The Murky side of Telecoms

This story caught my eye this morning "MTC denies PM murder probe"

Executives at Kuwait cellco Mobile Telecommunication Company (MTC) have
moved quickly to dismiss reports claiming that employees of its
Lebanese business were involved in the assassination of former Lebanese
Prime Minister Rafik Al-Hariri. Earlier this week local media reported
that a number of staff had been detained following a raid on the office
of MTC Touch Lebanon in connection with a UN investigation into the
former PM’s death earlier this year. MTC has dismissed the reports,
saying that UN officials visited the office to utilise the MTC Touch
staff’s ‘technical expertise’ in regard to data linked to the
investigation.

Yikes..

Find your plumber on eBay

What would you prefer to do: hire a plumber from the Yellow Pages that you have no idea about, or hire a plumber through Ebay after reading reviews on the plumbers work? Integrating a search function into the Skype client for businesses suddenly gives the Skype user a Yellow Pages with reviews of businesses and a direct connection at a reasonable price.

was a mega-value reader comment on eurotelco blog.

Wow..the $4.1bn spent starts to look like a good piece of business.

NTT eyes up the UK

According to Total Telecom, NTT is looking at a purchase within the UK and using it as a spring board into Europe. Now we start wondering who that could be.

following on from Slingbox is Orb

Scoble get’s nudged into looking at Orb following his comments on Slingbox. I’m sure I’ve mentioned or at least spotted Orb before.

Online calendar

Tipmonkies has a roundup of the online calendar tools. I’m still looking for one and I’ll give these a quick look.

IBM unveils online job site

Interesting peice of news. IBM isn’t doing it to get staff for it’s self but to connect IBM qualified people from specific universities with IBM and it’s business partners.

new cycling record

it’s a bit off topic but tough. I’ve clocked up 140K on my bike this week and there’s still a day left in the week.

TCP/IP @ wikipedia

lifehacker has just pointed out that wikipedia has a great break down of the Internet protocol suite.

IDT says no future in Voice

IDT has told the Carriers world conference that there’s no future in Voice. Finally a carrier admits it.[via]

Black day for IBM traditionalists

But IBM’s PC business is now owned by Lenovo, the Chinese PC producer, which has now introduced a new shade to the Thinkpad range with the launch of a Z-Series laptop that comes both in a “classic black” case and with a “special-edition” brushed titanium cover. [via]

The above article goes on to say this is a risky move,,how? I think it’s a great one. we all now Thinkpads are great machines, but I’d love to wip out something other than a black slab.

I heard a story about how a lady exec wanted a new laptop. She liked the thinkpad and had them in the past  but she felt that she wanted something a bit more stylish so she chose a Sony.

Now if lenovo had been around then it would have got the sale.

It’s great news…where do I queue?