Week in Review: Sony shocker, smartphone smiles

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Sony nightmare

Sony had what can only be described as a miserable week following the Bank Holiday weekend.

After two major breaches, one on the Playstation Network (PSN) and another on Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), the company came under heavy fire for not coming clean sooner to customers.

Over 100 million were thought to have been affected – all of whom have been offered some freebies and greater protection in the future. The Sony boss came out and said sorry too, which was nice.

Some have pointed to the possible LastPass breach as an example of how Sony should have handled the situation, updating customers almost immediately after something dodgy cropped up.

No doubt it’ll all turn into a giant ‘Who Dunnit?” now. Whoever it was, Anonymous is adamant it had no part in the theft, despite Sony pondering whether it was the hacktivism group in a letter to Congress.

Whatever happens now, let’s just hope Sony has learned its lesson and this shocking mess is cleared up soon. For the Japanese manufacturer, however, this may just be the beginning of a lengthy clean up process.

Good job RIM

There were plenty of smiles going round the smartphone world this week, especially over at RIM.

The manufacturer made Bing the default search engine and map service on all new BlackBerrys - a deal that certainly made sense to Mary Branscombe. RIM also introduced the newest version of its BlackBerry Bold smartphone, with improved performance specs and the firm’s latest OS.

RIM will be hoping to slow the seemingly unstoppable rise of Android, which was evidenced in yet another report this week.

There was good news for privacy advocates as well, as Apple put its smiley face on and fixed the tracking issue which had infuriated so many recently. Will other manufacturers make similar moves considering it seems everyone is tracking us? It’s an Orwellian Nightmare, I tell thee.

Best of the rest

We’ve shipped our intrepid Acting News Editor, Jennifer Scott, off to the US for a couple of weeks, where she’s been at a Brocade summit.

The firm has launched a range of networking products and talked about the move from IPv4 to IPv6, whilst we caught up with the company’s CEO too. As Back to the Future’s Dr Emmett Brown once said, Great Scott!

Elsewhere, Intel got excited about some 3D transistors it made, whilst BT decided to bring in some extra help for its fibre rollout in the form of ex-armed forces personnel. Over and out.

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