Medal of Honor game goes on sale

14 October 2010 Last updated at 19:00 ET By Daniel Emery Technology reporter, BBC News <!-- Embedding the video player --> <!-- This is the embedded player component -->

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Medal of Honor's prequel book author Chris Ryan on the game's realism

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The video game Medal of Honor (MoH) has gone on sale despite calls by the UK defence secretary to ban it.

The game follows the exploits of Special Forces troops battling insurgents in Afghanistan in 2002.

In August, Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox called for the game to be banned after it emerged that users could fight as The Taliban.

Its developer EA said the game was meant to be realistic, but eventually renamed The Taliban "The Opposition".

This edition, the latest in EA's long running series of games bearing the MoH title, has dispensed with its World War II theme and opted to recreate modern combat in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

But with 150,000 American, British and Allied troops fighting in Afghanistan, many felt taking on the role of the Taliban was a step too far.

Dr Fox described the game as "un-British" and said it was "shocking that someone would think it acceptable to recreate the acts of the Taliban against British soldiers".

The Canadian and Danish Defence Ministers also criticised the game.

EA weathered the storm for a few weeks, but in early October the firm bowed to pressure and took the term "Taliban" out of the multiplayer option.

Despite the change, the game is still banned from sale on military bases, although troops can purchase it elsewhere and play it on station.

'Ploy'

Johnny Minkley, a journalist with video gaming website Eurogamer, told BBC News that he thought EA's decision to allow users to play as the Taliban was a marketing ploy.

"I don't think EA was that naive," he said.

"They knew that this would be controversial, but they needed to do everything to get attention, especially when they are going up against Call of Duty: Modern Warfare - the biggest brand in the world."

The game itself has received mostly positive reviews, scoring an average of 75% according to the review aggregator site Metacritic. Computer and Video Games Magazine described it as "an accomplished, confident online shooter".

Mr Minkley agreed, saying the developers had done "a really good job" but added that the product was some way from being perfect.

"The campaign stands up well and it is a competent and exciting first person shooter.

"But I do have a problem with it, and that is that the single player mode is very short.

"A competent gamer could get through the entire game in under five hours."

Logging on

In the 1990s, single player games usually lasted for days, if not weeks. However, that changed with the 2001 release of Max Payne, which could be completed in under 12 hours.

"This is an ever growing trend - we saw it with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - of having an exciting, but short, single player game," said Mr Minkley.

"Developers claim that the multi-player aspect - where players compete on line - extends the life of the game, but the fact remains many people cannot or do not want to play online," he added.

US developer Activision's last modern combat shooter - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - grossed over $1bn in sales, and the follow on title Call of Duty: Black Ops, due for release on 9 November this year, is expected to do as well, if not better.

EA's decision to switch the Medal of Honor theme from the Second World War to a modern day conflict has prompted some critics to accuse the US firm of imitation.

Mr Minkley agreed, but said the decision was a financial one and Medal of Honor was not a pale imitation.

"What they've tried to do is focus on the confusion and uncertainty of western forces in Afghanistan and it feels different from a Hollywood style shooter like Call of Duty.

"You also have to bear in mind there is a degree of WWII fatigue and, ultimately, games developers are there to make money," he said.

"This is a commercial decision to follow the success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 but - other than The Taliban issue - is far less deliberately proactive than Call of Duty."

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Facebook and Skype in social deal

14 October 2010 Last updated at 17:19 ET By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Skype is integrating with Facebook to make it easier to call and video chat with friends and family on the social network.

The deal comes amid fevered rumours that Facebook plans to launch a phone of its own.

Meanwhile Skype is gearing up for a $100m (�62m) share issue.

"The essence of the Skype experience is communicating with the people you care about," said Rick Osterloh, Skype's head of consumer products.

The new Skype for Windows will include a Facebook tab. This means that for the first time Skype users can keep up-to-date and interact with their Facebook news feed including posting status updates, commenting and liking directly from Skype.

Added to that, the Facebook phonebook in Skype allows users to call and text Facebook friends directly on their mobile phones and landlines.

And if your Facebook friend is also a Skype contact, then users can make free Skype-to-Skype calls.

Group video calling is available in beta form as a free trial.

"We're working with companies such as Skype to make it easier to find your friends anytime you want to connect," said Ethan Beard, director of Facebook's developer network.

'New market'

The move is seen as a natural one for the world's biggest social network, which is aiming to be the central communications and messaging platform for its users across a range of media.

Commentator Ben Popper of business technology blog BNET.com told BBC News it is a win-win for both firms.

"For Skype they are getting built right into the conversation. For Facebook, which has the bulk of its users in the US, this is good in terms of expansion because a chunk of Skype users are in Europe and the rest of the world."

Mr Popper also said he believed this points towards "a possible new market".

"The deal makes this space a lot more interesting and indicates a different direction of where communications could go.

"Right now phones are owned by the cellular networks. This partnership is big enough and deep enough, it could point towards a different kind of telco [telecommunications company] in the future."

Skype has around 560 million registered users and 8.1 million paying users. The Luxembourg-based company said that people spend an average of 520 million minutes every day talking to one another on the service.

Facebook has more than 500 million users, helping the two companies close in on around one billion users, though there will be some overlap.

The research company ComScore reported that in August Facebook users spent more than 40 million minutes on the social networking giant.

The new Skype version 5.0 for Windows is available now. There has been no announcement about when Mac or Linux versions will follow.

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Call to define rules of cyber war

14 October 2010 Last updated at 12:24 ET

Nations need to define the rules of engagement for acts of cyber terror.

The call for clarity was issued by Michael Chertoff, former head of the US Department of Homeland Security, at the RSA security conference in London.

He said the lack of direction was giving the initiative to criminals and hampering co-ordinated responses to the growing number of hi-tech attacks.

Countries should be able to defend themselves, he suggested, if an attack posed imminent danger to human lives.

"It's the least understood threat and the one where our doctrine is least developed," said Mr Chertoff.

Graded response

The need for such a doctrine was as pressing now as it was in 1950s, he said, when the emergence of nuclear weapons rendered irrelevant earlier policies governing when and why conflicts were fought.

That vacuum was filled by the policy of deterrence which defined what response could be expected from the US depending on how its territory or citizens were threatened.

"It was very clear to an adversary the consequences of an attack," he said.

In a similar way, said Mr Chertoff, a nation's cyber defence doctrine would lay out a range of responses depending on the severity of the attack.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

The greatest stress you can have on security is when there is uncertainty - we are now in a state of uncertainty"

End Quote Michael Chertoff

"We have to treat espionage as different from attack or massive fraud or theft of information," he said.

Theft and espionage could be dealt with through the legal system, he said, with the strongest responses being reserved for the most serious cases.

"If you cause imminent danger of loss of life by attacking a network that's a different story," he said. "Theft is bad but murder is worse."

International laws of self-defence would allow a nation to respond to remove the threat posed by an imminent or unfolding attack, he said.

He admitted that such serious attacks on national infrastructure, such as rolling blackouts that led to deaths in hospitals, had not happened yet, but added: "I would not like to experience the first one."

"There seem to be very few entities that are perfectly immune from these types of attacks," said Mr Chertoff who now heads the Chertoff Group, which advises nations and governments on risks and security.

By defining a doctrine, he suggested, all nations would be encouraged to police domestic networks better to avoid incurring a strong response.

"The greatest stress you can have on security is when there is uncertainty," he said. "We are now in a state of uncertainty."

The need to develop response scenarios and an over-arching doctrine was becoming pressing, he said, as those involved in hacking for money carried out ever more attacks.

"It's a real problem and it's growing," he said, "If we do not address it then we are going to be confronted by an event that's so catastrophic that it cannot be shrugged off."

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Plan to build &#39;steam-powered PC&#39;

14 October 2010 Last updated at 08:23 ET By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News

A UK campaign to build a truck-sized, prototype computer first envisaged in 1837 is gathering steam.

More than 1,600 people have pledged money and support to build Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.

Although elements of the engine have been built over the last 173 years, a complete working model of the steam-powered machine has never been made.

The campaign hopes to gather donations from 50,000 supporters to kick-start the project.

"It's an inspirational piece of equipment," said John Graham-Cumming, author of the Geek Atlas, who has championed the idea.

"A hundred years ago, before computers were available, [Babbage] had envisaged this machine."

Computer historian Dr Doron Swade said that rebuilding the machine could answer "profound historical questions".

"Could there have been an information age in Victorian times? That is a very interesting question," he told BBC News.

Number cruncher

The analytical engine was designed on paper by mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage. It was envisaged that it would be built out of brass and iron.

"What you realise when you read Babbage's papers is that this was the first real computer," said Mr Graham-Cumming. "It had expandable memory, a CPU, microcode, a printer, a plotter and was programmable with punch cards.

"It was the size of a small lorry and powered by steam but it was recognisable as a computer."

Although other mechanical machines may predate the Analytical Engine, it is regarded as the first design for a "general purpose computer" that could be reprogrammed to carry out different tasks.

It was the successor to his Difference Engine, a huge brass number-cruncher.

"The Difference Engine is a calculator," said Dr Swade, who was part of a team that spent 17 years painstakingly building a replica. "It is not a computer in the general sense of the word."

He said that it would be "astounding" if the Anaytical Engine could also be built.

"The Difference Engine is already a legendary model, but it is dinky compared to the Analytical Engine," he said.

He said Babbage's many designs for the device suggested that it would be "bigger than a steam locomotive."

"That is with just 100 variables," he said. "He talked about machines with 1,000 variables, which would be an inconceivably large machine."

No one has built an entire Analytical engine, although various people, including Babbage's son and Dr Swade, have created elements of it.

Dr Swade said the most complex - although incomplete - recreations of elements of the machine have been built using Meccano by Briton Tim Robinson.

Confidence boost

Mr Graham-Cumming aims to recreate a design known as Plan 28 if his campaign is successful. However, he said, there would be a lot of work to do before then, including digitising Babbage's papers that are held at the Science Museum in London.

Dr Swade said that a researcher would also be needed to decipher Babbage's drawings and nomenclature.

"We would then need to build a 3D simulation of the engine [on a computer]," said Mr Graham-Cummings. "We can then debug it and it would make it available to everyone around the world."

Dr Swade, agreed that this was the correct approach and said a virtual recreation of the machine could solve "95% of problems" and allow them to use computer to design the thousands of individual parts needed to make the behemoth.

"Building a virtual engine is the only route of certainty to see the engine built in our lifetimes," he said.

When he built the Difference Engine, this route was not available he said.

First, however, Mr Graham-Cumming needs to raise the money to set up the non-profit Plan 28 organisation to oversee the work.

"I was a little worried whether enough people would care about a steam-powered computer, with 1k of memory that was 13,000 times slower than a [Sinclair] ZX81," he said.

However, he told BBC News, an earlier online campaign had helped persuade him that it was possible.

Last year he launched a petition on the No 10 website calling on the government to make a posthumous apology to World War II code-breaker and computer pioneer Alan Turing for his treatment by the authorities for being gay.

In August 2009, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote a letter in the Daily Telegraph saying that he was sorry for what had happened.

"That gave me the confidence that there are enough people that care about computing to get this kind of thing done," he said.

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Bing deepens ties with Facebook

14 October 2010 Last updated at 06:29 ET

Microsoft's Bing search engine has begun showing US users which sites and products their Facebook friends like.

The move is an attempt to make web search results more personal.

It is part of a four-year alliance between the two companies and marks another step in Microsoft's attempt to displace market leader Google.

The function is optional and only works when users are logged into Facebook or have "cookies" on their PC that store Facebook data.

"This is just the beginning; there is going to be a whole lot more to come over time," Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said at the launch.

Killer feature?

The service makes use of a Facebook feature that allows third-party websites to embed a "Like" button on their pages. When users click these buttons, it creates a connection with their profile.

These connections are then used to create personalised results, which show up in a separate box alongside traditional links.

At the launch, the firms showed an example of searching for a restaurant with results that included eateries Facebook friends liked.

"This is the long-awaited 'social search' that I've been talking about and waiting for years," wrote analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group.

She said that the deal "hits Google right between the eyes".

"Google has recently been making noises that it wants access to Facebook's social graph, calling for the company to be more open.

"That's because Google realizes that unless it can harness social graph data, it will be relegated to traditional algorithmic search based primarily on the information on the web page itself and scraping what social data it can".

Bing is currently the third most popular search engine behind Google and Yahoo.

However, Microsoft's search engine has been slowly increasing its market share.

The new feature takes advantage of a 2007 deal between Microsoft and Facebook that saw the software firm pay $240m for a 1.6% stake in the social network. That gave it "privileged access" to social data that other firms do not have.

However, Danny Sullivan of respected blog SearchEngineLand, said that he believed that the data used by Bing was currently "far from a killer feature".

"Should it turn out to be, I'd expect Google to ramp up the pressure so that the data should be fully 'freed' to them and others - and perhaps strike a paid deal for access to it, in the way Google pays Twitter for its data."

The two firms also announced a feature that allows people to search for Facebook contacts using Bing.

Facebook, which has come under repeated criticism for its privacy policies, stressed that no private data was shared in either feature.

"This is all information that is public about you anyway," said Mr Zuckerberg.

In related news, reports suggest that Yahoo is being targeted by private equity companies, two years after an attempted takeover by Microsoft.

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Two million US PCs hijacked

13 October 2010 Last updated at 05:56 ET

The US leads the world in numbers of Windows PCs that are part of botnets, reveals a report.

More than 2.2 million US PCs were found to be part of botnets, networks of hijacked home computers, in the first six months of 2010, it said.

Compiled by Microsoft, the research revealed that Brazil had the second highest level of infections at 550,000.

Infections were highest in South Korea where 14.6 out of every 1000 machines were found to be enrolled in botnets.

The 240-page Microsoft report took an in-depth look at botnets which, said Cliff Evans, head of security and identity at Microsoft UK, now sat at the centre of many cybercrime operations.

The research was undertaken, he said, to alert people to the growing danger from the malicious networks.

Malicious herder

"Most people have this idea of a virus and how it used to announce itself," he said. "Few people know about botnets."

Hi-tech criminals use botnets to send out spam, phishing e-mails and launch attacks on websites. Owners of botnets also scour infected machines for information that can be sold on the underground auction sites and markets found online.

Botnets start when a virus infects a computer, either through spam or an infected web page. The virus puts the Windows machine under the control of a botnet herder.

"Once they have control of the machine they have the potential to put any kind of malicious code on there," said Mr Evans. "It becomes a distributed computing resource they then sell on to others."

Some, he said, were being worked very hard by their owners.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

With the significant number of holes identified on the same day, businesses will be racing against time to fix them all,"

End Quote Alan Bentley senior vice-president, Lumension

Microsoft's research revealed that a botnet called Lethic sent out 56% of all botnet spam sent between March and June even though it was only on 8.3% of all known botnet IP addresses.

"It's phenomenal the amount of grip that thing has," said Mr Evans.

Evidence of how botnets were growing, he said, could be found in the number of infected machines Microsoft was freeing from the clutches of botnets.

In the three months between April and June 2010, Microsoft cleaned up more than 6.5 million infections, he said, which is twice as much as the same period in 2009.

The statistics in the report were gathered from the 600 million machines that are enrolled in Microsoft's various update services or use its Essentials and Defender security packages.

Despite the large number of people being caught out, Mr Evans said that defending against malware was straightforward.

He said people should sign up for automatic updates, make sure the applications they use are regularly patched, use anti-virus software and run a firewall.

Microsoft has just issued its largest ever list of fixes for flaws in Windows, Internet Explorer and a range of other software.

This month's update issued patches for 49 vulnerabilities, including one that plugs a hole exploited by Stuxnet, the first-known worm designed to target real-world infrastructure such as power stations, water plants and industrial units.

"With the significant number of holes identified on the same day, businesses will be racing against time to fix them all," said Alan Bentley, senior vice president at security firm Lumension.

"Not only is this Microsoft's largest patch load on record, but 23 of the vulnerabilities are rated at the most severe level," he added.

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Facebook offers temporary log-ins

13 October 2010 Last updated at 10:37 ET

Facebook is launching one-time passwords in an effort to make it safer to log on to the social network from public computers.

It also claims the system will help prevent cyber-criminals accessing users' accounts.

Users need to text the words 'otp' to 32665 and they will be sent a temporary password that will expire after 20 minutes.

But security experts questioned whether the system was safe.

Sign out

"If someone else is able to gain access to your phone then that's an open door for mischief-makers to access your Facebook account," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos.

It may also not be a foolproof method of avoiding Facebook hackers.

"A temporary password may stop keylogging spyware giving cybercriminals a permanent backdoor into your account, but it doesn't stop malware from spying upon your activities online and seeing what's happening on your screen," he said.

Users of the system must have a mobile phone number registered to their account, which could also open the system up to exploitation, thinks Mr Cluley.

"Do you know if you've registered your mobile phone number on Facebook? Would you notice if someone changed it? Imagine a scenario where some ''fraper' changes the mobile number of your account to one to which they have access. That may mean that anytime they like they could access your Facebook account," he said.

Facebook also launched another new feature which will allow people to sign out of Facebook remotely, aimed at those who log in to the social network via a friends phone or computer and then forget to sign out.

People will be able to keep a closer eye on the status of their accounts, Jake Brill wrote in the official Facebook blog.

"In the unlikely event that someone accesses your account without your permission, you can also shut down the unauthorised login before resetting your password," he wrote.

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UK services &#39;face cyber threat&#39;

12 October 2010 Last updated at 19:00 ET

The UK's critical infrastructure - such as power grids and emergency services - faces a "real and credible" threat of cyber attack, the head of GCHQ says.

The intelligence agency's director Iain Lobban said the country's future economic prosperity rested on ensuring a defence against such assaults.

The internet created opportunities for hostile states and criminals, he said.

For example, 1,000 malicious e-mails a month are already being targeted at government computer networks, he said.

Speaking to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Mr Lobban said he did not want to go into detail about the threat to the UK's "critical national infrastructure".

But he said the threat posed by terrorists, organised criminals and hostile foreign governments was "real and credible" and he demanded a swifter response to match the speed with which "cyber events" happened.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

Cyberspace is contested every day, every hour, every minute, every second"

End Quote Iain Lobban GCHQ

Critical national infrastructure also includes sectors such as financial services, government, mass communication, health, transport, and food and water - all of which are deemed necessary for delivering services upon which daily life in the UK depends.

With both the Strategic Defence and Security Review and the Comprehensive Spending Review due to be published next week, Mr Lobban said ministers would be looking at what capabilities the UK needs to develop further.

"Clearly they will also be deciding how they trade off against other spending priorities."

He added: "Just because I, as a national security official, am giving a speech about cyber, I don't want you to take away the impression that it is solely a national security or defence issue. It goes to the heart of our economic well-being and national interest."

Intellectual property theft

While GCHQ is more usually associated with electronic intelligence-gathering, Mr Lobban stressed that it also had a security role, referred to as "information assurance".

He said that they had already seen "significant disruption" to government computer systems caused by internet "worms" - both those that had been deliberately targeted and others picked up accidentally.

Each month there were more than 20,000 "malicious" e-mails on government networks, of which 1,000 were deliberately targeted at them, while intellectual property theft was taking place on a "massive scale" - some relating to national security.

And there was a "big challenge" with the government wanting to get more and more services online, he said.

"Cyberspace lowers the bar for entry to the espionage game, both for states and for criminal actors," he said.

"Cyberspace is contested every day, every hour, every minute, every second. I can vouch for that from the displays in our own operations centre of minute-by-minute cyber attempts to penetrate systems around the world."

While 80% of the threat to government systems could be dealt with through good information assurance practice - such as keeping security "patches" up to date - the remaining 20% was more complex and could not simply be solved by building "higher and higher" security walls.

Export expertise?

Although cyberspace presented a potential security threat to the UK, Mr Lobban said that it also offered an opportunity if the UK could get its defences right.

"Fundamentally, getting cyber right enables the UK's continuing economic prosperity.

"There's a clear defensive angle. In order to flourish, a knowledge economy needs to protect from exploitation the intellectual property at the heart of the creative and high-tech industry sectors. It needs to maintain the integrity of its financial and commercial services."

But he added that the implications were wider than that.

"There is an opportunity which we can seize if government and the telecommunications sector, hardware and software vendors, and managed service providers can come together.

"It's an opportunity to develop a holistic approach to cyber security that makes UK networks intrinsically resilient in the face of cyber threats.

"That will lead to a competitive advantage for the UK. We can give enterprises the confidence that by basing themselves here they gain the advantages of access to a modern internet infrastructure while reducing their risks."

He said developing such expertise would also open up potential export opportunities, with the global market for cyber security products "growing faster than much of the rest of the global economy".

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Battle for TV screens heating-up

12 October 2010 Last updated at 04:58 ET By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

The future of television is in flux as traditional manufacturers battle hi-tech companies to control the living room, say analysts.

The view comes as Sony prepares to unveil the first Google-powered TV.

Connecting the TV to the web has become a focus among manufacturers and set top box makers vying for market share.

Google's emergence has energised things said commentators as has Apple's renewed bid for domination with its TV converter.

"There are so many variables just now and no one clear winner," Paul Erickson, senior analyst with IMS Research told BBC News.

"Everybody is trying to own the living room experience. Google has definitely got everyone on their toes and all eyes are on Sony to see how it does with its Google TV offering."

Over five billion people watch TV which is more than the number of people who use mobile phones or computers.

'Jockeying for position'

Some in the business believe that in terms of the connected TV, it is a two horse race with Google and Apple pitched against one another.

Last Wednesday Logitech launched its Revue set top box as part of a partnership with Google to merge the TV and the internet.

A day later Apple's box went on sale aimed at connecting the TV to a wealth of internet-delivered TV shows, movies, pictures, podcasts and music.

"Everybody is jockeying for position but all eyes are on Google and Apple in this race," said Andrew Eisner content director for consumer site Retrevo.com.

"Google and Apple will be slugging it out to win consumers and own the TV operating system and put apps in the living room. I am a big believer that software sells hardware."

IMS Research's Mr Erickson disagrees.

"Neither one has proven that they have any strong traction in the TV arena yet. Apple has been on the market for a while with Apple TV and have yet to make it a hit. Despite their strong consumer brand identity and loyalty there is something about the product that is a fundamental miss.

"Google TV is still a new offering and still has to establish a brand in TV but I think if executed well, it could really change things," said Mr Erickson.

'Innovation'

Google unveiled its plans for the living room at its developer conference in San Francisco earlier in the year.

At the time the search giant called it an "adventure where TV meets web, apps, search and the world's creativity."

"We recognised that the pace of innovation in the TV space was not keeping up with the improvements in desktop and mobile computing," said Google spokesman Eitan Bencuya.

"Over the past few years consumers have been asking for a better way to find video content and more ways to find and access web video content, while developers have been looking for an open way to develop applications for TVs."

Apple boss Steve Jobs has famously referred to Apple TV as a "hobby". Its failure to catch on with consumers is something Mr Jobs acknowledged at a news conference in September.

""We've sold a lot of them, but it's never been a huge hit," he said.

The new version of the product has been reduced from $299 to $99 but will only allow people to rent content rather than buy it.

Initially, it will only offer TV shows from a small handful of providers such as Fox, ABC/Disney and the BBC.

"We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board pretty fast with us," said Mr Jobs.

Google also underscored the difficulty in getting content partners onside.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

We have a lot of experimentation going on by content providers"

End Quote Van Baker Gartner

While the major networks, ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC will not take part several other internet companies and media outlets will. These included HBO, CNBC, Twitter, Netflix and Amazon.

Analyst Van Baker of Gartner said what Google's offering is something of a half-way house.

"Their vision is a good vision but complete integration between the internet and TV experience I don't see happening because the partners they need to have lined up see it as too big a threat.

"The reality is that it's not about technology. It's about business models and right now the networks get about 90% of their revenue from TV service providers like the Time Warner's, Comcast's and Direct TV's of the world.

"The best Google can do is deliver what amounts to a side-by-side experience. On one side of the screen you get the standard TV user interface either over the air or from Time Warner or Comcast. In the other part of the screen you get access to the internet via Google," added Mr Baker.

'Empowering the TV'

Research shows that most people renew their TV sets every seven years.

For Logitech, best known for producing mouse and remote controls, this presents an opportunity in the market.

Its Revue set-top box with Google's software acting as the brains will let users browse the web, stream videos from sites like YouTube or Hulu, play Flash games, connect with friends on social networks and even show off photos on the biggest display in the house.

It will go on sale at the end of this month for $299.

"We are building the engine for Google TV - the box and the keyboard which will take Google TV to market," Rajiv Bansal, senior manager with Logitech's digital home group told the BBC.

"For people who have recently bought a new set we are empowering the TV again by bringing all this content to the television set, the best screen in the house, and making it centre stage."

Google is offering its software platform free to manufacturers, as it does with Android, in the hopes of broadening its advertising base from the Web to TVs.

While Logitech and Sony are the first to get on board, Google is planning to expand to a number of other manufacturers next year.

Other set-top boxes range from $60 for the newly released Roku to $200 for the Boxee, due to ship next month.

IMS Research's Mr Erickson said he thinks Sony's Google TV will make at impact at the expense of set top box manufacturers.

"The integrated experience is going to be much more powerful to sell to consumers than a separate box. The less steps you have to take to get this working the better - no extra wires, no extra remotes.

'Experimental work'

Google and Apple are not alone in trying to change how people watch TV and grab some market share.

A slew of manufacturers from Panasonic to LG and from Sharp to Toshiba are all offering all-in-one internet TV's.

Samsung, the biggest manufacturer in the space said it believed its plans for smart connected televisions will help it maintain its lead.

"We are in the transitional period where we are witnessing a shift in the TV paradigm and I do believe we are at a starting point of seeing companies try to control the living room," BK Yoon, the company's president of visual display business unit, told BBC News in September.

So far though there are no runaway winners according to Gartner's Mr Baker.

"We have a lot of experimentation going on by content providers. A lot of experimentation with the consumer electronic manufacturers and Apple and Google trying to be brokers in the mix.

"There is everything to play for. It's a huge market. Google would naturally love for this to succeed for them because it would give them the TV advertising market and that is a pot full of money that would make what they currently do look small," added Mr Baker.

For the consumer, the plethora of offerings now and in the future means they can afford to wait a while before deciding where to spend their cash.

Forrester research said it expected that the number of web connected TV's to go from about two million this year to 43 million in the US by 2015.

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Facebook makes copycats of us all

12 October 2010 Last updated at 20:16 ET

A study of the download rates of a set of apps for Facebook has shown how they follow an unusual "bandwagon effect".

Apps whose downloads were advertised to the Facebook community gained slowly in popularity, and rates had no evident connection to social pressures.

But at a certain popularity threshold, roughly the same across a wide range of apps, downloads began to skyrocket.

The authors of the research in PNAS say that in the offline world, no such "switch" is known to exist.

The data were gathered in mid-2007, when the site had 2,720 apps and 50 million users.

At that time, a Facebook user's apps were all visible to their friends, and the friends were notified when a new app was downloaded; Facebook has since stopped the practice.

Jukka-Pekka Onnela and Felix Reed-Tsochas examined anonymised data about the downloading of all the apps over a 50-day period.

They found that what they term "social influence" plays a role only for some of the apps on a given day.

"The surprising finding is that two qualitatively different behavioural patterns emerged," Dr Onnela told BBC News.

"There appeared to be a threshold of popularity, and users only seemed to be influenced by the choices of others for apps lying above this threshold.

Dr Onnela said the interesting thing about the data is that the millions of users were under no external influence, with the behaviour arising spontaneously as people made independent choices based on the evident choices of their friends and other Facebook users.

"Social influence is strongly present in online cultural consumption but, at least in this case, only for a subset of products," he said.

It remains to be seen if a similar threshold behaviour occurs in non-social network or indeed completely offline contexts. Dr Onnela said that the difficulty would be in replicating the rarefied conditions of a hands-off study of millions of "cultural consumers".

"Most 'real-world' studies focus only on the most prevalent products and behaviours," he explained.

"Had we done the same in our study, we would have only observed one behavioural pattern, not two."

"It is without doubt a very massive study," said Bernardo Huberman, a researcher for HP Labs whose recent work has shown the offline effects of tweets on the success of films.

"As to its conclusion, it reminds me of the 'tipping-point'-type transitions discussed by many social psychologists and popularised by Malcolm Gladwell," he told BBC News.

He points out that the paper also demonstrates a finding reflecting his own work, namely that the "present popularity of an item predicting its future popularity", mirroring his own work and, more recently, that of Yahoo researchers.

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