BT extends FTTP

BT Openreach has said they are now extending their FTTP (fibre to the premises) roll-out and will cover brownfield as well as greenfield areas. Originally FTTP was only planned for greenfield/new build areas.

This will greatly extend the number of homes covered by FTTP and offer speeds of around 100Mb/s, BT's FTTC (fibre to the street Cabinet) are offering around 40Mb/s using VDSL2+.

This is probably a preemptive move to frighten the various other players who may be considering fibre roll-outs such as BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse.

Nomadesk launch virtual Fileservers

Nomadesk have launched a virtual disk service. There's a personal version and a Team version, both with a 30 day free trial, but then they cost $50pa and $15 per month respectively. The personal version can be installed on up to 5 computers while the team version is unlimited. They have a Windows client and MacOS X (beta) client available now and there's a mobile desktop for managing files (as well as the web version).

There are lots of similar services out there Dropbox for one, however Nomadesk also have an API and clients can be built that use the Nomadesk cloud storage within the application.

Whether they're any better than anyone else, time will tell.

Nokia port Qt to Maemo

Nokia have ported Qt (the multi-system GUI layer) to Maemo which is the operating system that runs on their tablets such as the N900. Nokia previously purchased Trolltech who produce Qt which now runs on various UNIX like operating system, MacOS X and Windows and of course Symbian.

The Maemo port means there's a consistent programming interface for Nokia's main platforms and it means programs can easily be ported across systems.

The Maemo version should come out by the end of the year (for V5 of Maemo) and the Symbian version will follow.

Kevin Smith at the IndigO2

This isn't the normal technical post, though anyone knowing Kevin Smith (or more appropriately @ThatKevinSmith will know he's a prolific tweeter, does a regular PODcast (or in his case a SMODcast) and runs several websites (and a couple of comic shops).

On Saturday October 10th he did a Q&A session at the IndigO2 (part of the O2 Arena complex) in North Greenwich. The venue was pretty busy (there were a few empty seats) and Mr Smith pretty well ranted (in a god way) for 3 hours continuously, answering questions from the audience (don't ask why there was no commentary on the "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" ... you'll get a long answer).

The show was a lot of fun, though the main complaint was there was no hashtag for the event, so though people were tweeting, unless searching for @thatkevinsmith it was a bit meaningless.

There are several shows across the UK and another at the IndigO2 on Tues the 13th, which should be fun too and as the show is pretty well driven by the questions that come from the audience it should be different from Sunday's.

Hopefully they'll be a pre-show tweetup in the O2 arena and a hashtag for the night, I'm picking #kevinsmith ...