’s usual stomping grounds – such as the UK, Germany and France – are yet to see any official dates, and the carriers are remaining quiet on the whole issue. In fact, some rumors have suggested that Nokia does not even intend to launch the N9 in the UK and other traditionally well-served locations, instead holding off its attentions until the first batch of Windows Phone Mango handsets are ready. The first such device, codenamed “Sea Ray”, sticks closely to the pattern set by the N9, with a polycarbonate casing and smoothly curved g

Razer has confirmed that its Switchblade gaming notebook will be the first device to use the Intel Atom Z690 processor. The Switchblade – announced at CES 2011 earlier this year, though at the time billed as merely a concept – will use the 1.7GHz chip to run its 7-inch multitouch-capable display and dynamic keyboard, which can change key-legend to suit whatever title is being played. According to Intel, the Z690 is 13-percent more powerful than its predecessor, the Z670 Oak Trail chip found inside the Fujitsu Lifebook TH40/D and other tablets. That’s sufficient for desktop-style PC gaming on a portable device, the silicon company insists, and it appears to be using the Switchblade to prove that. Razer still insists on describing the Switchblade as a concept, despite having already signed up independent software vendors – including Chinese firms Tencent and ChangYou – to develop custom keyboard support for the button displays. “Our work with Intel allowed us to not only optimize the per