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While there was certainly a lot of media coverage around Facebook’s decision to revert its terms of service a couple of weeks ago, few Facebook users decided to leave Facebook because of the concerns, according to data released by Compete.

While user visits to the Terms of Service document more than tripled in the week before Facebook announced its new Terms of Service governance process, account deactivations only rose slightly above their normal levels:

While this is third party data (and thus pretty rough), it does generally show that relatively few Facebook users were so concerned by the events of the past few weeks that they decided to deactivate their accounts. After Facebook reverted its terms to the old version and announced the new site governance process, these metrics went back to normal.

More than half of US and European businesses have already implemented x86 server virtualisation or plan to do so within the next year, according to Forrester Research.

The analyst's survey also showed five per cent of firms investing in hosted virtual servers on a pay-per-use basis, with three per cent implementing this cloud computing model in the next year. The figures for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are two per cent now and two per cent next year.

"Firms large and small are in the midst of rethinking and overhauling IT infrastructure and client systems, with new approaches for greater flexibility, efficiency, and performance," said Forrester vice president and principal analyst Frank Gillett.

Forrester's survey also suggests that firms are "feeling real pain over the costs of maintaining PCs", with 70 per cent of organisations and 74 per cent of SMEs hoping to cut costs using desktop and client virtualisation.

Although 81 per cent of enterprises indicated some level of interest in dealing with datacentre energy efficiency, only 18 per cent said they were very interested in actually doing it.

The survey polled 2,600 technology decision makers in the US and Europe to assess emerging hardware trends in enterprises and SMEs.

Dell recently came out with the fancy upgrade version to their rather vanilla Studio 15 line with the Studio Special Edition.  The Studio edition adds a nifty “Black Vapor” exterior paint scheme, as well a 1440 x 900 LED-backlit display.

The standard RAM is 3GB, but some models will go up to 4GB, with storage capacities ranging from 250GB to 320GB.  You get to pick any one of three different trims that have varying specifications—
you can choose to get it powered by Pentium’s Dual Core or Core 2 Duo processor with an Intel integrated 4500MHD graphics processor (which comes standard), or you can pick the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450.

So, what else do we have on this “Special Edition”?  It has a 15.4-inch high definition widescreen.  An optional backlit keyboard.  It comes with Bluetooth and WiFi capabilities, a Blu-Ray disk reader, surround sound, HDMI and Ethernet connections, as well as a fingerprint reader.  By the way, it runs Windows Vista.

Prices have gone up over the non “Special” editions.  You are looking at a $799 starting price (after an $80 instant discount) for the standard configurations.  Though, even at these prices, you aren’t talking top price machinery.  You can find the Studio 15 Special Edition at your standard retailers, or at dell.com

Travel group Thomas Cook is investing in making its web site increasingly personalised to each customer to help increase online sales.

Data management will be the main focus area for the firm’s e-commerce team this year, working on ways to analyse customer behaviour on the web and tailor its offering to specific types of clients. For example, a system upgrade is under way with the aim of improving the use of historic data about individual buying patterns.

“Everything we do is based around customer search and personalisation and that will continue to be the main driver for web development this year,” Thomas Cook’s director of ecommerce Russell Gould told Computing.

“Gaining the ability to understand customer behaviour is key for us, so we track everything,” he said.

A major project to deliver a new web site was completed last year, offering the ability to personalise and tailor content based on visitor preferences. For example, a user who searching for a beach holiday in January may be shown beach imagery on the home page and applicable promotions.

Now the core web platform is in place, Thomas Cook will build on the tracking capabilities and enhance its customer relationship management system to push additional products to holidaymakers.

“We will improve the existing communication with customers between the booking and travel date to provide information such as useful advice on documentation and travel tips as well as offer extra products such as car hire,” said Gould.

“The additional system functionality will also allow us to, for example, follow up on customers that did not complete a booking process for any reason and try persuade them to go back.”

A recent survey carried out by Experian suggested that nearly a third of UK businesses have not profiled the contact data of their most profitable clients, despite the importance placed on customer information during the downturn.

Colleges providing further education will now be able to benchmark their technology and IT learning practices against others using a new online tool.

The Generator is provided by Becta, the government agency that promotes the use of IT in education.

The tool offers the chance to see how technology can be used to aid teaching across a range of subjects with the use of hardware and software.

John Stone, chief executive of Learning Skills Network, who helped develop the tool, said he hoped it would benefit education providers for years to come.

"With it, learning providers will not only be able to assess their use of technology, but they can benchmark themselves against other providers and develop improvement plans," he said.

The tool was launched at Becta’s Next Generation Learning conference today where minister for further education, Siôn Simon MP, challenged leaders from colleges, work-based learning and adult learning organisations to step up their use of technology.

"I really want to see further education students enjoying the opportunities and benefits that technology offers. There are already excellent examples of learning technologies right across the sector, but I want to see more and better," she said.

"One practical source of support is Becta’s new online assessment tool, Generator, to help leaders in further education review and improve how technology is applied in their organisations. We need commitment from top management if the strategic importance of technology for learning is to be recognised."

A multimillion-pound computer project designed to share secret service intelligence across government and Whitehall has been scrapped, according to the annual report of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

The Scope system was already partly up and running after a two-year delay, and tens of millions of pounds invested. It enabled MI5, MI6, and GCHQ to share information in a matter of minutes rather than hours.

But the second phase of the project was cancelled after technical issues, Cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell told the committee.

"We know that the way they were planning to do [Phase II] won’t work. So we are working actively on ways in which we can achieve those benefits, but probably through rather different routes," the committee report quotes him as saying.

The committee expressed outrage at the decision.

"We have consistently reported concerns about Scope and are appalled that Phase II of the system – on which tens of millions of pounds have been spent – has now had to be scrapped," the report says.

"We sincerely hope that lessons have been learnt from this failure and that they will be used when plans for the future are being drawn up. We will be investigating the reasons for the serious failure of this important project, and will report on the matter in the forthcoming year."

Scope was intended to replace paper intelligence briefing documents in Whitehall with a more sophisticated electronic method.

The second phase would have given officials in government departments and military personnel secure electronic access to intelligence.

And they say it’s hard to conquer the browser market. Despite Microsoft’s global domination, there are some places where Firefox is a vastly dominant browser. One of them is Antarctica; according to StatCounter’s recently added feature, GlobalStats, in 2009, only one browser was used there.

I’m guessing the data comes from one user - and he’s using Firefox.

Don’t believe me? Check out the graph below. If you go a bit further back in time, you’ll find that Internet Explorer also came on top at times, perhaps because of those pesky Windows Updates. But, this year, it’s all about open source, baby!

Looking at the operating systems used, Windows 2003 stands at 80 percent, with Windows XP holding the other 20 percent. Unsurprisingly, Google is the only search engine used. As far as the mobile browser market is concerned, Antarctica is still virgin territory. So, if you have an iPhone, and you don’t mind the coldish weather…

Since the DTV saga has finally come to an end, the new transition seems like it’s far off, but June 12 is only 3 months away.  Before you know it, it will be May, and don’t be a procrastinator who puts off getting a DTV converter box to the last minute.  As President Obama noted, when he urged Congress to change the date of transition, not enough Americans are ready for the date and this is possibly due to not only financial problems, but language barriers and lack of awareness. 

Fortunately for those who need help getting ready for the all digital transition, a few organizations based in Minnesota launched a DonateDTV.com website.  A website that allows people to donate their non-expired coupons so people can use them at FreeDTVShop.com.  That website allows you to purchase a variety of DTV converter boxes by simply using a coupon code.  Best of all, it is government approved, so you can order a converter box with the peace of mind knowing you won’t be scammed. 

Hopefully, these two services, especially DonateDTV, will help Americans who need a coupon in order to purchase a converter box.  If you have a coupon that you don’t need, and hasn’t expired, you can donate it by using the link below. 

Conserving water is always a high priority for all eco-minded homeowners. The only problem till date was the unavailability of a trendy-looking rainwater harvesting system that can help people do their bit for the environment without spoiling the aesthetics of their modern homes. CISTA, a new entrant, changes everything. Designed by a team of designers at MOSS SUND Architects and Fig Forty, the rainwater harvesting system is trendy, sturdy and good looking.

Amazon is getting into the video game trade-in business with the launch of the Amazon Trade-In Store. The site debuted this morning, and works like Amazon’s checkout system; you browse for the titles you’d like to trade-in, add them to a cart, and submit to Amazon.

From there, Amazon gives you a prepaid shipping label that you can print out and use to send your games in. Once they’ve received your games and find them to be in good condition, you’re credited with an Amazon Gift Card in the trade-in amount. It’s not yet clear if Amazon plans to sell these games on its website (there is no “used games” store), or is selling them back to retailers elsewhere.

While Amazon is late to this market – GameStop is already well-established both on the Web and in brick-and-mortar stores – they might be plenty disruptive. In addition to the fact that Amazon store credits can be used on anything that Amazon sells, Webware notes that the etailer appears to be offering higher trade-in values than all of its competitors. The timing of the launch is also spot-on, as people trade-in old, unneeded video games for extra cash.

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