Vodafone offers free mobile internet

If you aren’t already on an all-you-can-surf mobile broadbanc package and can’t find an unsecured Wi-Fi network nearby, save some pennies today by logging on with Vodafone. For one day only – today – the network carrier has promised to waive all costs associated with surfing the web from your mobile phone, letting you experience the world of web-while-you-walk without expense. Admittedly, most smartphone owners will already have unlimited web bundled into their monthly package, so Vodafone’s deal will probably only appeal to pay-as-you-go users or those pondering a move into the smartphone world.

The Register

London Stock Exchange trading hit by technical glitch

Trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) was halted for three and a half hours earlier because of technical difficulties. The LSE said it had been affected by connectivity issues, and at 1033 GMT had placed all orders for shares into an "auction call period".  This allowed traders to put orders to buy or sell shares into the system, ready for when trading restarted. Normal trading was then able to resume from 1400 GMT.

BBC Online

Second Sony Ericsson phone has software problem

A second of Sony Ericsson's new smartphones, key to its strategy for returning to profit next year, has been hit by software problems in Britain ahead of a critical sales period. A spokesman for the world's fourth-largest mobile phone maker said a number of users of the new Aino smartphone, part of the company's Christmas line-up, had experienced problems using the touch screen.

Reuters

Taking an Open-Source Approach to Hardware

The palm-sized Arduino serves as an electronic brain running everything from high schoolers' robots to high-end art installations. But perhaps the oddest thing about the device is the business model behind it. Plans for the Arduino, a simple microcontroller board, are available online, and anybody may legally use them to build and sell knockoffs. The Arduino represents an early entrant in the emerging open-source hardware movement, which like Linux and other open-source software projects is driven by the belief that allowing duplication is a better way to spur innovation than keeping designs under lock and key. Its success suggests that the open-source model could provide a new way for manufacturers to develop and improve upon products.

WSJ Online

iPhone worm creator lands software job

The 21-year-old hacker who wrote the first iPhone worm has landed a job developing software for the phones. Ashley Towns wrote Ikee, a self-propagating program that changed the phone's wallpaper to a picture of 80s pop singer Rick Astley.  Mr Towns has now been employed as a iPhone application developer for Australian firm mogeneration.  Ikee was not malicious but paved the way for a more serious variant which targeted users of the online bank ING.

BBC Online

iPhone Tries to Crack Korea

Apple Inc.'s iPhone on Saturday will finally go on sale in South Korea, a country that prides itself on creating and consuming cutting-edge technology but where the government raised trade barriers on smart phones to protect domestic manufacturers and carriers for several years. Since the availability and pricing of the iPhone was announced here last week, about 40,000 people placed pre-orders for it and the country's biggest seller of phones, Samsung Electronics Co., slashed the price of its most advanced and expensive phone, a touch-screen model like the iPhone called Omnia2.

WSJ Online