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Faster broadband "top of in-tray"

The man who will be in charge of the government’s Digital Britain plans has been named at Stephen Timms, the current treasury minister.

Following the departure of communications minister Lord Carter, author of the recent Digital Britain report, Timms will take on the “extra ministerial responsibilities” within Lord Mandelson’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills this autumn.

Joining Timms is the creative industries minister, Sion Simon, who will handle the relevant aspects of the plan for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

“Building a 21st century knowledge economy is at the heart of government’s vision. It’s vital for jobs and growth that Britain is able to maximise the benefits of the digital revolution”, Timms said.

“I look forward to driving this project forward in my joint role working in the Treasury and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills”.

“At the top of my in-tray will be plans to ensure faster broadband access for homes and businesses and combating digital piracy – as we move towards publication of the Digital Economy Bill”.

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Related links:

• News – Digital Britain report published
• News – Gordon Brown talks up "Digital Britain"

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"Digital Britain" chief named as Stephen Timms originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:10:20 +0100

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Only 200 in existence and not for sale.

To promote the new version of Tekken 6 due out on the PlayStation 3 later this year, Bandai has created a limited edition PS3 skin to get people excited.

The bad news however is that a spokesman for the company told us that although around 200 were in existence, there are no plans to offer the “skin” to the general public.

The latest game adds more characters including an overweight bloke named Bob, as well as a host of new moves and enhanced graphics.

Still, as the photo shows, if your a Tekken fan you’ll want to try and get your hands on one. Our suggestion? Start badgering Bandai, they may just be force to change their minds.

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Tekken PS3 mod that you’ll never get to own originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:14:54 +0100

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PS3 gets virtual pet game

Due out in time for Christmas, Sony is hoping to appeal to the cute side of your gaming you with a new augmented reality game called PetEye.

Using the Sony EyeToy (web camera) the console will display a cute critter on any flat surface in front of the camera and allow you to interactive with it as if it was real.

The virtual pet of course can be customised, played with, toyed and annoyed with a stack of content available on the game disk and more promised via downloadable content after the game has launched.

No word on an exact release day, although expect your kids to be pestering you once word gets how adorable this really is.

From our brief hands on, its pretty stunning, although admittedly basic – it’s no Project Natal for example, but with Bubble blowers and trampolines as just some of the interactive toys you can play with this is bound to be a sure fire hit this Christmas.

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PHOTOS: Sony EyePet originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:28:08 +0100

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To improve Bing results

Microsoft has announced a little game that it’s created to try and improve the search results on its Google competitor Bing. It’s called Page Hunt, and asks you to guess what searches would lead you to a displayed page.

If the query you search for has the website in its top five results, you get points. 100 for #1. 90 for #2, 80 for #3, etc. If you can get a page to display while avoiding frequently-used queries, you get bonus points.

The value comes because Microsoft gets to see what words people would associate with certain pages. If everyone labels a page something that it doesn’t have in its database, then it can introduce that term into its results.

The researchers behind the project – Chris Quirk and Raman Chandrasekar at Microsoft, and colleagues from Georgia Tech and the Chinese University of Hong Kong – have discovered one thing already – the longer a page’s URL, the harder it was for users to match the page to query words.

What’s your best score? We got 1955 on our first go, so that’s the number to beat.

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Related links:

• News – Bing bigger than Digg and Twitter
• Link – Page Hunt
• Via – Technology Review

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Microsoft launches "Page Hunt" game originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:00:20 +0100

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New homepage goes live, too

Yahoo! has brought its social news product, Buzz, over to the UK to coincide with the revamping of its homepage, as previously reported on Pocket-lint.

Buzz launched in the US back in February 2008, and has risen – through virtue of being promoted by Yahoo! – to being the top social news service online, above independent competitors like Digg and Reddit. Anyone can submit stories, and a combination of votes and other factors like search traffic will then promote top stories to the homepage.

Yahoo! also rolled out its new homepage in the UK today, as planned. The company told Pocket-lint that it considers this to be the “most significant change to the homepage in Yahoo!’s history”, with one of its SVPs, Tapan Bhat, saying that it’s got “much less stuff” on it.

Acknowledging that Yahoo!’s homepage has a “reputation for being cluttered”, he said that the company was trying to merge users’ desires for info about both their world, and the wider world, into one place. A new hovering “favourites” menu on the left-hand side aims to fulfil that pledge.

The company is also planning to let the user customise the nature of the news they get. It’s testing a “liking engine” (and admitted that the project doesn’t have a real name yet) that’ll allow users to adjust a slider for how much “fun” or “serious” news they’d prefer.

It won’t completely exclude the other from being shown – if a massive plane crash happens and you’ve got it slid all the way to “fun” then you’ll still hear about it – but it’ll act as a guide for the kind of content you’ll experience. That’s planned for testing in August.

Lastly, Yahoo! has bought out a company that’s provided several widgets for its mail service. Xoopit’s main app searches through photos in your mailbox and puts them in one place for you. Yahoo! told Pocket-lint to expect rollouts of similar services to its other products, too, as a result.

Related links:

• News – Yahoo Buzz to take on Digg
• Link – Yahoo Homepage

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Yahoo! launches Buzz in the UK originally appeared on Pocket-lint on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:05:27 +0100

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