WikiLeaks bolsters cyber defence

As its operations have come under increasing financial and political pressure, WikiLeaks has quietly bolstered its electronic defences in an attempt to become more difficult to censor, notes CNet.

In the last few days, the portion of WikiLeaks' infrastructure that relied on a company in Reno, Nevada, has been shifted outside the US to a provider in Toronto. Instead of employing only one company to direct traffic to Wikileaks.ch, currently the organisation's primary Web site, 14 providers are now being used to provide redundancy in case of legal or extralegal attack.

The reconfiguration comes as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested on sexual assault-related charges in London - charges that he strenuously denies and says are politically motivated - and was denied bail. An extradition hearing has been scheduled for 14 December.

Google has delayed a much-anticipated branded laptop powered by its Chrome operating system until next year, reveals the BBC.

Instead of a Chrome OS device for general release, Google revealed a pilot programme aimed at people who “live on the Web”.

Chrome OS is Google's boldest bid yet to erode Microsoft's market dominance with Windows software. Google has already gone after one of Microsoft's cash cows, Office, with Google Docs.

Amazon will make its Kindle electronic books available for reading on Web browsers, beginning early next year, with people's digital collections saved in the Internet “cloud”, writes AFP.

Amazon executives yesterday showed off “Kindle for the Web” at a Google press event, introducing a new, swifter version of the California technology giant's Chrome software for navigating the Internet.

Kindle for the Web was unveiled a day after Google opened an online electronic bookstore in a heavyweight entry into a booming market long dominated by Amazon.

Of the five biggest European economies, the UK is expected to benefit least from the cloud, because it doesn't yet have an adequate broadband infrastructure, says Computing.co.uk.

Research released by the Centre for Economics and Business Research on behalf of EMC, entitled: “The Cloud Dividend Report”, argues that although the cloud will benefit the UK economy by £26 billion between now and 2015, its share of the cloud market will be smaller than that of France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

However, this could be reversed if the government delivers on its promise to increase superfast broadband access to every part of the UK. The total revenue generated by the cloud is forecast to be £149.4 billion by 2015.