T-Mo UK selling user data like cheap narcotic…

Some people sell crafts. Some people sell services. Some people sell drugs while other people sell user data…waaait…what? Chances are your user data has been sold to the highest bidder — if you’re a T-Mobile UK user. While we’d like to believe carriers have our best interests in mind, we are always getting reminded such isn’t the case. Apparently some jerky T-Mo UK employees took it upon themselves to provide “millions of records” concerning “thousands of users” to third party “phone firms”.

Allow me to set the scene for you — a nice, warm, relaxing holiday get together with your family. You’re sitting down getting ready to feast with family from all over the country of whom you see once a year when all of a sudden your celly starts blaring “drop it like it’s hot” in front of your entire family. It wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t a 60 year old man, but there’s stranger things in this world…. Upon picking up the phone you’re greeted with an all to chipper salesman trying to pitch a cellular contract renewal or god knows what else just as your taste buds are salivating for a piece of the delectable carcass sitting in front of you, filling your senses with the pleasures of fine cuisine.

Sucks doesn’t it? Such breaches of data on the providers end and disruptions in daily life on the end user’s spectrum are both undesirable outcomes all due to someone getting a little too greedy. Law enforcement in the British Kingdom isn’t taking this lightly thankfully and is even pushing a hasher punishment than the standard £5,000 fine — even presenting jail time as a consequence.

Has anyone’s data been used to steal their identity or do any other kinds of nefarious acts of wrong doing? Not yet. In reality such things are highly unlikely. But it does make us question just how trustworthy these large corporations are, especially when massive amounts of user data are concerned.

T-Mo UK users: Any good/bad/indifferent experiences to share regarding this not so cheery development?

MobileCrunch > BBC

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IE 9 details getting loosed at PDC. Actual browser, not so much.

We’ll just start off this post asking one question: How do you like Internet Explorer? Hell, I’m feeling generous, all current versions are up for debate — 6, 7, and 8.

With that aside, today at the Professional Developers Conference, Chief Architect Ray Ozzie revealed a few concessions that the next gen Microsoft browser is in fact in the works. He didn’t however highlight any feature in particular. For that we’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s keynote. Also, before you get all hot and bothered searching for a download, we must stress that test code of any kind is not being released today or tomorrow. So stop looking. It’s strictly an informational event. Bummer.

While today’s keynote was a bust, tomorrow is looking to be more fruitful with Ozzie going a little deeper into “focus areas” for IE 9. After IE 8, many started speculating that Microsoft was going to make the move to a web-kit based rendering engine. I for one would greatly appreciate such a move as their current platform as a whole is terrible. And I know I’m not alone. When a new browser can’t even muster a 25% on a web standards compliance test, it is dead, outdated, and crap in my book. Will IE 9 finally see Microsoft accepting the cold hard reality that they need to abandon their current ventures?

Unfortunate for many, Microsoft denounced rumors that they were moving to or even looking at a future move to a web-kit engine. Sad for us, all around bad for them. Still, I’m eager to know more about their next browser and what they will do to surpass the likes of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and several other smaller yet highly capable browsers.

What do you think is coming to IE 9? Share it below..

Cnet

The magical shape-shifting laptop-turned-Xbox 360. Brought to you by Geek Squad.

Even though we in the tech circle pan Geek Squad fairly frequently, they do produce some useful entertainment from time to time. Mind you, this “entertainment” often comes at the expense of some poor saps sanity. But I digress. Today’s Geek Squad face palm of the day comes from Consumerist reader “Taylor”. After a two week wait with no end in sight, Taylor ventured to Geek Squad’s website and entered his service number. Little did he know a magical event was about to unfold before his eyes…

OCZ introduces the 3.5″ desktop dwelling “Colossus” SSD.

With the advent of flash technology came the realization that the old moving storage mediums that current flood the market are on the way out. Flash offers many advantages over it’s older, more mobile siblings with the most notable being lower energy consumption and eventual faster speeds. Flash storage based drives, or SSD’s as they’re now commonly called are increasing in market presence and dropping in price. Looking to join this wave of the future, OCZ has taken it upon themselves to formerly announce the Colossus 3.5″ HDD series.

This series will be OCZ’s main push in the SSD market and bring drives of various sizes — ranging from 120GB all the way up to 1TB — and featuring speeds hovering right around 260MB/s (peak) and 220MB/s (constant). Easing the transition to the solid state format, OCZ assures that these new Colossus drives will fit in traditional hard drive bays without a mounting kit. If the speeds aren’t exactly wowing you, remember that not everyone is as concerned with speed and capacity as geeks are. Therefore, the drives mentioned above, especially the lower capacity options, are a perfect fit. Those looking to pick up their own version can expect to drop $609 for the 120GB version and can pretty much write off feeding the kids for the rest of the year if you’re eying the 1TB monster. Said monster is a hefty $3,572. Ouch. Still interested?

Electronista

Swindon residents bathing in free WiFi

Whenever “the man” decides to throw citizens a bone, especially a digital/tech bone, it becomes necessary to applaud and mention such an effort. WiFi has proliferated cities and towns across the world bringing *mostly* free internet to many. If you happen to be one of the fine residents of Swindon, UK, your mobile browsing should now be a lot more pleasant. A joint venture between the public taxpayer and private funders has made way for a 1,400 access point strong WiFi network blanketing Swindon and bringing free internet to more than 186,000 individuals.

Is this reason to drop your home internet provider? If you can get a strong enough signal and are ok doing everything under public scrutiny then by all means. I however am slightly hesitant to move solely to public owned internet. However, if my home DSL keeps raising in price and my fine city decides to try this little deal out themselves, I couldn’t say I would be tempted. Still, the fact that such a large city now has city-wide, free internet is definitely something worth getting excited over.

With so much land to cover and users to support, it would be interesting to know how the network is coping with said factors. Does anyone living in Swindon feel like sharing their experience in regards to performance, latency, and so on?

TechDigest > The Guardian

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Pirate Bay logo gets patented — by clothing/tech company

The Pirate Bay trackers may be down for the count, but that infamous sailing ship will live on, plastered against countless clothing items from t-shirts and hoodies to sweatbands and underwear. In an odd turn of events, that iconic logo used by The Pirate Bay is in the process of becoming patented. Yes, patented. But it isn’t by founding members or anyone related to the company. Instead, a Swedish clothing and technology retailer called Sandryds Handel is taking it upon themselves to claim ownership. The founding members, with their pretty blanket feels frowning on private ownership, see this as an abomination and have stated that they feel the logo should remain in the public domain — which is the reason they never patented the logo themselves. What’s bringing me to a hearty chuckle is that this company believes a mass following of pirates — who don’t pay up front for stuff — are going to begin throwing money out for gimmicky products trying to cash in on TPB name. We’ll see how well that goes…

Now some other company is going to pick up the pieces of TPB and make some money off of their name. Pretty sad and shady if you ask me. Though from a business stand point, why not rip off someone elses logo and brand image to turn a dollar on your own time? The TPB logo has just been shat upon. Perhaps Sandryds Handel should spend a few dollars designing their own logo hmm?

What do you have to say?

Wired

PSP-3000 mod turns handheld gaming device into UFO.

When a company designs and develops a piece of gadget hardware, they have to consider the greater good or majority consensus on what defines a “good” device. Because of that, hardware often ends up being rather bland and boring, lacking any real definition or character. That’s where we gadget gurus come in. We take these half baked gadgets and mod them into our own visions. Even though they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, the wild and creative forms these custom gadgets take is truly spectacular. Take for instance the ET/UFO edition PSP-3000.

As you can see from above (video inside), this PSP in particular has several mutli-colored lights blasting away from within. The modder, Val, certainly has one of the coolest PSP mods on hand. If you need mobile gaming and some make shift laser surgery, it’s definitely an intriguing design.

Video inside…