The government's e-petitioning system may have backfired. Over 15,000 people have signed a petition posted on the Downing Street web site last week calling on prime minister Gordon Brown to resign.

And numbers are rising fast: at midday today, the petition had gathered 12,000 signatures, and by 3.30pm the number had reached 15,300, so it's going at a rate of around 1,000 new names per hour at present.

"There are many reasons why we might want Brown to resign, but rather than having lots of narrow petitions on this topic (most of which have been rejected), I wanted one for all of us," said the petition creator, Kalvis Jansons.

As long as an e-petition has more than 500 signatures, it will be passed to the government for a response. Every person who signs such a petition will receive an email detailing an official reply to the issues raised.

The government launched the e-petitioning system in late 2006 as a way to open up channels of public debate. However the launch also followed the introduction of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act in 2005 that made it a new offence to demonstrate within a kilometre of Parliament Square.

With the Labour Party eager to keep protestors off the capital's streets, the anti-Brown petition taking place over the internet could actually be seen by the government as a positive rather than a negative. The effect of an e-petition against Brown is likely to be a lot less damaging to the government's reputation than mass demonstrations.

And there is evidence the signatories view their action as more of a stunt than high level activism to take Brown down. A quick skim down the few thousands of names throws up a few Tony Blairs and one David Miliband.

UPDATE: Another anti-government e-petition has been filed on the Downing Street web site. This time the petition calls for Chancellor Alistair Darling to be fired for "incompetence in office". So far, only Max Kuhnke, the Petition Creator, has signed this petition.

April 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)

It has been a while since Sneak travelled by train. Ah, watching the countryside fly by in a blur of greens and browns and blues, the smell of half toasted paninis and weak coffee wafting down the carriage, there surely is no finer way to get from A to B. And for those of us lucky enough to travel on the National Express east coast franchise, free Wi-Fi. Yup, free it has been for just over a year now. So you would expect them to have sorted out any teething troubles.

Set-up is easy, with connection to the NXEC Wi-Fi network and registration taking just minutes but, sadly, that's the last positive thing Sneak has to say about the service. After managing to load a total of three web pages during the 80 minute journey to somewhere-in-the-North, Sneak gave up. Although signal strength was, according to my laptop, excellent or very good throughout, the connection speed hovered somewhere between dial-up and the epically poor service I get with my WAP phone.

Now last year, vnunet.com reported Wi-Fi usage tripling on National Express trains, with the company even picking up an award for innovation for its efforts to offer all passengers high speed internet access. It may even have swayed many to choose the train over the plane, given the productivity gains your average business traveller could make with internet access. Well, "pah!" is all Sneak has to say. It would be interesting to know how many of the estimated 85 per cent+ passengers with laptops who have eagerly logged on find themselves suckered with the same kind of abysmal service.

According to NXEC, the service is provided by a combination of a satellite and multiple 3G/HSDPA mobile networks. Cannily, said company does not advertise data speeds. Instead, its in-train magazine reveals:

"Due to the nature of the mobile connections the speed will fluctuate depending on your geographic location and the number of users on the service. However, you should always enjoy a faster service than using a PC mobile data card."

"Wireless Internet: Your Gateway to the World", screams the Wi-Fi guide. Well, next time I'll just take a book.

April 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Pirate Bay supporters have attacked the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) web site, making it difficult to load throughout Monday.

The IFPI represented music and film producers in a high-profile trial against the file-sharing site, which saw the operators behind the Pirate Bay found guilty by a Swedish court for helping make copyrighted content available on the web.

It is not the first time the IFPI has suffered due to the case. On the third day of trial, its Swedish version of the web site was defaced and hackers left a message for prosecutor Hakan Roswall to "stop lying".

Currently 205 web users are participating in a forum on irc.anonnet.org discussing how to destroy the web site.

April 21, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was bound to happen. Finally, a hacking story which will have a smile on everyone's face. Well, nearly everyone. It seems that 17 year old Michael "Mikeyy" Mooney, the script kiddie who claimed responsibility for the several Twitter worm attacks which took place last Easter weekend, has been on the receiving end this time.

According to a conversation that took place with the author of the SecuritySlacker blog via Moon's hacked Facebook account, the hackers carried out the attack because they didn't like the 17 year-old's cocky attitude. It seems they hacked his web domain and have now "got his life", which will please any Twitter users on the receiving end of Mikeyy's own antics last weekend, Sneak reckons. "His 5 minutes of fame is gona become a whole lotta shame", wrote the hackers, who go by the name /bin/sh. Well, it couldn't happen to a nicer fella.

However, Sneak is a little worried that Mikeyy might after all be the one who laughs last and longest. According to reports, two firms have already come forward and offered the lad employment, although, predictably, Twitter is not one of them. It is in fact web applications developer exqSoft Solutions which has won the race to secure Mooney's dubious skills.

According to the report, exqSoft's chief executive Travis Rowland doesn't see Mooney's actions as particularly anti-social, but that he was doing Twitter a service in highlighting a security flaw. Sneak is sure the countless users affected by last week's incidents would beg to differ.

April 18, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak was unsurprised to read the news that Virgin Media is going to be relying on Google Mail in future for its email services.

The partnership will see Virgin's four million home broadband customers offered enhanced email services based on the Google infrastructure. These will include 7GB of storage, advanced mail search, email updates via mobiles and up to 10 @virginmedia.com addresses.

Current customers will be able to keep their existing @blueyonder.co.uk, @ntlworld.com or @virgin.net addresses if they prefer, but will be migrated across to the new Google service anyway. The first 20,000 new customers to sign up to the program will get to try out the new email service from today, with a full rollout to other new customers shortly after, Virgin said.

So why was Sneak not surprised by this partnership? Well, a certain rather demanding family member has been a Virgin ISP and email customer for many years, a fact which has led to numerous heated phonecalls to Sneak due to their email and/or internet service going down yet again, and Virgin customer services yet again proving of no or very little help.

Virgin's efforts as an email provider didn't really seem to be working or get taken very seriously by the firm itself, so it certainly makes sense to partner with a company such as Google, which has clearly grasped the concept much better.

But Sneak is also relieved that after many months of effort, said relation has finally been persuaded to switch over to using a Gmail account rather than their old virgin.net address. Despite the recent outages with Google's own mail service highlighting this isn't a completely failsafe option, Sneak has had a few weeks of peace with no angry calls about the email being down again - and now doesn't have to worry about any further complications arising from this new Virgin email package.

April 15, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (7)

Ever get the feeling with social networking, that you're being left behind? Sneak entered the world of Facebook with trepidation a couple of years ago only to be harangued by ex-classmates, ex-colleagues and ex-exes, none of whom really appealed. So Sneak left.

Now all the fuss is about micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter. The site has risen up the greasy pole of tech popularity in record time thanks to high profile celebrity users such as Barack Obama, Britney Spears and our very own Stephen Fry. Regardless of the fact that very few celebs actually write their own Tweets, it seems to have caught the imagination of the young folks. With its own mini-language and shorthand of symbols and abbreviations, the whole thing can seem like a young'uns game, deliberately designed to exclude the more mature members of society. But not according to internet research firm comScore.

According to new stats from the firm, the majority of Twitter's ten million-odd global users are over 35. And those in that difficult age between 45 and 54 are a third more likely to visit the site than the average user. Ha.

What remains to be seen however, is if they can actually use the site. Sneak's parents have for several years grappled heroically with their respective email accounts, for example. Some months Sneak gets an email, some he doesn't. And on very, very rare occasions,those emails contain actual text.

April 14, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0)

After a series of high profile stories in the media portraying Google as an evil privacy-infringing web behemoth, now the public backlash begins in earnest. Yes, Broughton village near Milton Keynes has decided it would rather not have itself splashed all over Google Maps' new Street View tool.

A police car was called to the scene as angry villagers blocked the main road, preventing the Google car, with its 360 degree mounted camera, from proceeding any further on its hateful, privacy-infringing way.

"A member of the public had called us to report that he, along with a number of others, were standing in the middle of the road preventing the car from moving forwards and taking photographs," Thames Valley police is quoted by the BBC as saying. "They felt his presence was an intrusion of their privacy."

Despite Google's protestations that it is abiding by UK privacy laws and only takes pictures in public places, those curtain-twitching village folk obviously don't like the idea that they are being spied on.

The irony of all ironies, of course, is that Broughton is now receiving exposure on an unprecedented scale from all corners of the media. They'll probably be wishing they just left that Google van to its own devices now.

April 3, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (18)

It's the first day of April and that means it's April Fool's, a day of hi-jinks, pranks and general mirth. For journalists it's also a day to closely scrutinise every news story that comes your way to check if it's real, and possibly come up with a story of your own to see if you can pull one over on your readers, at least for a second.

We had a look around the internet to see what people had come up with and these are the ones we found.

In our opinion, the best prank of the day was the Guardian's announcement that it is planning to give up print all together in favour of solely using Twitter to report the news. Not only will all new stories have to be written up in 140 characters or less, but the entire archive is being twitterfied as well - with events such as World War Two condensed to "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more" and the assassination of JFK reduced to "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

According to the Telegraph, harnessing the power of swimming fish could be key to generating electricity for UK homes. Citing government scientists at the Environment Agency's Horizon Scanning Team, the new realm of Finetics could solve energy crisis woes.

Online video site YouTube managed to cause confusion among viewers when for a few hours, all videos were flipped upside down.

Chip maker Qualcomm went the whole nine yards, with its behind the scenes video of its work into genetic splicing in an attempt to expand network coverage.

Multimedia toasters were the pick of the day for both the BBC and Symbian. The Beeb unveiled the iPlayer Toaster, complete with the option to burn the iPlayer play button logo into the toast using a new HD (High Darkness) rendering mode and the Digital Retraction Mechanism (DRM), which automatically withdraws and shreds any uneaten toast after 7 days. While Symbian 'launched' an open source Wi-Fi enabled Toaster complete with a touch screen and BreadSense technology that uses internal sensors to figure out the ideal heat setting and time for the bread you have inserted.

For the die-hard trumpet and Lederhosen fans out there, Xbox announced plans to release Alpine Legend from Snowy Top products, complete with a special goat edition to help you yodel along to classics like 'Whose spit is in my horn?' and 'More goat bell (It needs)'.

For those who prefer to get out and about rather than sit at home and play video games, how about a budget trip to Mars for just $99, $3tn off the normal price courtesy of travel site Expedia?

Google had a few different pranks on the go, all around its Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (Cadie), an artificial intelligence recently launched by the search giant, which has already created its own blog. Just in case Cadie is not an April Fool, I for one welcome our new open source overlord.

According to Google, Cadie was used to help create a 3D version of Chrome (complete with printable 3D glasses) and new brain search tool for mobiles that helps you remember things by indexing the content of your brain to make it searchable

Another browser-based April Fool joke came from Opera, who revealed Face Gestures, allowing web surfers to interface with the browser using winks and other facial distortions. There is even an instructional video attached.

Mobile Crunch got the inside scoop on the Palm Post, and following the network sharing deal between O2 and Vodafone, Mobile News got wind of a new split screen twin phone to be launched jointly by the two operators.

Gadget sites Firebox and I Want One Of Those (Iwoot) both had a few spoof entries of their own.

Firebox had its Satnav trainers, powdered beer, an iREMember Dream Recorder and the P**s up in a Brewery Experience. While Iwoot was advertising a new holo-screen and memory stick that can extract and record your actual memories.

A few spoof press releases to hit our inbox included meeting organisers Doodle, claiming that all G20 meetings were being scheduled via its service, and UK job search engine 1Job saying it was going to buy Google - oddly enough the latter release didn't mention the price of the purchase.

That's all we've been able to find over the course of the day, but if there are any more around that we've missed, be sure to let us know.

April 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (1)