Hacking work: How to break the rules to work better

"Hacking" means to reassemble a system to produce a different or superior result.

"Work" has long meant a series of highly structured, heavily bureaucratic processes through which financial value is derived from human labour.

The former is more popular than ever before in human history due to widespread access to information, expertise and instruction via the internet - and the latter? Well, the latter is on the way out.

Call it "agile" or "iterative," "innovating" or "pivoting", call it "freelancing" or "outsourced."

Olympic Games 'not immune' to cyber-attack

The London Olympics "will not be immune" to cyber-attack, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude has warned.

He said attackers "would seek to disrupt the Games", noting that the Beijing Olympics saw 12 million cybersecurity incidents in 2008.

"We have rightly been preparing for some time a dedicated unit which will help guard the London Olympics against cyber-attack," he said.

Hackers takes Soca crime agency website down

The website of the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has been taken offline following a cyber-attack.

Soca confirmed to the BBC that soca.gov.uk had suffered a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

A spokesman said the site was taken offline at 22:30 on Wednesday, but that the attack did not "pose a security risk to the organisation".

Microsubmarines could clean oil spills, researchers say

Tiny submarines that are 10 times smaller than the width of a human hair could be used to clean up oil spills, researchers have suggested.

The self-propelled microsubmarines are able to gather oil droplets and take them to collection facilities.

The team from the University of California San Diego's nano-engineering department said their tests showed "great promise".

Facebook IPO values company at between $85bn and $95bn

Facebook has set the share price for its upcoming initial public offering (IPO) at between $28 and $35 per share, valuing the company at between $85bn-$95bn (£52bn-£59bn).

The IPO is set to be the largest ever for an internet firm, bigger than Google's valuation of $23bn in 2004.

IPOs are when companies list shares on the stock market for the first time.

Facebook is set to list on the Nasdaq and would rival Amazon's and Cisco System's current market values.

London to test 'smart city' operating system

An operating system designed to power the smart cities of the future will be put through its paces in London.

Living Plan IT has developed its Urban OS to provide a platform to connect services and citizens.

With partners including Hitachi, Phillips and Greenwich council, it aims to use the Greenwich peninsula as a testbed for new technologies running on the system.

IPv6: Europe 'ahead' in new net address scheme

Norway is leading the way in preparing for the move to the net's new addressing scheme, a survey has shown.

The survey comes a month before World IPv6day that will see many v6 websites permanently activated.

The new IPv6 scheme is needed because the older system, IP Version 4, is about to run out of addresses.

Compiled by Europe's net address overseer, RIPE, the report found that Norway was ahead of Asian nations where IPv4 addresses are no longer available.

Samsung: finally unveiled Galaxy Series 3

The handset has a 4.8 inch (12.2cm) screen, an increase on the 4.3 inch screen of its predecessor.

The device is perceived to be critical to how people view both Samsung's brand and the Android system it runs.

Analysts say the popularity of the previous Galaxy - the S2 - was a major factor in the firm overtaking Nokia to become the world's best-selling mobile phone maker.

Kickstarter video game project exposed as a scam

Crowdsourced funding site Kickstarter has suffered its first publicised scam.

An effort to raise cash for a role-playing video game was exposed as a fraud by users of Reddit, Something Awful and other sites.

The project had $4,739 (£2,922) in pledgesout of a target of $80,000 at the point it was pulled by its creator.

Kickstarter could not provide comment at this time. The site has successfully funded nearly 22,000 schemes since it was created in 2009.

The Rise Of The Schminternet

During the fight over the much-maligned Stop Online Piracy Act, the implacably irreverent denizens of Reddit took a moment to contemplate their future should the controversial bill become law. Under the headline "If SOPA passes..." one Redditor whipped up animage macro of Will Ferrell (as Ron Burgundy) screaming: "We'll make our own internet and you won't be invited!"

SOPA did not pass, of course, so the creation of a new internet was not needed. But a similar sentiment actually caught on with internet service providers after the Federal Communications Commission passed net neutrality rules in December 2010. With their behavior on fixed broadband now hemmed in by regulations, the ISPs are, in effect, creating a secondary sort of internet that allows them more freedom to influence their customers' media consumption. Among insiders it is known as "the Schminternet."

With BlackBerry 10, RIM Is Fighting the Wrong War

So far at BlackBerry World, there hasn’t been much talk about the “enterprise refocus” that Research In Motion CEO Thorsten Heins made headlines with at the company’s last earnings call.

At all the meetings, panels and keynotes I’ve attended so far, it’s been clear the siren call of the consumer market still commands a large portion of RIM’s attention.

Take one example: The way-cool time-shifting camera functions in BlackBerry 10 that Heins showed off in his keynote.

Motorola wins Xbox and Windows 7 ban in Germany

Motorola Mobility has been granted an injunction against the distribution of key Microsoft products in Germany.

The sales ban covers the Xbox 360 games console, Windows 7 system software, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.

It follows a ruling that Microsoft had infringed two patents necessary to offer H.264 video coding and playback.

Thoughts On Blackberry World 2012, BB10 And The Future For Research In Motion

Months ago when the Playbook 2.0 update hit and the keyboard/case thing finally was outed or when the Blackberry London Hardware leaked, i said i still believed in The Playbook, B10 and RIM having a future. Or a one last chance.

After having watched the most important 30 minutes of video and read around 10 pages of BW2012 briefings. I can still say it. Not only that, i would even add that they now got a very good chance.

HP And IBM Need To Be Very Afraid Of Dell

I recently attended Dell‘s Annual Industry Conference (#DAAC) in beautiful Austin, Texas.  I have staged and attended many conferences like this before and this was similar to those, but also different in many ways.  I’ll get into later.  One thing that kept repeating through my head was that Dell has all the characteristics to drive some serious enterprise and services revenue.  Hewlett-Packard and IBM better be taking them seriously in these spaces or face the consequences.