Performers in the UK took to the stage in the US yesterday as 3D holograms were beamed thousands of miles across the Atlantic. Live music and comedy performances shot in London using the Musion Eyeliner telepresence system were streamed to the InfoComm09 conference in Orlando, where holographic performers walked around the stage and interacted with the crowd.

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Drinks giant Diageo has signed two outsourcing contracts worth $35m with services company CSC. The first contract, worth $7m, will see CSC design and install a new supply chain management system for the company, based on SAP.

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A government plan to allow the intelligence services to monitor all UK web communications is technologically impossible, according to experts from the London School of Economics. The Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) calls for internet service providers to record the traffic details of all web communications. They must also present those details to the intelligence services and other public authorities in a way that establishes the links between different pieces of data associated with, for example, an individual's phone, email address or user IDs.

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BAA's tech team have had a busy past year with offshoring a large part of its IT, the opening of Heathrow T5 and the sale of Gatwick Airport. Service delivery manager, Kevin Mercer, told the Gartner Outsourcing Summit this week how the team were helping steer the UK's largest airport operator through a challenging period.

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Despite the Jaguar nipping at its heels, Roadrunner continues to speed past the supercomputing pack. That's according to the twice yearly Top500 list of the fastest supercomputers in the world, which is to be announced Tuesday morning at the 2009 International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany. The list is released in June and November every year.

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The Round-Up is sure you've had a boss who, quite frankly, was a complete git. We all have. Maybe you are such a boss, in which case the Round-Up suggests you take a good, hard look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself where it all went wrong.

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The government was warned back in 2004 that immediate action was needed to fix problems in the £12.7bn programme to revamp NHS IT, official reports have revealed. Fast forward to 2009, and the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is facing a number of difficulties: key projects to digitise patient records are running four years late, two major suppliers have walked away from the NPfIT and the Department of Health CIO has given suppliers six months to speed up delivery of IT systems or risk seeing the NPfIT replaced.

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Microsoft has grabbed another Yahoo! executive. Operations VP Kevin Timmons becomes the latest to swap Yahoo! purple for Microsoft blue. In his new role, Timmons will lead a datacentre services team, Microsoft infrastructure services general manager Arne Josefsberg said in a blog posting.

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CIOs spend countless hours listening to suppliers pitch their technology, so silicon.com decided to make the process a lot more entertaining by putting the vendors on the spot. Welcome to the 60-Second Pitch. Suppliers have just one minute to pitch their product or service to a panel of current and former heads of IT, who then have the opportunity to quiz the vendor before giving the technology a green or red light - just for fun, of course.

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Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) has developed a gender-recognition system that could change the way advertising works in future. The technology uses sophisticated algorithms to differentiate facial features of men and women. However, unlike the face-detection software found in digital cameras, the gender-recognition system can only detect faces that are facing the camera.

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Intel, Oracle, BT and a number of other high-profile IT companies have backed the launch on Wednesday of the Kantara Initiative, which aims to bring greater harmony to identity management. The project, which has been in the making for a year, is dedicated to examining ways of improving interoperability between different identity technologies and standards. It also intends to address topics such as privacy, which can be sidelined by purely technical discussions, according to Kantara.

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IBM is to invest millions of dollars for research into new mobile services and capabilities. The company said on Wednesday it is setting aside $100m over five years to "bring simple, easy-to-use services to the millions of people who have bypassed using the personal computer as their primary method of accessing the internet".

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Submit a funny caption for this picture by clicking on the 'Add comment' link below. Remember - anonymous posts can't win. (All entrants must be aged 18 or over and resident in the UK. You must submit a valid email address so you can be contacted in the event of winning. Your email address will be used for no other purposes. The competition closes at noon on Thursday 25 June 2009. The funniest caption will win a silicon.com branded 'executive decision maker' desk toy to be sent out upon receipt of a valid UK postal address. The decision of the silicon.com editorial team is final and no discussion will be entered into.)

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Microsoft will launch a public beta of its anti-malware service, Microsoft Security Essentials, on Tuesday as it phases out its Live OneCare suite in favour of a simpler free consumer security offering. Microsoft Security Essentials, which will run on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7, will be available in the US, Brazil and Israel in English and Brazilian Portuguese. A public beta version for Simplified Chinese will be available later in the year.

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Apple has patched nearly four dozen security holes in the iPhone and iPod Touch with its iPhone OS 3.0 release, made available on Wednesday. The 46 flaws could allow an attacker to bypass security restrictions, shut down an application, disclose sensitive information, conduct cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery attacks, or take over the device, Apple said in an advisory.

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BT is about to formally launch a virtualised infrastructure service called BT Virtual Data Centre, which will form the basis of its cloud-computing strategy. VDC involves the virtualisation of servers, storage, networks and security delivered to customers via an online portal as cloud-based services. On Thursday, BT's Global Services division announced the customer rollout of VDC, which will initially target multinational corporate customers and the public sector.

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Considering hitting the shops at the weekend? Looking for inspiration? Check out the latest in our series of gadget mini-reviews, courtesy of silicon.com's sister site CNET.co.uk, the home of technology reviews. For the full review and details, click on the link below. What is it: Update to Apple's premium 15-inch laptop

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IT security has been neglected due to the economic downturn, according to security experts. Bruce Schneier, BT's chief security technology officer, told a European Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa) event on Friday that organisations are struggling to keep on top of workloads that have increased due to layoffs.

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Google thinks it has made a breakthrough in "computer vision". Imagine stumbling upon a picture of a beautiful landscape filled with ancient ruins, one you didn't recognise at first glance while searching for holiday destinations online. Google has developed a way to let a person provide Google with the URL for that image and search a database of more than 40 million geotagged photos to match that image to verified landmarks, giving you a destination for that next trip.

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Business intelligence is getting a lot of attention amid the economic downturn as organisations try to use data they gather to become more efficient and compete more effectively with rivals. With this in mind, silicon.com has picked the brains of analysts specialising in BI to come up with some top tips about how you can make the most out of this growing area.

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Nokia Siemens Networks will buy Nortel Networks' wireless technology business for $650m. Nokia Siemens said on Friday it will use Nortel's CDMA and long term evolution (LTE) technology to expand its presence in the US. CDMA, (code division multiple access), is one of the two major networks operating in the US and is used by Verizon Wireless and Sprint. LTE is 4G wireless technology that will potentially replace today's mobile networks.

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Despite a degree of reluctance to outsource, retailers are likely to increasingly warm to handing over their technology to third parties as the economy continues to struggle. According to a new report from analyst house Datamonitor, pressure on margins from spending-shy shoppers and the resulting need for cost-cutting will prompt retailers to embrace outsourcing.

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Businesses have been slow to adopt unified communications, but Freeform Dynamics's Josie Sephton says its popularity could soon improve. The evangelists are calling for businesses to implement unified communications (UC), citing a whole raft of reasons - from cost savings to improved customer service and better productivity.

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The UK has dropped sharply in the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) annual 'e-readiness' league table, as the recession harmed many countries' ability to use ICT for social and economic development. The E-readiness rankings 2009: The usage imperative report, published last week, is the ninth in an annual series analysing and ranking countries according to the standard of their ICT infrastructure and the ability of their citizens, businesses and governments to use ICT for their good.

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Cutbacks in technology spending are the wrong remedy for the NHS in an economic downturn, according to a junior minister at the Department of Health. Instead, the NHS should embrace the efficiencies IT can bring, professor Lord Darzi, parliamentary under-secretary of state at the department, told an audience at the NHS Healthcare Innovation Expo in London on Thursday.

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Competition in the smartphone market is heating up this summer as one new hot smartphone after another hits the street. The latest is T-Mobile's next Google Android device, called the myTouch. T-Mobile is set to announce the new smartphone today. It is the second smartphone the carrier has introduced that uses Google's open-source mobile operating system, Android. T-Mobile introduced the world's first Google Android phone, called the G1, last autumn. And so far the company claims it has sold more than one million devices.

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All new mobiles will be packing a RFID chip by summer 2010 - ultimately opening up the possibility of your phone also becoming the keys to your car or your house. That's the prediction of Ericsson's VP of systems architecture, Håkan Djuphammar, speaking at the mobile infrastructure company's Business Innovation Forum in Stockholm on Tuesday.

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Few would disagree that faster is better when it comes to the web, and Google wants to get web publishers hooked on speed. Webmasters looking for ways to speed up page loading times now have a host of tips and tricks to peruse as Google has launched a new website designed to emphasise the importance of speed on the web, said Richard Rabbat, a product manager at Google.

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Police data systems should be based on open-source software, according to a senior member of the Association of Chief Police Officers. Ian Readhead, director of information for Acpo, said on Tuesday at a Unisys security event that emergency service data transferral systems should be open source, to help ensure interoperability between them.

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Intel and Nokia have announced a long-term relationship that will see the development of Intel-powered, Linux-based, handheld mobile computing devices. The deal between the chipmaker and handset manufacturer was announced on Tuesday. Intel and Nokia will collaborate on several open source mobile Linux software projects and Intel will license HSPA/3G modem intellectual property from Nokia, the companies said.

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City University London is setting up a centre dedicated to training the next generation of CIOs. The centre will provide short courses and ultimately a Masters-level qualification for mid-career IT professionals looking to develop themselves and acquire the skills to move up the IT ladder.

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Canvas eh? Are we talking painting or boxing here?Neither - it's a broadcast industry initiative around TV over broadband. It was announced in December 2008 and is expected to go live in 2010. What does that mean then?Well the broadcasters BBC and ITV along with telco BT have teamed up to create a platform for bringing on-demand content to the UK's televisions through new broadband-enabled receivers.

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Kevin Mitnick, one of the most famous computer hackers, talks to CNET News about his days on the dark side and why he's now one of the good guys. One of the first computer hackers ever prosecuted, Kevin Mitnick was labelled a "computer terrorist" after leading the FBI on a three-year manhunt for breaking into computer networks and stealing software at Sun, Novell and Motorola.

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In a series of gateway reviews published between 2002 and 2007, and released to the public for the first time last week, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) set out the difficulties that have faced the National Programme for IT (NPfIT). Of the 31 reviews into different aspects of the programme, nine were given a 'red' status indicating immediate action on the project was needed.

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Saritha Rai visits Infosys's giant Mysore training centre to gauge how outsourcers are using education to maintain their edge in challenging economic times. Just before nine o'clock every morning, thousands of twenty-somethings stream across an expansive landscaped campus - past the Domino's Pizza, the 24x7 library, the official merchandise store - and into large classrooms. A hundred or so file into one room, firing up their computers as their lecturer clips on his microphone and gets started on a two-hour session about Java technologies.

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