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Technological and digital news from around the world.

Digital Planet: 17/06/2008

Factual: Science & Nature

17/06/2008

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, 17/06/2008

Technology news with Gareth Mitchell and Bill Thompson. Every Tuesday.

Sun
In an exclusive interview this week we hear from Scott McNealy chairman of Sun Microsystems,  but far from being a technology evangelist he tells us why he’d rather be playing golf or going down the pub than doing anything with a computer. 

Sun in heavily involved in the concept of cloud computing, taking functions away from the desktop and putting them on the internet. Sun may not be a name that we see much of in the consumer electronics market, but they do make many of the server computers which host much of the data on the internet. 


Baby
The Manchester baby is 60 years old this week.  This is the world’s first computer that utilised a stored programme. With its tiny 128 bytes capacity it was the forerunner of every electronic storage device that we have today. 

Chris Burton from Britain’s computer conservation Society explains the significance and development of this valve powered monster that produced as much heat as a 3 bar electric fire. 


Misery
The ‘Web of Misery’ is an experiment designed by the University of California to see how the US economic recession has affected people’s online behaviour.  They are inviting participants to predict traffic increases to websites about subjects that are often associated with depression such as, religion, firearms,  and drug abuse.  So far all these sites seem to be seeing an increase. 


Waterloo
The city of Waterloo in Belgium is experimenting with Microsoft instant Messenger as a way of trying to interest young people in council services. They can send a message to a permanently online ‘virtual friend’ called Watson that can help them out with local information.

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17/06/2008

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