Wheres Your Web At?

Brits will spend £14bn online in the run-up to Christmas, according to figures from uSwitch.com.

This will bring the total spend on buying goods over the web to £40bn in the UK this year, the price-comparison site said.

Online shoppers are expected to spend an average of £509 this Christmas, up 40 per cent on last year.

Steve Weller of uSwitch.com said: “Online security has vastly improved so our peace of mind is greater than ever before. The internet makes it easy to shop around at maybe 40 or 50 different stores in one go to make sure that we are getting the best deals.”

However, a consumer watchdog has said that though online shopping is convenient, many people don’t understand their rights and the returns policies put in place by retailers.

Peter McCarthy of Which? said: “It’s a great time to buy online, especially with the new ruling on protection for credit card purchases abroad. But it’s also important to know exactly what your rights are before surfing the net for bargains.

“Online shopping isn’t always a case of ‘what you see is what you get’. It can be difficult when all you have to go on is a photo. As well as your statutory rights, it’s worth checking returns policies, as these do vary,” McCarthy continued.

Wireless networks are exposing the sensitive information of many surfers who don’t even realise that they are at risk, it has been warned.

At the Get Safe Online conference in London this morning, it was claimed that 7.8 million people in the UK have insecure home networks that anyone could use.

At the summit, a member of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) demonstrated how cybercriminals commit offences such as identity theft.

According to SOCA: “Criminals can use the network you are on to hijack your PC or laptop, meaning that they can see, steal, delete or even add files on your machine. They can do all of these things while you are using your PC without you even realising something is wrong.”

Cabinet Office Minister, Gillian Merron, moved to reassure the public that the threats were easy to prevent.

“The internet is a fantastic tool, whether you use it at home, in school, at your local library or at work. The risks we are highlighting today can be easily fixed and do not mean that people should stop using wireless networks. People simply need to take a few basic steps and simple precautions,” Merron said.

There were also warnings about the safety of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

Tony Neate, managing director of GetSafeOnline.org, said that of the 10.8 million people registered to social-networking sites in the UK, as many as a quarter had posted sensitive information, such as home addresses and telephone numbers on their profile pages.

“Although some of these details may seem harmless, they actually provide rich pickings for criminals. Your date of birth and where you live is enough for someone to set up a credit card in your name. So whilst most people wouldn’t give this information to a stranger in real life, they will happily post it online,” said Neate.

Get Safe Online is a government-backed initiative that has been running for three years.

Recently, the government was criticised by a House of Lords Select Committee for rejecting proposals put forward to increase the security of surfers in the UK.

The Ferrari team have announced Stefano Domenicali will take on the role of Director of the Gestione Sportiva, a position held by Jean Todt.

Domenicali was the team’s sporting director.

Ferrari also said technical director Mario Almondo will now be the team’s operations director, while Aldo Costa will take on the role of technical director.

Gilles Simon will be Ferrari’s engine director.

The announcement comes after Honda confirmed Ferrari’s former technical director Ross Brawn will join the Japanese squad as their team principal.

The Honda Racing team have confirmed former Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn as their new team principal.As revealed in April by autosport.com, Honda had contacted Brawn in a bid to convince the Briton to lead the Japanese squad from next year.

Brawn is on sabbatical after 10 years as technical director of Ferrari.

Honda said Brawn will have full responsibility for designing, manufacturing, and engineering the team’s car.

Brawn will work alongside Nick Fry, who continues as Chief Executive of the team.

“I am very excited to be joining the Honda Racing F1 Team,” said Brawn. “Honda has a proud heritage in Formula One and the opportunity to help the team to realise its potential represents a fantastic new challenge for me in the sport.

“The team has already done a great job of giving due consideration to its future and has spent a good deal of time putting in place both people and first class engineering resources to achieve its ambitions. I look forward to working alongside what I know to be some very talented people and helping Honda to rediscover its winning ways.”

Fry added: “One of my main tasks over the past six months has been to attract new talent to the Honda Racing F1 Team and we have made a number of key appointments in the areas of aerodynamics, design, engineering, marketing and on the racing team.

“Today’s announcement that Ross Brawn is to join our team is a very satisfying conclusion to the process of refreshing and revitalising a strong and determined team. Ross obviously needs no introduction.

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Eye-Fi, a new company that makes Wi-Fi camera-memory cards, was formed because of a broken promise.

Three years ago, Yuval Koren, Eye-Fi’s CEO, traveled to New York from San Francisco for a wedding. You know, the kind you see in every single romantic comedy ever made? Long-lost friends were reunited, copious snapshots were taken, and everyone pledged to send them along soon after. “There were lots of good intentions,” says Koren. “But it never happened.”

We all know why: Booting-up your computer, plugging in your camera, uploading pics to the hard drive and finally choosing what to send to the web is universally annoying.

Koren came home and cornered his geeky friends — some worked at Cisco, others at Wi-Fi vendor Atheros, and a few even labored away at Apple. He posed a question to them: Why do digital pictures so often end up trapped inside cameras?

And then they figured out a way to easily set them free.

Two-and-a-half years of intense work later, they produced a 2-GB SD memory card mated with a Wi-Fi chip. Just sync the card to a hard drive or Wi-Fi network, and plug it into a digital camera and start snapping away. Pics are then routed to the hard drive or to one of 17 photo vendors (like Facebook or Flickr.) The card’s software deftly handles scaling and compression while privacy settings at the individual sites allow you to filter what gets published.

The Wi-Fi chip, though, was the technical breakthrough. Developed by Atheros, it uses 70 percent less power than competing products, allowing it to be comfortably nestled in a standard SD card. Atheros didn’t realize how much its wunderchip could help Koren’s fledgling project.

“They didn’t know about us at first,” explains Koren. “The software and hardware were still in beta, but we begged for access.” Atheros eventually agreed and granted Koren access in order to help prove their own technology.

A marriage of innovation and vision may have hatched the Eye-Fi, but something larger is also at work here. Next-gen Wi-Fi networking is finally allowing lowly hardware to be integrated with web apps and software.

“Businesses realize that device margins disappear quickly,” says Jonathan Gaw, an IDC analyst who covers home networking. “One way to combat that is to integrate upwards with services via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. We’re going to see networking in all kinds of devices.”

Eye-Fi was able to beat lumbering industry dinosaurs like Kodak and San Disk to the punch on a Wi-Fi-equipped memory card for a couple of reasons. First, it’s rare for hardware companies to have cross-disciplinary chops in software, which the Eye-Fi development required. Second, camera makers like Nikon that have toyed with Wi-Fi seem intent on locking in consumers to one particular application or photo platform. Who cares if you can beam photos around wirelessly if you’re shackled to the same device all the time?

Eye-Fi is instead laser-focused on a more technically savvy crowd. “We’re not talking about grandmas,” says Koren. “Our customer knows how to get photos out of camera but would rather spend their time captioning and sharing.”

Eye-Fi also goes the extra distance to listen to its customers. Even now, anyone can log on at eye.fi com to suggest what other photo platforms should be supported.

Koren is coy about what’s next for the company, but says, “There’s a lot more that we have in mind. Keep following what we’re doing.”

At least 15 engineers at Renault knew about the McLaren technical information that is at the centre of the latest spy investigation, autosport.com has learned.

Renault are to face a hearing of the FIA World Motor Sport Council next month to answer charges that they had in their possession intellectual property belonging to McLaren.

This information was part of a number of floppy disks that engineer Phil Mackareth brought with him to the Enstone team from McLaren in September 2006.

Renault have admitted that Mackareth had the information transferred to his computer at Renault, and showed scale drawings to ’some engineers’, but are adamant that the details were not used to influence their car design.

McLaren have also conducted their own investigation into the matter at Renault’s Enstone headquarters, having used the independent Kroll company, and it is believed a dossier of evidence about the matter has been submitted to the FIA.

Autosport.com understands that Renault and McLaren’s investigations have revealed that more than 15 engineers in total examined the information from McLaren, which included details on the 2007 car. It is believed each of these has confirmed the fact in writing.

Sources have suggested that the engineers are not just junior staff members, but also include head of vehicle performance and R&D, deputy technical director, deputy chief designer and chief designer Tim Densham.

The extent of knowledge within Renault about the McLaren information mirrors similar claims surrounding the McLaren/Ferrari case, where the depth of the knowledge about Ferrari secrets extended well beyond just chief designer Mike Coughlan.

The tidal surge threatening the east coast of the UK can be tracked on the website of the Environment Agency.

There are currently 12 areas where there is a flood warning in place and 8 with a severe flood warning. Twenty-one more areas have been placed on flood watch.

The region affected most acutely at the moment is East Anglia. Recent reports suggest that though many tidal defences have been breached, the widespread damaged first feared has been avoided.

You can check on the risk to your area on the Environment Agency’s website, which is currently being updated every 15 minutes with all the changes to the warning status.

www.environment-agency.gov.uk
www.metoffice.gov.uk