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Online banking at Lloyds Bank is the latest compnay to have suffered problems with their online systems.Some Lloyds TSB customers suffered problems getting into the online banking system on Thursday morning.

The bank’s customer services team has been apologising to customers who have complained about a shutdown in the system.

However, they said that the system should now be working as normal.

The glitch comes in the same week as computer problems affected customers with accounts at the Post Office who visited branches.

Last month, maintenance work affected services for customers of RBS and NatWest – the day after HSBC customers faced a shutdown in online services.

A spokeswoman for Lloyds claimed that the glitch affected the online banking system for an hour.

The source code behind the mobile operating system WebOS, is being given to open source software developers by Hewlett Packard.The company acquired the software when it bought the smartphone maker Palm for £767 million ($1.2 billion) last year.

HP used the code to power its short-lived range Touchpad tablet computers before it abandoned the product line.

The firm said it would continue investing in the project to help third parties add enhancements.

“By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices,” said the firm’s president and chief executive, Meg Whitman.

A statement from the company said it would make the underlying code behind WebOS available under an open source licence. It said third-party developers, partners and HP’s own engineers could then “deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace”.

The firm added that it intended to be “an active participant and investor in the project”.

Analysts said the decision secured the platform’s future, at least in the short to medium term.

Chip maker Intel has said it will miss it’s sales forecasts because of a shortage of hard disk drives.Intel, the world’s largest maker of microprocessors, now expects to make revenues in the fourth quarter of £8.6 billion to £9 billion ($13.4 billion to $14 billion).

Intel shares fell more than 4% on news of the sales reductions.

Floods in Thailand, where several computer manufacturers have plants, have seriously disrupted production.

Intel’s statement said: “The worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases as a result of hard disk drive supply shortages.

“The company expects hard disk drive supply shortages to continue into the first quarter, followed by a rebuilding of microprocessor inventories as supplies of hard disk drives recover during the first half of 2012.”

Tom Kilroy, senior vice president at Intel, told a news conference: “In the last two weeks, as the supply became more apparent, we saw a substantial change in our order rate.

“Most of our customers are concerned the shortage will continue – especially through the early part of the first quarter,” he said.

Analysts were not surprised that Intel cut its forecast, as recent news from the industry generally had prompted a lowering of expectations.

Shares of smartphone maker HTC have fallen by 7%, the maximum allowed in one day, after the company cut its growth forecast.Taiwan-based HTC said on Wednesday that it expected revenues for the final three months of 2011 to be little changed from a year earlier.

The firm had earlier forecast growth of 20% to 30%.

HTC, the world’s fourth-biggest smartphone brand, blamed increased competition and weakening demand.

Analysts and the markets were surprised by the statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

In October, the company had warned that fourth quarter revenue was slowing, predicting 125bn to 135bn New Taiwan dollars (£2.6 billion- £2.9 billion), compared with T$135.8bn (32.81 billion) in the previous three months.

Although HTC did not give a specific forecast for Wednesday’s further downward revision, it said it predicted no growth compared to the same period last year. HTC’s revenue in the last three months of 2010 was £2.166 billion.

Analysts said the grim outlook could be blamed on lack of new products to compete with an expansion in Apple’s distribution channels in the US.

However, the company said it expected a pick up in revenue in the first half of 2012.

Hewlett-Packard has unveiled a 91% fall in fourth quarter profits after announcing a £2.1 billion ($3.3 billion)  charge to close down its WebOS business.HP reported a profit of £125 million ($200 million) on total sales of £20. 06 billion ($32.1 billion) for the quarter ending 31 October.

This compares to a profit of £1.56 billion ($2.5 billion)  on revenue of £20.81 billion ($33.3 billion) over the same period last year.

The figures are the first since new chief executive Meg Whitman took over.

Despite the slide in profits, revenue rose 1% – analysts had predicted revenue of £20.03 billion.

Ms Whitman took over the firm after her predecessor Leo Apotheker was fired in September.

He had embarked on a series of widely criticised moves to increase HP’s focus on commercial computing hardware and software.

These included cancelling HP’s plans to compete in the tablet and smartphone market with gadgets based on WebOS software that HP acquired when it bought Palm last year – resulting in the £2.06 billion loss which was the biggest contributor to its steep profits fall.

He was also criticised for plans to spin off the firm’s PC division – a decision Ms Whitman reversed on her arrival.

Mr Apotheker also bid £7.8 billion for Autonomy, a software firm based in Cambridge, which analysts felt overvalued the firm by as much as £6 billion.

However, Ms Whitman confirmed the deal would go ahead.

Dell has warned its revenues could be hit by a worldwide shortage of hard drives caused by the flooding in Thailand.
Thailand is a production hub for many global firms like Apple and Toyota, and severe flooding has hurt a wide range of industries.

Dell is the world’s third largest personal computer maker.

The earnings warning came as Dell announced revenues of £9.7 billion ($15.4 billion) and net profits of £564 million ($893 million)  for the third quarter of 2011.

Shares in Dell fell by 2% in after hours trading in New York, after the warning and after analysts said revenues had slightly missed expectations.

Brian Gladden, Dell’s chief financial officer, told Reuters that the Thai floods may mean the company has to give priority to “higher-end customers and products”.

He also warned that the company may have to raise computer prices after the flooding forced the closure of factories and pushed up the global cost of hard drives.

In recent years Dell has focused more on corporate needs and less on the home consumer, which is reflected in its latest results.

Its earnings from large corporations rose by 4% to £2.81 billion compared to the same period last year, and revenue from consumers dropped by 6% to £1.75 billion.

UK broadband speeds drop by an average of 35% from their off peak highs when most people are online in the evening, according to a report.The research, conducted by the comparison site uSwitch, was based on two million broadband speed tests.

The peak surfing times between 7pm and 9pm were the slowest to be online, the report said.

There were also huge regional variations between evening and early morning surfing times.

The report suggested the best time to be online was between 2am and 3am.

Users in Evesham, Worcestershire, fared worst, according to the survey, with a massive 69% drop-off between off-peak morning and evening surfing.

Those living in Weston-super-Mare did little better with speeds falling from an off-peak average of 9.5Mbps (megabits per second) to 3.4Mbps in the evening – a 64% drop.

The difference was often most noticeable in rural areas where even peak speeds were relatively slow. In Wadebridge, in Cornwall, speeds nearly halved from 4.1Mbps at off-peak times to 2.1Mbps at peak times.

“It really is surprising just how much broadband speeds fluctuate at different times of the day, with drop-offs of almost 70% in some areas of the UK,” said uSwitch’s technology expert Ernest Doku.

“Not many internet users enjoy the maximum headline broadband speeds offered by providers, and certainly not during the working week,” he added.

Broadband speed is becoming more important as bandwidth-hungry services such as on-demand TV become more popular.

Telecoms regulator Ofcom recently revealed that British households download an average of 17 gigabytes of data every month over their home broadband connections.

That monthly data diet is equivalent to streaming 11 movies or 12 hours of BBC programmes via iPlayer.

Critics say consumers are being misled by internet service providers who continue to advertise their maximum broadband speeds, even though many users do not get them.

New rules from the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) say that from April next year providers will no longer be able to advertise maximum speeds for net packages unless 10% of customers receive them. They must also make it clear if a significant proportion of users wll not be able to get the headline speed.

Almost half of broadband users are now on packages with advertised speeds above 10Mbps but the average broadband speed is 6.8Mbps according to Ofcom.

The broadband speed test results can be viewed here.

Last month Facebook admitted that hackers are breaking into hundreds of thousands of Facebook accounts every day.Out of more than a billion logins to the website every 24 hours, 600,000 are impostors attempting to access users’ messages, photos and other personal information Facebook said.

The figure is the first time that the social network has revealed how it is bombarded by hackers on a daily basis.

Security experts said the figure is a “big concern” and that people need to be more careful when choosing their passwords across the web.

Facebook is just one of the main target sites for hackers.

Web users need to make sure that their passwords across email, banking and other digital services more complicated in order to avoid their personal information being compromised.

Top tips for choosing an internet password:

- Vary different types of characters in your passwords; include numbers, letters and special characters when possible.
- Choose passwords of eight characters or more. Separate short words with spaces or underscores.
- Don’t use the same password and username combination for multiple websites. Use an online password manager to keep track of your different accounts.

Here are a list of the 25 ‘worst’ internet passwords- if you use ANY of these you should seriously change them NOW:
1. password
2. 123456
3.12345678
4. qwerty
5. abc123
6. monkey
7. 1234567
8. letmein
9. trustno1
10. dragon
11. baseball
12. 111111
13. iloveyou
14. master
15. sunshine
16. ashley
17. bailey
18. passw0rd
19. shadow
20. 123123
21. 654321
22. superman
23. qazwsx
24. michael
25. football

Apple has met environmental groups in China in a bid to improve concerns about pollution caused by it’s Chinese manufacturers. Apple has identified China as one of the key markets for its future expansion and growth plans

The move comes after a report in August alleged that some Apple manufacturers were discharging harmful pollutants into the environment.

The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) said the technology giant had shared its plans to address the issues during the talks.

The IPE said Apple did not disclose the identity of its suppliers, but it was confident that the US company will work to ensure that its partners comply with environmental regulations.

Although Apple refused to comment on specific talks, its Beijing-based spokeswoman, Carolyn Wu, told the BBC that the company conducts regular audits of its suppliers.

According to its Supplier Responsibility report, Apple conducted such checks at 127 different facilities last year.

The company also said that it required its suppliers to resolve any violation within 90 days.

“Apple is committed to driving the highest standards of social responsibility throughout our supply chain,” Ms Wu said.

“We require that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made.”

Dell has warned its revenues could be hit by a worldwide shortage of hard drives caused by the flooding in Thailand.Thailand is a production hub for many global firms like Apple and Honda- and severe flooding has slowed down a wide range of industries.

Dell is the world’s third largest personal computer maker.

The earnings warning came as Dell announced revenues of £9.7 billion ($15.4 billion) and net profits of £564 million ($893 million) for the third quarter of 2011.

Shares in Dell fell by 2% in after hours trading in New York, after the warning and after analysts said revenues had slightly missed expectations.

Brian Gladden, Dell’s chief financial officer said that the Thai floods may mean the company has to give priority to “higher-end customers and products”.

He also warned that the company may have to raise computer prices after the flooding forced the closure of factories and pushed up the global cost of hard drives.

In recent years Dell has focused more on corporate needs and less on the home consumer, which is reflected in its latest results.

Its earnings from large corporations rose by 4% to £2.81 billion compared to the same period last year, and revenue from consumers dropped by 6% to £1.75 billion.