Online passport check breached

The UK's Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has admitted a data breach in its online passport application progress checking service, says Computing.co.uk.

The incident was formally reported to the Information Commissioner's Office but has not been made public until now.

"A parent was able to discover the existence of a child's passport application by using the online application progress checking service, possibly without entitlement," according to an annual report from the IPS.

The European Union (EU) has thrown a new set of anti-trust allegations at Intel, reports The Register.

Earlier this week, rumours swirled that the EU would spring into action, adding charges to a European Commission investigation against Intel that's been going since 2001.

Now the extra charges have arrived, with EU regulators accusing Intel of three new bits of "abusive conduct" designed to wound AMD's place in the x86 processor market.

It's nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days of the computer mouse are numbered, says The BBC.

A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years.

Taking over will be so called gestural computer mechanisms like touch-screens and facial recognition devices.

In a significant step toward vanquishing the local video store and keeping couch potatoes planted firmly in front of their televisions and computers, Amazon.com yesterday introduced a new online store of TV shows and movies, called Amazon Video on Demand, reports The New York Times.

Customers of Amazon's new store will be able to start watching any of 40 000 movies and television programmes immediately after ordering them because they stream, just like programmes on a cable video-on-demand service.

That is different from most Internet video stores, like Apple iTunes and the original incarnation of Amazon's video store, which require users to download files to hard drives.