Saturday, October 30, 2010

MPs accuse Google on wi-fi data

MPs have accused Google of deliberately collecting wi-fi data for commercial gain.

It is another twist to events kicked off by the search giant collecting of millions of pieces of sensitive information via its Street View cars.

Discovery of the data triggered investigations around the globe.

Google has always maintained that the data was collected in error because of code being mistakenly included in the Street View software.

The code was created by a Google engineer as part of a wider project to map wi-fi hotspots but should never have found its way into Street View cars, the search giant said.

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Google's head of PR told the BBC's Today programme this week that there was code incorporated into Street View which was intended to map wi-fi hotspots in order to improve Google's location-based services.

But it was never the intention that any part of it would also suck up personal and sensitive information relating to unsecured wireless networks, he said.

"This data has never been used in any Google product, was never intended to be used by Google and will never be used," he said.

"Start Quote

I find it hard to believe that a company with the creative genius and originality of Google could map the personal wi-fi details, computer passwords and e-mail addresses of millions of people across the world and not know what it was doing"

End Quote Robert Halfon Conservative MP

He added that Google had now stopped collecting any wi-fi data, had "isolated" the personal data and wanted to delete it as soon as investigations by information commissions around the world had concluded.

During a two-hour parliamentary debate on privacy, MPs questioned Google's version of events.

Conservative MP Robert Halfon questioned Google's insistence that the details were sucked up by Street View cars as a result of code being accidentally included in the software.

"I find it hard to believe that a company with the creative genius and originality of Google could map the personal wi-fi details, computer passwords and e-mail addresses of millions of people across the world and not know what it was doing," he said.

"My own feeling is that this data was of use to Google for commercial purposes and that is why it was done.

The question is whether the company underestimated the reaction of the public, and many governments around the world, once it had been revealed what it had done."

Google said that the allegations were "completely untrue".

Graham Cluley, a senior consultant at security firm Sophos, told the BBC that he found it "surprising" that Google staff did not realise that the Street View cars were storing more than just the location of wi-fi hotspots.

"If you were competent then it would be surprising that you wouldn't know that you were storing far more than you actually needed," he said.

Refuge pictures

During the two-hour parliamentary debate, there was wider criticism of the Street View service, which offers detailed maps of the country on a street-by-street basis.

Conservative MP Mark Lancaster cited a women's refuge in his constituency which had asked to be removed from Street View.

"Imagine their great concern when on entering the name of the organisation on Google, a picture of the building the refugees use and also their addresses appear on the search engine," he said.

He said that requests to Google to remove the refuge from the map had received no response.

"I find it staggering that such an invasion of privacy on an organisation whose purpose is to protect others is allowed to occur," he said.

Google told the BBC that it was unaware of this particular case.

"Anyone can request an image for removal using our simple 'report a problem' tool in Street View. When they do we remove the image quickly," said a Google spokeswoman.

No investigation

In June Privacy International made a complaint to the UK Metropolitan police, saying the data collection put Google in breach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).

Broadband minister Ed Vaizey revealed during the debate that the police had "decided that it would not be appropriate" to launch a criminal investigation in the matter.

But he said that he planned to meet with Google to discuss the data breaches.

MPs also criticised the way the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) had handled the matter, describing it as "lily-livered".

In July, the ICO said that Google did not harvest "significant" personal details when the data was collected.

But as more details have emerged about the nature of the data it is reassessing its position.

"Earlier this year the ICO visited Google's premises to make a preliminary assessment of the 'pay-load' data it inadvertently collected.

Whilst the information we saw at the time did not include meaningful personal details, we have continued to liaise with, and await the findings of, the investigations carried out by our international counterparts," it said in a statement.

"Now that these findings are starting to emerge, we understand that Google has accepted that in some instances entire URLs and e-mail and passwords have been captured," it added.

In the light of this the ICO said it was "deciding on the necessary course of action, including a consideration of the need to use our enforcement powers".

Investigations conducted by the Canadian information commissioner revealed that Google had collected some highly sensitive information including complete e-mails, lists of names of people suffering from a certain medical conditions, telephone numbers and addresses.

Its findings go against Google's initial assertion that all the information collected was "fragmentary".

The Canadian investigation found that Google was in breach of privacy laws but said no further action would be taken if Google tightened up its internal privacy policies.

Medical conditions

The US Federal Trade Commission ended its investigation yesterday, welcoming changes Google has recently announced to its internal processes.

On Friday Google revealed that it would be creating a director of privacy and offering more training and better procedures regarding privacy.

"Every engineering project leader will be required to maintain a privacy design document for each initiative they are working on," Google said in a statement.

But it still faces on-going investigation in the US, with a lawsuit looming and a large scale enquiry backed by 38 states demanding detailed explanations about the process which led to so much personal data being stored by Google.

It has pressed Google to name the engineer responsible and to explain in full how the code he designed came to be incorporated in Street View.

Google has never publicly named the engineer.



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Mass Effect 2 wins &#39;game of year&#39;

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Click's Marc Cieslak reviews the role playing game Mass Effect 2 on 28 January 2010

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Mass Effect 2 has won the ultimate game of the year at this year's Golden Joystick awards.

Other winners at the gaming industry's biggest event include popular titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Final Fantasy XIII.

Mass Effect 2 also won role-playing game (RGP) of the year with tower defence game Plants vs. Zombies also taking home two prizes.

The winners are voted for by UK fans and the event is now in its 28th year.

Spread across 16 categories, other winners at this year's Golden Joysticks included Assassin's Creed II (action game), FIFA 10 (sports game) with Call of Duty: Black Ops bagging the 'one to watch' prize.

Racing game of the year went to Forza Motorsport 3, Super Street Fighter 4 won the fighting game award and Guitar Hero 5 was voted music game of the year.

The portable game prize went to Pokemon Heart Gold/ Soul Silver, League of Legends picked up online game of the year and World of Goo was voted puzzle game of the year.

Cambridge-based firm Jagex, behind titles such as online multiplayer RuneScape and strategy game War of Legends, picked up the UK developer of the year prize.

The Golden Joysticks began in 1982 with Jetpac winning the first ultimate game of the year, an award handed out by former Radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis.

Other winners have included video game classics such as Fallout 3, Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto.

See a photo gallery of previous ultimate game of the year award winners

Last year the Golden Joysticks made it into the Guinness Record Books as the world's most popular video game awards.

To qualify for an award games had to be released between May 2009 and May 2010, except for the 'one to watch'.

This year more than 1.5 million votes were cast with the awards hosted by US comedian Rich Hall at London's Park Plaza Westminster Bridge hotel.



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YouTube co-founder Hurley steps down

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley is stepping down as chief executive of the online video-sharing website.

Google bought the YouTube website in 2006 for $1.65bn (�1.03bn) and since then has been asserting more control over the popular site.

In a statement, Mr Hurley said Google's Salar Kamangar had led YouTube's daily operations for the past two years while he had worked in an advisory role.

Mr Hurley said he would continue to serve as an adviser to YouTube.

Mr Hurley founded YouTube in 2005 with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. His co-founders have already left the firm.

Mr Kamangar will take over as YouTube CEO.



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Thursday, October 28, 2010

China claims supercomputer crown

China has claimed the top spot on the list of the world's supercomputers.

The title has gone to China's Tianhe-1A supercomputer that is capable of carrying out more than 2.5 thousand trillion calculations a second.

To reach such high speeds the machine draws on more than 7,000 graphics processors and 14,000 Intel chips.

The claim to be the fastest machine on the planet has been ratified by the Top 500 Organisation which maintains a list of the most powerful machines.

High power

China's Tianhe-1A (Milky Way) has taken over the top spot from America's XT5 Jaguar at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee that can carry out only 1.75 petaflops per second. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

The news about the machine broke just before the publication of the biennial Top 500 Supercomputer list which ranks the world's most powerful machines.

Prof Jack Dongarra from the University of Tennessee, one of the computer scientists who helps to compile the list, said China's claim was legitimate.

"This is all true," he told BBC News. "I was in China last week and talked with the designers, saw the system, and verified the results."

He added: "I would say it's 47% faster than the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's machine, 1.7 Pflops (ORNL system) to 2.5 Pflops (Chinese system)."

Tianhe-1A is unusual in that it unites thousands of Intel processors with thousands of graphics cards made by Nvidia.

The chips inside graphics cards are typically made up of small arithmetical units that can carry out simple sums very quickly. By contrast, Intel chips are typically used to carry out more complicated mathematical operations.

The machine houses its processors in more than 100 fridge-sized cabinets and together these weigh more than 155 tonnes.

Based in China's National Center for Supercomputing in the city of Tianjin, the computer has already started to do work for the local weather service and the National Offshore Oil Corporation.



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UK net economy &#39;worth billions&#39;

The internet is worth �100bn a year to the UK economy, a study has concluded.

The research, which was commissioned by Google, found that the internet accounts for 7.2% of the UK's gross domestic product (GDP).

If the internet was an economic sector it would be the UK's fifth largest, said the report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

This would make the sector larger than the construction, transport and utilities industries.

Central pillar

Some 60% of the �100bn a year figure is made up from internet consumption - the amount that users spend on online shopping and on the cost of their connections and devices to access the web.

The rest comes from investment in the UK's internet infrastructure, government IT spending and net exports.

The report, The Connected Kingdom: How the internet is transforming the UK, says that the internet's contribution to GDP is set to grow by about 10% annually, reaching 10% of GDP by 2015.

The UK, according to the report, is the world's leading nation for e-commerce. For every �1 spent online to import goods, �2.80 is exported.

"This is the opposite of the trend seen in the offline economy, which exports 90p for every �1 imported," the report says.

Internet companies play a vital role in employment with an estimated 250,000 staff, the report finds.

Small businesses that actively use the internet report sales growth more than four times greater than that of less active companies.

The report also attempts to compare the UK to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Under its scoring system, the UK ranks sixth, above Germany, the US and France. The highest ranked country is Denmark.

"The internet is pervasive in the UK economy today, more so than in most advanced countries," said Paul Zwillenberg, partner with BCG.

"Several industries - including media, travel, insurance and fashion - are being transformed by it."

Matt Brittin, managing director of Google UK, said: "The internet is a central pillar of the UK's economy.

"The sector has come of age, and with great prospects for further growth the UK internet economy will be vital to the UK's future prosperity," he added.

What do you think of this report? Do you run an online business? You can send us your views and experiences using the form below.

At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws. In most cases a selection of your comments will be published, displaying your name as you provide it and location unless you state otherwise. But your contact details will never be published.



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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Virgin speeds up UK cable network

Virgin Media is set to turn up the dial on its cable network, offering users speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second).

It aims to provide the service to over 50% of the UK by mid-2012, beginning in December with 200,000 homes in London, the Home Counties and West Yorkshire.

It is the latest move in the race to bring super-fast broadband services to the UK.

It will give new impetus to rival BT's super-fast broadband rollout.

Left behind

Neil Berkett, chief executive of Virgin Media described the service as "a significant milestone".

"The world of possibilities that broadband will enable is set to explode," he said.

The first towns earmarked for the super-fast service are Chelmsford, Farnborough and Heckmondwike in West Yorkshire.

The service will be available as part of a telephone or TV bundle for �35 a month or �45 for a standalone broadband product.

"It will be interesting to see whether the British public will be tempted away from their compulsion for cheap deals," said Michael Phillips, product director of comparison website broadbandchoices.

"So far only a small proportion of Virgin Media's four million broadband customers have signed up to its 50Mbps service," he added.

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Mr Berkett said Virgin Media had seen "a massive uptake" in the number of customers watching video-rich services and using bandwidth-hungry applications.

"We are now in a world where people want the best connectivity with whatever screen they are using and those service providers that aren't able to deliver this will simply be left behind," he said.

BT is Virgin Media's chief rival in the super-fast broadband race and is planning to offer fibre optic broadband to around 70% of the UK by 2012.

It questions Virgin's prices.

"Thier new service is more than twice the price of BT's fibre product and we are surprised by the high price when most family budgets are tight," said a statement from BT.

It also questioned why Virgin Media has not been required to open its network to other operators in the same way as Ofcom requires of BT.

The majority of BT's next-generation broadband roll-out consists of so-called fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), which is initially delivering top speeds of around 40Mbps (megabits per second).

The faster fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology, which can offer speeds to compete with Virgin's network, will only be available to a quarter of the total.

Experts argue that FTTH is a more future-proofed technology because it offers much faster upload speeds for services such as high-definition video conferencing which are becoming more popular.

Virgin's 100Mbps service will offer upload speeds of 10Mbps.

"This will be of particular interest to those who are sharing content online, and may help drive wider use of cloud-based applications," said Sebastien Lahtinen, co-founder of broadband news site ThinkBroadband.

League table

Prime minister David Cameron welcomed the Virgin Media roll-out.

"We want to see superfast broadband brought to peoples' homes and businesses right across the country and this exciting news takes us a step closer towards reaching that goal," he said.

Despite the government's determination to make the UK the fastest broadband nation in Europe by 2015, Britain is currently ranked 18th in the global broadband ratings.

It has also failed to make it on to super-fast broadband rankings released by the Fibre to the Home Council for Europe at this week's World Broadband Forum in Paris.

The league tables show that some 18 million homes in Europe can get FTTH, with Eastern European countries dominating the rankings.

In many cases this is because of poor existing infrastructure meaning fibre optics make good economic sense while the high proportion of people living in flats mean more homes can be reached via such technology.

"Start Quote

We expect the government to continue to make lots of positive noise and encouragement for the private sector, without actually reaching for their chequebook"

End Quote Charlie Ponsonby Simplifydigital

Chris Holden, president of the FTTH Council for Europe said Eastern Europe could become a more attractive place to do business.

"Businesses will go where the bandwidth is. It is disappointing that countries such as Italy and France are at the bottom of the rankings while the UK, Germany and Spain aren't even on it," he said.

He said that despite a flurry of recent activity it would be "very difficult" for the UK to catch up.

No money

The European Union wants to see half of Europe's homes benefitting from 100Mbps broadband by 2020. By the same date it wants 100% of homes to have broadband speeds of at least 30Mbps.

Charlie Ponsonby, chief executive of broadband comparison service Simplifydigital, said it was hard to see where the money will come from for such an ambitious roll-out.

"The UK's broadband infrastructure is much like the railway infrastructure - getting better, but by no means up there with the world leaders. The trouble is, it is likely to cost about �2.5bn to bring us in line with the best in the world," he said.

"We expect the government to continue to make lots of positive noise and encouragement for the private sector, without actually reaching for their chequebook," he added.

Last week the government annnounced that the BBC would fund super-fast broadband roll-outs in rural areas.

At the World Broadband Forum, companies have been busy showing off their net wares, including a glut of companies offering cheaper solutions to fibre optics.

Some firms are offering ethernet solutions for the so-called last mile of connection between the telephone exchange and peoples' homes which would offer 100Mbps at a fraction of the cost of FTTH.

Network firm Adtran has ongoing trials of its Ultra Broadband Ethernet technology and is on the verge of signing deals with several European telcos.

At the other end of the scale, a device to boost the speeds of broadband in rural areas was also being shown off.

The WiBE gadget connects to the 3G network, creating a web hotspot where phones and dongles have no signals.

Although its average speed is just 2.8Mbps it could be a lifeline for remote areas languishing on dial-up speeds.

The gadget goes on sale in the UK from next week.

The UK government has put back the timetable to offer a minimum 2Mbps broadband connection to every home from 2012 to 2015.



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Dutch police warn botnet victims

Dutch police have taken the unusual step of tapping into hijacked computers to tell users that their machines had been taken over.

It is the culmination of an operation to close 143 servers commanding an army of 30 million hijacked computers around the globe.

The infected machines formed a huge botnet, giving criminals access to sensitive information.

Experts have questioned whether it puts the Dutch police in breach of the law.

It is believed to be the first time a police force has used such an approach.

"Technically, what the Dutch police did could be considered to breaking the law in some countries, by making unauthorised changes to another user's computer," said Graham Cluley, a senior consultant at security firm Sophos.

"I think it's unlikely that anyone would believe legal action against the police would be appropriate in this circumstance. They're trying to make the best of a bad situation," he added.

But it may not have convinced everyone.

"Some users may not believe the warning and may think it's one of the commonly seen fake security warnings that tries to trick users into taking a dangerous action," he said.

The botnet closed down by Dutch police was created using the so-called Bredolab trojan, malicious code which allowed criminals to capture bank details and other sensitive information from infected machines.

In a statement the Dutch hi-tech crime squad said that Armenian police had arrested "the probable mastermind" behind the Bredolab botnet at Yerevan airport in Armenia.

It said that it had decided to let users know their machines were part of the botnet.

"More than 100,000 computer users have been warned that their computers are part of the botnet," the statement read.

It said had received 55 responses from users whose computers were compromised.

Although the decision to use a botnet for innocent purposes might be a first in the police force, it is not the only time a botnet has been taken over.

The BBC programme Click took control of over 22,000 home computers last year as part of an investigation into hi-tech crime.



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File-sharing site shut down in US

An injunction issued by the US district court in New York has effectively shut down LimeWire, one of the internet's biggest file-sharing sites.

It ends four years of wrangling between the privately-owned Lime Group and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The injunction compels Lime Group to disable its searching, downloading, uploading and file trading features.

The firm plans to launch new services that adhere to copyright laws soon.

Visitors to the LimeWire website are confronted with a legal notice that reads: "This is an offical notice that LimeWire is under a court ordered injunction to stop distributing and supporting its file-sharing software."

It adds that "downloading or sharing copyrighted content without authorisation is illegal".

The RIAA told the AP news agency that it was pleased by the judge's decision.

"It will start to unwind the massive piracy machine that LimeWire... used to enrich themselves immensely," said RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy.

LimeGroup appeared to acknowledge defeat.

"We are out of the file-sharing business, but you can make it known that other aspects of our business remain ongoing," Lime Group spokeswoman Tiffany Guarnaccia told AP.

The firm is working on developing new software that will adhere to copyright laws.



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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Go beyond the PC, Microsoft urged

Microsoft must think beyond the PC if it is to weather the changes due to hit in the next five years.

The warning was given by Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie in a memo penned soon after he announced he was leaving the company.

In it, Mr Ozzie said that the last five years had been "breathtaking" and expected the next five to be the same.

But, he said, the strengths that had helped Microsoft grow in the past now risked holding it back.

The memo, called "Dawn of a New Day" mirrors one Mr Ozzie wrote soon after taking over from Bill Gates as the man in charge of charting the development direction of Microsoft's portfolio of programs.

That first memo imagined a world of seamless computing and kicked off Microsoft's attempts to get its many different programs working together across lots of different devices.

In Dawn of a New Day, Mr Ozzie praised the work Microsoft had done towards that end, but said rivals had done even better.

"...their execution has surpassed our own in mobile experiences, in the seamless fusion of hardware and software and services, and in social networking and myriad new forms of internet-centric social interaction."

The reason for this, he suggested, was Microsoft's legacy of being intimately tied to the PC.

"Start Quote

Those who can envision a plausible future that's brighter than today will earn the opportunity to lead. "

End Quote Ray Ozzie Microsoft chief software architect

"For the most part, we've grown to perceive of "computing" as being equated with specific familiar "artifacts" such as the "computer", the "program" that's installed on a computer, and the "files" that are stored on that computer's "desktop".

Such thinking, he said, was becoming less and less relevant as the way people used computers and what they did changed.

"...the early adopters among us have decidedly begun to move away from mentally associating our computing activities with the hardware/software artifacts of our past such as PC's, CD-installed programs, desktops, folders & files," he wrote.

Connections rather than computers were more important, he suggested, and devices were becoming almost disposable.

"They're instantly usable, interchangeable, and trivially replaceable without loss," he said.

To prosper and stay relevant, he said, Microsoft must embrace this change and get to grips with a world that cares about "continuous services" rather than computers.

"Close our eyes and form a realistic picture of what a post-PC world might actually look like, if it were to ever truly occur," he wrote. "Those who can envision a plausible future that's brighter than today will earn the opportunity to lead."



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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Privacy body to re-examine Google

Britain's privacy watchdog is to look again at what personal information internet giant Google gathered from private wi-fi networks.

The Information Commissioner's Office had investigated a sample earlier this year after it was revealed that Google had collected personal data during its Street View project.

At the time, it said no "significant" personal details were collected.

But Google has since admitted that e-mails and passwords were copied.

"Start Quote

We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologise again for the fact that we collected it in the first place."

End Quote Alan Eustace Google

On its official Google blog, senior vice president Alan Eustace wrote that the company was "mortified" to discover, after the initial investigation in May, that personal information had been collected.

Privacy watchdogs in numerous countries, including France, Germany and Canada, had also investigated the information.

"It's clear from those [external] inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire e-mails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords," Mr Eustace wrote.

"We want to delete this data as soon as possible and I would like to apologise again for the fact that we collected it in the first place.

"We are mortified by what happened, but confident that... changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users."

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office said it had kept an eye on international investigations since its own one concluded in July.

That investigation said that the information "did not include meaningful personal details that could be linked to an identifiable person".

Enforcement powers

However, Google's admission of more detailed data has prompted further action by the ICO.

"We will be making enquires to see whether this information relates to the data inadvertently captured in the UK, before deciding on the necessary course of action, including a consideration of the need to use our enforcement powers," a spokesman said.?

Information about the gathering of personal data came to light following a request by data protection authorities in Hamburg, Germany, for more information about the operation of Google's Street View technology which adds images of locations to maps.

This revealed that Google had "accidentally" grabbed data from unsecured hotspots for years as its Street View cars captured images of street scenes.

It led to many data protection authorities pressing Google for access to the mass of data it grabbed to see if laws on the protecting of personal information had been broken.



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Friday, October 22, 2010

Reclaim phone money, Ofcom says

Customers of telecom firms have been told to reclaim money owed to them when they switch contracts.

The regulator Ofcom says in the past two years about two million people have left at least �10m on their old accounts.

Typically the money is for line rental paid in advance, or promotional credits offered at the start of a contract.

Ofcom said its advice applied to mobile and landline phone services, broadband connections, and pay TV.

Out of pocket

The regulator said all companies should automatically refund all money owed, but until now only three had done so.

It said only BT, Orange and the Post Office had had a policy of automatically refunding all outstanding money on their customers' accounts.

"Start Quote

Taken together, people have been millions of pounds out of pocket as a result"

End Quote Ed Richards Ofcom

T-Mobile has now agreed to do so and Vodafone is now doing so for its direct debit customers.

Meanwhile Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile have agreed to do so from 1 December for sums greater than �1, and O2 will now automatically credit sums of more than �20.

But Ofcom said Sky, Talk Talk and Three are still insisting on customers contacting them first.

The regulator criticised this stance, saying everyone in the industry should refund customers with all the outstanding credit they were owed, without customers having to ask first.

"Consumers were telling us that they found it difficult to claim unused credit from their providers when they left their contracts," said Ofcom's chief executive, Ed Richards.

"Taken together, people have been millions of pounds out of pocket as a result.

"We hope that automated refund processes, clearer signposting by providers and our new consumer guide should help consumers claim back money that is rightfully theirs," he added.



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China unveils own mapping service

China has launched an official online mapping service called Map World.

The web-based service gives people access to increasingly detailed satellite images of China and high-level images of other nations.

The flat maps can be viewed in 3D if visitors download and install a browser plug-in to convert the images.

China said the service was still in development and would be updated regularly. It said it could currently handle about 10 million visits per day.

Map World has been created by China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping from satellite images collected over the last four years. It said the information depicted would be updated every six months.

Within the nation's borders, images have a 2.5m resolution in rural areas and can go down to 0.6m resolution in 300 cities. Beyond its borders, images have a 500m resolution and many nations are blank when users zoom in.

Mapping services are tightly restricted in China and any company wanting to offer them must obtain a licence. This imposes strict conditions on what they can show and where the servers hosting the service can be located.

The Mapping bureau said about 80 companies, including Nokia, had bought mapping licences. Google is not thought to be one of them.

When China announced plans for the map licence scheme the search giant said it would consider its options before deciding whether to sign up. Google does have maps of China on its services but they are not as detailed as in many other nations.

One stumbling block could be the widely publicised shift of Google's servers out of mainland China to avoid official oversight of what its users were doing.



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Thursday, October 21, 2010

Germans opt out of Google plans

Almost 250,000 Germans have told Google to blur pictures of their homes on the Street View service.

The German government insisted that people get the chance to make the request as a condition of letting Google operate Street View.

It said personal privacy would be violated if people did not have an option to opt out.

When Street View is live in Germany, citizens will be able to use a webform to request their homes to be obscured.

Since April 2009, German home-owners and tenants have had the chance to write to Google to tell it to blur images of where they live. In August, Google supplemented this with an online tool through which these requests could also be made.

Now the window to make requests has closed, Google said a total of 244,237 requests had been made to have homes and property obscured.

However, said Google, it was not yet clear if all the requests to blur images could be carried out.

"In some cases for example the addresses could not be clearly assigned because the specifications were not legible or the descriptions of buildings were not precise enough," wrote Andreas Tuerk, Google Germany's Street View product manager in a blog post.

Street View has had a troubled time in Germany. It was requests from the Hamburg information commissioner which uncovered Google's mistaken collection of personal data from unsecured wi-fi networks.

Street View has hit problems in many other places too. In mid-October Canada's privacy commissioner said Google's accidental gathering of personal data while snapping images amounted to a "serious violation" of its privacy laws.

In September, the Czech government banned Google from taking any new photos for the service.

In August, authorities in South Korea raided Google's offices prior to the switch-on of a version for the nation.



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Tech giants invest in social web

Facebook, Amazon and Zynga will invest in a fund to help entrepreneurs develop applications and services for a new era of the social web.

The lion's share of the sFund's $250m (�160m) will come from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Details were announced at an event at Facebook's California headquarters.

"There's going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way," said Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

"We think that every industry is going to be fundamentally re-thought and designed around people."

That was a view backed by KPCB partner John Doerr, best known for investing in Amazon, Google and Netscape.

"These social networks are going to go from a half a billion people to billions of people connected on the planet and so represents an extraordinarily exciting time on the internet," he told BBC News.

"Think of it as a quarter-billion-dollar party. The third great wave of the internet is mobile and social together. It's going to be tectonic," added Mr Doerr.

'Hopes and dreams'

The sFund will provide financing, advice and relationship capital for a new generation of start-ups to deliver on the promise of the social web.

Amazon will help businesses get access to the company's web services platform for one year, as well as provide business and technical support.

Facebook will contribute access to its platform teams, beta APIs, and new programmes like Facebook Credits.

The essence of the sFund is similar in concept to KPCB's $200m iFund aimed at companies that create applications for Apple's iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

That fund, which started in 2008, has invested in 14 start-ups so far.

The sFund will be led by Bing Gordon, a partner at KPCB and former chief creative executive at Electronic Arts.

The main focus will be on social start-ups in all industries from consumer to enterprise and from health to mobile. It will not invest in direct competitors to Facebook, Amazon or social gaming company Zynga.

"We intend to be very loyal to the people we are working with. Our hopes and dreams get kind of enmeshed with theirs," Mr Gordon told the BBC.

"The companies we will invest in will be the Zynga of health, the Zynga of education, different kinds of commerce, of social utility, of finance. There is an opportunity to build Zynga-sized companies that will scale up.

"Social is just getting started and the opportunities are vast. As in the early days of the internet, the race is on."

'Facebook effect'

For Google, which harbours social ambitions of its own, the creation of the sFund could be seen as a blow to the search giant.

"It is aligning everything against Google," said MG Siegler of the technology blog TechCrunch.

"I am sure the sFund will say they will be okay to fund things built on Google's upcoming social graph but it will be a long time before any of those companies pop up. This really does bolster the Facebook effect here."

Asked why Google is not taking part in this fund, Mr Doerr, who sits on their board, told reporters, "Google is still developing their social strategy. Stay tuned."

At the event the sFund's first investment was announced.

Cafebots closed a first round of $5m. The company is involved in what has been termed "friend relationship management". They did not make any comment because they are in stealth mode.

Other companies that KPCB said would have made the grade for the sFund were ones that the venture capital firm had invested in.

They included Jive, Lockerz and Flipboard.

"Everything is becoming more and more social," said Evan Doll, co-founder of Flipboard.

"This is about people. Applying that point of view to a lot of businesses and services will be great going forward and help the internet feel less like this cold and impersonal technological space," Mr Doll told BBC News.



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Amazon profits boosted by Kindle

The online retailer, Amazon, has reported a 16% rise in third-quarter profit, as its Kindle e-book reader continues to bolster sales.

Amazon made a net profit of $231m (�147m) in the three months to September, up from the $199m it made in the same period a year earlier.

Revenues rose 39% to $7.56bn.

But the firm also said that its total operating expenses rose more than 40% to $7.29bn, sending its shares down 5% in after-hours trading.

The Kindle launched in the US in 2007. Since going on sale in other countries, including the UK, in 2009, it has become Amazon's fastest-selling and best-selling item.

Revenue from Amazon's largest sales category - electronics and other general merchandise, which includes the Kindle - shot up 68% to $3.97bn.

Revenue from books, CDs, DVDs and other media grew by 14% to $3.35bn.

Looking ahead, Amazon said it expected sales in the last three months of the year to be between $12bn and $13.3bn, representing growth of between 26% and 40%.

Mike Koskuba, an analyst at Victory Capital Management, said he was confident the retailer would continue to perform well.

"I do believe the holiday [season] is going to be really quite strong for Amazon. Kindles are going to sell exceptionally well," he said. "I do think that general merchandise will pick up as well in the fourth quarter."



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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Hawk-Eye &#39;can meet Fifa&#39;s needs&#39;

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Lampard effort not given

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The inventor of Hawk-Eye has claimed he has goal-line technology that can make a decision within half a second.

The International Football Board (IFAB) has asked companies to present it with systems that confirm within one second whether or not a goal has been scored.

"Our system for football is easier than for cricket, technically," Paul Hawkins, whose system is used in cricket and tennis, told BBC Sport.

"Technology is not here to hurt anyone, it can only make things better."

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The IFAB, which determines the laws of football, has asked for goal-line technology ideas by the end of November and hopes to test them before its meeting in March.

The move follows incidents such as the one during England's 2010 World Cup finals match against Germany, when a Frank Lampard shot clearly went over the line but a goal was not given. England lost the match 4-1.

Hawkins, chief executive of Hampshire-based Hawk-Eye Innovations, added: "We will put our name into the hat.

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"It is good news [that goal-line technology is being considered] but it was pretty much inevitable.

"Fifa's approach will be sensible and I am confident we can deliver."

Hawkins, whose invention is also used in the BBC's television snooker coverage, stated that his system for football is similar to the ones in tennis and cricket. It uses multiple cameras to track the ball, video-framing and a signal being sent to the referee's earpiece.

He added that his company simulated 250 goal-line incidents and in them the referee was found to get 72% of decisions correct, the assistant referee was right in 76% of them, and the official behind the goal-line - a system being tested by Fifa at present - was correct in 81%.

The English Football Association had hoped to introduce Hawk-Eye in 2009 but Fifa president Sepp Blatter stopped goal-line technology experiments the previous year.

Blatter claimed there were problems with reliability and said the system was unsuitable for football.

Fifa had also tested a system using microchips in balls but this was dropped because it was thought to be too complex and not sufficiently accurate.

Hawkins said at the time he was "gobsmacked" by the decision and was "livid" because of the amount of money his company had spent.

"We have invested an awful lot of money and now we have no return on that," he had stated.

Fifa instead decided to have trials of the system in which an assistant referee stands behind the goal-line to determine whether the ball has gone over the line.

German company Cairos has a rival system to Hawk-Eye which uses a chip inside the ball.

Managing director Christian Holzer has pressed Fifa to use goal-line technology, saying his system is "100% accurate" and "adds fairness to the game".

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Football's rejection of goal-line tech

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Print Sponsor



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Apple launches MacBook Air laptop

Apple is cashing in on the popularity of its iPhone and iPad to boost demand for its oldest product, the Macintosh.

The company launched a revamped MacBook Air at an event dubbed "Back to the Mac" at its Cupertino headquarters.

The computer is seen as a marriage of what Apple has learned from desktop computing and mobile devices. Like the iPad, the Air will have no hard drive and rely on flash memory.

"It's like nothing we've ever created before," said Apple boss Steve Jobs.

"We see these as the next generation of MacBooks. We think all notebooks are going to be like this one day. We've been inspired by some of the work we have done on iOS and want to bring them back to the Mac," said Mr Jobs.

Analysts said the new product sends out a clear signal to the industry.

"This is a strong reminder to everyone out there that Apple is still in the PC business," said Michael Gartenberg, research director with Gartner.

"They are still making a lot of money in the PC business and if anyone thinks they are getting out of that business given the money they are making they are very mistaken."

On sale

The new MacBook Air is 0.11 inches thick at its thinnest point. Apple said the computer's battery life lets users surf the web for seven hours. In standby mode, the battery can last 30 days.

Models start at $999 and are now shipping.

In an overview, Apple said the Macintosh accounted for a third of the company's revenue or $22bn in the fiscal year that has just ended.

They sold 13.7 million Macs last year, which is three times the sales they had in 2005. The firm also cited research figures that showed Apple now controls 20.7% of the US consumer market and accounts for one in every five computers sold.

"The Mac company, if it were a standalone company, and we have no plans to do that, would be 110 on the Fortune 500 list," said Tim Cook, Apple's chief technology officer.

Other features

Apple also unveiled a new version of the Macintosh operating system, called Lion, to be released next summer.

The new OS is designed to take advantage of some of the features of the mobile iOS by bringing them to the desktop.

"Lion brings many of the best ideas from the iPad back to the Mac, plus some fresh new ones," said Mr Jobs.

The company revealed that Macs will soon have an application store mirroring the one that exists for the iPhone and the iPad.

A launchpad will make it easy to organise and launch apps in the new version of the operating system.

The store will open in 90 days.

FaceTime, which debuted on the iPhone 4 this summer, will bring video-chatting to Macs.

Also being updated is Apple's flagship software suite iLife. The new edition includes updates to iPhotos, iMovie, GarageBand, iDVD and iWeb.

With the refreshed iPhoto feature, it will be easier for users to email photos and turn pictures into books and cards.



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Rural broadband to survive cuts

The government will trial super-fast broadband in the Highlands, North Yorkshire, Cumbria and Herefordshire, it announced in its Spending Review.

Next-generation broadband is among a handful of projects to survive the cuts, which will see �83bn wiped from public spending.

The BBC has agreed to contribute �300m towards the �530m total cost of funding rural broadband.

The rest of the money has been set aside from the digital switch-over.

Extending broadband services in rural areas is expected to benefit around two million households, including those in remote locations who currently struggle on dial-up speeds.

Speaking about the decision to trial next-generation broadband in rural areas, Chancellor George Osborne said: "It will help encourage the growth of our creative industries as a key part of the new economy we are seeking to build."

Fibre vote

Around a third of the UK is currently due to miss out of super-fast broadband because it is not regarded as economically viable to offer services in remote areas.

BT is trying to address the issue and recently agreed to roll out fibre optic services across the whole of Cornwall, part funded with EU money.

It has also set up a 'vote for fibre' project to identify areas where there is demand for such services.

However it will only consider roll-outs to areas with more than a 1,000 votes, meaning many rural communities will be too small to qualify.

Dr Charles Trotman, chairman of the Final Third First campaign, thinks it could create a new digital divide.

"Where do you find an exchange with a thousand people in a rural area? It is a good initiative but it has to be rethought or it will add to the urban/rural digital divide," he said.

Airwaves auction

Malcolm Corbett, chief executive of the Indepedent Networks Co-operative Assocation (Inca), a group of community broadband schemes, thinks local solutions will remain vital.

"With private sector investment limited to commercially attractive areas and public sector funding limited full stop, it's up to us to work together - private, public and community sectors, to make sure Britain creates the broadband infrastructure we need for the future," he said.

In the Spending Review 2010 document the government also revealed that it will hold spectrum auctions for next-generation mobile broadband in either 2011 or 2012.

The document said that at least 500Mhz of public sector airwaves will be released over the next ten years for new mobile services, including mobile broadband.



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RIM counters Apple tablet jibes

One of the CEOs of Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has hit back at Apple chief Steve Jobs' critique of the tablet market.

On Monday, Mr Jobs said that a raft of 7in tablet-computers would be "dead on arrival" when they hit the market to take on Apple's iPad.

But RIM's Jim Balsillie said his comments do not make sense "outside of Apple's distortion field".

RIM has said that it will launch a 7in-tablet known as the Playbook in 2011.

"For those of us who live outside of Apple's distortion field, we know that 7" tablets will actually be a big portion of the market," Mr Balsillie said in a company blog post.

"And we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience".

Apple's iPad does not support Flash, software commonly used to add animation, video or interactive elements to a web page.

"We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple," he wrote.

'Half truths'

Mr Jobs launched his salvo against other tablet during a conference call on Monday to announce the firm's financial results.

He listed a number of reasons why he believed the 10-inch iPad would dominate over 7in rivals, including pricing, the availability of apps and the resolution of the screens.

"These are among the reasons we think the current crop of 7in tablets are going to be DOA, Dead on Arrival," he said.

"Start Quote

Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn't. It wasn't."

End Quote Iain Dodsworth Tweetdeck developer

"Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the seven-inch bandwagon with an orphan product. Sounds like lots of fun ahead".

Mr Balsillie also sought to counter Mr Jobs' assertion that the iPhone had outsold the Blackberry in its latest quarter.

RIM's last fiscal quarter ended on 28 August, while Apple's ended on 25 September.

"Industry demand in September is typically stronger than summer months," Mr Balsillie wrote, adding that the iPhone had not performed so well in the previous quarter.

RIM shipped 12.1 million Blackberrys in its last quarter. Apple said that it had sold 14.1 million iPhones.

"As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story," Mr Balsillie said.

During the call, Mr Jobs also took aim at Google's Android operating system, calling it "fragmented" and said Google was wrong to characterise the software as "open".

"Google loves to characterise Android as open, and iOS and iPhone as closed," he said. "We find this a bit disingenuous and clouding the real difference between our two approaches."

Others, such as respected software devloper Joe Hewitt, have questioned Google's definition of openess.

Google has not formally responded to Mr Jobs's comments. However, Android-creator Andy Rubint tweeted a seemingly cryptic message in response that resembled a string of symbols.

The message is the code that allows anyone to download and use Android.

Others have also criticised Mr Jobs tirade.

Iain Dodsworth, the developer of the Twitter client Tweetdeck, refuted Mr Jobs' assertion that "the multiple hardware and software iterations [of Android phones] present developers with a daunting challenge."

Mr Jobs said the firm had recently said "they had to contend with more than 100 different versions of Android software on 244 different handsets".

"Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android?," tweeted Mr Dodsworth in response. "Errr nope, no we didn't. It wasn't."



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Microsoft bets on cloud services

Microsoft has ramped up its battle with Google in wooing business customers with its next generation cloud-based product.

While the software giant dominates the office space with a 94% market share it has been facing increased competition from Google.

At a San Francisco event, Microsoft unveiled Office 365.

The product brings together Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online.

This means instead of paying for packaged software and installing it on a PC or corporate server, Microsoft will host and deliver the software from its own giant data centres.

"Start Quote

This is really changing the way [Microsoft] make money via a subscription service and represents a big change in the way they sell things"

End Quote Ina Fried CNET.com

"We are at a pivot point in the adoption of cloud services," said Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft's Office division.

"Customers will get the best of everything we know about productivity, 365 days a year."

Microsoft said it has around 40 million customers using one of its cloud-based services.

"The desktop or on-premises services are still king, where customers run their own software and their own data centre," Chris Capossela, senior vice president at Microsoft told BBC News.

"That is still the vast majority of the industry but it is moving rapidly. Office 365 offers the opportunity for Microsoft to reach more of those small and mid-sized customers who don't have the people to run their own IT services and now we can say you don't need them."

For the smallest customer, Office 365 will be available for $6 per user a month. For larger enterprises, the service will include added features such as phone support, and will cost between $2 per user per month to more than $20 per user per month.

"This is a big deal for Microsoft," said Ina Fried from technology news site CNET.com.

"Start Quote

We believe we will win by out-innovating our competitors and even by out-innovating ourselves,"

End Quote Chris Capossela Senior vice president, Microsoft

"They make most of their money from two products - Windows and Office. This is really changing the way they make money via a subscription service and represents a big change in the way they sell things.

"They only get paid when people upgrade and this product allows them to get paid on a more consistent basis," added Ms Fried.

'Head to head'

The battle for the office software market has intensified with Google offering its own suite of networked applications.

While a number of products like email and spreadsheets are free, businesses can also pay for premium versions. Google's share of the market has been estimated at 4%.

Other competitors include Salesforce and IBM.

Microsoft began offering its popular software as cloud services a couple of years ago in large part to respond to a trend championed by Google.

"We believe we will win by out-innovating our competitors and even by out-innovating ourselves," said Mr Capossela.

CNET's Ms Fried said: "This actually puts them more head to head with Google."

Providing Office as an online service will mean that Outlook exchange and document programmes that have been fixtures on business networks will now be accessible through smartphones, tablet computers and other gadgets used by a mobile workforce.

Jim Smith, a senior director of intranet services for Starwood Hotels, said moving to the cloud has really paid off.

"We have made tremendous savings especially in travel. We have over 1,000 hotels in our portfolio and it is virtually impossible for our senior leaders to travel to all these different properties.

"Now they can connect and collaborate remotely and share documents, calendars and have discussions and hold virtual meetings without having to buy that air ticket or take time out of the office," said Mr Smith.

Office 365 is available now in beta in 13 countries including the US, Canada, the UK, France, Japan, Mexico and Germany.

The product will go on sale next year.



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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Users &#39;should get paid for data&#39;

Companies that want to make use of the personal information people put online should pay for it, the US Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has said.

It made the statement as it released a list of five technology trends to watch for the year ahead.

Privacy was top of the list, which also included mobile and green technology.

"The mining of personal data is here to stay; there is just too much money at stake to imagine otherwise," said Sean Murphy, of the organisation.

"Privacy is only going to continue to get increased attention in the years and months to come," said Mr Murphy who authored the report Selling The Stories Or Our Lives: Technology and Privacy.

Privacy has become a hot topic for net firms with a series of high-profile incidents over the last 12 months. The latest high profile glitch involved the leaking of data from some of the most popular applications on Facebook.

The Wall Street Journal claimed apps sent details to dozens of advertisers and companies that track what people are doing online.

Facebook said that it would introduce new technology to limit the security breach.

Mr Murphy said that there were companies which wanted to give users control of their data and allow those people willing to give their information away a chance to make money from it.

"I haven't seen a successful business model yet but I reckon in the next year we will see people doing the behind the scenes work and aggregating this dossier of yourself and giving you something in exchange for it.

"Companies will embrace it because it becomes more of a transaction where the consumer is authorising the use of their information and carrying out a business deal," added Mr Murphy.

'Economic opportunity'

The report highlighted one start-up firm in favour of this approach.

Bynamite launched software earlier this year to let users find out which sites are tracking them online.

"There should be an economic opportunity on the consumer side," Ginsu Yoon, co-founder of the firm said in the report.

"In a few years...a person's profile of interests could be the basis for micropayments or discounts."

Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, said it had no trouble with such a scheme as long as users are fully aware of what they are doing.

"That is the key to the whole thing," the group's John Simpson told BBC News.

"If people are fully informed, have control of their data and choose to opt in to some sort of scheme that offers payments for sharing information or price reductions, then I think that is fine.

"The problem is that right now so much of this is done in the dark with online companies effectively looking over your shoulder while you are online and have no idea your information is being shared."

The CEA's Mr Murphy has also suggested government action is needed in the form of a major public awareness campaign to help users become better informed because so many are largely unaware of what they willingly share online and how the information can be used.

A poll by CEA showed that identity theft was the number one concern among respondents followed by the security of financial transactions and personal health records.

'Connectivity is the future'

The CEA, which hosts the world's biggest consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, said the other tech trends that will impact our future include how video will be delivered to users, advances in mobile broadband and 4G, the latest in green technology and the cottage industry of apps for numerous devices.

"One of the over-arching themes of the trends we covered is the importance of connectivity and having these devices integrated to create the seamless experience for the consumer," said Shawn Dubravac, chief economist and director of research for the CEA.

"The average household in the US owns 24 consumer products from multiple TVs, phones and computing devices from laptops to desktops to tablets. The next step in all of this is pulling these pieces together to create this seamless experience so the consumer, the end user, can toggle between all these devices.

"That means if you are reading a book on a mobile phone, you can put it down and pick up exactly where you left off when you go to read it on your tablet device. Connectivity is the future of technology," added Mr Dubravac.

Industry commentator Jon Healey, an editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times, said, for him, making devices more social was important.

"The emergence of social as a function on more and more devices, as a guide as an activity is the most important trend.

"It really does change the nature of who programmers are. For example when you think about what to watch on TV today, you are guided by people at TV studios.

"What we are seeing more and more in the content industries is that you will choose who is going to guide you by assembling friends you trust, people you admire, people you emulate.

This would influence interfaces, he said, so that they say "here is what your friends are watching, here is what they have added to their collection.

"That is a very different approach," said Mr Healey.

Holiday high

Despite the slow climb out of recession, the CEA is optimistic about the coming holiday season.

Mr Dubravac is predicting healthy sales in the fourth quarter and noted that "portability is going to play a big role in who wins and who loses this holiday season".

He said the product categories that will sell well include tablet computers, because they are a relatively new toy to the market and MP3 players.

Mr Dubravac also predicted connected TV's getting some traction as well as set top boxes and new accessories for games consoles such as the PlayStation and XBox.

"I would argue that this recession has highlighted that technology has moved from a pure luxury item to, in some instances, a necessity," said Mr Dubravac.

"An individual who is out of work is not going to give up their mobile phone because that phone is their lifeline to that next job. Many of these technologies have become so integrated into our lives that we forgo other things in our life like dining out and vacations.

"Technology is a part of our lives as we know it today," he added.



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Website to whet wildlife appetite

The UN Environment Programme is turning to the wiki-world in an attempt to improve protection of the natural one.

Its new venture - protectedplanet.net - aims to help people visit little-known protected areas, so generating revenue and improving knowledge about them.

The launch at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting came amid reports warning that protection of the sea needs to be increased rapidly.

A target to protect 10% of oceans by 2012 will be missed by a long way.

Protected areas are one of the most effective ways of safeguarding plants, animals and ecosystems, said Charles Besancon, head of the protected areas programme at the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

"We know national parks and protected areas are important for many functions - they provide fresh water to one-third of the world's largest urban areas, they protect carbon, they protect endangered species," he told BBC News.

"For example, the last 600 mountain gorillas are in protected areas surrounded by communities - without the protected areas, we'd lose the mountain gorilla."

Unep maintains a database of protected areas around the world, based on data from governments and other authorities.

But with an estimated 150,000 sites in existence, data on what is in the sites and how they are protected is, in many cases, scanty.

"[The database] doesn't get updated as much as we'd like; so we've recognised that the best way is to reach out to the public," said Mr Besancon.

Park life

Protectedplanet.net links into and from existing web-based resources, such as Google maps, Wikipedia and the Google-owned photo-sharing site Panoramio.

Species information comes from the less well-known Global Biodiversity Information Facility (Gbif).

Users can search for sites close to a holiday destination, for example - and may find there are protected areas or national parks that do not usually feature in tourist itineraries.

Unep hopes this will increase the number of people visiting such sites, generating revenue that can help with their upkeep.

It will also allow first-time visitors to create Wikipedia entries on the areas, or post photos, that can attract others.

Meanwhile, public feedback on how sites are managing their wildlife could enhance standards.

Protecting land and sea features in a number of targets agreed under the Convention on Biological Diversity.

But whereas about 13% of the Earth's land area is now under some form of protection, the record for marine areas is barely 1% - way short of the 10% by 2012 target, for example.

"Start Quote

It is certainly the worst coral die-off we have seen since 1998"

End Quote Andrew Baird James Cook University

In a major report launched here, a number of organisations including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) say that needs to be increased rapidly.

Failing to do so, they warn, will make it harder for marine ecosystems to survive in a world where ocean water is becoming on average warmer and more acidic as a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions.

As the report was being launched here, scientists were warning that coral reefs in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean are seeing a major die-off due to unusually warm water conditions.

The Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, a network of university research facilities, said the warming caused coral "bleaching" in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Burma and Sri Lanka.

"It is certainly the worst coral die-off we have seen since 1998," said Andrew Baird, a scientist at James Cook University.

"It may prove to be the worst such event known to science."

Warm water causes coral to expel the algae with which they usually live in a symbiotic relationship - without which they die.

The unusually high temperatures of 1998 were caused by El Nino conditions in combination with the gradual warming attributable to greenhouse gas emissions.

Francois Simard, deputy head of IUCN's Marine Programme and an author on the new report, suggested the issues of climate change and marine protection were closely linked.

"Marine life is under threat, that's absolutely clear - and (with warming and acidification) it's not a matter of management of the sea, it's a matter of management of our activities as human beings, of our emissions.

"But at least we should take care of what we have in a proper way."



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