VoIP News: November 2009

The number of PCs being shipped around the world is likely to show a year-on-year increase of 2. 8 per cent in 2009, according to a new report from Gartner. Despite this increase, however, revenue is expected to fall by nearly 11 per cent as the average selling price of a PC has fallen in recent months.

Online retailer Amazon is preparing for high sales figures on 'cyber Monday', the busiest day of the year for online shopping that often takes place on the first Monday of December. Last year the first Monday of the month fell on December 8th and the company claims its UK site sold more than 16 items every second to produce its highest ever sales for a 24-hour period, reports the Guardian. It believes this year's figure could be up to 36 per cent higher as more people shop online to search for the best deals in the lead-up to Christmas.

The residents of a remote town in Cumbria are digging their own trenches so that fibre optic cabling can be laid to provide broadband speeds of up to 20 megabits per second (Mbps). Alston Moor has only had broadband services from BT for four years, but local campaigning has since resulted in broadband co-operative Cybermoor, which has delivered speeds of up to 10Mbps to local residents through a network of transmitters, reports the Sunday Times.

The BBC has announced it will be altering the way its headlines are written so that search engine optimisation (SEO) is maximised. Changing the wording in this way means BBC articles are more likely to appear towards the top of internet searches on services such as Google and so the stories could be read by more people. Sam Tilston, online marketing director of vitabits.

Fake pages in the style of popular social networking websites are being used to get hold of personal information such as login passwords, according to Panda Security. The IT security solutions provider said it discovered a fake Facebook page that has now been taken down, but more scams of this sort are likely from cybercriminals. Once hackers have access to the right personal information they can potentially steal more data that can sometimes be sold on to third parties on the internet.