Business

Apple has been ordered to pay VirnetX $302.4 million in patent lawsuit

by Andrew Liptak, The Verge Online, Oct 1, 2016

This is a story about how after the huge computer giant Apple have been ordered to pay $302.4 million to tech company VirnetX. The court found in favour of VirnetX, a company founded by a group of employees from SAIC, who took Apple to court due to infringements of their patents regarding FaceTime and its secure communications.

Here is a link to the full story: http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/1/13130722/apple-been-ordered-virnetx-patent-lawsuit-facetime

Communities

Facebook’s social network for work will launch in October

by Matt Burgess, Wired Online, Sep 28, 2016

This news story by Matt Burgess from Wired online is a story I have seen on many sites. Facebook have announced they are about to roll out a new side of Facebook just for businesses. The original idea was introduced for its own use at Facebook HQ, it has now made the decision to offer the product to all companies.  

Here is a link to the full story: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-at-work-launch

Information

Commissioner: UK ‘must avoid data protection Brexit’

by BBC online news, Sep 29, 2016

This was a news article reporting the interview of Elizabeth Denham on the BBC Radio 4’s show PM programme. Ms Denham, one of the UK’s regulator told interviewer Chris Vallance how they needed to be tough on companies like WhatsApp who share their data with their parent company Facebook. She goes on to say the consumer has little confidence with data protection online, this is not surprising when you think of Yahoo admitting that 500 million users had had their accounts breached. Her main concern was that we need to be careful when we leave the EU that our laws are just as tight as the rest of Europe in protecting our online data.

Here is a link to the full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37512419

Entertainment

Pokémon Go servers were hit by 50 times higher traffic than expected

By Alex Hern, The Guardian Online, Sep 30, 2016

Here Alex Hern reveals how the creators of Pokemon Go, Niantic and Google, who provided some of the cloud server service, struggled and failed in part to keep up with the huge player demand for the game when it was first released. In the article Hern shows Niantic and Googles prediction graph of the expected, worse case and actual Cloud Datastore Transactions per second. It shows how wrong they were, with the actual figures being 50 times larger than their expectation and 10 times larger than their worst case scenario.

Here is a link to the full story: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/30/pokemon-go-traffic-google

Public Services

Top health tech awards go to Birmingham GP and Salford Royal NHS Trust

By Rebecca Hill, Sep 30, 2016

Rebecca Hill’s report for www.publictechnology.net showcases some of the winners of the EHI Healthcare IT awards in London. Winners included Masood Nazir, a GP in Birmingham and David Dalton of the Salford Royal NHS Trust.

Here is a link to the full story http://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/top-health-tech-awards-go-birmingham-gp-and-salford-royal-nhs-trust

Communicating on the move

50% of parents knowingly text their teens while teens are driving

By Chris Matyszczyk, CNet.com, Sep 30, 2016

In this report the writer is highlighting the large percentage of parents that knowingly text their children who maybe driving. In some cases, text the children demanding a reply. 50% of the 1000 parents surveyed admitted to doing this, with only 29% of the drivers admitting to texting back.

Here is a link to the full story https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/50-percent-of-parents-admit-to-knowingly-texting-their-teens-while-theyre-driving/