Old tech aids Egyptian protests

31 January 2011 Last updated at 06:56 ET

Fax machines, ham radio and dial-up modems are helping to avoid the net block imposed on Egypt.

On 27 January, Egypt fell off the internet as virtually all international connections were cut following an order from the government.

But older technologies proved their worth as net activists and protesters used them to get round the block.

Protesters are also circulating information about how to avoid communication controls inside Egypt.

Call charge

Dial-up modems are one of the most popular routes for Egyptians to get back online. Long lists of international numbers that connect to dial-up modems are circulating in Egypt thanks to net activists We Re-Build, Telecomix and others.

Dial-up numbers featured heavily in Twitter messages tagged with hashes related to the protests such as #egypt and #jan25.

ISPs in France, the US, Sweden, Spain and many other nations have set up pools of modems that will accept international calls to get information to and from protesters. Many have waived fees to make it easier for people to connect.

Few domestic lines in Egypt can call internationally to get at the modems, however. The Manalaa blog gave advice about how to use dial-up using a mobile, bluetooth and a laptop. It noted that the cost of international calls could be "pricey" but said it was good enough for "urgent communication". The advice was posted to many blogs, copied and sent out by many others.

We Re-Build, which campaigns for unmonitored internet access around Europe, said it was also listening on some ham radio frequencies and would relay any messages it received either by voice or morse code.

Fax machines were also drafted in by online activists and others who wanted to contact people inside Egypt and pass on information about how to restore net access.

The group of internet activists known as Anonymous was also using faxes to get information to students at several schools in the country. Anonymous activists have been faxing copies of cables from Wikileaks relating to Egypt in the hope that the information they contain about the Mubarak regime will be more widely distributed. It is not clear how much impact this is having, however.

Internal aid

While most net connections with Egypt have been cut, Egyptian ISP Noor seemed to stay online largely because it connects the country's Stock Exchange and many Western companies to the outside world.

Reports from Cairo suggest that many people and businesses who are signed up to Noor have removed the passwords from their wi-fi routers so others can piggy-back on their connection.

Elsewhere, a crowd-sourced document entitled 20 Ways to Circumvent the Egyptians Governments' Internet Block has compiled the best ways for Egyptians to keep communicating.

Some Egyptians reported that they could get at websites such as Google, Twitter and Facebook by using the numeric addresses for the sites rather than the English language name.

Mobile networks were not free of official interference. On Friday Vodafone Egypt said it, and all other operators, had been ordered to shut down services in some areas.

To get around this blockade, protesters circulated alternative message centre numbers throughout the weekend. Using these has allowed some locals to continue texting and using services such as Twitter.

Many people reported that they could avoid the block on Twitter by using a third-party updating program, rather than the official website, to receive and send messages.

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Microsoft warns on browser flaw

31 January 2011 Last updated at 08:54 ET

Microsoft has issued a "critical" warning over a newly-discovered flaw in Windows.

In a security advisory, the company warned of a loophole that could be used by malicious hackers to steal private information or hijack computers.

The bug potentially affects every user of the Internet Explorer web browser - around 900 million people worldwide.

Microsoft has issued a software patch to defend against attacks, and said it was working to develop a long-term fix.

The security advisory, which was published on Friday, details how the vulnerability can be used to manipulate users and take over their machines.

Although the flaw is actually inside Windows itself, it only appears to affect the way that Internet Explorer handles some web pages and documents.

Microsoft admitted that the problem meant users could easily be fooled into downloading malicious files by doing something as simple as clicking on a web link.

"When the user clicked that link, the malicious script would run on the user's computer for the rest of the current Internet Explorer session," wrote Microsoft representative Angela Gunn in a website announcement accompanying the advisory.

Once the computer had been hijacked, hackers could use it to steal personal data or send users to fake websites, she added.

"Such a script might collect user information, e.g e-mail, spoof content displayed in the browser or otherwise interfere with the user's experience."

Although Microsoft said it had seen no evidence that the glitch had already been exploited by hackers, it warned that research had shown it was a serious threat.

And while it has not been able to remove the bug itself, it issued a "fix it" security patch to block any attempts to use it.

All Windows users - particularly those who use Internet Explorer - are being urged to download the fix while the company's security team develop a way to plug the hole permanently.

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Easing pain with virtual reality

31 January 2011 Last updated at 04:10 ET

Burn patients in the US are being helped to escape the pain of burn injuries by immersing them in the virtual reality of a computer game during treatment.

Agony from severe burns can be one of the most intense and prolonged types of pain you can experience. And for many, the rehabilitation treatment is as painful as the initial burn.

Caleb Springer, aged 23, from Valdez in Alaska suffered second and third degree burns when he was set on fire in a motor bike accident.

Petrol spilled out of his scooter and a stray spark from a cigarette ignited it.

"I was engulfed in flames for probably two minutes. It was the worst pain I've ever felt, it was just excruciating. I looked down and just saw skin hanging from my legs," he said.

His burns were so bad he was airlifted from Alaska to a specialist centre in Seattle where his rehabilitation has been helped by pioneering treatment using a virtual reality computer game.

Escape from pain

SnowWorld, set in an icy 3D canyon, was developed by Professor Hunter Hoffman and Professor David Patterson at the University of Washington Harborview Burn Centre in Seattle.

It evolved out of the scientific advances in the last decade in understanding pain.

The aim of the game is "to make a very attention grabbing experience for the patient and basically to give them a place to escape from their pain" says Professor Hoffman.

Scientists have found many different elements can affect how we experience pain, including our emotions, environment, context and distractions.

"Because pain has such a strong psychological component to it, psychological treatments can be used to counteract the pain," said Prof Hoffman.

"Because humans are so visually dominant wherever you're looking typically that's where your attention is focused.

"(For patients) during wound care, when they're getting their bandages changed, they're looking at these different tools that the nurses are using to treat them, and just looking at those objects makes them anxious.

"They begin to associate objects in the room with high pain so you can imagine that day after day they start to develop psychological associations between the treatment room and pain, amplifying how much pain they experience."

Another world

Being immersed in SnowWorld puts a "curtain between the patient and reality", he explains.

Patients wear a helmet hooked up to the virtual world and wear noise cancelling headphones, cutting off all the sights and sounds associated with the painful treatment.

It is a fairly simple computer game. Patients can throw snowballs at various objects, including snowmen, igloos, mammoths, and penguins.

"When they put you in SnowWorld, the snowmen throw snowballs at you and you have to throw snowballs back at them," says Caleb Springer.

"If you hit the penguins, they freeze, and if you hit them a second time, they explode. There's a lot of action in it. You never stop to think about anything else."

The game is quite simple, intentionally, because patients could not concentrate on regular computer games.

The icy world was chosen, so patients would not be reminded of the fire that caused their burns.

"When I was in SnowWorld, I didn't think about the pain at all. There was pretty much no pain - there were at some points, but the most part there was no pain," said Caleb.

There is a limit to how much information the brain processes at any one time, so although Caleb's brain received exactly the same amount of pain signals, he did not register them.

"They basically become oblivious to what's happening in the hospital room," explains Professor Hoffman.

"There are other studies showing you feel less pain during music or watching movies, but this takes it to a much more stronger level, because it's so immersive.

"It isolates the patient from the real world, unlike any other media that's ever been tried. That's part of the reason we're getting such strong results".

Brain scans

Over the last two years, Prof Hoffman has been collecting brain scans from his patients.

Pain-related brain activity "lights up their brains like a Christmas tree when there's no virtual reality".

"When you compare it to pain stimuli when they were in virtual reality, some regions showed a 50% reduction in brain activity.

"This is consistent with the idea that there is so much attention devoted to SnowWorld that there is not enough attention available to process the pain signals anymore."

A growing number of burn centres around the world are showing interest in using SnowWorld with their patients, including hospitals in New York, Hawaii, Copenhagen and Holland

Caleb and SnowWorld feature in Horizon: The Secret World of Pain on BBC Two 31 January 2100 GMT.

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Egypt quits net to stifle protest

28 January 2011 Last updated at 05:14 ET

Internet connections across Egypt appear to have been cut, as authorities gear up for a day of mass protest.

Net analysis firms and web watchers have reported that the vast majority of the country's internet has become unreachable.

The unprecedented crack down will leave millions of Egyptians without internet access.

There have been unprecedented protest in the country over the past few days - much of it co-ordinated via the web.

According to internet monitoring firm Renesys, shortly before 2300 GMT on 27 January virtually all routes to Egyptian networks were simultaneously withdrawn from the internet's global routing table.

That meant that virtually all of Egypt's internet addresses were unreachable.

Egyptian authorities seem to have manged this by shutting down official Domain Name Servers (DNS) in Egypt. These act as address books and are consulted by web browsing software to find out the location of a site a user wants to visit.

Messages circulating in Egypt pointed people towards unofficial DNS servers so they could get back online.

Unprecedented action

That sudden drop off has been confirmed by other web traffic watchers, including Arbor Networks and BGP Mon.

"The government seems to be taking a shotgun approach by ordering ISP's to stop routing all networks," said Andree Toonk, a researcher at BGP Mon.

People and businesses within the country that relied on the four main ISPs have been cut off, Renesys' chief technology officer, James Cowie wrote on the company's blog.

"Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air," he wrote.

Severing the majority of a country's internet connections respresents "is unprecedented in internet history", said Rik Ferguson, a security researcher at Trend Micro.

Domino effect

Earlier this week, Egyptians had reported being unable to access social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. At the time the Egyptian government denied it was behind the block, saying it supported free speech.

Many of the protesters were able to get round those restrictions by using smartphone apps - which had not been blocked - to access those sites.

Others used proxy servers - which divert web traffic to its destination via sites that haven't been blocked.

Those initial restrictions now appear to have been a precursor to a much more stringent communication clamp down.

Elsewhere, unconfirmed reports suggest that mobile users have been blocked from receiving text messages.

But protesters continue to circumvent the net blockade. One Twitter user, @EgyptFreedomNow claimed it is still possible for Egyptians to access the internet using dial up connections.

The protests in Egypt followed similar unrest in Tunisia, which saw the collapse of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's government.

Amid fears of a domino effect in the Middle East, other regimes are following Egypt's lead in restricting access to some sites.

The Syrian authorities have banned certain programmes that allows access to Facebook's Chat application.

The Egyptian Consulate in London was not answering calls at the time of writing.

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Net approaches address exhaustion

28 January 2011 Last updated at 06:01 ET By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

The last big blocks of the net's dwindling stock of addresses are about to be handed out.

The event that triggers their distribution is widely expected to take place in the next few days.

When that happens each of the five regional agencies that hand out net addresses will get one of the remaining blocks of 16 million addresses.

The addresses in those last five blocks are expected to be completely exhausted by September 2011.

Final five

The trigger event will likely come from the agency that oversees net addresses in the Asia-Pacific region, a body known as Apnic.

When Apnic's store of addresses falls below a key threshold, said Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the agency, it will ask for more from the central repository - the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

"When IANA process this request that will leave it with five /8s in its pool," said Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia Pacific registry.

A "/8" is the biggest block of net addresses that IANA hands out and comprises about 16 million addresses.

"That will trigger the IANA to activate its 'final /8' actions, which entail the IANA handing out a final /8 to each of the five regional internet registries," said Mr Huston.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

If you do not have any plans for IPv6 now you are irresponsible"

End Quote Axel Pawlik

IANA is expected to formally hand over the final five in a ceremony in mid-March that will signal the beginning of the end for this pool of addresses.

The internet was built on version 4 of the Internet Protocol (IPv4) which has an upper limit of about four billion addresses. In the 1970s when IPv4 was drawn up this seemed enough but the explosion in the use of the net has led to its rapid depletion.

Making plans

Axel Pawlik, managing director of RIPE which hands out net addresses in Europe, said he expected the entire stock to run dry in September 2011.

"It might be earlier," he said "as we have had some quite significant growth."

"There have been a lot of big requests for addresses," he said, "specifically in the US and Asia but that's not a surprise as they have all the people there and the growth too."

Mr Pawlik said Ripe and other regional registries have been rationing requests for addresses for some time. Enough addresses to last two years used to be given out, he said, but now it only supplied sufficient to last six months.

The 16 million addresses in the last block /8 assigned to Europe could run out quickly, he said, as people woke up to the fact that there are not many left.

Plus, he said, Ripe and other agencies were planning to reserve a chunk of addresses for new entrants and to help with migration to the new addressing scheme - IP version 6 (IPV6).

While number of requests for IPv6 addresses was rising, said Mr Pawlik, it was not happening fast enough.

"If you do not have any plans for IPv6 now you are irresponsible," said Mr Pawlik, "They should have that in place, if they do not have that by now something is going seriously wrong."

Mr Pawlik said there would not be chaos once the IPv4 addresses were used up. However, he said, it made sense to start switching as the technical work-arounds to cope with a lack of IPv4 addresses were unwieldy and limited.

"IPv6 is the solution," he said.

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Police hold five over web attacks

27 January 2011 Last updated at 07:59 ET

Five men have been arrested over a spate of recent web attacks in support of Wikileaks.

The five males are being held after a series of arrests at residential addresses in the West Midlands, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey and London this morning.

The men were arrested in relation to recent and ongoing attacks by an online group that calls itself "Anonymous".

Targets included the websites of PayPal, Mastercard and Amazon.

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UK moves closer to mobile wallet

26 January 2011 Last updated at 20:16 ET

Paying for a sandwich will soon be possible via mobile phones as network operator Everything Everywhere rolls out what it claims is the UK's first mobile payments service.

The service, due for launch in summer 2011, sees the mobile phone operator partnering with Barclaycard.

Businesses that have contactless technology include Pret a Manger, Little Chef and the National Trust.

More services are expected to roll out in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.

The London games is seen as an epicentre for contactless payments, with sponsors such as Visa and Transport for London heavily involved in so-called Near Field Communication (NFC), the short range wireless technology that underpins many wireless payment systems.

In 2009 O2 trialled contactless payments, using mobiles in place of the popular Oyster card which allows commuters to pay for their tube journeys.

By the time of the Olympics it is expected that transactions, transport and tickets will all be available via contactless technology.

Mobile wallet

Consumers can already take advantage of contactless technology in the UK, if their credit or debit card is enabled - designated on Barclaycards, for example, with a wireless symbol.

There are already 11.6 million contactless credit and debit card in circulation.

Users with a contactless mobile, as with contactless cards, will only currently be able to use them for small payments of up to �15.

Moving the experience on to the mobile is something consumers want, according to Jason Rees, head of m-payments at Everything Everywhere.

"Studies show that people are more likely to forget their wallets than their mobile phones. Trials have proved that customers love it, they love the simplicity of having their wallet all in one place and it means there is no more need to carry cash," he said.

Everything Everywhere plans to extend its contactless services.

"We want to use the technology for loyalty cards and to get more information, for example, by tapping on a poster," said Mr Rees.

In Japan and Korea, handsets have come equipped with wireless payment chips for some years.

David Chan, chief executive of Barclaycard's consumer division thinks there is a natural fit between the phone and the wallet.

"I believe that future generations will find it surprising that early this century we were still carrying separate items to buy goods and to communicate with each other," he said.

A report by the Payments Council, which oversees payments strategy in the UK, said in a recent report that "by 2050, using cash could well be a minority activity".

Juniper Research predicts that one in six mobile devices will be contactless by 2014.

Ben Wood, an analyst with research firm CCS Insight, predicts that NFC will open up a host of applications, beyond paying for goods.

"Payments is going to be the anchor application but you can imagine shops having a NFC sticker which you simply touch with your phone to check yourself into Google or Facebook. Or imagine touching a digital photo frame and being able to transfer a picture," he said.

"There are going to be some incredibly cool ways to use it," he added.

It is rumoured that Apple will incorporate NFC in its next iPhone.

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Facebook blames bug for &#39;hacking&#39;

26 January 2011 Last updated at 10:59 ET

Mystery surrounds the apparent hacking of a Facebook page used by fans of the site's founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Overnight, a cryptic message was posted to the page in the name of the 26-year old billionaire founder calling for the site to become a "social business" with investment from its users.

The message has led to suggestions that the the site was hacked or Mr Zuckerberg's account was compromised.

Facebook has so far declined to comment on the incident.

Take down

The message, left in the name of Mr Zuckerberg, read: "Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn't Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way?

"Why not transform Facebook into a 'social business' the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it?"

Muhammad Yunus is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the founder of the Grameen Bank, which offers small loans to people who have no collateral to get started in business.

The message also linked to a recently edited Wikipedia article about social business and asked readers: "what do you think?"

In addition, it linked to a page for the Hacker Cup, an annual programming event organised by Facebook. Many have interpreted this as a sign that the hacker feels they should win the competition.

A detailed analysis of the message by the Guardian newspaper turned up some clues about the hacker, but has failed to identify them.

The cryptic Facebook post attracted nearly 2,000 comments before it was taken down, but not before technology blog TechCrunch spotted it.

The page, which has nearly three million fans, has also been moved to a new address, according to researcher Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos.

He said that because the site was a public fan page, which are used to promote everything from businesses and products to bands and public figures, it was likely run by Facebook staff.

"It's quite possible that other people than Zuckerberg had access," he said.

"It could have been one of those that got hacked," he said.

The hacker may have got access to the account, he said, via a poorly chosen password or spyware installed on an employee's computer that stole the password.

Walk away

He said the password could also have been stolen when an employee was accessing the unsecured version of the site over an unencrypted wi-fi network.

Last year, a tool called Firesheep was released that that made it easy for anyone sharing an unsecure connection to grab login information for many unsecure sites, including Facebook.

"I can easily imagine that something like that could have happened," said Mr Cluley.

Facebook has just released new tools aimed at shoring up user's accounts against tools like FireSheep, by allowing people to always connect via a secure connection.

However, Mr Cluley admitted that the site may not have been hacked at all and the post may have been made by a disgruntled employee.

"The other possibility is that [Mr Zuckerberg] strode away from his desk for a while and someone grabbed it and typed the message in.

"Although you wouldn't think that would do much for their job prospects".

The incident comes days after the account of French president Nicolas Sarkozy was also hacked to suggest that he was resigning.

"As a general rule this can happen to anyone," said Mr Cluley.

"Just because a person is famous or well known doesn't mean that everything that is posted from their account is legitimate."

Mr Zuckerberg's private account appears not to have been affected.

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O2 plans UK-wide wi-fi network

26 January 2011 Last updated at 06:27 ET

Mobile operator O2 is launching free wireless in the UK, which it promises will be double the size of existing networks by 2013.

Initially the hotspots will be available in 450 O2-owned sites but will be expanded to other locations, including shops and restaurants.

Previously 02 had offered free wi-fi on some of its tariffs via BT Openzone and The Cloud.

The Cloud is rumoured to be close to sealing a buy-out deal with Sky.

Premium

O2 said access to the hotspots would be through a simple sign-up process and would be free to both 02 and non-02 customers.

For Jeremy Green, a principal analyst with Ovum, the move is a "step in the right direction" to sorting out 02's capacity issues, brought about by high iPhone ownership and the increasing desire for data on the move.

"450 sites is not fantastic coverage and wi-fi isn't something that smartphone users will be able to rely on but it is a gesture in the right direction," he said.

He said it was "surprising" that O2 was prepared to offer it free to non-customers, something the firm is hoping to fund via advertising.

In a swipe at BT's Fon network, which offers connections which piggyback on BT home broadband networks, O2 said that its service would offer "premium public hotspots, as opposed to using residential connections with limited bandwidth".

BT's Openzone and Fon networks are currently the biggest networks in the UK.

The second largest The Cloud claims to have around 22,000 hotspots.

BT recently launched an iPad app allowing its broadband customers to gain access to wi-fi hotspots around the country.

It already has Android and iPhone apps, which has proved popular, attracting 400,000 downloads.

Rival Virgin Media is also toying with the idea of creating a nationwide wi-fi network.

Years away

O2 wants to help kick-start more wi-fi usage.

"Only 20% of people who have access to free public wi-fi on 02 tariffs actively use it despite the majority of devices being wi-fi enabled," said O2's business development director Tim Sefton

"We know that wi-fi as a technology has great potential and can be a very fast service, however customers are discouraged by barriers which include complexity in activation, uncertainty of where wi-fi is free and the variable quality of the current experience," he added.

Mr Green said that 02's wi-fi network would have to go hand-in-hand with other network upgrades.

O2 said that it is continuing to invest in its existing network but Mr Sefton confessed to UK technology news site TechRadar that it would be "years rather than months before we'll have a commercial 4G network".

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Egypt protests face net clampdown

26 January 2011 Last updated at 05:39 ET By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News

Egypt appears to have clamped down on web services, such as Twitter, that have been used to help organise anti-government protests in Cairo.

Twitter confirmed that its service has been blocked in Egypt on Tuesday from around 1600GMT.

A Swedish mobile video site called Bambuser also reported that it had been blocked around the same time.

However, the Facebook page used to co-ordinate many of the protests has remained online.

Facebook has not said whether it has implemented any technical measures to keep the site up and running but a spokesperson said that it was "seeing consistent levels of traffic".

The social network, which has more than 600m users, recently was forced to intervene when it emerged that political protest pages in Tunisia were being hacked and passwords stolen, seemingly at the behest of the former government.

The site implemented a series of technical measures to counter the attacks, including encrypting all requests for the site from within Tunisia.

'Right to protest'

Details of the blocks in Egypt began to emerge on Tuesday afternoon, as thousands of people joined a "day of revolt" against the government of President Hosni Mubarak.

Initially it was unclear whether state authorities were blocking internet access or if mobile networks were simply overloaded by the numbers of people gathering in the streets.

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The BBC's Jon Leyne, who is in Cairo, said the protests like this in Egypt were rare

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Twitter were at first unwilling to comment, instead directing people towards Herdict, a website created by a group at Harvard University, which collects reports of websites that are down.

The site has seen a small spike in the number of reports about Twitter from Egypt.

But overnight, Twitter issued a statement..

"We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com and applications."

The block had previously been confirmed by BBC readers and telecom operator Vodafone Egypt, which sought to reassure customers that it was not responsible.

"We didn't block Twitter - it's a problem all over Egypt and we are waiting for a solution," it said.

Some Twitter messages - many tagged #jan25 to show they were in support of the demonstrations - seemed to have got through via text messages and some third-party applications.

Bambuser, a service that allows people to stream live video from a phone to a website or a Facebook page, also said that it had been hit by the ban.

"We are working hard to ensure access resumes for the Egyptian community and stand by them in their quest for the right to protest," it said.

Street ban

In support of the protests, a collective of online "hacktivists" known as Anonymous claimed to have taken down the Egyptian interior ministry's web page.

Anonymous came to prominence for its cyber-attacks on the websites of companies it deemed to be anti-Wikileaks.

It has since turned its attention to supporting the protests in Tunisia and Egypt.

The group uses so-called "denial-of-service" attacks, that seek to swamp websites with large volumes of traffic, until they are knocked offline.

The group was one of many that also offered advice to the protesters on how to evade blocks on sites and services.

However, some sites appear to have escaped the block.

Google-owned video sharing website YouTube, which has been used to share film of the protests, has seemingly not been blocked.

Protesters are also turning to other digital tools to help.

For example, a map has been set up by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, for people to report arrests, and harassment during the protests.

The digital blocks come as the government issued a ban on street protests.

Public gatherings, protests and marches are all now prohibited, the country's official news agency reports.

Are you in Cairo? Did you attend the protests? Send us your comments using the form below.

Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124 (UK) or +44 7725 100 100 (International). If you have a large file you can upload here.

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Unified memory heralds green PCs

25 January 2011 Last updated at 06:21 ET

A new form of computing memory which could lead to faster starting, user-friendly computers has been developed by US researchers.

The device, developed by a team at North Carolina State University, claims to combine the advantages of two commons forms of memory used today.

The "unified" memory device, outlined in the journal IEEE Computer, is still undergoing testing.

But the team believe it could form the basis of PCs that start immediately.

Permanent speed

Currently, computers rely on two distinct forms of memory: volatile and non-volatile.

The type of memory used depends on whether data needs to be accessed quickly or stored permanently.

Volatile technologies such as random access memory (RAM) or its newer variation DRAM, store data in such a way that it can be read and written rapidly, making it ideal for rapid computations. But the data is lost when the power is switched off.

By contrast, non-volatile memory devices, such as the flash drives found in memory cards, USB dongles and MP3 players, can retain information for long periods without power.

But the device created by Dr Paul Franzon and his team combines the speed of DRAM while being able to switch to a more persistent mode of storage.

That would potentially enable computer makers to build machines that boot up almost instantly, as the information needed to start up the machine could be stored in fast memory, said Dr Franzon.

It could also lead to servers that can be powered down, when not in use.

Currently, the servers found in most data centres continue to slurp energy even when their processors are idle because the server memory cannot be turned off without affecting performance.

Lasting memory

The device developed by Dr Franzon's team - known as a double floating-gate field effect transistor - stores data in the form of a charge, like non-volatile memory but uses a special control gate to enable the stored data to be accessed quickly.

Today's flash memory devices use a single floating gate to store an electric charge, which represents data. "We realised that a second gate would allow us to transfer charges really quickly," said Dr Frazon.

His team have shown they can transfer charges - in effect change the data - in around 15 nanoseconds. "That's comparable with DRAM speeds," he added.

When in non-volatile mode, the data will be stored safely for a couple of years.

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Law firm stops chasing &#39;pirates&#39;

25 January 2011 Last updated at 03:43 ET By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

A lawyer has dramatically withdrawn from pursuing alleged illegal file-sharers in the middle of a court case he brought.

The patent court in London is currently scrutinising 26 cases brought by ACS: Law on behalf of its client MediaCAT.

The law firm had sent thousands of letters to alleged file-sharers.

Those who received such letters may pursue ACS: Law for harrassment, said law firm Ralli, which represents some of the defendants.

In a statement read to the court, solicitor Andrew Crossley said he had now ceased all such work.

He cited criminal attacks and bomb threats as reasons.

"I have ceased my work...I have been subject to criminal attack. My e-mails have been hacked. I have had death threats and bomb threats," he said in the statement, read to the court by MediaCAT's barrister Tim Ludbrook.

"It has caused immense hassle to me and my family," he added.

In September, ACS: Law was the victim of a cyber attack and it accidentally exposed thousands of its e-mails online when its website went live again.

These e-mails detailed all the people it was pursuing and the pornographic films they were accused of downloading for free.

The data breach is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Information Commissioner, and Mr Crossley could face a hefty fine.

ACS: Law hit the headlines when it began sending thousands of letters to alleged file-sharers, on behalf of client MediaCAT.

Consumer group Which? has accused it of sending letters to innocent people, while some ISPs have refused to hand over details about their customers.

"It can be incredibly upsetting for people to recieve these letters and they may well have a claim in harrassment," said Michael Forrester, a solicitor at law firm Ralli, which represents some of the defendants in the current case.

Groups such as the BPI, which represents music labels, have criticised its methods.

Judicial scrutiny

Those methods hinge on a partnership between ACS: Law and MediaCAT, which in turn has signed deals with various copyright holders allowing it to pursue copyright infringement cases on their behalf.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

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The case of MediaCAT versus 26 alleged illegal file-sharers is proving as dramatic as a Dickensian court drama.

Judge Birss described the twists and turns as "mind-boggling" as more details emerge about how ACS: Law and its colourful solicitor Andrew Crossley went about chasing alleged pirates.

But among the debates about the competence of ACS: Law and its real motives, is some evidence which could provide an interesting test of such cases in the future.

Both barristers for the defendants have questioned whether IP addresses - the numerical code which identifies the network connection - can be used as evidence and Judge Birss has raised doubts about whether accusing someone of "allowing" their network to be used for illegal file-sharing is a watertight argument.

With the government pledging to get tough on net pirates, there will be many waiting to see what Judge Birss says when he delivers his judgement in a few days.

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• Net piracy gets its day in court

The court heard that copyright owners receive a 30% share of any recouped revenue while ACS: Law takes a 65% share.

Members of the public who received letters were given the choice of paying a fine of around �500 or going to court.

Detractors have accused Mr Crossley of seeking to make money with no intention of taking any cases to court.

In his statement, Mr Crossley denied this.

"It has always been my intention to litigate and, but for the fact that I have ceased this work, my intention was to litigate forcefully in these 26 cases," he said.

Mr Crossley is subject to an ongoing investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Even before Mr Crossley's statement, the court case had been highly unusual.

ACS: Law's client MediaCAT wants to drop the cases, and letters have already been sent to the defendants informing them that action against them has been dropped.

Not happy

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"Start Quote

I am getting the impression with every twist and turn since I started looking at these cases that there is a desire to avoid any judicial scrutiny"

End Quote Judge Birss

But Judge Birss said granting permission to discontinue the cases was not a simple matter, due largely to the fact that the actual copyright holders were not in court.

This meant that, in theory, these copyright holders could continue to pursue cases against the 26 defendants.

"Why should they be vexed a second time?" he asked.

Judge Birss also questioned why MediaCAT wanted to drop the cases.

"I want to tell you that I am not happy. I am getting the impression with every twist and turn since I started looking at these cases that there is a desire to avoid any judicial scrutiny," he said.

The case was made more complicated by the fact that a new firm, GCB Ltd, had begun sending similar letters, including one to one of the defendants who had been told just the day before that no further action would be taken.

Judge Birss said he was considering banning MediaCAT from sending any more such letters until the issues raised by the cases had been resolved.

Doing so, he said, would be a highly unusual move but one made more likely by the fact that Mr Crossley had said in his statement that there were "no new letters pending" and that GCB Ltd had also halted its work.

The judge was keen to find out what the relationship was between GCB and ACS: Law, something Mr Crossley sought to clarify in his statement.

He said that he had no connection with GCB Ltd beyond the fact that the founders of the firm had previously been employed at ACS: Law.

The case has raised some serious questions about how copyright firms pursue file-sharers.

Barristers acting on behalf of the accused questioned whether an IP address - a number assigned to every device connecting to the internet - could be used to identify the person who downloaded illegal content.

Barrister Guy Tritton also questioned the nature of the letters sent by ACS: Law, asking why it described MediaCAT as a "copyright protection society" - a title that he said was "misleading".

Judge Birss is expected to deliver his judgement on the case later in the week.

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Mobile phone to blast into orbit

23 January 2011 Last updated at 20:02 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

British engineers are planning to put a mobile phone in space.

The team at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford want to see if the sophisticated capabilities in today's phones will function in the most challenging environment known.

The phone will run on Google's Android operating system but the exact model has not yet been disclosed.

It will be used to control a 30cm-long satellite and take pictures of the Earth in the mission later this year.

Although mobile phones have been flown on high altitude balloons before, this would likely be the first time such a device has gone into orbit several hundred kilometres above the planet.

"Modern smartphones are pretty amazing," said SSTL project manager Shaun Kenyon.

"They come now with processors that can go up to 1GHz, and they have loads of flash memory. First of all, we want to see if the phone works up there, and if it does, we want to see if the phone can control a satellite."

High Street product

The venture is part of the company's quest to find more inexpensive, off-the-shelf electronics that can be used to lower the cost of its spacecraft designs.

The mission is known as STRaND-1 (Surrey Training Research and Nanosatellite Demonstration).

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

We're trying to use as much of the capability of the phone as possible"

End Quote Doug Liddle Head of science, SSTL.

It involves both the company and researchers from the local university's Surrey Space Centre (SSC).

Much of the development work has been done in team-members' spare time.

The mobile model being used will be a standard, sub-�300 ($450), smartphone available in High Street stores.

"We're not taking it apart; we're not gutting it; we're not taking out the printed circuit boards and re-soldering them into our satellite - we're flying it as is," Mr Kenyon explained.

"And, in fact, we're going to have another camera on the satellite so we can take a picture of the phone because we want to operate the screen and have some good images of that as well."

Eye on Earth

Critical to the whole endeavour is the phone's operating system.

Android is open source software which means SSTL's engineers can modify it to adapt the phone's functions.

The great swings in temperature and the harsh radiation found in space require the phone be placed inside the satellite casing to give it some protection.

A hole will have to be cut in the side of the casing therefore to allow the phone's camera lens to see out.

The phone itself will not "call home"; messages and pictures will come back via the satellite's radio link.

For the first part of the mission, the mobile will act as the back-up to the main computer on the spacecraft.

After a period of time, however, the phone will be put in charge.

"We're trying to use as much of the capability of the phone as possible," said Doug Liddle, head of science at SSTL.

"Ideally, the phone can take control and do the thinking."

Busy months

To precisely point and manoeuvre, the satellite will be incorporating advanced guidance, navigation and control systems including miniature reaction wheels, and a GPS receiver, as well as innovative pulse plasma thrusters to propel it through space.

The intention is that the phone be given the chance to oversee all these subsystems.

"The open source nature of the software is very exciting because you can see how further down the line, once we've got the phone working in orbit, we could get people to develop apps for it," Mr Liddle added.

Chris Bridges from the Surrey Space Centre commented: "If a smartphone can be proved to work in space, it opens up lots of new technologies to a multitude of people and companies for space who usually can't afford it. It's a real game-changer for the industry."

SSTL has earned a worldwide reputation for its small satellites. The company has managed to reduce the cost of its systems by incorporating components that were originally developed for consumer products such as laptops.

The coming months will see the company launch Earth observation spacecraft for Nigerian, Russian and Canadian customers.

It is also about to start building the spacecraft that will form the initial constellation of Galileo, Europe's multi-billion-euro answer to America's GPS network.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

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Facebook offering raises $1.5bn

21 January 2011 Last updated at 18:37 ET

Facebook has said it has raised $1.5bn (�900m) from investors, valuing the world's most popular social networking site at about $50bn.

About $1bn of the total came from overseas clients of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank handling the share sale.

The remaining $500m came from Goldman itself, and Russia's Digital Sky Technologies.

Facebook said it could have raised more money from the oversubscribed offer.

"Our business continues to perform well and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing," said David Ebersman, Facebook's chief financial officer.

"With this investment completed, we now have greater financial flexibility to explore whatever opportunities lie ahead."

The company said that it had "no immediate plans" for the proceeds from the fundraising, but would "continue investing to build and expand its operations".

It added that it would begin filing public financial reports on 30 April next year.

The New York Times reported the Goldman and Digital Sky Technologies investment earlier this month.

At $50bn, Facebook would be worth more than eBay and Time Warner.

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Lush hackers cash in stolen cards

21 January 2011 Last updated at 12:48 ET

Cyber thieves are cashing in after stealing credit cards in a hack attack on the website of cosmetics firm Lush.

The online shop was shut down on 21 January and its home page replaced with a message revealing the attack.

Lush said anyone who placed an online order between 4 October and 20 January should contact their bank in case their card details had been compromised.

Many Lush customers have reported that their cards have been used fraudulently.

Comments posted on the Facebook page of Lush revealed that many customers were angry about the security lapse that may have spanned four months.

Many said they had lost money or had to cancel cards in case they were about to be abused. Some said Lush should have noticed the problem earlier and called for compensation for the money they have lost.

Security expert Rik Ferguson from Trend Micro said the sums of money the hackers were taking could be significant.

"I was initially alerted to the attack by one of my own friends whose card, along with her husband's, have subsequently been used to make fraudulent purchases totalling almost �6000 from well-known online retailers," wrote Mr Ferguson on the Trend Micro blog.

"The risk of these stolen card numbers being used by criminals has already moved from the theoretical to reality," he said.

Hilary Jones, ethical director at Lush, said the firm became aware of problems on Christmas day when hackers were discovered to have penetrated the site.

The site was taken down and did little trade between Christmas and New Year while Lush investigated to see if the hackers were merely mischievous or out to make money.

It became obvious that the hackers were after cash as European customers began reporting small purchases made with credit cards that had been used on Lush and other web shops.

Ms Jones said the small transactions were "test" purchases that thieves do to see if a stolen credit card is still live.

She said that when it became obvious that a lot of test purchases were being made and the Lush site was the key, the company shut down its store and told customers what had happened.

"As an ethical company we could not keep that information to ourselves," said Ms Jones. "We had to tell a huge raft of customers."

The four-month window that people needed to check was a safeguard to ensure all at-risk customers were covered, she said. The site was not vulnerable throughout that time.

"We really want to make sure we cover all possibilities," said Ms Jones. "We wanted to tell more customers than less."

The Lush website has been "retired" and a new online shop is set to appear in a few days but will initially only accept payment through Paypal.

Ms Jones said a forensic investigation was underway to find out how the thieves broke into the site.

Hack attack

At the same time, Trapster in the US has reported that it too has been hit by hackers.

The site, which helps people avoid speed cameras and road hazards, issued a warning to its 10 million users saying their e-mail addresses and passwords may be in the hands of attackers.

It said the attackers breached the site once and managed to get away with the data. Trapster's warning triggered a similar one by Twitter advising people to change their password and avoid using the same one on different sites.

The attack could mean that accounts on other sites get taken over by spammers and used to send junk mail.

In mid-December Gawker Media's revelation that its servers had been hacked and 1.3 million accounts had been compromised gave rise to warnings from Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn and World of Warcraft maker Blizzard asking people to change login details.

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Scholar rejects Google &#39;attack&#39;

21 January 2011 Last updated at 06:04 ET

A researcher who has accused Google of bias says the internet giant is now waging a campaign to discredit him.

Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, published a study this week claiming Google boosts its own products in search results.

The Californian company responded by suggesting he was actually working on behalf of its rival, Microsoft.

But Mr Edelman told the BBC that Google was launching "personal attacks" to distract people from its own behaviour.

"I don't mind personal attacks, to be honest, because I think it shows they can't argue against the research," said the associate professor.

"That's what they've done to most of my recent research."

His study, "Measuring Bias in Organic Web Search", was conducted in August last year alongside Harvard colleague Benjamin Lockwood and published on Wednesday.

It found that Google gave undue prominence to its own sites across a number of popular search terms, such as e-mail, video and chat.

Under a search for "e-mail", for example, the study found that Google's top result is its own Gmail service - despite the fact that almost twice as many people searching the site subsequently clicked on the second result, Yahoo Mail.

The company responded angrily to the study, issuing a statement that accused him and his methodology of deliberate bias.

"The report is highly biased, ignoring contrary examples like "search engine", "book flights" or "directions", and failing to account for other reasons why certain sites rank highly," it said in a statement.

It was also unimpressed by the author's credentials.

"Mr Edelman is a longtime paid consultant for Microsoft, so it's no surprise that he would construct a highly biased test that his sponsor would pass and that Google would fail," it said.

"Google never artificially favours our own services in our organic web search results, and we perform extensive user testing to ensure that search results are ranked in a way that provides users with the most useful answer," it added.

Antitrust investigations

The issue strikes at the heart of Google's multibillion dollar search business, which it has always said is based on a neutral, automated system that merely reflects how popular a site is online.

That claim is already being questioned by regulators in Europe and America, following complaints from some services who feel they have been deliberately excluded.

In November, the European Commission announced that it was launching an investigation into whether the company was abusing its dominance.

Earlier last year, meanwhile, the attorney general of Texas said he was looking at claims that Google manipulates results to boost its own products and therefore make more profit.

Mr Edelman said his work was a thorn in Google's side because it backed up those criticisms.

"I can see why it would hit home for them - they're under antitrust scrutiny on at least two continents," said Mr Edelman. "Their approach of asking people to trust them seems to be wearing thin."

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

"I can see why it would hit home for them - they're under antitrust scrutiny on at least two continents."

End Quote Ben Edelman Associate professor, Harvard Business School

Mr Edelman told the BBC that the study could have been improved with more information and time.

He said its data could have been more recent and the search terms could have been independently chosen. But, he added, the numbers were sound and that he stood by his conclusion.

Not everyone agrees with Mr Edelman's analysis, however.

Danny Sullivan, the editor of the Search Engine Land website, has defended some of Google's practices in the past. He said the Harvard study did outline some "odd" behaviour but said the figures could also be used to show that Google was less biased than might be expected.

"Statistics can easily be turned to whatever you want them to be," he wrote. "I feel like Edelman is turning his study into the most negative view possible."

Responding to Google's claims of bias, Mr Edelman said that he had been a paid consultant for Microsoft in the past, a fact openly disclosed on his website.

However, he added, the research - which also looked at Microsoft's Bing service and found it was less skewed than Google - was not deliberately designed to produce such a result.

He added that he had also given free advice to Google in the past as well as other companies, including the BBC.

He also said that the company supported him when he criticised the behaviour and bad practices of Yahoo, which was Google's main rival at the time.

"When Google didn't have as much market power as they do now, they consulted with me on some projects," he said. "How quickly Google forgets."

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Larry Page to become Google chief

20 January 2011 Last updated at 17:18 ET

Google co-founder Larry Page is to become chief executive of the US internet search giant in April.

He will take over from Eric Schmidt, who has been in the job for a decade and will become executive chairman.

Google said Mr Schmidt would focus on "deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships".

The surprise news came as Google unveiled strong net profits in the last three months of $2.54bn (�1.6bn) on revenues of $8.44bn.

Mr Page, 37, is reclaiming the job he relinquished to Mr Schmidt, 55, when investors called for a more experienced business leader.

"In my clear opinion, Larry is ready to lead and I'm excited about working with both him and Sergey [Brin] for a long time to come," Mr Schmidt said in a blog posting. Mr Brin, also 37, is Google's other founder.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

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It's just under 10 years ago that Eric Schmidt joined Google, and what a ride it's been. He was brought in as the "adult" to complement the search company's young leadership team. He had plenty of experience: at Bell Labs, Xerox, Sun and Novell. His job: to reassure investors and manage growth.

Mr Schmidt has delivered, and more. His biggest achievement is how he bonded with Google's two founders; as an executive triumvirate they appear to have managed the company with little internal friction.

In corporate terms, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have been grown-ups for quite a while. Now they are taking charge at the company that is rightfully theirs.

But Google has lost momentum recently, especially in competition with Facebook. Key staff are leaving. It will be Larry Page's job to re-energise the search giant.

Still, shareholders will feel a tad safer in the knowledge that Eric Schmidt will carry on as the founders' mentor.

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Mr Schmidt said the management changes, which take effect on 4 April, were part of a plan to "streamline" decision making and create clearer lines of responsibility and accountability.

"We've been talking about how best to simplify our management structure and speed up decision making for a long time," Mr Schmidt said.

He added: "Larry will now lead product development and technology strategy, his greatest strengths... Sergey has decided to devote his time and energy to strategic projects, in particular working on new products. His title will be co-founder."

Caution

Analysts said that Mr Page was now more experienced, and would carry more weight with investors on Wall Street than he did 10 years ago.

But Brian Pitz, analyst at UBS, added a note of caution. "The Street will think it's a negative, that there is probably some issue going on. Google is trying to get more efficient and trying to get a tech guy in the seat to compete with Facebook.

"I don't think it changes anything strategically where the company is headed," he said.

The surprise news overshadowed strong fourth-quarter profits that were well ahead of analysts' estimates. The $2.54bn profit compares with $1.97bn made in the same quarter the year before.

Analysts said Google appeared to have strengthened its internet advertising machine during the pre-Christmas shopping season, sparking a 26% surge in revenues to $8.44bn.

After subtracting the commissions Google pays to advertising partners, revenues were $6.37bn, about $300m more than analysts had forecast.

Mike Hickey, analyst at Janco Partners, said: "When you see an executive change, you hesitate because generally, it's a disruption at the top. Obviously the numbers look good, so it's a balance between the two."

Shares of Google rose about 2% to $639 in after-hours trading on Wall Street. The company now has a market value of about $200bn and has turned the co-founders and Mr Schmidt into billionaires.

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Illegal gamers costing &#39;billions&#39;

By Dan Whitworth
Newsbeat technology reporter <!-- Empty - Wide embedded hyper -->

People who play illegal copies of video games on chipped or modified consoles cost at least �1.45 billion in lost sales in 2010.

The Association of UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE), which speaks for the games industry, says it's not just money that's being lost.

It also estimates that it's resulted in 1,000 fewer jobs in the industry.

One pirate told Newsbeat that games are too expensive and the companies behind them make enough money as it is.

Continue reading the main story

They want to bring the prices down and then maybe people would stop doing this

Martin, 25, from Scarborough on illegal gaming

Piracy is traditionally more commonly associated with music or films.

But 25-year-old Martin, from near Scarborough, says that's not the case.

He's been modifying consoles for a year and says he's adapted, otherwise known as 'modded', 'chipped' or 'flashed', around 60.

"I can pretty much modify anything," he admitted.

"Xbox 360s and there's a new hack for the PS3, Wii, DS and PSP."

Sony takes PS3 hackers to court

Pirated games

He charges around �40 to modify a console which makes it possible to then play pirated games on them.

They can cost anywhere from �1 to �5 per illegal copy.

UK software sales were down from �1.9bn in 2008 to �1.45bn last year

He said: "At the end of the day the video game industry makes as much as the film industry nowadays.

"So they (the industry) can't say they're losing masses of money over this.

"They want to bring the prices down and then maybe people would stop doing this."

That is a common argument used by pirates, that legitimate games which cost around �45 is too much for many people to pay.

"They want to bring the prices down and maybe people would stop doing this."

Sales down

As with many parts of the economy the video game industry is suffering at the moment.

Total software sales in the UK are down from �1.9 billion in 2008 to �1.45 billion last year.

It estimates that for every original game sold at least one is pirated.

Continue reading the main story

I think pirated games are a bad idea. It's stealing and it doesn't give revenue to the industry to be able to invest in future games, bigger game and better games

Luke Gourley, 19, from Sunderland

Video game bosses say that, like the music and film industry, it's a huge problem and that figure is a conservative estimate.

Michael Rawlinson, the Director General of UKIE, says it's a simple question of criminals breaking the law and posing a genuine threat to video game companies.

He said: "When people play a pirated game that money goes to a criminal, not to the industry.

"That takes away jobs from young developers and graphic designers, so it actually stifles creativity and stops new games coming out."

He says games aren't overpriced: "These big games, you get 20 to 50 hours game play, which is tremendous value for money.

"A game like Call of Duty could take two years to make and cost millions of pounds.

"So there are huge sums of money involved in individual games."

Luke Gourley, who's 19 and from Sunderland, agrees.

He said: "I think pirated games are a bad idea.

"It's stealing and it doesn't give revenue to the industry to be able to invest in future games, bigger game and better games."

Follow our technology reporter Dan Whitworth on Twitter

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Amazon buys Lovefilm DVD service

20 January 2011 Last updated at 06:47 ET

Amazon has agreed to buy online movie rental service Lovefilm.

The American internet retailer, which already had a significant stake in the London company, said Lovefilm had a "productive and innovative" future.

The move is largely seen as a defensive ploy against a planned international expansion by US video-streaming giant Netflix.

Lovefilm chief executive Simon Calver said the deal would help the company improve its online services.

He told BBC News that it did not matter that it was an American firm that had bought the company:

"It's not about location. The big question is who is going to be the best partner to work with. There are few that offer the expertise that Amazon do, which is why it is perfect for Lovefilm."

Defensive move

The service, which began as a pure DVD rental company in 2002, has more than 1.4 million members around the UK as well as significant interests in Germany and Scandinavia.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

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Is this a good or bad day for the UK tech scene?

Lovefilm is one of the most impressive new media businesses to have come out of the UK in the last ten years.

Starting with a very simple idea - send DVDs in the post to people who watch them and then send them back - it has attracted 1.25 million paying customers across Europe.

It is now transforming itself into a digital delivery service, following the example set by Netflix in the United States - and it will be better placed to do that as part of a giant business like Amazon.

But some in the UK tech scene will be disappointed that Lovefilm could not carry on growing as an independent business.

They will point to the rumoured price tag - �200m - and contrast that with Netflix which is now valued at about $10 billion.

And they will ask the old question - why can't we in Britain grow our own world-beating technology businesses?

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For a monthly fee, subscribers can receive movies and TV shows through the post or watch them over a broadband internet connection.

Over the years the company has grown rapidly and increased its reach by acquiring rival services such as Screenselect and Video Island. In 2008, it bought Amazon's fledgling DVD service; in return, the US retailer gained a significant stake in Lovefilm's business.

The company has been adding more services, including games rental and, more recently, online streaming - but it has also run into trouble. A dispute with Universal Pictures blocked access to major films such as Bruno and Public Enemies.

In recent months insiders have made it known that senior executives and investors were agitating for a sale, with reports suggesting that negotiations between the two companies have been under way since last autumn.

The move could help guard against the possibility that US rival Netflix, which has more than 16 million subscribers, could invade the British market.

Last year Netflix - which has pioneered online video subscription - suggested that it was looking to expand internationally, and is believed to be targeting Europe.

"We're now talking about other regions in the world," a spokesman told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in December.

"Based on the early success of Netflix Canada, we're going to continue our international expansion next year and we're going to allocate significant dollars to it."

Investors in Lovefilm said the deal should be seen as a European success story.

"This is a great deal for Lovefilm and Amazon," said Dharmash Mistry, a partner at Balderton Capital, one of the company's backers.

"Lovefilm is the Netflix of Europe and it will be central to Amazon's European and global strategy."

It was a sentiment echoed by Mr Calver.

"It's an exciting day," he told BBC News. "We've demonstrated that you can take a business model, take an idea and grow a successful business and attract the attention of a truly global company like Amazon."

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Web images to get expiration date

20 January 2011 Last updated at 07:19 ET

Help is at hand for anyone who has ever forgotten about embarrassing images they posted to a social network or website.

German researchers have created software called X-Pire that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key.

Once this date has passed the key stops the images being viewed and copied.

Creators plan to levy a small charge to use the tagging system and put a digital lock on digital pictures.

Naked online

"More and more people are publishing private data to the internet and it's clear that some things can go wrong if it stays there too long," said Professor Michael Backes of the Information Security and Cryptography department at Saarland University, who led development of X-Pire.

Dr Backes said development work began about 18 months ago as potentially risky patterns of activity on social networks, such as Facebook, showed a pressing need for such a system.

"Many people join social networks because of social pressure," said Prof Backes. "They tend to post everything on the first day and make themselves naked on the internet."

"Only a small fraction of people are active every day," he said. "The majority are passive users, they do not contribute apart from their initial phase and afterwards they do not seem to care or perhaps they just forget."

However, he said, social networks never forget and images posted to sites, be they embarrassing or not, were visible forever.

Date stamp

To help solve this problem, the X-Pire software creates encrypted copies of images and asks those uploading them to give each one an expiration date.

Viewing these images requires the free X-Pire browser add-on. Currently only a version that works with Firefox is available. Those without the viewer will be unable to see any protected image.

When the viewer encounters an encrypted image it sends off a request for a key to unlock it. This key will only be sent, and the image become viewable, if the expiration date has not been passed.

Images given an expiration date with X-Pire have been successfully uploaded to Flickr, Facebook and many other websites, said Prof Backes.

This testing was essential because the different ways that sites treat uploaded images added lots of complications.

"Facebook, for instance, does a huge amount of post-processing and whatever protection you deploy has to cope with that treatment," he said.

The X-Pire program should be available in late January and will cost 2 euros (�1.68) a month. Those who stop paying will not see their images suddenly become viewable, he said, instead they will just not be able to put expiration dates on new images.

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