Nortel loses 2012 Olympics contract

Supplier Nortel has lost its network infrastructure deal for the London 2012 Olympic Games, reports Computing.co.uk.

According to The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Locog), the termination was prompted by the vendor's decision to sell some assets of its wireless portfolio and its intention to sell other businesses.

As the partnership between Locog and Nortel covered the supplier's entire operation, Nortel was no longer able to meet the contract's requirements, so both parties decided to “amicably” end the relationship.

A critical ActiveX vulnerability, used by hackers to exploit Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser, is a prime candidate for another Conficker-scale attack, security experts said, according to ComputerWorld.

On 6 July, just hours after security companies reported that thousands of compromised sites were serving up exploits, Microsoft acknowledged the flaw in the ActiveX control that can be accessed using IE.

The vulnerability "exposes the whole world and can be exploited through the firewall", said Roger Thompson, chief research officer at security software vendor AVG Technologies USA. "That's better than Conficker, which mostly did its damage once it got inside a network."

Google Maps users accessing the service through a computer can now find out where they are as easily as users of mobile phones, says InformationWeek.

The search giant updated Google Maps to include a new icon labelled My Location, which, as its name suggests, pinpoints the user's coordinates on the map.

Google insists "Google Maps does not record your location in any way". However, any online interaction with Google or any other Web service will reveal the user's IP address, and that may allow a user's location to be determined.

Microsoft has unveiled Silverlight 3, its rich Internet application technology competitor to Adobe Flash, states eWeek.

The new version of the application includes increased support and new features such as enhanced video performance.

The newest iteration of Silverlight includes over 50 new features, ranging from enhanced video performance and improved quality to support for Visual Studio, Expression Blend and running Silverlight applications from the browser.

Buckingham Palace has revealed that the Royal Family has now joined the Twitter micro-blogging revolution, says BBC News.

The Twitter account @BritishMonarchy has just gone live, following several weeks of testing.

A spokesperson said it had signed up to harness the popularity of Twitter to spread news about the Royal Family.