Author: The Conversation

There have frequently been calls for BT, the former telecoms monopoly, to be broken up. Now, with the company having emerged as the buyer of mobile phone network EE, complaints about BT’s power – which have never gone away – have grown louder. But other than

The capacity of today’s wireless communications networks has increased a million-fold since the introduction of the first cellular network in 1957. But this improvement isn’t due to improving connectivity technologies such as Wi-Fi, 2G, 3G and so on, which

Passwords are a pain. I seem to have 100 or more different identities on different websites to manage. Whenever I book a flight or buy a concert ticket, it often means setting up yet another persona and coming up with a password to authenticate it. It’s got so bad I’ve

Last week, prominent tech site Gigaom ceased operations with the terse note that it “recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time”. Started in 2006 by Om Malik, the site had raised about US$40m over that period to create a technology news site, an IT

From The Terminator to The Matrix, science-fiction movies have captured our fear of dystopian futures where we are ruled or subjugated by our own robotic creations. But Neill Blomkamp’s new film, Chappie features a far more humanised robot. Along with

Another month, another data breach, and another set of proposals for what is seemingly an intensifying cyberattack problem.
When we examine the evidence, though, the actual expenses from the recent and high-profile breaches at Sony, Target and Home Depot

Hacking is a state of mind. Traditionally, hackers like to discover, understand and share the secrets they expose. They like to laugh at the dumb things they find. They’re not necessarily in it for the

Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and BlackBerry were all victims of disruption. During the 1990s and 2000s, they shepherded the cellphone during its period of take-off into ubiquity. Then in the last five years, they all lost their leadership positions and are now on the

Apple CEO Tim Cook has released the much anticipated Apple Watch, the company’s first new product since the iPad. Cook said the new watch, in addition to telling the time, was a “comprehensive health and fitness companion”. But we’re unlikely to hear much about how

Apple’s event at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center was widely expected to focus on the release of the Apple Watch. In a move that took everyone by surprise, however, Apple also released a