Facebook names alleged Koobface gang
Facebook has taken the unusual step of making public the names and personal details of five men it believes to be behind the Koobface computer worm that attacked hundreds of thousands of computers through the social network’s profiles.
The alleged gang appear to be living in St Petersburg and were tracked by Facebook and a team of researchers over three years.
Google Apps clocks up BBVA win
Google’s enterprise unit is jubilant after snaring its biggest customer win to date, as BBVA, the Spanish bank, said it was going to migrate all its 110,000 employees onto Google Apps.
It’s about twice the size of Google’s next biggest customer wins with Rentokil and Ahold, and there is kudos in having a security-conscious bank place its trust the company’s cloud offering.
When Acer last March unceremoniously ousted its then-chief executive Gianfranco Lanci, it was not an amicable parting, with both sides apportioning blame on the other for the split.
But if the Taiwanese company had thought they were rid of Mr Lanci by forcing his resignation, then they are sorely mistaken. Mr Lanci was this week appointed the head of Europe, Middle East and Africa by none other Lenovo, Acer’s Chinese rival.
US companies snap up Euro chip bargains
Marvell, the US semiconductor company, has bought Xelerated, the Swedish maker of networking infrastructure chips, in a deal understood to be worth around $100m.
Meanwhile, UK-based Picochip was bought by Mindspeed Technologies, a US chip vendor, in a deal valued at up to $76.8m, including a $51.8m in cash and shares and up to $25m earn-out.
Facebook prints up Moo cards to take Timeline offline
Notch another win up for London’s Silicon Roundabout. Moo, the online printing service that was one of the first tech companies to set up shop on the Old Street interchange, has beaten international competition to strike a deal with Facebook to become the go-to site for making business cards out of its new Timeline profile pictures.
Soundcloud raises $50m from Kleiner Perkins
Tech news from around the web:
Soundcloud, the Berlin-based “YouTube for audio”, has raised $50m at a $200m valuation, Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Europe reports. Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led the round, giving an early boost to the European tech scene’s prospects for 2012, with Berlin in particular tipped for great things this year.
Arise, Sir Jony: Apple designer Ive is knighted
Apple’s top designer, Jonathan Ive, has been knighted in the Queen’s New Year’s honours list for raising the standards of industrial design and championing British talent abroad.
Raised in north-east London, Mr Ive – known as Jony – has been the design mastermind behind Apple hardware ranging from the iPod, iPhone and iPad to its iMac and Macbook computers.
UK heading for a fight over cookies
The rhetoric over cookie legislation ratcheted up a notch on Tuesday, as the Information Commissioner’s Office told companies they “must try harder” in working out how to comply with the new rules on online privacy.
Christopher Graham, the commissioner, suggested that very few companies had yet come up with ways to get permission from online users to collect their details, as required by the new law.
Lifeline for Iceland’s data centre hopes
Iceland’s hopes of becoming a global hub for data centres came a step closer on Thursday, when plans for a new transatlantic subsea cable were announced, that would link New York and London via Iceland and Ireland.
Iceland has long been trying to market itself as a prime location for data centres. Its plentiful, cheap geothermal energy is attractive to data centre operators who are becoming increasingly worried about electricity costs, and the cold climate means cooling the racks of servers is virtually free.
Let them eat data
The UK government does not have a lot of money to pump into the technology sector so it is trying to be generous with something it does have in plentiful supply – data.
On Tuesday, as part of the government’s Autumn Statement George Osborne, the chancellor, is expected to announce plans to open up access to more government data, including transport data, health records, house prices and Met Office weather information.
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