Welcome to another edition of the Prompt Newsletter.

This week, we take a look at goings-on at Google, CERN's black hole machine (oh, all right - Large Hadron Collider) and a new music service from Sony Ericsson.

We also take a look at big business offering Bletchley Park a helping hand and investigate a new open source task force fighting back against evil hackers. It's like a really tedious Saturday morning cartoon...

If you enjoy reading this newsletter, then why not visit our blog?

Hazel Butters
CEO
Prompt Communications

Google gets busy

By Dave Wilby

Compared to its veteran rival in the browsing and online service space, old man Microsoft, Google could still be regarded as merely a talented toddler. Last week though, it did a very precocious and clever thing, outshining its competition with the Google Chrome browser launch, and garnering a lot of praise from plenty of tired grown ups into the bargain. This week, Microsoft is running scared, pulling reactive announcements out of its hat. And yet Google continues to take ever more assured steps, with yet another flurry of announcements. Should we lavish it with even more attention and risk creating a spoilt brat? Well, this week certainly, it's been hard to ignore Google's antics.

First up, the company revealed it had pushed automatic fixes for two critical-risk vulnerabilities related to buffer overrun vulnerabilities and some lesser issues in Chrome. Next, it announced it was on target with its project to create a 250-year back index of the world's newspapers online in tandem with its Google Books library scanning endeavours. Work has apparently already begun on the first North American papers, according to The Times (already owner of its own index).

What next? Well, following pressure from European regulators, Google conceded to halving the amount of time it stores user IP addresses before they become anonymous, from 18 months to nine months. With that done, the company then found time to file a patent for a floating datacentre that would use wave motion to provide energy for on-board server stacks, and sea water to cool them. Nifty, huh?

Finally, following a hard week's work, Google's share price took a battering, dropping 5.5 percent, thanks in no small part to the US government's decision to help out mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, there might also be an antitrust suit coming Google's way sometime soon, apparently. Thought your workload was high this week?

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Scientists fail to destroy universe with black hole machine

By Tarryn Landman

If you are reading this, chances are the world has not been devoured by man-made black holes, a threat most of us were blissfully unaware of until a new study in Geneva caused a tidal wave of apocalyptic headlines to sweep the globe this week.

CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, has built a machine called the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva to test the Big Bang theory by replicating conditions in the split second after the explosion. To do this, beams of protons will be fired through a 17 mile underground tunnel at almost light speed to create roughly 6 million collisions a second. At the moment though, protons are only being fired in one direction and it may be months before the CERN scientists are able to create the collisions necessary for their research.

Once the LHC is running at full speed, the scientists at CERN will use an ATLAS detector to examine the subatomic aftermath of the proton collisions. In the wreckage, they hope to learn more about things like dark matter and black holes. They also hope to find evidence of how the universe was created and perhaps get a glimpse of the Higgs boson particle (or God particle), which is thought to have assigned mass to many particles after the Big Bang.

There have been concerns that the LHC will create small black holes that could grow and consume the planet from the inside out, and critics have launched a lawsuit at the European Court for Human Rights against the 20 countries that fund the project. According to CERN, however, these microscopic black holes are unlikely to occur, and even if they do, would dissipate immediately.

With months of experiments ahead, it will be a while before the LHC cracks open the secrets of the universe's inner workings. On the bright side, as the largest machine and most powerful supercomputer in the world, the emptiest space in the solar system, and one of the hottest spots in the galaxy (while being simultaneously colder than outer space), the LHC is a bargain at only £4.4 billion.

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IBM and PGP shell out £57,000 to help secure British computing heritage

By Kathryn Cave

The BBC reported this week that IMB and PGP have donated $100,000 (£57,000) to save Britain's National Museum of Computing. This is housed at Bletchley Park, Bucks, on the famous site where the Enigma code was cracked during WWII. It contains some seminal landmarks of computing history - like Colossus, the world's first ever computer.

Andrew Hart, head of privacy and security services for IBM in the UK and Ireland, said: "I think it's very important to act to preserve this because a lot of people think this equipment is obsolete, so a lot of this material is being lost and destroyed at an incredible rate. Take something like the internet, which... was really only invented in 1989, and here we are in 2008 and it's almost as if it has never not been there."

Andy Clark, a director and a trustee at the museum, was thrilled by the donation - although it's only a small dent in the £7 million the museum hopes to raise. Clarke emphasised the museum was of computing not computers and that education was at the heart of the venture.

"It's important that people can do things. To be physically engaged with the artefacts really puts the whole thing in context. You see that with kids, they stand in front of the Colossus and I say to them, do you realise this is a computer? And they say, 'It's very big!', and it catches their imagination."

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Open source sheriffs are ready for a showdown

By James Gerber

Most people who are involved with open source software have a deep sense of community. However, one group has recently taken open source zeal to a new level, joining together to fight against hackers and other bad guys. The 'Russian Business Network' of hackers they are fighting against have been labeled "the baddest of the bad" hackers for hire.

The team will be called 'Grey Goose'. Experts that are involved include people with Microsoft, the Dept. of Homeland Security and Lexis-Nexis Security on their résumés, so these are no amateurs. They will look through network data that's been released and scour the blogs of the Russian Business Network.

I've heard of open source security before, but this is a new one for me. Last Friday, a former NSA programmer made his software, which can take control of an operating system without permission, open source to catch hackers who download it to use for naughty reasons. The open source community has always been about openness, including that of the internet in general, which is continually infringed upon by rogue hackers who use it for malware, phishing and viruses. I'm glad to see people start taking a stand. Hopefully these cowboys can lasso a few hackers. Yeehaw!

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Sony Ericsson may come with music first

By Sally Forge

The FT reports that Sony Ericsson is developing an unlimited download music service that could potentially launch in late September, before the October launch date of Nokia Comes with Music (reported by Prompt last week). The article suggests that, while Sony Ericsson may be choosing a similar music-based strategy as Nokia, the company may gain an advantage over the Nokia service if it chooses to provide DRM-free tracks. In any case, while mobile TV never really took off, this is all good news for consumers who can look forward to more music on mobiles.

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RIP Facebook. Long Live Facebook.

By Rebecca Cheers

Thursday 11 September was the day that Facebook chose to kill off its old design. After giving users the freedom to switch between the old and new site for the past seven weeks, Facebook announced that, love it or hate it, the facelift was becoming permanent.

The social networking site began switching all 100 million users over to the new site on Thursday, despite protests from users. One group named 'I Hate the New Facebook' has managed to attract nearly 800,000 members, while another called 'Petition Against the New Facebook' has almost a million supporters.

But, before we all jump on the bandwagon, perhaps it's worth looking at the improvements that Facebook has made to the site. In a post on the Facebook blog, Production Manager, Mark Slee said, "We set out to make Facebook simpler, cleaner, more relevant, and easier to control."

The site has done this by changing both the content and layout. The new look site has extra filter feeds, customised tabs on the profile page, a new toolbar to make navigation easier, user participation in friends' stories and a publisher box which allows content to be published directly to the mini-feed.

About 30 million users made a voluntary swap to the new site over the last seven weeks.