Science & Technology World

Test for 3D TV

2010-01-09T14:37:00.000+06:00

This is supposedly the year 3- D television becomes the hot new thing: Updated sets and disc players are coming out, and 3- D cable channels are in the works. But it's not clear the idea will reach out and grab mainstream viewers. Besides having to spring for expensive new TVs, people would have to put on awkward special glasses to give the picture the illusion of depth. That limits 3- D viewing to times when viewers can sit down and focus on a movie or show. It's one thing to put on 3- D glasses in a theatre, but "at home, you're with other people in the living room, running to the kitchen and doing other things," said Greg Ireland of the research firm IDC. Unfazed by the potential hang-ups, the biggest TV makers began revealing their 3- D models Wednesday before the official opening of the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics Co.' s consumer division, said in an interview that 10 to 14 percent of the roughly 35 million TVs sold in the US this year will be 3- D-capable. Samsung is determined to make 3- D a big feature on its more expensive TVs this year. It's teaming with DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. to make the Blu-ray 3- D version of the movie " Monsters vs. Aliens" an exclusive for buyers of Samsung's 3- D TVs. Panasonic Corp. said it will debut four 3- D sets this spring, but they won't be LCD sets, the most common type of flat panel. Instead, Panasonic is using plasma panels, saying the viewing quality will be superior to 3- D on LCDs. Sony Corp. said its 3- D sets will be out this summer. Some will come with glasses, others will be "3- D ready," which means that buyers will have to complement with a separate plug-in device and glasses for 3- D viewing. LG Electronics Inc. said it will introduce 47- inch and 55- inch flat-panel TVs with 3- D capabilities in May. LG didn't announce exact prices for its new sets. But Tim Alessi, director of product development at LG Electronics USA, said 3- D TV sets will likely cost $200 to $300 more than comparable flat- panel sets without 3- D capabilities, which already run more than $1 ,000. Even Vizio Inc, which is one of the TV market share leaders in the US but mainly sells inexpensive sets, said it would have 3- D capabilities on its larger, higher-end sets. Manufacturers aren't counting on 3- D to take over instantly. Colour TV and high definition caught on over many years. Like those earlier advances, 3- D programming requires upgrades throughout the TV and movie infrastructure, from shooting to editing to distribution. Incidentally, Samsung and Dreamworks are working with Technicolor, which pioneered color movies, to get 3- D right. Of course, movies in 3- D have been around since the 1950 s and from time to time have been billed as the next big thing in entertainment. And technically speaking, 3- D viewing in the home has been possible for the past few years. But there has been no good way to get 3- D movies and shows to watch. That obstacle is being swept away this year, as plans for a 3- D version of the Blu-ray disc have solidified. Players are expected this spring. Also, satellite broadcaster DirecTV Inc. said Wednesday that it will send out software upgrades to most of its set-top boxes in June that will enable 3- D reception. On Tuesday, two major cable networks - ESPN and Discovery - said they plan to start beaming 3- D entertainment into homes for the first time. ESPN plans to have its channel running in time to show World Cup soccer matches in 3- D on June 11. Discovery Communications Inc. will partner with Imax Corp and Sony to bring out its own full-time 3- D network in 2011. Samsung isn't waiting for 3- D programming: It said its sets will be able to convert standard 2- D programming to 3- D on the fly. The effect likely won't be as good as original 3- D footage, but it will "tide consumers over" until there is more 3- D programming, Baxter said. Toshiba is taking the same tack. It plans roll out a new line of five TVs this year that will perform the 2- D to 3- D conversion in a separate box with a powerful processor similar to one used in the Sony PlayStation 3. Like the other manufacturers, Toshiba didn't announce prices for the sets, but they will probably be expensive. TV manufacturers, movie studios and broadcasters are counting on the excitement around the latest wave of 3- D movies in theatres to finally drive interest in adapting the technology for the home. In particular, James Cameron's "Avatar" has set a new standard for 3- D in movies and has surpassed $1 billion at the box office. It demonstrates that 3- D is viable for more than just computer-animated children's or family movies such as "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." "The hopes of the industry have undoubtedly been raised by the success of `Avatar,'" said NPD analyst Ross Rubin. But it's not clear people will be eager to pony up the premium prices for 3- D in the home - at least for a few years - or even that the experience will translate well from the movie theatre to the living room. (It is possible to do 3- D TV without glasses, but those solutions usually require viewers to keep their heads in one particular place. The image quality is also lower.)

Two killer types whale found

2010-01-06T14:54:00.000+06:00

Scientists have revealed that there is not one but two types of killer whale living in UK waters. Each differs in its appearance and diet, with males of one type being almost two metres longer than the other. The killer whales could be at an early stage of becoming two separate species, the researchers say. The international group of scientists has published its results in the journal Molecular Ecology. "It's exciting to think about two very different types of killer whale in the waters around Britain," says Dr Andy Foote from the University of Aberdeen, UK, who undertook the study. This divergence may eventually lead to the two types becoming different species Dr Andy Foote University of Aberdeen "Killer whales aren't really a species that we think of as being a regular visitor to Britain, but in fact we have two forms of these killer whales in our waters," he told the BBC. Scientists have found different forms of killer whale that occupy particular niches in the Pacific and the Antarctic, but this is the first time that they have been described in the North Atlantic. Dr Andy Foote undertook the study along with colleagues from universities and museums in Denmark and the UK. Killer whales ( Orcinus orca ), otherwise called orcas, live in family groups called pods. As the largest member of the dolphin family, killer whales are known for their intelligence and range of hunting behaviours. Tooth work There was very little prior to this study to suggest that different types of killer whale would be found in the North Atlantic. However, Dr Foote and colleagues studied teeth from remains of killer whales stranded over the past 200 years and found a difference in tooth wear. "We found that one form, which we call 'type 1 ' had severely worn teeth in all adult specimens," explains Dr Foote. "The other form, 'type 2 ', had virtually no tooth wear even in the largest adults." In the wild, killer whales that "suck up" herring and mackerel display this tooth wear. Knowing this, the researchers suspected a difference in diet and ecological niche between the two groups. Dolphin predator Using stable isotope analysis that gives clues to the orcas' diet, the scientists found that type 1 is a generalist feeder, consuming fish and seals. It's similar to how Darwin's finches have adapted to different ecological roles in the Galapagos but on a larger scale Dr Andy Foote University of Aberdeen Type 2 , on the other hand, is a specialist feeder that scientists suspect exclusively feeds on marine mammals such as small dolphins and whales. This specialisation for alternate ecological niches has also resulted in a difference in shape and appearance. "The two types also differed in length, with type 2 adult males being almost two metres larger than types 1 males," Dr Foote says. The researchers also found that colour, pattern and number of teeth vary between the groups. Dr Foote says the fish feeding type 1 killer whales are found across the North East Atlantic and around Britain. The cetacean hunting type 2 killer whales are regularly seen off the west coast of Scotland and Ireland. New species Genetic analysis indicates the two types belong to two different populations. "Type 1 specimens were from closely related populations, but the type 2 whales were more closely related to a group of Antarctic killer whales," Dr Foote explains. Comparing the findings with studies on killer whales around the world shows that killer whales have radiated to fill different ecological niches. "It's similar to how Darwin's finches have adapted to different ecological roles in the Galapagos, but on a larger scale," Dr Foote notes. He suggests this could be an important discovery for the future of the animals. "They seem to have occupied completely different ecological niches and have started to diverge morphologically. This divergence may eventually lead to the two types becoming different species." He also recommends the two types be considered "evolutionary significant units" and monitored separately in order to more effectively conserve one of the oceans most charismatic animals.

Facebook has blocked a website

2010-01-05T20:26:00.000+06:00

Social network giant Facebook has blocked a website from accessing people's profiles in order to delete their online presence. The site, Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, offers to remove users from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Myspace. It does not delete their accounts but changes the passwords and removes "friend" connections. Seppukoo.com, which offers a similar service, was issued with a "cease and desist" letter by Facebook in 2009. Netherlands-based moddr, behind Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, says it believes that "everyone should have the right to disconnect". However Facebook says that by collecting login credentials, the site violates its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR). "Facebook provides the ability for people who no longer want to use the site to either deactivate their account or delete it completely," the company said. "We're currently investigating and considering whether to take further action." Web 2.0 Suicide Machine claims that it only stores the name, profile picture and "last words" of its clients, who can choose to watch their friend/follower connections disappear in real time as their profiles unlink from others. "Seamless connectivity and rich social experience offered by web 2.0 companies are the very antithesis of human freedom," says a statement on its website. " Seamless connectivity and rich social experience offered by web 2.0 companies are the very antithesis of human freedom. " Web 2.0 Suicide Machine The machine operates on an adjusted Linux server which runs open source software Apache 2. Seppukoo.com, which offers to remove people from Facebook, received a letter from the social network site's lawyers in December 2009. Once they have deleted their friends Seppukoo clients can choose an image instead of their profile picture to remain as a "memorial" . The site is run by a group called Les Liens Invisibles, and describes itself as an artistic project. The name Seppukoo is taken from a Japanese ritual form of suicide known as Seppuku. In November 2009 the group orchestrated the " virtual suicide" of a group of fictitious Facebook profiles set up in the names of deceased well- known figures including Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Virginia Woolf.

Planet hunting

2010-01-05T20:16:00.000+06:00

Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope has detected its first five exoplanets, or planets beyond our Solar System. The observatory, which was launched last year to find other Earths, made the discoveries in its first few weeks of science operations. Although the new worlds are all bigger than our Neptune, the US space agency says the haul shows the telescope is working well and is very sensitive. The exoplanets have been given the names Kepler 4 b, 5 b, 6 b, 7 b and 8 b. They were announced at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington DC. The planets range in size from an object that has a radius four times that of Earth, to worlds much bigger than even our Jupiter. And they all circle very close to their parent stars, following orbits that range from about 3.2 to 4.9 days. This proximity and the fact that the host stars are themselves much hotter than our Sun means Kepler's new exoplanets experience an intense roasting. Intriguing density Estimated temperatures go from about 1 ,200 C to 1 ,650 C (2 ,200 F to 3 ,000 F). "The planets we found are all hotter than molten lava; they all simply glow with their temperatures," said Bill Borucki, Kepler's lead scientist from Nasa's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. THE KEPLER SPACE TELESCOPE Will study more than 100 ,000 suns Continuously for 4 to 6+ years Tuned to see Earth-size planets Will target the habitable zone Will also see Mars to Jupiter sizes "In fact the upper two are hotter than molten iron and looking at them might be like looking at a blast furnace. They are very bright in their own right and certainly no place to look for life." Kepler 7 b will intrigue many scientists. It is one of the lowest-density exoplanets (about 0.17 grams per cubic centimetre) yet discovered. "The average density of this planet with its core is about the same as Styrofoam," explained Dr Borucki. "So it's an amazingly light planet, something I'm sure theoreticians will be delighted to look at in terms of trying to understand [its] structure." Kepler blasted into space atop a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on 6 March, 2009. It is equipped with the largest camera ever launched into space. The telescope's mission is to continuously and simultaneously observe more than 100 ,000 stars. It senses the presence of planets by looking for a tiny "shadowing" effect when one of them passes in front of its parent star. 'Water worlds' Kepler's detectors, built by UK firm e2 v, have extraordinary sensitivity. Nasa says that if the observatory were to look down at a small town on Earth at night from space, it would be able to detect the dimming of a porch light as somebody passed in front of it. The space agency hopes this sensitivity will lead it to planets that are not only Earth-size but which orbit their stars at distances more favourable to life, where liquid water might potentially reside on their surfaces. The mission's scientists told the AAS meeting that Kepler had measured hundreds of possible planet signatures but that these needed further investigation to establish their true nature. To confirm the existence of the most ideal Earth- like planets would take a few years, they warned. In the meantime, all detections will help scientists improve their statistics on the distributions of planet size and orbital period. The follow-up observations needed to confirm the new exoplanets' existence used a suite of ground-based facilities including the Keck I telescope in Hawaii.

A lakes found in Mars

2010-01-05T20:07:00.000+06:00

New images of Mars suggest the Red Planet had large lakes on its surface as recently as three billion years ago. The evidence comes from Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) which spied a series of depressions linked by what look like drainage channels. Scientists tell the journal Geology that the features bear the hallmarks of being produced by liquid water. But they appear to have formed much later in Mars' history than many thought possible, the researchers add. The team, from Imperial and University Colleges London, studied pictures of several flat-floored depressions located above Ares Vallis, a giant gorge running some 2 ,000 km across Mars' equator. The hollows are about 20 km in diameter. Scientists had previously ascribed their formation to the slumping of the ground as ice in the soil was lost to Mars' thin atmosphere almost four billion years ago in the process of sublimation (in which the ice turns directly from a solid into a vapour). But the detail in the MRO pictures has allowed the Imperial-UCL team to trace a series of channels that connect the depressions. The group says these channels could only be formed by running water, and not by ice turning directly into gas. The scientists' ageing of the region, which on bodies like Mars is done by counting craters, suggests the features formed during the so- called Hesperian Epoch on the Red Planet. "The exciting thing is that this occurred at a time when Mars is thought to have been cold and dry and [liquid] water wasn't stable at the surface," Dr Sanjeev Gupta from Imperial College London told BBC News. The researchers propose that Mars may have experienced bouts of short-lived warming during this epoch that were caused perhaps by volcanic activity, meteorite impacts, or even shifts in the planet's orbit. This could have provided both the warmth to melt ice in the soil and the pressure needed in the atmosphere to maintain liquid water on the surface. "We don't really understand what caused this transient episode," Dr Gupta explained. "We have different hypotheses. Maybe local conditions generated an atmosphere creating a minor greenhouse effect that allowed these lakes to exist. We don't know how long they existed for, but it's exciting nonetheless that we see [evidence of] liquid water." The conditions would have made it possible for the depressions to fill with meltwater and even overflow, cutting channels as the liquid ran from a higher basin to a lower one. "This provides another environment - another place to go and look for microbial life," said Dr Gupta. "This would be fossil life. This is somewhere we hadn't perhaps considered as a place to go."

Honour for the game makers

2010-01-01T21:53:00.000+06:00

Veteran British game makers have featured strongly in the Queen's New Year Honours list. In total, four games figures won honours including Oliver and Paul Collyer, the brothers behind the Championship Manager series. Also honoured were Rodney Cousens, head of Codemasters and Paul Jackson former head of industry group Elspa. Dr Andrew Herbert, who manages Microsoft's Research labs in Cambridge, was given an OBE. The two brothers were made Members of the British Empire (MBE) in recognition for their services to the UK's computer games industry. The pair founded Sports Interactive in 1992 and have been behind the iconic Football and Championship Manager games. In a statement posted to the Sports Interactive site, the pair said: "We are really proud to have been given this honour, which is something we never thought would happen to us." "We're still heavily involved in the games, with Paul heading up the match engine, and Ov heading up Football Manager Live, and we look forward to many more years making games with the rest of the team that so many people out there enjoy to play." Rodney Cousens, currently boss of Codemasters, was made a Commander of the British Empire ( CBE) also for services to the computer games industry. Mr Cousens began his career in gaming in 1981 and has worked at Activision and Acclaim. Recent games from Codemasters include Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and Fuel. Paul Jackson was given the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his long service at EA and on the board of the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (Elspa). He is currently head of specialist game firm Rail Simulator. An OBE was also awarded to Andrew Herbert, who is current managing director of Microsoft's UK research labs in Cambridge. He won his honour for services to computer science.

Spinvox bought by Nuance

2010-01-01T21:47:00.000+06:00

UK firm Spinvox, which converts voicemails into texts, has been bought by speech recognition company Nuance for $102.5 m (£64 m). The deal is worth $66 m in cash and $36.5 m in stock, about a third shy of the earlier rumoured $146 m price tag. Nuance told BBC News it is too early to say what impact the deal will have on Spinvox's 230 staff. It also declined to comment on whether Spinvox founders Christina Domecq and Daniel Doulton will remain on board. "At the beginning of the year Spinvox was riding high as one of Britain's most promising technology companies," said BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones. "But the year has ended with it being sold at a knock-down price which means its investors are not likely to see much of a return." More than $200 m has been invested in the company so far and it had also been given a £30 m loan. "Nuance is likely to have been more interested in Spinvox's contracts with major telecoms firms - such as Telefonica - than in its technology," added Mr Cellan-Jones. Spinvox investor Invesco Perpetual had confirmed in September that Spinvox was up for sale. In recent months doubts had been cast on how effective Spinvox's speech-to-text software actually was. The company claims to use advanced voice recognition software for its service, but the BBC found that human operators were also involved in transcribing many messages. "Around the world, the voice-to-text market has experienced tremendous growth over the last year," said John Pollard, vice president of Nuance Voice-to-Text Services. "With Spinvox's robust infrastructure, language support and operational experience, we will broaden the reach and capabilities of our platform."

Devil cancer origin identified

2010-01-01T21:28:00.000+06:00

Researchers believe they have identified the source of fatal tumours that threaten to wipe out the wild population of Tasmanian devils. Writing in Science, an international team of scientists suggest cells that protect nerves are the likely origin of devil facial tumour disease ( DFTD). The disease is a transmissible cancer that is spread by physical contact, and quickly kills the animals. DFTD has caused the devil population to collapse by 60 % in the past decade. "To look more closely at the tumours' origin, we sequenced the genes that are expressed in this devil cancer and compared them with other genes that are expressed in other devil tissues," explained lead author Elizabeth Murchison, from the Australian National University in Canberra. She told the Science podcast the team's findings delivered surprising results. "We found that the tumours expressed genes that were normally only expressed by Schwann cells, which are cells that are found in the peripheral nervous system that protect nerves." 'Genetically distinct' The researchers sampled 25 different tumours from all over Tasmania, the only place on the planet where the world's largest carnivorous marsupials are found. DEVILS IN DETAIL Scientific name: Sarcophilus harrisii Devils were given their common name by early settlers, who were haunted by "demonic growls" Largest living carnivorous marsupial Now only found in Tasmania Can live up to five years in wild Weight: male 10-12 kg; female 6-8 kg They favour habitats where they can shelter by day and scavenge by night They found that the growths were genetically distinct from their hosts, but were identical to one another. Dr Murchison, who is also a researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, US, said the teams findings had a number of positive outcomes: " Most importantly, this has led to the development of a diagnostic test for the disease. "Devils are susceptible to a number of different types of cancer. Just like humans, they can get breast cancer, leukaemia, etc - especially in their old age. "Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference between these types of cancer and the transmissible disease. "Now that we know that these very specific Schwann genes are expressed in the cancer, we can use these genes as diagnostic markers." DFTD was first described in the mid-1990 s, when devils with large facial tumours were photographed in north-eastern Tasmania. By the end of 2008 , the disease - which kills infected animals within nine weeks - had been confirmed at 64 locations, covering more than 60 % of the Australian island state's mainland. Experts warn that without intervention, the disease could wipe out the wild population of the world's largest carnivorous marsupial within decades. Dr Murchison hoped identifying the catalogue of genes associated with DFTD would lead to the development of vaccines, or possibly therapies. "As yet, unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to help the devils that have the disease," she said. "This devil facial cancer is very unusual as it is an infection cancer; it is a little bit like an organ transplant," she said. "In an organ transplant, you have an organ that is transplanted into an unrelated individual. In the case of the devil cancer, you have a cancer that is transplanted into another unrelated devil through biting. "One of the big questions about this cancer is why it is not being rejected or being recognised as a foreign graft. "If we could understand that... we could perhaps use this data to develop a vaccine that could help the devils' immune system reject the cancer before it takes hold."

Early european analysed DNA

2010-01-01T21:21:00.000+06:00

Scientists have analysed DNA extracted from the remains of a 30 ,000- year-old European hunter- gatherer. Studying the DNA of long-dead humans can open up a window into the evolution of our species ( Homo sapiens ). But previous studies of this kind have been hampered by scientists' inability to distinguish between the ancient human DNA and modern contamination. In Current Biology journal, a German-Russian team details how it was possible to overcome this hurdle. Svante Paabo, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues used the latest DNA sequencing techniques to study genetic information from human remains unearthed in 1954 at Kostenki, Russia. Excavations at Kostenki, on the banks of the river Don in southern Russia, have yielded large concentrations of archaeological finds from the Palaeolithic (roughly 40 ,000 years ago to 10 ,000 years ago). Some of the finds date back as far as 45 ,000 years. " The ironic thing is that our group has been one of those that raised this issue " Professor Svante Paabo, Max Planck Institue The DNA analysed in this study comes from a male aged 20-25 who was deliberately buried in an oval pit some 30 ,000 years ago. Known as the Markina Gora skeleton, it was found lying in a crouched position with fists reaching upwards and a face orientated down towards the dirt. The bones were covered in a pigment called red ochre, thought to have been used in prehistoric funeral rites. The type of DNA extracted and analysed is that stored in mitochondria - the "powerhouses" of cells. This mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her offspring, providing a unique record of maternal inheritance. Using technology pioneered in the study of DNA from Neanderthal bones, they were able to distinguish between ancient genetic material from the Kostenki male and contamination from modern people who handled the bones, or whose DNA reached the remains by some other means. The new approach, developed by Professor Paabo and his colleagues, exploits three features which tend to distinguish ancient DNA from modern contamination. One of these is size; fragments of ancient DNA are often shorter than those from modern sources. Previous ancient DNA studies used the widespread polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology. PCR amplifies a few pieces of genetic material, generating thousands to millions of copies of a sequence. But the researchers found many fragments of ancient DNA were too small to be amplified by PCR. A second characteristic of ancient DNA was its tendency to show particular changes, or mutations, in the genetic sequence at the ends of DNA molecules. A third feature was a characteristic breakage of molecules at particular positions in the DNA strand. Trust issues The apparent ease with which modern DNA can infiltrate ancient remains has led many researchers to doubt even those studies employing the most rigorous methods to weed out contamination by modern genetic material. "The ironic thing is that our group has been one of those that raised this issue," Professor Paabo told BBC News. "To take animal studies on cave bears, for example, if we use PCR primers specific for human DNA on cave bear bones, we can retrieve modern human DNA on almost every one. That has made me think: 'how can I trust anything on this'." Using the new techniques, the researchers were able to sequence the entire mitochondrial genome of the Markina Gora individual. Future studies like the one in Current Biology could help shed light on whether the humans living in Europe 30 ,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of modern populations or whether they were replaced by immigrants who introduced farming to the continent several thousand years ago. The modern gene pool contains a wide variety of mtDNA lineages. Studying these maternal lineages provides scientists with clues to the origins and histories of human populations. Scientists look for known genetic signatures in order to classify an individual's mtDNA into different types, or "haplogroups". These haplogroups represent major branches on the family tree of Homo sapiens . Early arrival The researchers were able to assign the Kostenki individual to haplogroup "U2 ", which is relatively uncommon among modern populations. U2 appears to be scattered at low frequencies in populations from South and Western Asia, Europe and North Africa. Despite its rarity, the very presence of this haplogroup in today's Europeans suggests some continuity between Palaeolithic hunters and the continent's present-day inhabitants, argue the authors of the latest study. U2 , along with closely related haplogroups such as U5 , are among those which could plausibly have arrived in Europe during the Palaeolithic. Geneticists use well-established techniques to " date" particular genetic events, such as when a haplogroup first diversified. The "U" branch ( comprising haplogroups U1 , U2 , U3 and so on) appears to be more ancient than many other genetic lineages found in Europe. A recent study found a very high percentage of U types in the skeletal remains of ancient hunter- gatherers from Central Europe compared with later farming immigrants and modern people from the region. Meanwhile, an analysis last year of mtDNA from 28 ,000- year-old remains unearthed at Paglicci Cave in Italy showed this individual belonged to haplogroup "H" - the most common type found in modern Europeans.

Virtual goods is to billion

2009-12-31T21:43:00.000+07:00

Virtual goods such as weapons or digital bottles of champagne traded in the US could be worth up to $5 bn in the next five years, experts predict. In Asia, sales are already around the $5 bn mark and rapidly growing. For many, virtual goods are one of the hottest trends in technology and are fuelling huge growth in the social gaming sector. "This is just an exploding part of the gaming business right now, said venture capitalist Jeremy Liew. "It is the most exciting area in gaming," he said. Mr Liew, whose firm Lightspeed Venture Partners has invested $10 m in virtual goods companies, said the rapid growth of the sector was unprecedented. "We have seen companies go from nothing in the last 18-24 months to tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue." Revenue model Playfish is a social gaming company that started two years ago. Today it has 11 online games and more than 61 million people who play those games worldwide. Crucial to its success is the sale of virtual goods, ranging from furniture for your pet to menu items for your own restaurant in games like Pet Society and Restaurant City. "Virtual items within the Playfish games are the centre point of the way in which Playfish derives its revenue," Tom Sarris of the firm told BBC News. "We have two different revenue models. The primary is the sale of virtual goods and the second is in-game advertising, but that is a very minor aspect at this stage." Mr Sarris would not reveal how much Playfish makes from the sale of virtual goods, but admitted that it accounts for the lion's share of the company's revenue. That, according to Mr Liew is fairly typical. "Virtual goods is the whole story in the world of social games. It accounts for 90-95 % of revenue for a lot of these social game developers." The new gamers And it is not just the stereotypical gamers that are spending their hard earned cash on goods that only add up to a handful of pixels on a website Emma Cox is probably fairly typical of the new breed of social gamer who plays as a way to stay connected to friends and family. "I am not a traditional gamer. I don't buy console games or go out and spend $40 on a game for my PlayStation," said Ms Cox. "I am playing online games for a different reason and it's instant gratification, playing with friends, showing off to others and have them see all the virtual goods you have bought for yourself and even for them." Ms Cox told the BBC she spends about $10 a month per game on virtual goods and plays two to three games. Her favourite is Country Store where players trade real money for coins allowing players to move ahead in the game or to buy goods. The game bills itself as an opportunity to let players get away from the hustle and bustle of life by hanging out in the country tending crops and breathing the country air. On her last visit, Ms Cox bought fertiliser and seeds for corn and peppers. "These virtual goods are easy to buy, they are accessible, they are online," said Ms Cox. "The immediate impact is being able to move throughout the game a lot more quickly. It also enhances your overall experience of the game - it is about total entertainment." Playfish's Mr Sarris said that is the main reason people are willing to purchase products that do not exist. "The way we look at it is it's no different from paying money to go and see a movie or rent a dvd. What you are paying for is the experience and that notion of entertainment." Social is key Central to the early growth of this virtual goods revolution have been social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. Users of these networks can also pay for virtual goods, such as digital birthday cards, champagne or flowers. "Increasingly as people's relationships migrate online, your interactions occur there," said Lightspeed's Mr Liew. "That makes it more natural for those acknowledgements of how important someone is to us to occur there also. Buying something like virtual champagne or a birthday card is telling someone they are important to you." However most of the momentum in this virtual goods market happens through social games which Mr Liew said is responsible for bringing a new type of new gamer to the fore. "We have found tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people playing these social games and many would never consider themselves as gamers. Yet they spend real money to play these games and in some cases really meaningful amounts of money. "That is what makes the expansion of this market so exciting," added Mr Liew. Bright future The market is clearly one with a lot of life in it. About two thirds of the top 15 applications on Facebook are games, according to analytics firm AppData. Those ten games are said to draw more than 100 million users a month. Earlier in December, one of the biggest social gaming companies, Zynga, sold a stake in the firm to Russia's Digital Sky Technologies for $180 m (£113 m). And in November, Electronic Arts, agreed to buy Playfish in a $400 m deal (£251 m). Proof of how successful the virtual goods business has become is evident in moves by Facebook itself to test a payment system to get a cut each time an online-game player buys a digital tractor or pair of flip flops. "We are still in the growth stage of this industry, " said Mr Liew. "We are still seeing people come out of nowhere and become a leading player. Five years down the line, it will become more stable with five to ten companies becoming more valuable. "The virtual goods industry is one of the most exciting categories of 2009 and will remain an exciting category in 2010 ," he added.

2010 is will be 3D year

2009-12-31T21:33:00.000+07:00

If 2009 was dominated by touch technology then 2010 looks set to be the year of 3 D. 3 D has been one of the biggest hits of the cinemas this year and it is likely to continue its stride into other mediums during 2010 , experts agree. TV manufacturer LG wants to sell nearly half a million 3 D-ready TV sets next year as the World Cup kicks off in the format. Meanwhile laptops and games consoles are also getting a 3 D makeover. Acer has already released what it is claiming is the world's first 3 D-capable laptop, and most agree it will be the first of many. One critic likened the screen of the Acer Inspire 5738 DZG to that of a 1960 's cinema "but in laptop form". Others have dismissed the 3 D capability as a gimmick, but most agree that it will be the start of a glut of similar machines. Acer has created its 3 D effect by putting a polarising filter over the screen which splits images into separate streams. When combined with a pair of polarising glasses ( and the laptop comes with a free pair) it allows users to view content in 3 D. Some movie trailers come preloaded on the laptop, while software called TriDef 3 D can add a third dimension to PC games, DVDs and video footage with varying degrees of success. Microsoft is watching developments in the field with interest. Julie Larson-Green, Microsoft's vice president of user experience believes the technology will play a major role over the next decade. "A 3 D spatial camera inside a computer will offer a new way to interact with content. It will allow people to spatially organise things with older things farther away," she said. Trendy glasses Gaming is the most obvious first stop for 3 D and Sony committed in November to making all its PS3 consoles "upgradeable to 3 D", suggesting games are on their way. Meanwhile Microsoft continue to work on its own alternative to a gaming remote control called Project Natal, which uses an optical camera and 3 D sensors to read body movements and facial expressions. In order to view content, some form of eyewear is going to be essential although it is unlikely to have much in common with the cardboard spectacles of the 1970 s. Jeremy Fennell, head of marketing for Dixon Store Group, is betting on visitors to January's high-tech CES show spending a lot of their time on the conference floor wearing 3 D glasses. "An awful lot of money has been invested in 3 D and there is a world of difference between cardboard glasses from the 1970 s to designer 3 D RayBans and aviators," he said. He expects to have a range in store towards the end of next year. In the world of TVs, HD-ready is rapidly being replaced by 3 D-ready. LG Electronics aims to sell 400 ,000 3 D TVs in 2010 and 3.4 million in 2011. One of the drivers for such sets will be the World Cup which Fifa has confirmed will be the first soccer event shot in 3 D. But 3 D isn't the only thing changing TV. More sets will be available with built-in net access, making the viewing of content such as the iPlayer a whole lot simpler. And Microsoft's UK managing director Ashley Highfield envisages an even more interactive future for the humble box in the corner. "If TVs have some form of 2- way functionality, the TV recognises you and you can flick through too find a programme you want to watch," he said at a recent conference, although he did not offer a timeframe for such smart sets. Headset patent Apple has recently filed a patent suggesting that it is looking into create its own 3 D display, possibly as an alternative to the mouse and keyboard. The patent refers to "an electronic device for providing a display that changes based on the user's perspective". MacRumours speculated that the maker of the Mac is planning to offer greater interactivity for users via an established technology known as head-tracking. Using a camera, such a system would be able to detect a user's position and adjust a 3 D display to create the illusion that an on-screen object is physically present, it said. Such patents are not unusual though. In December 2008 Apple filed one seemingly aimed at created a 3 D desktop. And back in 2007 university student Johnny Chung created his own head tracking device using a Nintendo Wii remote controller which became one of YouTube's most popular videos. Interest in 3 D is likely to continue unabated as 2010 begins to make it a reality for consumers.

Honours for science educator

2009-12-31T21:20:00.000+07:00

John Holman, a lifelong champion of science and technology education, is among the scientists to appear in the New Year Honours list. Professor Holman, who leads the National Science Learning Centre, is awarded a knighthood. Prehistory expert Paul Mellars and RSPB director Graham Wynne also receive knighthoods, while nuclear physicist Sue Ion becomes a dame. Further honours for scientists include two CBEs, three OBEs, and nine MBEs. "I'm delighted; it's an enormous personal honour and somewhat overwhelming," Sir John told BBC News. "But more importantly I think that it's a recognition of the importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to the future of the UK and to the lives of millions of young people." Sir John studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, going on to teach in a number of secondary schools and soon began advising on science education nationally and internationally. In the late 1980 s, when the National Curriculum standardised teaching across the UK, it was he who wrote the science curriculum. After six years as headmaster of Watford Grammar School for Boys, in 2000 he came to the University of York as Salters Professor of Chemical Education, founding the National Science Learning Centre in 2004. In 2006 , he also became the first national director of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) for the government, a post Sir John refers to as "conducting an orchestra of groups inside and outside the government" where the sole motive is STEM education. "We're in difficult economic times but it's quite clear that one thing this country is very good at is science and technology - but we need to maintain that and build on the strength of that as the core of a future economic strategy."

Russia 'plans to stop asteroid'

2009-12-31T21:13:00.000+07:00

The head of Russia's federal space agency has said it will work to divert an asteroid which will make several passes near the Earth from 2029. Anatoly Perminov told the Voice of Russia radio service that the agency's science council would hold a closed meeting to discuss the issue. Any eventual plan is likely to be an international collaboration, he said. The US space agency said in October that there is a one-in-250 ,000 chance of Apophis hitting Earth in 2036. That announcement was a significant reduction in the probability of an impact, based on previous calculations that put the chances at about one-in-45 ,000. The asteroid is estimated to pass within about 30 ,000 km of the Earth in 2029. Mr Perminov, who is the chief of Roscosmos, gave little detail of any plans that the agency has, but was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying that the solution would not entail the use of nuclear weapons. Other schemes that have been put forth in the past for diverting asteroids from collision courses include spacecraft that nudge the space rocks out of their trajectory through force, or diverting them with "solar sails" that use the wind of particles ejected from the Sun. "People's lives are at stake," Mr Perminov reportedly told the radio service Golos Rossii ( Voice of Russia). "We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people."

Nasa's 3 project

2009-12-31T21:05:00.000+07:00

The US space agency Nasa has selected three projects as finalists for its next celestial mission. The projects aim to either probe the atmosphere and surface of Venus, return an asteroid fragment to Earth, or send back rocks from the Moon's south pole. The proposals are part of the New Frontiers programme, designed to carry out frequent, low- cost missions. Nasa has provided funding for a fuller analysis of the projects, with a winner to be selected in mid- 2011. The cost of the winning project must not exceed $650 m (£410 m) and must be ready to launch by the end of 2018. These limits are in keeping with the New Frontiers programme's principles of funding focused, short-term, and comparatively cheap space science missions. The three proposals are: The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer, or Sage, would gather information about Venus' atmosphere during the descent of a lander, which would then scratch at the planet's surface to determine its chemical and mineral composition in detail. The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer, or Osiris-Rex, would initially orbit an asteroid, landing on it to collect about 60 g of material that would be returned to Earth. The Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return Mission would land near the Moon's southern pole, returning about a kilogram of material that scientists believe has risen from the moon's interior to the surface. Each team has been given $3.3 m (£2.1 m) to further flesh out the details of their proposals over the coming year. "These are projects that inspire and excite young scientists, engineers and the public," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for Nasa's Science Mission Directorate. "These three proposals provide the best science value among eight submitted to Nasa this year." The proposal that is eventually chosen will form the third mission in the New Frontiers programme. The first, New Horizons, was launched in 2006 and is bound for a Pluto fly-by in 2015. The second, dubbed Juno, will be the first craft to orbit Jupiter from pole to pole after it launches in August 2011.

Music therapy for tinnitus victim

2009-12-31T20:58:00.000+07:00

Individually designed music therapy may help reduce the noise levels experienced by people who suffer from tinnitus, say German researchers. They altered participants' favourite music to remove notes which matched the frequency of the ringing in their ears. After a year of listening to the modified music, individuals reported a drop in the loudness of their tinnitus. The researchers said the "inexpensive" treatment could be used alongside other techniques to relieve the condition. " It could significantly complement widely-used and rather indirect psychological treatment strategies " Dr Christo Pantev Westphalian Wilhelms University It is thought that around 1-3 % of the population have chronic ringing in their ears which is significant enough to reduce their overall quality of life. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers said although the cause of tinnitus remains unknown, it has been shown that the part of the brain that processes sounds is frequently disrupted in people with the condition. The theory behind the new technique is that removing the spectrum of noise associated with tinnitus from the music reduces activity in the brain relating to that frequency, alleviating the condition. Therapy The 39 patients who took part in the study all had chronic tinnitus for an average of five years but had no other hearing problems. They were split into three groups and were offered either the modified music therapy, a dummy version of music therapy or usual treatment. Participants listened to the music for an average of 12 hours a week and by the end of the study, those who had been given the tailored music reported a significant drop in the level of the ringing they heard compared with those listening to the dummy version. Study leader Dr Christo Pantev, from Westphalian Wilhelms University in Munster, said the approach specifically targeted the part of the brain responsible for tinnitus. "The notched music approach can be considered as enjoyable, low cost, and presumably causal treatment that is capable of specifically reducing tinnitus loudness. "It could significantly complement widely-used and rather indirect psychological treatment strategies." Dr Ralph Holmes, director of biomedical research at deaf and hard of hearing charity, RNID, said he would look in detail at the findings. "While we find it encouraging there is new investment in treatment for tinnitus, we know there is no proven 'cure'. "This seems to be similar to tinnitus retraining therapy which is one of the most common ways of managing the condition."

Secret mobile phone codes crack

2009-12-29T20:35:00.000+07:00

A German computer scientist has published details of the secret code used to protect the conversations of more than 4 bn mobile phone users. Karsten Nohl, working with other experts, has spent the past five months cracking the algorithm used to encrypt phone calls using GSM technology. GSM is the most popular standard for mobile networks around the world. Mr Nohl told the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin that the work showed that GSM security was "inadequate". "We are trying to inform people about this widespread vulnerability," Mr Nohl told BBC News. "We hope to create some additional pressure and demand from customers for better encryption." The GSM Association (GSMA), which devised the algorithm and oversees development of the standard, said Mr Nohl's work would be "highly illegal" in the UK and many other countries. "This isn't something that we take lightly at all," a spokeswoman said. Mr Nohl told the BBC that he had consulted with lawyers before publication and believed the work was "legal". 'Secret key' Mr Nohl, working with a "few dozen" other people, claims to have published material that would crack the A5 /1 algorithm, a 22- year-old code used by many carriers. The code is designed to prevent phone calls from being intercepted by forcing mobile phones and base stations to rapidly change radio frequencies over a spectrum of 80 channels. It is known to have a series of weaknesses with the first serious flaw exposed in 1994. Mr Nohl, who describes himself as an "offensive security researcher", announced his intention to crack the code at the Hacking at Random (HAR) conference in The Netherlands in August this year. "Any cryptographic function is a one way street," he told BBC News. "You should not be able to decrypt without the secret key". To get around this problem, Mr Nohl, working with other members of the encryption community, used networks of computers to crunch through "every possible combination" of inputs and outputs for the encryption code. Mr Nohl said there were "trillions" of possibilities. " It lowers the bar for people and organisations to crack GSM calls " Ian Meakin Cellcrypt All of the outputs are now detailed in a vast table, which can be used to determine the encryption key used to secure the conversation or text message. "It's like a telephone book - if someone tells you a name you can look up their number," he said. Using the codebook, a "beefy gaming computer and $3 ,000 worth of radio equipment" would allow anyone to decrypt signals from the billions of GSM users around the world, he said. Signals could be decrypted in "real time" with $30 ,000 worth of equipment, Mr Nohl added. 'Not practical' It has been possible to decrypt GSM signals previous to this work to listen in on conversations, but the equipment cost "hundreds of thousands of dollars," experts said. According to Ian Meakin, of mobile encryption firm Cellcrypt, only government agencies and " well funded" criminals had access to the necessary technology. He described Mr Nohl's work as a "massive worry". "It lowers the bar for people and organisations to crack GSM calls," he told BBC News. "It inadvertently puts these tools and techniques in the hands of criminals." However, the GSMA dismissed the worries, saying that "reports of an imminent GSM eavesdropping capability" were "common". It said that there had been "a number" of academic papers outlining how A5 /1 could be compromised but "none to date have led to a practical attack". The association said that it had already outlined a proposal to upgrade A5 /1 to a new standard known as A5 /3 which was currently being " phased in". "All in all, we consider this research, which appears to be motivated in part by commercial considerations, to be a long way from being a practical attack on GSM," the spokeswoman said.

Kindle is the most gifted item in Amazon

2009-12-28T17:27:00.000+07:00

Amazon.com on Saturday released its annual post-Christmas statement on holiday sales and made one thing clear: the Kindle was king, perhaps fueled by continued shifts in plans for shipments of Barnes & Noble's competing Nook e-reader . "We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history," said Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. In another milestone for the e-reader, the company noted that on Christmas Day, for the first time ever, Amazon customers bought more Kindle books than physical books. The company didn't offer specific numbers for either category. The peak shopping day for the online retailer was December 14 , when customers ordered more than 9.5 million items worldwide, "a record-breaking 110 items per second." Among those items bought between November and December 19 , the top electronics, following the Kindle, were Apple's iPod Touch GB and the Garmin Nuvi 260W GPS . In the video game category, top sellers were the Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board; New Super Mario Bros., and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 . Among software purchases, top items were Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 , Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 , and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac (Home and Student Edition). Top wireless purchases included the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (unlocked), Plantronics 510 Bluetooth Headset , and BlackBerry Bold 9700 Phone (AT&T). Other top selling gadgets included Casio's Waveceptor Atomic Dual-Time Watch, Oster's Electric Wine-Bottle Opener, Omron's HJ-112 Digital Pocket Pedometer, and Bosch's Laser Distance Measuring Device. We'll have more comprehensive coverage on what looks to be a strong online holiday sales season as the figures come in. In the meantime, here are a few more fun gadget sales factoids from Amazon: • If all the computers customers purchased this holiday were stacked one on top of the other, they would be more than twice as high as Mount Everest. • Amazon customers bought more than 50 times more light therapy devices this holiday season than there are sunny days in Seattle the entire year. • For the holiday time period alone, Amazon customers purchased enough shoot-and-share camcorders to supply 50 years' worth of nonstop YouTube watching. • Amazon customers purchased so many Blu-ray disc players, that if you lined them up side to side, they would stretch for more than 27 • During the 2009 holiday season, Amazon customers bought enough 8 GB iPod Touches to play 442 years of continuous music. • In 2009, Amazon customers purchased enough heart rate monitor watches to put one on the wrist of everyone who finished the New York City marathons in 2008 and 2009. • The last Local Express Delivery order that was delivered in time for Christmas, was placed by a Prime member and went to Seattle. It was a Kindle that was ordered at 1 :43 p.m. on Christmas Eve and delivered at 4 :57 p.m. that evening.

Netbooks are 1st choice of all

2009-12-28T17:09:00.000+07:00

Rising prices and better alternatives may mean curtains for netbooks. The small portable computers were popular in 2009 , but some industry watchers are convinced that their popularity is already waning. "The days of the netbook are over," said Stuart Miles, founder and editor of technology blog Pocket Lint. As prices edge upwards, net-using habits change and other gadgets take on their functions, netbooks will become far less popular, he thinks. "Technology has advanced so much that it's outmanoeuvred itself," he said. "You wouldn't go for something so basic anymore." His prediction stems from his belief that the netbooks of 2009 are losing touch with what made them so appealing. Media heart Asus kicked off the netbook trend in 2007 when it launched the Eee PC 700 and 701. The 700 sported a 2 GB solid state hard drive, 512 MB of Ram, a 900 Hz Intel Celeron processor and a seven-inch screen. It was cheap, cheerful and a boon for those wanting to check e-mail and go online while out and about. But, said Mr Miles, the success of the small, portable notebook has been its undoing because it has spawned so many imitators. Many contemporary netbook models run Windows XP or Windows 7 which has forced the specifications, and price, upwards. Many, he said, now cost at least £350 , a figure close to that for a more capable full-size laptop. What people are looking for now, he believes, is a machine that can keep up with the demands of contemporary web users - far more than the basic e-mail and web browsing that made the first models so appealing. "As soon as you want to do anything else you hit the same problem, it ceases to work," he said. "It does not have the power." Those changing habits of web users, he maintains, are too complex for those basic machines. "It's the internet's fault for making us much more multimedia savvy," he said. Uploading and editing still or moving pictures and handling audio all require far more power than the basic netbook offers, he said. This could explain, he said, why many laptop makers are now turning out very thin and light machines that have power but not the shoulder- wrenching bulk. All change Ian Drew, spokesman for chip designer Arm, also believes netbooks are in for a shake-up. Consumers, he said, were chafing against the restrictions that using a netbook imposed on them. "We have failed the consumer because we have imposed constraints on them," he said. Changing web habits and greater use of social media will mean consumers will be looking for gadgets that are tuned to specific purposes. " The web is the king " Christopher David, SonyEricsson "It will be a lot of different machines for a lot of different people," he said. "This whole market will be exploding in the next couple of years." Impetus for this change will come, he believes, from the phone world where many, many types of gadgets are already blooming. "It's no surprise that your mobile has changed a lot in the last three years but your PC hasn't," he said. Arm hopes that many more netbook makers will be using one of its designs as a core processor and turn to Linux as the operating system. At the very least a crop of Arm-based netbooks might mean a big boost to battery life. Arm's mobile pedigree means it is designed to be parsimonious with power. Dell already produces notebooks sporting Latitude ON technology that use both Arm and Intel chips so that they can boot into either Windows or Linux. Editing tools Battery life on Linux is in excess of 10 hours, for Windows rarely more than three. Machines sporting Arm chips are also likely to be thinner as they will not need the heat sinks demanded by processors used in desktops. Mr Drew said deals Arm has signed with Adobe will help ensure that future devices will be able to use the software maker's familiar video, audio and image editing tools. What will also be worth watching, he said, is what happens when Google's Chrome OS is launched. Many of the devices running that will be Arm- based as Chrome is broadly based on one of the Linux distributions. There are also unconfirmed rumours that either Windows 8 or 9 will run on Arm chips. Mr Drew also expects to see devices tailored to particular types of user. E-book readers were an example of this, he said, and were evolving into devices capable of doing more than just handle text. Many can play MP3 s or let owners browse the web. Then there is the approaching wave of tablet computers. Apple is rumoured to be working on one. Dell and Microsoft have shown off their own ideas of what one will look like and there are bound to be many more from established tablet makers such as Archos. Mr Miles from Pocket Lint believes these are likely to take up the mantle from the netbook. "I don't think people will expect it to do much more than you get from a netbook," he said, adding that they were perfect for those who needed a device that let them get online quickly to satisfy their curiosity. They were more likely to succeed now more than ever, said Mr Miles, because of the greater experience people had with using such devices. "It'll be helped by Apple which has educated people how to use multi-touch through the iPhone and iPod touch," he said. Netbooks are also likely to come under pressure from smartphones as they get even smarter, said Christoper David, head of developers at SonyEricsson. Phone makers, he said, have to position themselves to be more open and able to support the web habits of users no matter what they were or what they wanted to do. "The web is the king," he said. Handset makers must work with those open web standards to ensure that the software on the phones they make is flexible enough to cope. "Though," he added, "that is only the starting point of the journey." What will not change, he believes, is the importance of the phone as a vessel for data about its owner. "We're going to see phones coming along where the form factor will be less and less relevant in terms of what we carry about with us," he said. Future devices will grab the best resources nearby whether that is a flat screen, projector or thin film display. The ID credentials stored on what was our phone will handle all the logins and give access to all the sites and services we use. The netbook, and its limitations, will be well and truly left behind.

Plant chemical 'manipulates' ants

2009-12-28T16:48:00.001+07:00

In Africa and in the tropics, armies of tiny creatures make the twisting stems of acacia plants their homes. Aggressive, stinging ants feed on the sugary nectar the plant provides and live in nests protected by its thick bark. This is the world of "ant guards". The acacias might appear overrun by them, but the plants have the ants wrapped around their little stems. “ Acacias... have very open flowers, but still, the ants don't seem to go on to them. We wanted to know why ” Nigel Raine, Royal Holloway These same plants that provide shelter and produce nourishing nectar to feed the insects also make chemicals that send them into a defensive frenzy, forcing them into retreat. Nigel Raine, a scientist working at Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK has studied this plant-ant relationship. Dr Raine and his colleagues from the universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh and Reading in the UK and Lund University in Sweden have been trying to work out some of the ways in which the insects and the acacias might have co-evolved. He explains how the ants provide a useful service for the acacias. "They guard the plants they live on," said Dr Raine. "If other animals try to come and feed on the rich, sugary nectar, they will attack them." In Africa, one type of ant-guard, known as Crematogaster , will even attack large herbivores that attempt to eat the plant. "If a giraffe starts to eat the leaves of an acacia that is inhabited by ants, the ants will come out and swarm on to its face, biting and stinging," says Dr Raine. "Eventually, the giraffe will get fed up and move off." In the New World tropics, the Pseudomyrmex genus of ants fulfil a very similar guarding role. For both species, the acacias provide little, reinforced structures that the ants hollow out and nest within, as well as sugar-rich nectar for them to eat. "In return, both groups of ants protect their host plants from herbivores - both hungry insects and larger [animals]," explains Dr Raine. Give and take That is the plus side for the plants. But being inhabited by aggressive insects could make one important aspect of a plant's life difficult - flowering. Flowers need to be pollinated so the plant can reproduce. So what stops the ants from attacking the helpful little pollinators or stealing all the tasty nectar that attracts them? "Some plants do this structurally, with physical barriers to stop ants getting on to the flower, or sticky or slippery surfaces that the insects can't walk on," said Dr Raine. "Acacias don't have these barriers. They have very open flowers, but still, the ants don't seem to go on to them. We wanted to know why." One clever approach by the plant is a food " bribe". "Extrafloral nectaries" are small stores of nectar on stems, from which the inhabitants can feed without going on to the flowers. Acacias also produce structures called beltian bodies on the leaf tips. These, Dr Raine explains, are nutritious structures produced by the plant to feed its resident colony of ant-guards. But when this isn't enough, it is a case of chemical warfare. Flowers can produce a variety of chemicals. We can smell some of the volatile organic compounds they release when we sniff our favourite summer bloom. But there is a more manipulative side to these scents. Floral volatile compounds can act as signals - drawing in pollinators such as bees and hummingbirds in with their irresistible aromas. To the ants, however, they are far from irresistible. "The flowers seem to produce chemicals that are repellent to the ants," said Dr Raine. "They release these particularly during the time when they're producing lots of pollen, so the ants are kept off the flowers." In recent studies, described in the journal Functional Ecology, Dr Raine and his colleagues found that the plants with the closest relationships with ants - those that provided homes for their miniature guard army - produced the chemicals that were most effective at keeping the ants at bay. "And that was associated with the flower being open," he says. "So the chemicals are probably in the pollen." When the pollen has all been taken away - by being brushed on to the bodies of hungry pollinators and helpfully delivered to other plants - the flowers become less repellent. "So at this point, the ants can come on to the flowers and can protect them from other insects that might eat them, so that the developing seeds aren't lost," he explains. Dr Raines' team was able to test this using young flowers that had just opened and that contained lots of pollen. The scientists wiped them on older flowers and on the acacia's stems. This showed them that the effect was " transferrable" - the stems and older flowers that had been wiped became more repellent. "It gives this really neat feedback system - the plant is protected when it needs to be protected, but not when it doesn't." Selective deterrents The repellent chemicals are specific to the ants. In fact, they attract and repel different groups of insects. "[The chemicals] don't repel bees, even though they are quite closely related to ants. And in some cases, the chemicals actually seem to attract the bees," says Dr Raine. The researchers think that some of the repellents that acacias produce are chemical " mimics" of signalling pheromones that the ants use to communicate. "We put flowers into syringes and puffed the scent over the ant to see how they would respond, and they became q

US health system will be digitizing

2009-12-25T12:54:00.000+07:00

Next to the global economy, overhauling the U.S. health care system dominated headlines in 2009. We'll leave the debate over a public option for others to tackle and instead focus on one of the major ways in which an overhauled health care system would affect the tech industry: digitizing health records. At the close of 2008 , an in-depth survey published by the New England Journal of Medicine found that only 4 percent of physicians have a fully functional electronic records system . The health care industry's enormous paper trail is notoriously expensive, inefficient, and outdated. So in early 2009 , the stimulus package enacted by Congress pushed for medical records to go electronic . Among the stated goals: "utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014. " By 2015 , government reimbursements to physicians who are not participating in the federal e-record effort will begin to decline. Today, organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, which by early 2009 had already taken its 450 nationwide locations mostly paperless , remain anomalies. The Obama stimulus package committed $59 billion to revamping the health care industry, earmarking $19 billion for hospital technology efforts alone, but even that is considered little more than a down payment on the total cost to modernize a system that is extremely convoluted, not to mention critical to secure. Another stimulus goal is to establish a uniform policy for health IT . Bill Mitchin, co-chair of a health policy collaborative called the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration, said, "At our very first meeting, we started talking about HIE (health information exchange), and we spent two and a half hours trying to decide if HIE is a noun or a verb. The answer is both." Of course, tech giants are lining up for stimulus dollars , but will any of them get it right? President Obama says he supports an open- source system , while MSN moved forward with My Health Info and IBM partnered with Google Health , which uses software built partially on open-source standards. At the CTIA Wireless 2009 trade show in Las Vegas, many companies talked about jumping on the stimulus gravy train . Wireless companies also flooded a health care technology trade show in Chicago the following week, saying that the most useful electronic records will be those that access data directly from diagnostic and monitoring devices wirelessly, so medical professionals won't have to commit valuable ( read: expensive) time to entering data. Of course, as the industry struggles to go digital, 2009 proved to be a year of tremendous innovation as well. The world of health-related mobile phone apps continues to expand, from scanning bar codes for health ratings and finding the best medicine in a pharmacy , to tracking swing flu outbreaks and carrying the entire Merck Manual on your iPhone. And 2009 brought plenty of optimistic health news, such as the development of fun body monitoring devices ; scientists further finessing the increasingly intricate movements that amputees can perform with prosthetic hands and fingers ; the introduction of a bra that, when taken off, could save your life ; and new research, however flimsy, that porn may not be so bad for you after all.

HP cameras can't detect black faces

2009-12-25T12:36:00.000+07:00

A YouTube video suggesting that face recognition cameras installed in HP laptops cannot detect black faces has had over one million views. The short movie, uploaded earlier this month, features "Black Desi" and his colleague "White Wanda". When Wanda, a white woman, is in front of the screen, the camera zooms to her face and moves as she moves. But when Desi, a black man, does the same, the camera does not respond by tracking him. The clip is light-hearted in tone but is titled "HP computers are racist". "HP has been informed of a potential issue with the facial-tracking software included on some of its systems, which appears to occur when insufficient foreground lighting is available," an HP spokesman told BBC News. "We take this seriously and are looking into it with our partners."

Scientists decode memory

2009-12-25T12:28:00.000+07:00

US scientists believe they have uncovered one of the mechanisms that enables the brain to form memories. Synapses - where brain cells connect with each other - have long been known to be the key site of information exchange and storage in the brain. But researchers say they have now learnt how molecules at the site of the synapse behave to cement a memory. It is hoped the research, published in Neuron, could aid the development of drugs for diseases like Alzheimer's. The deteriorating health of the synapses is increasingly thought to be a feature of Alzheimer's, a disease in which short-term memory suffers before long-term recollections are affected. " Scientists have been perplexed for some time as to why, when synapses are strengthened, you have the degradation of proteins going on side by side with the synthesis of new proteins " Kenneth Kosik University of California Santa Barbara A strong synapse is needed for cementing a memory, and this process involves making new proteins. But how exactly the body controls this process has not been clear. Now scientists at the University of California Santa Barbara say their laboratory work on rats shows the production of proteins needed to cement memories can only happen when the RNA - the collection of molecules that take genetic messages from the nucleus to the rest of the cell - is switched on. Until it is required, the RNA is paralysed by a " silencing" molecule - which itself contains proteins. When an external signal comes in - for example when one sees something interesting or has an unusual experience - the silencing molecule fragments and the RNA is released. " This interesting development could give a greater understanding of the memory loss experienced by people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia and lead to new treatments " Rebecca Wood Alzheimer's Research Trust Kenneth Kosik of the university's neuroscience research institute said: "One reason why this is interesting is that scientists have been perplexed for some time as to why, when synapses are strengthened, you have the degradation of proteins going on side by side with the synthesis of new proteins. "So we have now resolved this paradox. We show that protein degradation and synthesis go hand in hand. The degradation permits the synthesis." Identifying the proteins the brain needs in order to cement the memory could ultimately have benefits for those suffering from memory disorders. Rebecca Wood, head of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "Scientists say they have studied nerve cells in the laboratory and learnt more about how specific proteins may have a role in areas of the brain that transmit messages and help us store memories. " The health of synapses and their activity levels is becoming an important and interesting focus of research " Professor Julie Williams "This interesting development could give a greater understanding of the memory loss experienced by people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia and lead to new treatments." The most recent projections suggest 115 million people across the globe will suffer from dementia by 2050. Julie Williams, professor of psychological medicine at Cardiff University, said: "Our increasing understanding of genetic risk factors in Alzheimer's is pointing to the synapses so any new study in this area is welcome. "Alzheimer's is a complicated disease and it is early days, but the health of synapses and their activity levels is becoming an important and interesting focus of research."

Twitter buy GeoAPI

2009-12-24T10:50:00.000+07:00

Twitter has bought Mixer Labs, the company that created the GeoAPI location service for developers building application atop Twitter. Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, announced the acquisition on the company's blog , saying "when current location is added to tweets, new and valuable services emerge--everything from breaking news to finding friends or local businesses can be dramatically enhanced." Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it would appear Twitter is putting some of that money it now gets from Google and Microsoft to work. Elad Gil, the co-founder and CEO of Mixer Labs, is a veteran of Google and McKinsey, saying on his company bio that he co- founded Google's Mobile team. Seven employees are listed on Mixer Labs' "About" page , but that might not be an exhaustive list. Twitter acquired Summize in July 2008 , but the company has made few acquisitions, instead fending off perpetual rumors that Google, Microsoft, or another tech heavyweight is poised to snap up the company. Geo-location is definitely one of the hotter segments among the social-media butterflies, with companies like Foursquare and Gowalla drawing significant attention.

Slim line PC is designed

2009-12-24T10:45:00.000+07:00

The group behind the $100 laptop has revealed the design for its latest computer aimed at connecting children in the developing world. The XO-3 , as it is known, is a slim-line touchscreen tablet PC. One Laptop per Child (OLPC) said it would be " available in 2012 " and would cost "well below $100 ". The new design replaces the proposed XO-2 , a foldable e-book that was first shown off in 2008 but has since been scrapped by the organisation. The XO-3 will eventually replace the original XO laptop that first went into production in 2007. The innovative machines, which have been designed for use in remote and harsh environments, were designed for use by school children and featured a sunlight readable display and open source software. 'Bigger appeal' OLPC originally aimed to sell the low-cost laptops in lots of one million to governments in developing countries for $100 each. However, the non-profit organisation had difficulty getting governments to commit to bulk orders. The machines - which are able to run both Linux and Microsoft Windows - are now offered in single units and cost around $200. So far the XO has been distributed to more than 1.4 million children in 35 countries. The high-price has not however put off all governments. Uruguay has bought a computer for every one of their school children. Walter de Brouwer, CEO of OLPC Europe said that these "saturation projects" were the future of the organisation both in the developed and the developing world. "I'm talking to three four countries in the EU at the moment," he told BBC News. "Once one says yes, the others can't say no." The organisation believes the new design will cost significantly less. Mr Brouwer said that because of the pace of technological change and the ever decreasing prices of electronics he could imagine the design selling for "50 , 60 or 70 euros". He said governments could pay this back over a number of years, allowing pupils to have a laptop for less than one euro per month. "This is very realistic," he said. The concept shows a touchscreen, a camera, induction charger, and a carrying ring on one of its corners. Its inner workings - including a chip from UK firm ARM - will come from an interim design - the XO 1.75 - set for launch in 2011. The 1.75 will merge elements of the current machines with technologies - such as a touchscreen - intended to be included in the XO- 3. OLPC recently said that the organisation would just focus on promoting its concepts and educational aims, rather than manufacturing laptops. "We are not a laptop company," said Mr Brouwer. "Manufacturing a laptop is not such a big deal. The bigger appeal for us is deploying them and integrating them with education systems to transform a society." Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the group, said that he hoped that industry would now copy the design for the XO-3.

Kindle's copyright hacked by hacker

2009-12-24T10:39:00.000+07:00

An Israeli hacker claims to have broken the copyright protection on Amazon's Kindle e- reader, reports say. The hack will allow the ebooks stored on the reader to be transferred as pdf files to any other device. The hacker, known as Labba, responded to a challenge posted on Israeli hacking forum, hacking.org. It is the latest in a series of Digital Rights Management hacks, the most famous being the reverse engineering of iTunes. The Kindle e-book reader has been very successful since it was launched in the US in 2007. Amazon hopes to have sold a million devices by the end of the year. It leaves it to individual publishers whether they want to apply DRM but books in its main proprietary format .azw, cannot be transferred to other devices. It did not immediately respond to the news but it is likely it will attempt to patch its DRM software. DRM has long divided opinion. While rights holders regard it as a crucial tool to protect copyright, consumers tend to hate it because it limits what can be done with content. "DRM is not an effective way of preventing copying nor is it a good way of making sales. There isn't a customer out there saying 'what I need is an electronic book that does less," novelist and co-editor of the Boing Boing blog Cory Doctorow told the BBC when the Kindle was launched. As soon as a new DRM system is active, hackers begin to try and break it. Most famously Jon Lech Johansen, known as DVD Jon, cracked the copy protection on DVDs in 1999. He went on to break the copyright protection on iTunes, leading Apple to offer DRM-free music. DVD Jon now runs a company with an application to take the pain out of moving different types of content between devices.

US cyber chief faces tough job

2009-12-24T10:34:00.000+07:00

President Obama's long awaited cybersecurity tsar faces a "tough job", Security experts have warned. Despite saying the issue was a priority for the government, it has taken seven months to find someone to take the job. Howard Schmidt, a former eBay and Microsoft executive was appointed after others turned the post down. "I bring to this challenge lessons learned during 40 years of experience in government, business and law enforcement," said Mr Schmidt. "In our digital world the information technologies we depend on every day present us with great opportunity and great danger - for our national security, public safety and economic competitiveness as well as our personal privacy," added Mr Schmidt in a video broadcast posted on the White House's website. 'The right person' While applauding the appointment of the country's first cybersecurity co-ordinator, security professionals have also expressed some frustration at how long it has taken to fill the post. "While I am disappointed that it has taken this long, I am happy the government spent the time to get the right person for the job," said Ken Silva, the chief technology officer of VeriSign and someone who has known Mr Schmidt for around eight years. "What he brings to this job is the right level of senior government experience and industry experience. That is something that is hard to find. "Before getting down to the technology challenges he has to establish himself within government and industry in this new role," Mr Silva told BBC News. Mr Schmidt served under President George W Bush for three years, where his tasks involved reviewing how to improve network security for government agencies, the private sector and citizens. Some in the industry warn of the political pitfalls ahead as Mr Schmidt tries to pull together a number of government agencies and their various cybersecurity issues. "I think it will be a very tough job. He's going to have to herd some cats," said Roger Thornton, CTO and founder of security vendor Fortify Software. Cisco's chief security officer John N. Stewart agreed that Mr Schmidt has his work cut out for him. "Today more than ever, we need greater collaboration between government and business leaders to help enable national security and public safety, provide for economic prosperity, and ensure the delivery of critical services to the American public." Challenges In Mr Schmidt's video broadcast, he said that the President has already directed him to focus on several priority areas. These include "developing a new comprehensive strategy to secure American networks, ensuring an organised, unified response to future cyber incidents, strengthening public/private partnerships, promoting research and development for the next generation of technologies and leading a national campaign for cybersecurity, awareness and education". "When it comes to cyber security our vulnerability is shared," said Mr Schmidt. In May this year, President Obama pledged to personally appoint someone to the post. Mr Schmidt will have "regular access to the President and serve as a key member of his National Security Staff," said John Brennan, assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism. The White House's acting cyber-security head, Melissa Hathaway, stood down in August after complaining that the post did not allow her to implement necessary changes. News of Mr Schmidt's appointment comes amid claims in the Wall Street Journal that the FBI is investigating a hacker attack on Citigroup Inc that led to the theft of tens of millions of dollars. The newspaper has reported that the hackers were connected to a Russian cyber gang. Citigroup has denied the report.

Soyuz docked with space station

2009-12-24T10:27:00.000+07:00

A Russian spacecraft carrying an international crew has docked with the International Space Station, Russia's mission control says. Spokesman Valery Lyndin said the Soyuz TMA-17 , launched from Kazakhstan on Monday, docked at 0148 Moscow time on Wednesday (2248 GMT on Tuesday). American Timothy J Creamer, Soichi Noguchi of Japan and Russia's Oleg Kotov were on board. They join an American and a Russian currently on the station. Jeff Williams and Maxim Surayev have been there since October.

TV technology is changing

2009-12-24T02:47:00.000+07:00

Touchscreens are so yesterday. Remote controls? So last century. The future is controlling your devices with a simple wave of the hand. A wiggle of the fingers will change television channels or turn the volume up or down. In videogames, your movements will control your onscreen digital avatar. It's called 3 D gesture recognition and while it may not be in stores this Christmas a number of technology companies are promising that it will be by next year. Softkinetic, a Brussels-based software company, is one of the leaders in the gesture-control field and has teamed up with US semiconductor giant Texas Instruments and others to make this touchless vision of the future a reality. Besides TI, Softkinetic has forged partnerships with France's Orange Vallee for interactive TV, another Belgian firm, Optrima, a maker of 3 D cameras and sensors, and with Connecting Technology, a French home automation company. "On the consumer side you have three markets -- television, videogames and personal computers," Softkinetic chief executive Michel Tombroff told AFP in a telephone interview. "The objective is to be on the consumer market at the end of next year, by Christmas, so people can buy these things," he said. "In the same way that the Nintendo Wii completely changed the way that people play videogames this 3 D camera technology will allow us to completely transform the way people interact with television," Tombroff said. Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, said he believes that gesture recognition technology is "directionally correct because anything leading to a more natural interface for a human is better. "We're in that transition to a time when gestural input will be quite natural," Kay said. "From what I've seen of the demos they're pretty close. " On the gaming front, "using a camera in real time to capture motion and then take the representative avatar from that and play it on a screen with other elements in a virtual world is a pretty compelling experience," he said. US software giant Microsoft demonstrated a gesture recognition program called "Project Natal" for its Xbox 360 videogame console in June and has announced plans to launch it next year. Tombroff said Softkinetic's gesture recognition solutions involve using a 3 D camera that "looks like a little webcam" and is mounted on top of a television set or computer monitor. "It looks at the scene and it can analyze gestures without you holding anything in your hand or wearing any special equipment," he said. "It's really the ultimate gesture-based solution. "With the Wii you need to hold something in your hand," Tombroff said. "With this we look at your full body. You don't need to hold anything. "You just stand up or just move your hand," he said. "We let you interact without any intermediate component." Tombroff said the technology has the capability of transforming television. "It will become an active component of the living room," he said. "It's not just about sitting in the living room, turning it on and watching. "It's about interacting. The TV will recognize you. If you step in front of it, the camera will recognize it's you," Tombroff said. "Maybe it will start with a quick recap of your email, the weather, and the traffic because it knows you need to go to the office," he said. "That's the personalization," Tombroff said. " After that it may propose interactive programs. So instead of just sitting and watching TV you'll be able to play games or enter into programs. "In the same way that the iPhone completely transformed the user experience as far as the phone is concerned this will transform the way people experience television," he said.

Yahoo close down for holydays

2009-12-23T15:27:00.001+07:00

Most Yahoo employees will be off next week due to mandatory office closings though they& had since April to figure out what to do. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Yahoo is shutting down everything except for certain essential functions during the week between Friday, December 25 , and Friday, January 1. A Yahoo representative confirmed the Journal report Tuesday however, according to the representative, Yahoo employees were informed of this plan in April, a detail lacking from several reports about the shutdown, although Reuters had pointed it out at the time. Yahoo has certainly looked to cut costs this year , its first with CEO Carol Bartz and CFO Tim Morse. Layoffs, a search-outsourcing deal with Microsoft , and a reassessment of business priorities were high on the company to-do list in 2009. The shutdown, which requires employees to take unpaid leave or vacation days, would be the first ever in Yahoo history, though other tech companies, notably Hewlett-Packard and Adobe Systems, also shut down for the holidays. Yahoo will have customer support people working over the break, and it obviously plans to keep its Web site up and running, the representative said. Outside the United States, employees will either have paid time off or unpaid time, depending on local laws.

Microsoft lost word petent appeal

2009-12-23T15:15:00.000+07:00

Microsoft has lost an appeal in a patent case that will force it to alter Microsoft Word to avoid an injunction on sales of the product. Microsoft lost a patent case involving a company called I4i in May , after a jury ruled that Microsoft infringed one of i4 i's patents with a custom XML feature found in Word. In August an injunction was placed on sales of Word pending the appeal, which did not go in Microsoft's favor Tuesday. "We couldn't be more pleased with the ruling ( click for PDF ) from the appeals court which upheld the lower court's decision in its entirety. This is both a vindication for I4 i and a war cry for talented inventors whose patents are infringed," said Loudon Owen, chairman of I4 i, in a statement. The technology in question involves "any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML," according to a copy of the injunction released in August. I4i's Owen said at the time that his company wasn't out to force a halt in sales of one of Microsoft's most profitable products, and it doesn't appear that will happen. Microsoft said it planned to remove the feature from all copies of Microsoft Word 2007 that will be sold on or after January 11 , 2010. Prior copies of Word 2007 are not affected by the injunction, and Word 2010 is being designed without the infringing technology, the company said. "While we are moving quickly to address the injunction issue, we are also considering our legal options, which could include a request for a rehearing by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals en banc or a request for a writ of certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court," said Kevin Kurtz, director of public affairs for Microsoft, in a statement. The ruling also means that Microsoft is on the hook for $200 million in damages awarded by the jury as well as additional fees and interest. Reuters reported the total would reach $290 million. I4i , unlike other high-profile patent plaintiffs of recent memory ( what's NTP up to these days? ), appears to actually have a business. The company, based in Toronto, helps companies publish and organize documents created with XML, and appears to have carved out a niche in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

Firefox mobile will realese one day away

2009-12-22T20:58:00.000+07:00

The first mobile phone version of the popular web browser Firefox is "days away" from launch, the head of the project has told the BBC. The browser, codenamed Fennec, will initially be available for Nokia's N900 phone, followed by other handsets. It is currently going through final testing and could be released before the end of the year, said Jay Sullivan at Mozilla, the group behind Firefox. The open-source browser will be able to synchronise with the desktop version. " Apple is very restrictive. It doesn't allow other browsers " Jay Sullivan Mozilla Software will mean that any web pages open in a user's desktop browser will automatically open in the mobile version. "At the end of the working day you can walk away from your computer and keep on going on your phone," Mr Sullivan told the BBC. "It encrypts all of the information and sends it back through the cloud between your desktop and mobile." He said that providing there were no "show stoppers", the software could be available to download "within the year". Desktop success The browser will be available to download from the Mozilla website and then offered in Nokia's Ovi store, so that N900 owners can download the software. The organisation is also developing versions for Microsoft's Windows mobile and Google's Android operating system. However, he said that it would be some time before iPhone users would be able to use the browser. "Apple is very restrictive. It doesn't allow other browsers," he said. "As it's a pretty closed platform we don't see that happening soon." When it launches, Firefox will compete with browsers such as Opera, which is the most popular mobile browser according to analytics firm Stats Counter. Apple's Safari for mobile, which comes bundled with the iPhone, is the second most popular, whilst Nokia's own browser is third. The mobile version of Firefox will hope to follow the success of its desktop browser.

Vodafone will sales iPhone

2009-12-22T20:51:00.000+07:00

Vodafone says it will start selling the iPhone in the UK on 14 January 2010. It is the latest of the UK's major phone networks to offer the iPhone to customers. The cheapest tariff available is £30 a month for 24 months, plus additional handset charges ranging from £59 ( iPhone 3 G 8 GB) to £239 (3 GS 32 GB). Both business and consumer contracts are subject to a 1 GB monthly data limit on mobile internet use. Orange has a "fair use" limit of 750 MB per month. Vodafone and O2 both offer unlimited wifi use. Orange's data limit includes connections to the internet via BT Open-Zone wifi. Both O2 's and Orange's lowest tariffs - £34.26 and £29.36 respectively - are on a 24- month contract and come with a free iPhone. Vodafone comes close with a £35 a month contract over a two year period, also including a free 3 G 8 GB handset. Tesco Mobile tariffs start at £20 a month for 12 months - with a £222 charge for the same model of handset. However, Tesco says that the shorter contract will enable customers to upgrade more quickly. Guy Laurence, chief executive of Vodafone UK, said that the company had been preparing its network for over a year to handle the introduction of the iPhone. There are concerns that mobile networks globally are struggling to cope with demand as more consumers choose internet-enabled smartphones and mobile dongles over fixed broadband deals. Vodafone has also introduced a charge for customers wishing to use their iPhones as a modem - starting at £5 to download 500 MB.

Bird-like dinosaur was venomous

2009-12-22T20:36:00.000+07:00

A bird-like dinosaur that prowled an ancient forest 125 million years ago used venom to subdue its prey, according to a new theory. Sinornithosaurus upper teeth resemble those of rear-fanged snakes which bite their prey and channel venom into the wound. The dinosaur probably fed on the abundant birds which inhabited what is now north-east China. The work appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Rear-fanged snakes are considered less dangerous than other venomous snakes. The fangs in these snakes do not inject venom, but instead channel the poison along a groove on the outer surface of teeth that pierce their prey flesh. Sinornithosaurus had upper teeth that were similarly long, grooved and fang-like. David Burnham, from the University of Kansas, US, and colleagues, say the dinosaur upper jaw also contained a pocket that could have housed a venom gland. This is connected to the base of the teeth by a long groove. Like rear-fanged snakes, the venom Sinornithosaurus used was probably not lethal. The researchers suggest it instead caused rapid shock, allowing the dinosaur to subdue its prey. The researchers propose that the length of the dinosaur fangs allowed it to penetrate the thick plumage of birds that populated the forests of north-east China during the early Cretaceous period.

British Army get new uniform

2009-12-21T17:10:00.000+07:00

The uniform of the British Army is to be changed for the first time in almost 40 years. The new Multi-Terrain Pattern (MTP) will replace the traditional four colour woodland uniform known as No.8 : Disruptive Pattern Material (DPM). Forces in Afghanistan will start to get the new uniforms in March next year, with the whole army upgraded by 2011. MTP is designed for a wide range of environments, including the volatile "green zone" of Helmand province. British troops in Afghanistan currently use a mix of desert camouflage and temperate DPM, depending on which area they are operating in. There are three main types of terrain in Helmand - desert, the agricultural "green zone" either side of the Helmand river, and residential areas with dusty buildings and mud huts. One soldier said that the mix-and-match was far from ideal and made units stand out, especially in the "green zone". Not perfect Lt Col Toby Evans - a military advisor with the Government's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory - told the BBC the new uniform was a compromise between having a uniform that was perfectly suited to a specific environments and one that would work well across a wide range of conditions. "We've realised that Afghanistan is more complex - especially Helmand - than, say Iraq, which was predominantly a desert background or north-west Europe, which was predominantly green," he said. "The new camouflage is optimised for all the Afghan background colour sets and in doing so we never reach a point - which we did with the old colours - where it is actually wrong. "It may not be quite perfect, but its good enough for everything," he added. The Army's Infantry Trials and Development Unit and the government's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory tested a number of different designs in the UK, Cyprus, Kenya, and Afghanistan before selecting the MTP design. Developed by Crye Precision, MTP is developed from the firm's MultiCam pattern, currently used by some special forces units. 'Looks good' Corporal Adrian Gibbs, from The Grenadier Guards, told BBC News his first impressions of seeing the new MTP uniform. "I think it's good - when you see it compared to the green and desert DPM I think it will work well both on tour and within the UK itself. "This new uniform will make it harder for us to be seen and so much easier for us to do our job." The MoD say the dark green DPM uniforms will slowly be phased out and replaced by MTP. However the current No.5 : Desert combat dress will remain in service and be used along side the Multi-Terrain Pattern.

Mars mission go ahead

2009-12-21T17:09:00.000+07:00

Esa's Council of Ministers has approved an initial budget of 850 million euros to support the missions. It will need to increase the cash available by about 150 million euros in future years. "This marks an important moment for Europe in its steps towards space exploration on the world scale," said Professor David Southwood, the director of science and robotics at the agency. "We have been to the planets before, sure. But now we have a plan for exploration ahead to build our technical capability and explore Mars in a long-term partnership." The two-mission scenario has been born out of a much smaller proposal passed in 2008 which had the idea of launching a technology- demonstration rover to Mars in 2011 known as ExoMars. Technical considerations that saw this concept grow in scope and cost meant the whole endeavour was revised. The 2016 orbiter would be designed to track down the sources of methane and other trace gases recently detected at Mars. The presence of methane is intriguing because its likely origin is either present-day life or geological activity. Confirmation of either would be a major discovery. The 2018 ExoMars rover - now a much bigger vehicle - could then be targeted at one of the most interesting sources. The 2016 mission would also have sufficient mass margin to put some sort of lander on the surface, although this would stay in just one location and may not be very long-lived. Even so, Europe is keen to have a go at putting down some sort of instrument package on the planet to gain expertise in entry, descent and landing technologies. David Southwood told BBC News that the programme was "on the road in that full implementation of the hardware build will now start".

Twitter had been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army

2009-12-19T11:11:00.000+07:00

Twitter has been hit by an embarrassing security breach. A group claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army managed to redirect Twitter users to its own site displaying a political message. Twitter said the attack had been carried out by getting at the servers that tell web browsers where to find particular sites. The site said it would start an investigation into what allowed the "unplanned downtime" to take place. Address books Twitter was hit by the security breach at 2200 PCT (0600 GMT) which led to users being redirected to a page showing a message declaring it had been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army. It showed an image of Arabic text overlaid on a green flag carrying the name of the third Shi'i Imam, Imam Husayn. It also included a poem in Persian which said: "We shall strike if the leader orders, we shall lose our heads if the leader wishes." Also included were the words: "Those that wage fight on the path of God win." Some have suggested the attack is retaliation over the use made of Twitter during protests surrounding the Iranian election. Soon after the images appeared Twitter went offline. About an hour later the site came back to life and appeared to be working normally. A post on the Twitter status blog said: "We are working to recovery (sic) from an unplanned downtime and will update more as we learn the cause of this outage." Later, Twitter admitted that its DNS records had been "temporarily compromised". It said it was looking into what happened. " THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But THey Don't, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To.... NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA? WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST Take Care. " Twitter hack text DNS, the Domain Name System, acts as the address books for the internet. It tells browsing software where to find the computers hosting a particular webpage. By attacking the DNS servers the hackers were able to re-direct Twitter users. "These changes mean that when you or I type a website address into our browsers, we are directed not to the real website but to a second site, set up by the hackers, in this case the ' Iranian Cyber Army'," said Rik Ferguson from security firm Trend Micro. "This has the net effect of making it look like, in this example, servers belonging to Twitter were compromised when in reality that was not the case." Mr Ferguson said such attacks were typically a result of politically motivated hacking or " hacktivism". However, he added, some cyber criminals also try the ruse using a replica of a website in an attempt to trick people into handing over login details. The attack is the latest in a series of security embarrassments that Twitter has suffered. In August, Twitter was offline for two hours as it struggled to cope with an attack aimed at a Russian blogger. In July many of Twitter's confidential business documents were stolen in a hack attack and published online. Many spammers and scammers are also targeting the service in a bid to hijack accounts and piggyback on the popularity of some Twitter users.

Human like fossil found

2009-12-19T11:00:00.000+07:00

The discovery of a fossilised skeleton that has become a "central character in the story of human evolution" has been named the science breakthrough of 2009. The 4.4 million year old creature, that may be a human ancestor, was first described in a series of papers in the journal Science in October. It has now been recognised by the journal's editors as the most important scientific accomplishment of this year. It is part of a scientific top 10 that ranges from space science to genetics. The first fossils of the species, Ardipithecus ramidus , were unearthed in 1994. Scientists recognised their importance immediately. But the very poor condition of the ancient bones meant that it took researchers 15 years to excavate and analyse them. " It's not a chimp. It's not a human. It shows us what we used to be " Professor Tim White University of California, Berkeley The most important thing to emerge from that excavation was the partial skeleton of a female creature, which has now been nicknamed "Ardi". An international team of scientists unveiled the skeleton in a series of scientific papers published in Science in October. Their careful examination of its skull, teeth, pelvis, hands and feet revealed that Ardi shared a mixture of "primitive" traits shared with its predecessors, and "derived" features, which it shared with later hominids, or human-like creatures. It shared some of these derived features with humans. Professor Tim White from the University of California, Berkeley in the US, was one of the lead scientists working on the project. "This is not an ordinary fossil. It's not a chimp. It' s not a human. It shows us what we used to be," he told Science Magazine at the time the research was published. One of his team's key conclusions was that Ardi walked upright. This was based on the painstaking reassembly of its very badly crushed pelvis, which the scientists said had a shape that would have allowed Ardi to balance on one leg at a time. Evolution debate Professor White said that some researchers had been sceptical about these conclusions. "Some people have looked at the pelvis and said, 'my gosh, that's fairly squashed. Are you sure you knew how to put it together correctly?' So we're responding to that," he told Science magazine. Ardipithecus was even more primitive than the famous "Lucy" fossil - a 3.2 million year old Australopithecus skeleton that was discovered in 1974. Professor Chris Stringer, a palaeontologist from the Natural History Museum in London said that Ardi was likely "a remnant of a more ancient stage of human evolution" than Lucy. "[It was] closer in many ways to the ancestor we shared with our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, more than six million years ago," he said. The editor-in-chief of Science said that the Ardipithecus research represented a "culmination of 15 years of painstaking, highly collaborative research by 47 scientists of diverse expertise from nine nations." The nine runners up in Science's list of this year's most important breakthroughs were published in a number of scientific journals, including Science, Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The first runner up was Nasa's discovery of magnetised, rapidly rotating neutron stars called pulsars. Others included the discovery that a compound called rapamycin boosted longevity in mice - the first time any drug has stretched a mammal's life span - and advances in gene therapy that could help treat a fatal brain disease. The nine runners up were: Pulsar mystery: Nasa's Fermi gamma-Ray Space Telescope helped identify previously unknown pulsars - highly magnetised and rapidly rotating neutron stars. Extending life: Researchers found the compound rapamycin extends the life span of mice. The discovery was particularly remarkable because the treatment did not start until the mice were middle-aged. Supreme conduction: Materials scientists probed the properties of graphene - highly conductive single-layer sheets of carbon atoms - and started fashioning the material into experimental electronic devices. Plant survival: Scientists discovered the structure of a critical molecule that helps plants survive during droughts. This could help in the design of new ways to protect crops against prolonged dry periods. Laser tool: The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California unveiled the world's first X-ray laser, a powerful research tool capable of taking snapshots of chemical reactions as they happen and studying materials in unprecedented detail. Gene Therapy: European and US researchers made progress in treating a fatal brain disease, inherited blindness, and a severe immune disorder by developing new strategies involving gene therapy . Magnetic monopoly: Physicists working with strange crystalline materials called spin ices created magnetic ripples that behaved like " magnetic monopoles" - fundamental particles with only one magnetic pole . Watery Moon: Nasa discovered water vapour in the debris when it deliberately crashed a rocket near the south pole of the Moon. The experiment was part of the space agency's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission. Hubble Repair: A final repair mission by space shuttle astronauts gave the Hubble telescope sharper vision, enabling it to produce some of its most spectacular images yet.

Firefox 3.6 released

2009-12-18T12:37:00.000+07:00

Mozilla, racing to release Firefox 3.6 by the end of the year , issued a fifth, and likely final, beta version of the new browser. The open-source browser backer announced the new Firefox beta (download for Windows and Mac OS X ) in a blog announcement Thursday. Firefox 3.6 builds in a feature called Personas for customizing the browser's appearance, adds the File interface for better file management such as selecting what to upload, and, my personal favorite, placement of new tabs next to the ones that spawned them . A total of 127 bugs were fixed since the fourth beta, but this time Mozilla didn't announce any new features . The first Firefox 3.6 beta arrived in October. Mozilla had considered issuing its first Firefox 3.6 release candidate this week: "If we can go to build today or tomorrow, QA [quality assurance] will scrap Beta 5 and we'll release RC to the beta audience ASAP," the Mozilla meeting notes said.

Firefox and Adobe top

2009-12-18T12:31:00.000+07:00

Firefox was the application that had the most reported vulnerabilities this year, while holes in Adobe software more than tripled from a year ago, according to statistics compiled by Qualys, a vulnerability management provider. Qualys tallied 102 vulnerabilities that were found in Firefox this year, up from 90 last year. The numbers are based on running totals in the National Vulnerability Database . However, the high number of Firefox vulnerabilities doesn't necessarily mean the Web browser actually has the most bugs; it just means it has the most reported holes. Because the software is open source, all holes are publicly disclosed, whereas proprietary software makers, like Adobe and Microsoft, typically only publicly disclose holes that were found by researchers outside the company, and not ones discovered internally, Qualys Chief Technology Officer Wolfgang Kandek said late on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Adobe took the second-place spot from Microsoft this year. The number of vulnerabilities in Adobe programs rose from 14 last year to 45 this year, while those in Microsoft software dropped from 44 to 41 , according to Qualys. Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and Microsoft Office together had 30 vulnerabilities. A shift in focus The numbers illustrate the trend of attackers turning their focus away from operating systems and toward applications, Kandek said. "Operating systems have become more stable and harder to attack and that's why attackers are migrating to applications, he said. "Adobe is a huge focus for attacks now, around 10 more than Microsoft Office. However, other widely used targets like Internet Explorer and Firefox are still far from secure." Research from F-Secure earlier this year provides further evidence that holes in Adobe applications are being targeted more than Microsoft apps. During the first three months of 2009 , F-Secure discovered 663 targeted attack files, the most popular type being PDFs at nearly 50 percent, followed by Microsoft Word at nearly 40 percent, Excel at 7 percent, and PowerPoint at 4.5 percent. That compared with Word representing nearly 35 percent of all 1 ,968 targeted attacks in 2008 , followed by Reader at more than 28 percent, Excel at nearly 20 percent, and PowerPoint at nearly 17 percent. As a result, Adobe needs to respond the way Microsoft did in 2002 when it launched its Trustworthy Computing initiative , and make securing its software a company-wide priority, researchers say . F-Secure even recommended that people stop using Reader and use an alternative PDF reader. Adobe has taken some action, announcing in May that it would release its security updates on a regular schedule, quarterly and coinciding with every third Microsoft Patch Tuesday. Another study released this week focuses on which applications are the riskiest to users. Based on the most severe vulnerabilities in popular applications that run on Windows and which are not updated automatically, Firefox again tops the list, followed by Adobe Reader and Apple QuickTime, according to Bit9 , a provider of application whitelisting technology. The list of risky software compiled by Bit9 based on the National Vulnerability Database also includes Java, Flash Player, Safari , Shockwave, Acrobat, Opera, Real Player, and Trillian. Last year, the Bit9 list of the most risky apps included Skype, Yahoo IM, and AOL IM, but those three were not on this year's list. Not included on the list are programs from Microsoft and Google because of the ability for users of their software to have patches installed automatically. Microsoft software can be automatically and centrally updated via the Microsoft Systems Management Server and Windows Server Update Services, and Google Chrome is automatically updated when users are on the Internet, Bit9 said. The lists do not take into account the amount of time it takes for companies to release patches, particularly when there is an exploit in the wild. Bit9 noted that Microsoft Internet Explorer was given an "honorable mention" because of a zero- day vulnerability related to ActiveX that went unpatched for three weeks in July . Microsoft isn't alone in taking longer than customers would like to fix holes. In March , Adobe released a patch for a zero-day vulnerability in Reader and Acrobat--about two weeks after it was disclosed to users and nearly two months after exploits had been discovered in the wild. Adobe customers will have to wait about a month for a fix to the latest critical zero-day hole in Reader and Acrobat. The company announced on Wednesday it would not patch the vulnerability until its next scheduled quarterly security update release on January 12.

Youtube now in movie deal

2009-12-18T12:22:00.000+07:00

A producer from Uruguay who uploaded a short film to YouTube in November 2009 has been offered a $30 m (£18.6 m) contract to make a Hollywood film. The movie will be sponsored by director Sam Raimi, whose credits include the Spiderman and Evil Dead films. Fede Alvarez's short film "Ataque de Panico!" ( Panic Attack!) featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and was made on a budget of $ 300 (£186). So far it has had more than 1.5 million views on YouTube. "I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios," he told the BBC's Latin American service BBC Mundo. "It was amazing, we were all shocked." The movie Mr Alvarez has been asked to produce is a sci-fi film to be shot in Uruguay and Argentina. He says he intends to start from scratch and develop a new story for the project. "If some director from some country can achieve this just uploading a video to YouTube, it obviously means that anyone could do it," he added. YouTube recently revealed the most watched videos of 2009. Britain's Got Talent star Susan Boyle topped the chart with more than 120 million views worldwide of her debut on the show.

Deepest volcano caugth on video

2009-12-18T12:17:00.000+07:00

Extraordinary video has been obtained in the Pacific Ocean of the deepest undersea eruption ever recorded. The pictures show lavas bursting into the water at the West Mata submarine volcano, which is sited about 200 km (125 miles) south-west of the Samoas. The US Jason robotic submersible had to descend over 1 ,100 m to acquire the high definition video. The vehicle found microbes and a specialized volcano-dwelling shrimp thriving in hot, acidic waters. "It's an extraordinary environment," said Joseph Resing, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Washington and the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean in Seattle, US. "You have molten lavas at 1 ,400 C producing acidic fluids - the sulphur dioxide makes these fluids as acidic as pH1.4 - and yet microbes are thriving," he told BBC News. "The magmatic gases sustain and provide energy for microbial life, and then the microbes provide energy for the shrimp. "We see them very close to the volcano - within metres." Dr Resing has been describing the volcano's behaviour here at the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth scientists. Rock recycling The West Mata submarine volcano is about 9 km long and 6 km wide. The base is some 3 km down. Its setting is very close to the 10 ,000 m-deep Tonga-Kermadec Trench. This is where the Pacific Tectonic Plate, which comprises much of the central ocean floor, dives under (subducted) the Australian Plate. It is a key location for the recycling of rock back into the interior of the Earth and it is where molten material can also then force its way back up to the surface. The possible existence of the eruption was first identified in November 2008 through water samples recovered from the ocean that contained anomalously high levels of hydrogen and volcanic debris. But it was not until a full scale expedition took place in May this year and Jason was able to go down and investigate West Mata that scientists realised the magnificence of the discovery. Lava flows Jason, which is operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), moved to within 3 m of the erupting volcano. The vehicle's high-definition camera captured large molten lava bubbles about a metre across bursting into cold seawater, and it saw glowing red vents explosively ejecting lava into the sea. It is said to be the first-observed advance of lava flows across the deep-ocean seafloor. Jason's two robotic arms collected samples of rocks, hot spring waters, the microbes, and the shrimp. To find and study animal life in such a location was fascinating, said Tim Shank, a WHOI macro- biologist on the expedition. "The animal life you see down there has evolved over millions of years to take advantage of the situation. Virtually every species down on the sea floor at vents has some sort of novel adaptation," he told reporters at the AGU meeting. "Shrimp have modified eye forms, and modified claws to enable them to scrape certain types of bacteria. This is where fundamental planetary processes like eruptions meet life, so it has profound implications for me as a biologist looking at the evolution of life on this planet." Researchers say the volcano is spewing boninite lavas, believed to be among the hottest erupting on Earth in modern times, and a type only seen before on extinct volcanoes older than a million years. "Having a very fresh occurrence - it hasn't been altered by the ravages of time - and having a known date of eruption gives us the ability to study many different aspects of the rock, including radioactive tracers which will give us the rates of these processes - i.e. how long it takes for this recycling [at subduction zones] to occur." The West Mata expedition was funded by the US National Science Foundation and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Coldest place found on the moon

2009-12-17T17:38:00.000+07:00

The Moon has the coldest place in the Solar System measured by a spacecraft. Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has used its Diviner instrument to probe the insides of permanently shadowed craters on Earth's satellite. It found mid-winter, night-time surface temperatures inside the coldest craters in the northern polar region can dip as low as minus 249 C (26 Kelvin). "The Moon has one of the most extreme thermal environments of any body in the Solar System," said Prof David Paige. "During the middle of the day, temperatures can get up to about 400 K (127 C) at the equator; and at the poles at night, they can get very cold," the Diviner principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles, added. Prof Paige has been describing his instrument's latest findings here at the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth scientists. Diviner was part of the suite of instruments launched on LRO in June this year and has been operating continuously since it was switched on in July. In October, the spacecraft found itself in the perfect position to witness summer solstice in the Moon's southern hemisphere and winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. The Moon does have seasons - just about. The tilt of the lunar axis is 1.54 degrees. For most places, this makes no difference, but as Prof Paige explained, at the poles, this gives rise to a small, three-degree change in the elevation of the Sun on the horizon through the course of a year. "This results in a significant variation in the extent of shadows and temperatures," he said. Diviner observed the lowest summer temperatures in the darkest craters at the southern pole to be about 35 K (-238 C); but in the north, close to the winter solstice the instrument recorded a temperature of just 26 K on the south- western edge of the floor of Hermite Crater. There were also areas on the southern edges of the floors of Peary and Bosch Craters that got almost as cold. Calculations suggest one would have to travel to a distance beyond the Kuiper Belt - well beyond the orbit of Neptune - to find objects with surfaces this cold. "The way you can make something cold is to eliminate all possible other heat sources, and in these craters at the lunar poles they receive no direct sunlight and the coldest places don't even receive any indirect sunlight," Prof Paige said. "In other words, only what little radiation may be scattered from some distant cliff gets down into these areas; and they just cool off. Finally, they reach an equilibrium temperature down at those low values." The discovery adds further weight to the idea that some craters on the Moon could harbour water-ices for extended periods, and also more volatile substances that require even colder storage temperatures.

Scientists cracked cancer's genetic code

2009-12-17T17:32:00.000+07:00

Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers - skin and lung - a move they say could revolutionise cancer care. Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumours far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Wellcome Trust team. Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer. The UK is looking at breast cancer, Japan at liver and India at mouth. China is studying stomach cancer, and the US is looking at cancers of the brain, ovary and pancreas. " These catalogues are going to change the way we think about individual cancers " Wellcome Trust scientist Professor Michael Stratton The International Cancer Genome Consortium scientists from the 10 countries involved say it will take them at least five years and many hundreds of thousands of dollars to complete this mammoth task. But once they have done this, patients will reap the benefits. Professor Michael Stratton, who is the UK lead, said: "These catalogues are going to change the way we think about individual cancers. "By identifying all the cancer genes we will be able to develop new drugs that target the specific mutated genes and work out which patients will benefit from these novel treatments. "We can envisage a time when following the removal of a cancer cataloguing it will become routine." It could even be possible to develop MoT-style blood tests for healthy adults that can check for tell-tale DNA patterns suggestive of cancer. Russian roulette The scientists found the DNA code for a skin cancer called melanoma contained more than 30 , 000 errors almost entirely caused by too much sun exposure. " Most of the time the mutations will land in innocent parts of the genome, but some will hit the right targets for cancer " Wellcome Trust researcher Dr Peter Campbell The lung cancer DNA code had more than 23 ,000 errors largely triggered by cigarette smoke exposure. From this, the experts estimate a typical smoker acquires one new mutation for every 15 cigarettes they smoke. Although many of these mutations will be harmless, some will trigger cancer. Wellcome Trust researcher Dr Peter Campbell, who conducted this research, published in the journal Nature, said: "It's like playing Russian roulette. "Most of the time the mutations will land in innocent parts of the genome, but some will hit the right targets for cancer." By quitting smoking, people could reduce their cancer risk back down to "normal" with time, he said. The suspicion is lung cells containing mutations are eventually replaced with new ones free of genetic errors. By studying the cancer catalogues in detail, the scientists say it should be possible to find exactly which lifestyle and environmental factors trigger different tumours. Treatment and prevention Tom Haswell, who was successfully treated 15 years ago for lung cancer, believes the research will benefit the next generation: "For future patients I think it's tremendous news because hopefully treatments can be targeted to their particular genome mutations, hopefully... reducing some of the side effects we get". Cancer experts have applauded the work. The Institute of Cancer Research said: "This is the first time that a complete cancer genome has been sequenced and similar insights into other cancer genomes are likely to follow. "As more cancer genomes are revealed by this technique, we will gain a greater understanding of how cancer is caused and develops, improving our ability to prevent, treat and cure cancer." Professor Carlos Caldas, from Cancer Research UK's Cambridge Research Institute called the research "groundbreaking". "Like molecular archaeologists, these researchers have dug through layers of genetic information to uncover the history of these patients' disease. "What is so new in this study is the researchers have been able to link particular mutations to their cause. "The hope and excitement for the future is that we will eventually have detailed picture of how different cancers develop, and ultimately how better to treat and prevent them."

UK consumers enter in digital life

2009-12-17T17:23:00.000+07:00

The UK is one of the world's most advanced countries in terms of digital communications, an Ofcom report says. The telecoms regulator said people in the UK watched more TV and sent more texts than people in many other countries, but had slower broadband. The UK remains the country with the highest proportion of households with digital TV on their main set - at 88 %. The Ofcom study compared the UK with countries including France, Germany, Italy, the US, Poland and Spain. The Netherlands, Sweden and the Irish Republic were among the other countries included in the study. It found the UK had seen the highest average rise in TV viewing in 2008 , up by 3.2 % to 3.8 hours a day. The average time spent watching TV was 3.5 hours per day across the European countries surveyed, although average viewing time fell in France and Germany. The UK's viewing figures were slightly lower than those for Italy, Poland and Spain. Text appeal And people in the US watched the most television in 2008 - an average of 4.6 hours a day, which was up 1.8 % from 2007. The survey also found that the UK was the second highest texting nation in the world, with the volume of outgoing messages estimated to be 83 billion in the year. That was second only to the US, where 830 billion text messages were sent. UK consumers also enjoy the cheapest prices for mobile phones and broadband, while the country also leads the world in online advertising. However, the UK's broadband speeds were not impressive when compared with other countries, Ofcom said. Only 10 % of UK homes could connect at over 8 megabits (Mbps) a second, compared with 37 % in the Netherlands. People in Sweden and France also had much faster speeds than those in the UK. Broadband warning A report earlier this month from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned that the UK risked falling behind rivals if it did not invest in fast broadband. It placed the UK 21 st out of 30 countries in terms of network speeds. The OECD suggested that countries that invested in fibre networks were likely to see the best economic returns in other areas. The UK's broadband population currently stands at nearly 18 million and take-up of the technology is good but there are concerns about how quickly the UK is rolling out super-fast services. The UK government would like everyone in the country to have access to broadband speeds of 2 Mbps by 2012. And it wants to see super-fast broadband available to 90 % of the country by the end of 2017. Superfast broadband is generally regarded as speeds of 50 Mbps or above.

Youth group win wi-fi

2009-12-17T17:17:00.000+07:00

Mother and toddler groups, youth clubs and unemployment centres are among the winners of a competition offering free wi-fi to remote areas. From the Orkney Islands to southern Cornwall, 46 communities have been chosen to receive free wi-fi for a minimum of three years. The competition was launched by wi-fi hotspot firm Freerunner. The firm uses a combination of broadband, satellite and 3 G to connect remote communities. The connections will be paid for by a combination of advertisements and corporate sponsorship. Rural town Stromness in Orkney is a typical winner. The pier is a gathering point for both tourists and locals and having wi-fi installed will benefit a range of groups including local artists, the Ladies Lifeboat Guild and the Fisherman's Co- operative. Other winners include a church in the Midlands which is working with refugees and asylum seekers, a community centre in Stirling running a group for mothers and toddlers and a youth club in Devon. "The Freerunner mission is to give everyone free access to fast wi-fi whether you are in a coffee shop in the West End of London or a community centre in the suburbs of Newcastle," said chief executive Owen Geddes. "It is incredible to think that a small piece of relatively low cost technology is going to fundamentally change nearly 50 communities across the UK," he said. Broadband supplier BE is the first sponsor to the scheme and will roll out free broadband to those with no connection. "We agree that wi-fi should be more widely available," said Tom Williams, head of operations at BE Broadband. Ian Johnson is a project leader for the Black Country Learning Academy which is among the winners. "Many people in our area have never been online and know little about IT. Wi-fi means we can set up new internet-enabled computers allowing us to run more ...courses, improving the employment prospects of people across the region." The UK government has pledged to provide broadband running at a minimum speed of 2 Mbps (megabits per second) to all homes by 2012.

Two super earth discovered

2009-12-16T20:14:00.001+07:00

Planet-hunters have discovered two "super- Earths" orbiting two nearby
Sun-like stars. These rocky planets are larger than the Earth but
much smaller than ice giants such as Uranus and Neptune. Scientists
say the discoveries are a step towards finding potentially habitable
planets - smaller planets that are comparable to the Earth. Details
of the new planets are described in two papers in the Astrophysical
Journal. Two US-based scientists led the international research
effort - Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institution's Department of
Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington and Steven Vogt of the University
of California, Santa Cruz. They combined several years' worth of data
from the W M Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and the Anglo-Australian
Telescope in New South Wales, Australia. " The discovery of
potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away "
Steven Vogt University of California, Santa Cruz By detecting the
subtle "wobbling" of the stars, caused by the gravitational tug of
orbiting planets, the researchers were able to determine each
planet's size and orbit. The scientists saw evidence of three of these
" low-mass planets" orbiting a star called 61 Virginis, which is just
28 light-years from Earth and is visible with the naked eye in the
constellation of Virgo. The smallest of the three was five times the
mass of Earth, and orbited the star once every four days. Dr Butler
said that the signal produced by this planet was one of the smallest
ever detected. "One has to be very cautious when you claim a
discovery," he said. "What gives us confidence is that we see the
signal from two separate telescopes, and the two signals match up
perfectly." The other newly-discovered system was orbiting the star
HD 1461 , which is 76 light-years from Earth. The researchers found
clear evidence for a planet 7.5 times the mass of Earth, and possible
indications of two others. Both stars resemble our Sun in size and
age. The planets have orbits too close to their stars to support life
or liquid water. But, according to Dr Butler, they point the way
toward finding other planets in similar orbits around nearby "M-
dwarfs" - stars that are typically less than half the mass of the
Sun. "These sorts of planets around M-dwarfs actually would be in a
liquid water zone," he said. "So we are knocking on the door right
now of being able to find habitable planets." Professor Vogt said:
"These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common
around nearby stars. "The discovery of potentially habitable nearby
worlds may be just a few years away."

Microsoft blogging faces problem

2009-12-16T20:12:00.001+07:00

Microsoft has indefinitely suspended its Chinese microblogging
service MSN Juku after admitting that it "copied" code used to create
the site. A vendor contracted to work for the software giant was
caught lifting code from a rival Canadian start-up, Plurk. According
to Plurk as much as 80 % of the basecode was "stolen directly".
Microsoft apologised to Plurk, saying "we are obviously very
disappointed but we assume responsibility for this situation".
Microsoft China launched Juku in November. Bloggers and Taiwanese
users of rival service Plurk first alerted the Canadian firm to the
fact that a large amount of the base code appeared to have been
stolen. Plurk responded: "We were shocked and outraged when we saw
with our own eyes the cosmetic similarities Microsoft's new offering
had with Plurk....Microsoft China's offering ripped off our service."
'Daylight robbery' It was not just the look and feel of the site, that
was the same. "On closer inspection we found that much of the
codebase and data structures... are identical snapshots of our code.
That it is Microsoft doing the copying in broad daylight makes it
even more incredulous," Plurk said. Microsoft was quick to issue an
apology. "The vendor has now acknowledged that a portion of the code
they provided was indeed copied," it said in a statement. "We are a
company that respects intellectual property and it was never our
intent to have a site that was not respectful of the work that
others in the industry have done," it said. "We will be reaching out
to them [Plurk] directly to explain what happened and the steps we
have taken to resolve the situation," it added.

Australia makes web filter

2009-12-16T20:10:00.001+07:00

Australia intends to introduce filters which will ban access to
websites containing criminal content. The banned sites will be
selected by an independent classification body guided by complaints
from the public, said Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. A seven
month trial in conjunction with ISPs found the technology behind the
filter to be 100 % effective. However, that claim has been questioned
and there has been opposition from some internet users. Twitter
users have been voicing their disapproval by adding the search tag "
nocleanfeed" to their comments about the plans. "Successful technology
isn't necessarily successful policy," said Colin Jacobs, a
spokesperson for Electronic Frontiers Australia, a non-profit
organisation that campaigns for online freedom. "We're yet to hear a
sensible explanation of what this policy is for, who it will help,
and why it is worth spending so much taxpayers' money on." Mr Conroy
said the filters included optional extras such as a ban on gambling
sites which ISPs could choose to implement in exchange for a grant.
"Through a combination of additional resources for education and
awareness, mandatory internet filtering of RC (refused
classification)- rated content, and optional ISP-level filtering, we
have a package that balances safety for families and the benefits of
the digital revolution," he said. The filter laws will be introduced
in parliament in August 2010 and will take a year to implement.
'noble aims' "Historical attempts to put filters in place have been
effective up to a point," Dr Windsor Holden, principal analyst at
Juniper Research, told BBC News. The "noble aims" of the filter could
be lost in its implementation, he warned. "Clearly there is a need to
protect younger and more vulnerable users of the net, but one
concern is that it won't just be illegal websites that will be
blocked," he added. "You have to take extreme caution in how these
things are rolled out and the uses to which they' re put."

A smart software invented for ship traking

2009-12-16T20:08:00.001+07:00

Ships could be in and out of European ports much quicker thanks to
smart software that monitors their movements. Developed for Dutch
firm Royal Dirkzwager, the monitoring system tracks ships almost in
real time. It will be used to tell ships to speed up or slow down to
ensure there is a berth for them to unload. As use of the system
increases, it hopes to cut costs, reduce fuel consumption and allow
ports to unload and service ships much faster. Ship spotters Founded
in 1872 , Royal Dirkzwager began by only monitoring ships that pass
in and out of Rotterdam in Holland. Information about ship movements
is valuable to governments, cargo handling companies and maintenance
firms. Paul Wieland, Dirkzwager's manager of logistics and ICT, said
it used to employ people equipped with binoculars to spot which
vessels were in port, which were waiting to unload and which had
just appeared over the horizon. The advent of automatic identification
systems ( AIS) made that job easier, he said, but still limited
Dirkzwager's ability to monitor movements. "We used to have
visibility of shore-to-sea of about 20 miles away from the receiving
station," said Mr Wieland. "But it was very short visibility of a
geographically limited part of the world." As ships move to adopt
space-based identification systems the view that Royal Dirkzwager
has of shipping has opened up enormously. "By interconnecting
networks and using space- based IS we can suddenly see the whole
world," said Mr Wieland. "That's an incredible increase in the
amount of data we can theoretically track and process with our
systems." It has meant a shift from 200 position reports every
second to more than 1 ,000. "We're going to monitoring every few
seconds rather than once a day," Mr Wieland told BBC News. "We were
simply not able to handle that amount of data." To help it cope Royal
Dirkzwager has just turned the key on a monitoring system that
automatically analyses a stream of data to pick out related events.
It is based on the work of former academic Giles Nelson who developed
the Apama software. Dr Nelson originally developed Apama for
financial institutions who had a need to swiftly route information to
key traders no matter where they were. Mr Wieland said Royal
Dirkzwager's monitoring system would help Rotterdam and other
European ports handle ships far faster. Rotterdam handles more than 30
,000 ships per year, he said, and any delay can be very costly.
"We're monitoring the journey of a ship to make sure it is going to a
port that has available berth space to accommodate that ship," said
Mr Wieland. "By following a ship we know when it's passed through
the Suez Canal and we can see it's going to arrive one day early and
that berth will not be free until the next day," he said. "If it's
too early you can, for example, slow it down instead of burning fuel
and arriving too early and taking up anchor space outside the
harbour." "Logistic processes in ports have speeded up." said Mr
Wieland. "The stay becomes shorter and shorter so information about
the arrival of a ship is absolutely critical." It is not just
businesses and governments that are keen to track ship movements,
said Mr Wieland. Royal Dirkzwager was also using it to drive an SMS
alert service for ship spotters who want to know when a particular
cruise liner is in port.

Charge for newspaper reading

2009-12-16T20:05:00.001+07:00

The UK's Guardian newspaper has launched a paid-for news app,
charging users a one-off fee of £2.39. The application, which allows
readers to access content via an iPhone, comes as newspapers around
the globe grapple with how they offer digital content Despite
charging for the app, the Guardian's website and mobile platform will
remain free. The app, by UK developer 2 ergo, will offer news,
comment, features, audio and photos but currently no video. Writing
in his blog about the application, The Guardian's mobile product
manager Jonathon Moore answered criticism of the decision to charge
for it. "At an early stage we decided to set the bar high, which
hopefully means the app has been planned, designed, tested and
developed to offer a truly engaging experience," he said. "The
investment involved in this requires us to ask a small fee in
return," he said. Martin Garner, director of mobile internet at
research firm CCS Insight sees the app as an " experiment". "The app
provides a better user experience but there are still a lot of
substitutes online and via other mobile platforms," he said. "We will
probably see a lot of people move to a more charged-for model over
the next few years but whether users will pay or not remains to be
seen," he said. The debate about how newspapers manage their digital
content is a hot topic at the moment. Earlier this month, Google
agreed to close the backdoor on users entering subscription-based
websites via its search pages by limiting the number of free clicks
they could make.

Nokia N70 in Bangladesh

2009-12-16T20:04:00.001+07:00

We waited so long for this device that we waited even more to test it
and write a review. But after using it we found out that there are so
many things to write that we cannot cover everything in a single
review article. But still we gave it a shot. The Nokia N97 , the
flagship Nokia N-series device, is undoubtedly among the best
smartphones that came out in 2009. It is one of the most powerful,
smartest and fully featured phones that Nokia came out till date.
When we first heard about the N-97 , we could not wait to get our
hands on the product and in this review, we shall tell you how we
used it and how it performed. Nokia N97 , with its large touch screen
display has created craze and additionally the slide out full QWERTY
keyboard just makes the experience even better. Having a physical
keyboard makes it great for heavy texters. When camera phones first
came out it made photography very easy. Then we needed to transfer
the images to a PC and upload them on our Facebook accounts. Image
qualities of N-97 are just brilliant with the 5 Megapixel camera
having Carl Zeiss lens. Its Facebook and Ovi application made photos
uploading and sharing very handy. The Facebook application also lets
you stay connected all the time with friends and the home-screen
Widgets make them even better. The N97 has the best homepage widgets
implementation that we have seen so far. On many phones, widgets are
messy, but Nokia has done a good job at maximising the use of screen
space and the best part is that you can customise it according to your
taste. The outlook of the phone is amazing. The big touch-screen is
resistive and quite responsive to finger presses. The screen is large
measuring 3.5 in diagonally. On the outer side, there's a lock button
on one side of the casing, as well as a camera button, volume key
and micro-USB connector for mains power. There's a converter to both
standard round pin Nokia mains power chargers in the box that it
comes with. The best part is that there's a 3.

Outlook set for more open future

2009-10-28T20:07:00.000+07:00

Microsoft has announced plans to open up the format of the data files used by its e-mail program Outlook. The software giant said it would provide full documentation on the format so non-Microsoft developers can interrogate and use it. Microsoft said it was making the move because data portability was becoming increasingly important to customers and clients. No deadline was given for when the documentation effort will be complete. Microsoft already provides two ways to get at the data Outlook and Exchange servers store about e-mail messages, contacts and calendar entries in a format known as .pst. However, that information can only be accessed if Outlook is installed on a user's desktop or laptop computer. The documentation effort will provide full information about the .pst file format and remove the need to have Outlook installed to get at it. "This documentation is still in its early stages and work is ongoing," wrote Paul Lorimer, group manager, Microsoft Office Interoperability, in a blog post announcing the move. When the documents are complete, Microsoft said they would be released to make it possible for anyone to use the .pst format "on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way". Microsoft said it was already talking to key customers and industry experts to ensure the information it provides is useful. The move could see novel e-mail, contact and calendar clients that work on many different devices. Mr Lorimer said the move was taken as part of Microsoft's commitment to Interoperability Principles that it announced in 2008. Microsoft is not alone in pursuing a more open agenda for its products. Many firms now provide detailed interfaces to their data or software so others can find out how they work and put that information to their own ends. For instance, in September Google set up a Data Liberation Front - a team of engineers whose job it is to ensure that its users can get at their data and do what they want with it.

Facebook memorialises profiles

2009-10-28T20:02:00.000+07:00

Facebook has announced that it will be giving friends and family the option to "memorialise" the profiles of members who have died. It follows some cases of members receiving updates about dead friends. If a user is reported as deceased, Facebook will remove sensitive information such as status updates and contacts. When reporting a death, users must offer " proof" by submitting either an obituary or news article. "When someone leaves us, they don't leave our memories or our social network," Max Kelly, head of security at the firm, wrote in the official Facebook blog. "To reflect that reality, we created the idea of " memorialised" profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed." Memorialised accounts will have new privacy settings so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. Contact information and status updates will be removed and the person will no longer appear in the newly-introduced Suggestions panel which, according to its blog it is designed "to remind people to take actions with friends who need help on Facebook". But there have been some some cases where people were 'reminded' about dead friends or relatives. "We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialised," Mr Kelly wrote in his blog. In separate news, Facebook has once again been targeted by cybercriminals. Security firm Websense has reported thousands of fake messages, purporting to come from Facebook Support, with a malicious payload. The fake message invites users to download a new password as part of ongoing security messages. If users click on it it will download a piece of software which could allow their machine to be taken over by malicious hackers. In one day, Websense has seen 90 ,000 such messages.

Nasa tries again to lunch rocket

2009-10-28T19:57:00.000+07:00

The US space agency will make another attempt to launch a prototype rocket designed to replace the ageing shuttle. Tuesday's launch of the Ares I-X had to be scrubbed due to bad weather, and the forecast for Wednesday is no better. There is just a 40 % chance of acceptable weather for today's launch attempt, according to Nasa. The slender, 100 m-tall Ares I-X vehicle will test technology crucial for the development of a manned craft that could return astronauts to the Moon. A combination of high wind speeds and clouds contributed to Nasa's decision to postpone the launch from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Tuesday. Overnight, the area was lashed by rain and there were four lightning strikes near the launch pad. Nasa is testing the launcher to ensure no issues arise as a result. The experimental craft has a four-hour launch window between 1200 and 1600 GMT (0800 and 1200 EDT) on 28 and 29 October. The craft is the first new launch vehicle that Nasa has designed and built in more than three decades. Prior to the scheduled take-off on Tuesday, a fabric cover designed to protect a probe on the nose of the craft whilst it was on the launch pad became tangled. It was finally released to a round of applause by the mission team. A ship that had sailed into the seas surrounding the launch site caused further delays. Finally, bad weather forced controllers to scrub the event. Winds at ground level were blowing above 20 knots, higher than allowed for launch, and clouds obscured the pad. The flight team was particularly concerned about the cloud coverage, partly because they needed clear skies to watch the flight but also because of a problem known as " triboelectrification". This phenomenon occurs when the rocket encounters water or ice droplets in the clouds. As these collide with the rocket they cause a static charge to build up on its skin, creating interference with radio signals. This is a problem for the 1- X team, which needs clear signals to gather data from 700 sensors wired throughout the vehicle, which are designed to collect flight data. In addition, the team needed to be able to send a signal to a detonator and explosives onboard the craft, which would be used to destroy it in case of an emergency. The slim-line rocket is a prototype of the Ares I craft, part of the Constellation programme intended to return the US to the Moon by 2020. However, a recent report has cast doubt on the future of the programme. The Augustine panel, which had been asked to review the US human spaceflight programme, published its report on 22 October. Although the panel supported the Ares I-X test flight, it questioned the need to develop the Ares I. In particular, the panel queried the cost and design of the craft as well as its development time.

Sky player lunch on XBox delayed

2009-10-28T19:52:00.000+07:00

It was supposed to run like clockwork. The launch of a new service that would give XBox Live users access to dozens of live Sky channels and on-demand TV shows. But Tuesday's 10 am launch didn't quite go according to plan. All some people logging on to the service could see was an error message. It was announced months ago that XBox Live and Sky were going to work together. The idea was to give users on- demand access to shows, as well as some live channels. Toby Doyle, 15 , from Cheltenham was one of those affected. He said: "I was really disappointed when I found out it wasn't working. "There's been lots of hype going on about it and I thought it'd all go well, so I was a bit shocked when it wasn't." Sky statement Sky has apologised and said: "The service has been suspended due to an unforeseen technical issue. "Sky Player engineers are hard at work to resolve the problem. We expect to have the full service available on Wednesday." Eighteen-year-old Liam from Dumfries said that wasn't good enough for him. "I'm quite annoyed. I think they could have done a bit more to let people know they are having problems," he said. This service isn't the only one to suffer problems. Nintendo's Wii has offered users the chance to watch the BBC's iPlayer for months but has also suffered technical problems since September. When the Sky Player service on XBox does get up and running users will be able to sign up to it on a month by month basis. Depending on what package users go for it costs anywhere from £15 to £50. Users also need good broadband speeds, around two meg, to make it work properly and it doesn' t come in HD quality. But, if you are willing to pay, you can see live Premier League football games, get Sky One on- demand and connect with online friends at the same time, using headsets to speak while you're watching.

UK to get tough on file shares

2009-10-28T19:43:00.000+07:00

People who persistently download illegal content will be cut off from the net, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has announced. Speaking at a government-sponsored forum to debate copyright issues he said the UK would introduce a similar policy to France. It means persistent pirates will be sent two warning letters before facing disconnection from the network. The issue has divided the telecoms and media industries. Mr Mandelson said that cutting internet connections would be a "last resort". "I have no expectation of mass suspensions. People will receive two notifications and if it reaches the point [of cutting them off] they will have the opportunity to appeal," he told the audience at the C&binet Forum, a talking shop set up by government to debate the issues facing the creative industries. The pay-off for tough penalties against persistent file-sharers would be a more relaxed copyright regime, Mr Mandelson said. The details of it would need to be hammered out at European level but it would take account of the use of copyright material "at home and between friends", he said. It would mean that, for example, someone who has bought a CD would be able to copy it to their iPod or share it with family members without acting unlawfully. Mr Mandelson praised the UK's creative industries, which are worth around £16 bn and employs 2 million people. ILLEGAL FILE-SHARING File-sharing is not illegal. It only becomes illegal when users are sharing content, such as music, that is protected by copyrights The crackdown will be aimed at people who regularly use technologies, such as BitTorrent, and websites, such as The Pirate Bay, to find and download files There are plenty of legitimate services which use file-sharing technology such as some on-demand TV services But it has been eroded in recent years, he said, by new ways of accessing content. "I was shocked to learn that only one in 20 music tracks in the UK is downloaded legally. We cannot sit back and do nothing," said Mr Mandelson. The fact that young people now expect to download content for free was "morally as well as economically unsustainable," he added. But he emphasised that "legislation and enforcement can only ever be part of the solution". The long-term answer was for the industry to offer new and cheaper ways to download content, he said. In France the government has just approved a so-called three strikes policy. Under its system, those identified as illegally downloading content would initially be sent warning letters and, if they failed to comply, could be removed from the network for up to a year. UK internet service providers have argued that it is not their job to police the network while content providers are keen to get due recompense for artists. At the same forum, Jean-Bernard Levy, chief executive of Vivendi, a French content and internet service provider, called for a tough stance. He believes the UK will damage its economy if it does not follow France and clamp down on internet piracy. "At Vivendi, we are in the content business, we are in the telecom business and there is no internal debate," he told delegates at the C&binet forum. "The priority is not to grow traffic on the ISPs. The priority is that creators, people who develop content, should find a way [to be rewarded]."

Solar superpower: Should Europe run on Sahara sun?

2009-10-26T15:57:00.001+07:00

EVERY two weeks, the sun pours more energy onto the surface of our
planet than we use from all sources in an entire year. It is an
inexhaustible powerhouse that has remained largely untapped for
human energy needs. That may soon change in a big way. If a
consortium of German companies has its way, construction of the
biggest solar project ever devised could soon begin in the Sahara
desert. When completed, it would harvest energy from the sun shining
over Africa and transform it into clean, green electricity for
delivery to European homes and businesses. Prospects for the project,
called Desertec, have blossomed over the past year, and this month
20 major German corporations are expected to announce the formation
of a consortium that will provide the €400 billion needed to build a
raft of solar thermal power plants in north Africa. They include
energy utilities giants E.ON and RWE, the engineering firm Siemens,
the finance house Deutsche Bank and the insurance company Munich Re.
The current plan, outlined by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in a
report to the federal government, envisages that the project will
meet 15 per cent of Europe's electricity needs by 2050 , with a peak
output of 100 gigawatts - roughly equivalent to 100 coal-fired power
stations. Preliminary designs in the German report show electricity
reaching Europe via 20 high-voltage direct-current power lines,
which will keep transmission losses below 10 cent ( New Scientist ,
14 March, p 42). Trans- Mediterranean links will cross from Morocco
to Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar; from Algeria to France via
the Balearic islands; from Tunisia to Italy; from Libya to Greece;
and from Egypt to Turkey via Cyprus. It is claimed that the project
could meet 15 cent of Europe's electricity needs by 2050 Desertec
would take its place in a wider European supergrid that conveys power
generated from wind turbines in the North Sea, hydroelectric dams in
Scandinavia, hot rocks in Iceland and biofuels in eastern Europe.
Adding solar thermal capacity would help ensure a steady supply of
green electricity. But is this really the best use of such a colossal
amount of money? Critics are lining up to point out the project's
shortcomings. They say it could make Europe's energy supply a hostage
to politically unstable countries; that Europe should not be
exploiting Africa in this way; that it is a poor investment compared
to covering Europe's roofs with photovoltaic (PV) solar panels; and
that, while deserts have plenty of sun, they lack another less obvious
but equally indispensable resource for a solar thermal power plant -
water. Is Desertec really the model of future power generation, as
its promoters would have us believe, or is it politically
misconceived and a monumental waste of money?

Amazon suspends wine sales effort

2009-10-26T15:47:00.001+07:00

Amazon.com is apparently shelving its planned effort to sell wine
online. A little more than a year after word of the effort trickled
out , a senior Amazon account manager told wineries in an e-mail that
the company has decided "not to resume shipping." "As you know, we
were excited to work with you to build the AmazonWine business," Dini
Rao said in an e-mail first reported by WineBusiness. com . "For
that reason, this was a very tough choice for us. Many of you took
the time and leap of faith to really support us." Amazon
representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Word of the effort leaked out in September 2008 when a nonprofit
vintner group announced it had partnered with Amazon to drum up
interest from its members to sell wine through the retail giant.
However, its fulfillment partner New Vine Logistics briefly suspended
operations this summer before securing additional financing from
Inertia Beverage Group. Since the Supreme Court ruled in May 2005
that states must grant the same shipping rights to out-of-state and
in-state wineries, winery-to- consumer shipping has become legal in
35 states , according to wine advocacy group Free the Grapes. But
state laws governing direct wine shipping vary greatly, creating an
onerous task in managing compliance. Amazon had dabbled in the wine
business before, investing $30 million for a 45 percent share in
Wineshopper.com in 1999 , a start-up that was acquired by Wine.com in
2000 before going through a series of layoffs. Wine.com has a
storefront on Amazon, through which it sells gourmet food baskets
but not wine.

Netflix streaming coming to PS3

2009-10-26T15:40:00.001+07:00

Netflix online streaming is coming to the PlayStation 3 . A Netflix
press release spelled out the details of deal. The good news is that
the streaming feature--which enables Netflix subscribers to access
thousands of movies and TV shows on- demand via the Internet--is
available at no extra charge beyond the monthly Netflix DVD- by-mail
subscription, which can be as low as $9 a month. (By contrast, Xbox
360 owners also need to subscribe to Xbox Live, which is an extra
$50 per year.) The bad news: PS3 owners will need to put a special
Blu-ray disc in the game console, which will enable streaming via the
Blu-ray's BD Live functionality. That's a departure from all other
Netflix-enabled devices (including the Xbox 360 and other Blu-ray
players), which just have the Netflix option as a built-in feature.
In our experience, tends to be slow and clunky, though it's
generally better on the PS3 than on other Blu-ray players. However,
the press release specifies that the disc will be needed "initially,"
so perhaps a future software upgrade will add Netflix as a built-in
feature on the PS3. Still, the Netflix feature of the 360 has long
been envied by PS3 owners, so its inclusion-- even with the need to
be launched from a disc-- will be welcome news. The Netflix site says
that the feature will be available before the end of the year, and
Netflix subscribers who own a PS3 can reserve a copy of the Netflix
disc as of now. So, what do you guys think: does the addition of
Netflix put the PS3 at the top of the game console heap, or is the
Xbox 360 an all-around better deal? Share your thoughts below.

Acer Takes Interdimensional Leap With New Laptop

2009-10-26T15:14:00.001+07:00

Acer on Thursday announced a notebook with 3-D viewing technology
aimed at gamers and entertainment buffs. The Aspire 5783 DG has a
15.6- inch backlit Acer CineCrystal HD display integrated with a
TriDef 3- D screen. It comes with 3- D software and glasses. CLOSE X
Loading Image... The Acer AS5738 DG 3- D laptop (click image to
enlarge) It also has an integrated multi-in-one media reader and an
HDMI port. The 5783 DG's Tech Specs At the heart of the notebook is
an Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Core Duo T6600 processor with 2 MB of
L2 cache. The notebook also has a Mobile Intel PM45 Express chipset
and 4 GB of DDR2 1 ,066 MHz memory. For graphics, it incorporates
the ATI (Nasdaq: ATYT) Mobility Radeon HD 4570. This has 512 MB
of dedicated DDR3 VRAM and up to1 ,792 MB of shared system memory.
Storage consists of a 320 GB 5 ,400 RPM SATA hard drive. The Aspire
583 DG also has an 8 x DVD-Super multi double-layer drive and four
USB 2.0 ports. For sound, the notebook has Dolby Home Theater Audio
Enhancement and built-in stereo speakers. It provides 5.1- chanel
surround output. The Aspire 5783 DG has integrated 802.11 a/b/g/ n
wireless support and Gigabit Ethernet. It incorporates a built-in
Acer Crystal Eye webcam that can capture still photos and video. The
notebook has a multi-gesture touchpad. The notebook comes with 64- bit
Windows 7 Home Premium preinstalled. It has a six-cell lithium ion
battery and weighs 6.16 pounds. It measures 15.1 by 9.9 by 1.03
inches and uses Acer's Gemstone design. Three-dimensional
capabilities are provided by the TriDef 3- D solution, which consists
of the 3- D screen, software and special glasses. The TriDef Media
Player lets users play back videos and photos in 3- D, and the TriDef
Ignition tool enables 2- D to 3- D conversion for games and
applications supporting Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) DirectX9 and
above. The TriDef Media Player includes 2- D to 3- D conversion
technologies that let users watch standard definition 2- D DVDs in
3- D at run time, according to DDD , the developers of the Tri-Def
technology. DirectX is a collection of application programming
interfaces for handling multimedia tasks, especially game programming
and video, on Microsoft platforms. The first product in the Aspire
5738 DG line, the AS5738 DG-6165 , will be available at retailers in
the United States this week. Pricing starts at US$ 779.99. TriDef and
3- D Technology DDD, a 3 D software and content creator, first
publicly displayed its TriDef technology in 2006 at the Adult
Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. The company's patented technologies
enable features like 3- D viewing without glasses, the integration
of computer graphics applications with 3 D displays; 2- D to 3- D
conversion; and 3- D transmission over existing networks. Several
electronics manufacturers use TriDef in their products. Sanyo
demonstrated LCD screens with TriDef at the 2004 CEBIT sow
Targeting the Gamers The Aspire 5738 DG notebook is aimed at gamers as
well as business users. "This holiday season, we are seeing 3- D
content become more prevalent in popular films and games," said Ray
Sawall, senior manager of product marketing for Acer America. "The
new Acer Aspire 5738 DG notebook enables consumers to enjoy exciting
new 3- D entertainment on a mobile PC that can also replicate a 3- D
experience from standard 2- D content." Targeting both markets might
work, Laura DiDio, principal at ITIC , told TechNewsWorld. "I can
see the appeal to business users," she said. " We've all been stuck on
public transport or sitting in planes, or stuck at airports doing our
work, but sometimes we just need junk food for the mind, and that's
where the games capability comes in." At this point, the Aspire 5738
DG is not a threat to video game console makers, she said. "It'll
sell in parallel with video game consoles," DiDio explained. "But in
18 months or so, when quad- or six-core processors become more
standard in notebooks and we see more filter down to ATI and Nvidia
graphics cards, these notebooks might pose a threat." With
competition so keen in the computer market, manufacturers are
grasping at anything they can to make their products stand out. "
Hardware vendors are really stepping up the game," DiDio said. Dell
(Nasdaq: DELL) , for example, lets users overclock its latest gaming
notebook, and it's letting customers choose not only the colors for
their computers but also logos, such as those of their favorite
baseball teams. "The competition is fierce at every price point, and
it's going to remain that way," DiDio said. 3- D or Not 3- D? Whether
or not 3- D technology will help Acer's products stand out remains to
be seen. Japanese electronics manufacturer Sharp unveiled its Actius
RD3 D in 2004. That computer weighed 12 pounds and cost about $3
,000. Sharp's 3 D computer has not been heard of since, according to
DiDio. "It sank without a trace," she said. Its fate may be a warning
for Acer. 3- D is really a gimmick right now, Carl Howe, director of
anywhere research at the Yankee Group , told TechNewsWorld. "While a
3- D display sounds cool, 3- D is irrelevant for most office work,"
Howe pointed out.

The Young and the Twitterless

2009-10-26T15:08:00.001+07:00

hey think it's pointless, narcissistic. Some don't Even so, more young
adults and teens -- normally at the cutting edge of technology --
are finally coming around to Twitter , using it for class or work,
monitoring the minutiae of It's not always love at first tweet,
though. Many of them are doing it grudgingly, perhaps because a
friend pressures them or a teacher or boss makes them try the 140-
character "I still find no point to using it. I'm the type of person
who likes to talk to someone," says Austyn Gabig, a sophomore at the
University of California, San Diego, who only joined Twitter this
month because she heard Ellen DeGeneres was going to use tweets as a
way to win tickets DeGeneres set off a frenzy on the UCSD campus
when she promised the tickets to those who, minutes of the tweet,
e-mailed her cellphone photos of themselves wearing a red towel and
standing with someone in a uniform. Gabig got the tweet, found a towel
-- and won Twitter Denial, Then Acceptance She might think she won't
tweet again, but social networking expert David Silver predicts
she'll change her mind. "Every semester, Twitter is the one technology
that students are most resistant to," says Silver, a media studies
professor at the University of San Francisco, where he regularly
teaches a class on how to use various Internet applications. "But
it's also the one they end up using the most." It is a rare instance,
he and others say, of young people adopting an Internet application
after many of their older counterparts have already done so. Their
slowness to warm to Twitter comes in part from a fondness for the ease
and directness of text messaging and other social networking
services that most of their friends already use. Many also are under
the false impression that their Twitter pages have to be public,
which is unappealing to a generation that's had privacy drilled into
them.

Windows 7 Draws New PC Designs Out of the Woodwork

2009-10-26T15:00:00.001+07:00

lthough no one waits in long lines for a new edition of Windows
anymore, the debut of (Nasdaq: MSFT) latest software that runs
PCs is part of why buying a computer is starting to feel fun for the
first time in years. is expected to work better than its predecessor,
Vista. At the same time, Microsoft's has gotten savvier, and PC
makers (Nasdaq: AAPL) lead by improving hardware design. Computers
with the Windows operating system suddenly seem a lot "If you line up
the six or seven most interesting PC designs, people will say, 'Wow.
I didn't know all of that could be done with a PC,'" Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer said in an interview. Liking It, Not Just Tolerating It
Windows 7 , which became available Thursday, is designed to look
cleaner than Vista, streamlining the ways people can get to work, with
fewer clicks and fewer annoying notifications. Setting up home
networking to share photos and music won't require an advanced
degree in information technology. Plugging in a new device won't set
off a mad hunt online for driver software, which tells the equipment
how to work with an operating system. Making a version of Windows
that people like, rather than tolerate, is critical for Microsoft.
Most people don't choose Windows as much as they end up with it,
because it's familiar and affordable. However, it's conceivable
Microsoft will have to work harder to win people over, thanks to a
small but growing threat from Apple's Macs and a forthcoming PC
operating system from Web search nemesis Google ( Nasdaq: GOOG) .
Vista fell flat because it didn't work with many existing programs
and hardware. Microsoft fixed many of Vista's flaws but didn't spread
the word, instead allowing Apple to attack with ads that pit a dorky
office stiff (PC) against a casual creative type (Mac) and paint Vista
PCs as unjustifiably complex.

Apple punts on lower-cost MacBook

2009-10-26T14:35:00.001+07:00

$999 is as low as Apple will go. (Credit: Apple) By not coughing up a
low-cost MacBook, as some had expected , Apple has ceded a
potentially huge market to PC makers. But is this just all part of
Apple's marketing genius? during the third quarter, putting it right
behind Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Acer. Comparatively, overall PC
shipments in the U.S. grew by 3.5 percent from a year earlier. But
among those unimpressive overall PC numbers (HP's third-quarter
shipments grew only 2.7 percent), was an impressive statistic for
Acer: buoyed by Netbooks, Acer's shipments grew by 61.4 percent
year-over-year, and it blew past Dell to become the No. 2 PC maker
worldwide based on this growth. Granted, Netbooks are a relatively
low-profit segment (i.e., profit on a $400 Netbook is going to be a
lot less than that on a $999 laptop). Nevertheless, they're a hot
market. Intel CEO Paul Otellini has stated numerous times that Intel
was able to create a market that grew faster than either the iPhone
or Nintendo Wii . Case in point: Windows 7 -based Acer Netbooks are
now big on the Home Shopping Network-- which claims to have sold more
than 5 ,000 in one segment on Saturday. And that's not the only
market Apple is punting on. A new category of inexpensive, thin
laptops has emerged with the roll-out of Windows 7 on Thursday.
Like Netbooks, these laptops are light (typically 4 pounds) and
don't include an optical drive. But they are relatively powerful and
full featured. The 15.6-inch Acer Aspire Timeline , for example,
with a 320 GB hard disk drive and dual- core Intel processor is fairly
well-endowed at only $500. Apple is not receiving a lot kudos in the
mainstream business press by sticking to its $999 guns. The Wall
Street Journal said that users can get roughly equivalent laptops
for a lot less at Dell and HP. And other publications have said
that Apple is not just ignoring new market realities but, in fact,
ignoring the Mac lineup as a whole in favor of the iPhone . So, do
consumers lose by not getting the chance to buy a competitive
low-cost Apple MacBook? The short answer to that rhetorical questions
is yes--because Apple offers no alternative to, for example, a thin,
light $650 HP Pavilion dm3 laptop. But an apples-to-apples (pun not
intended) comparison shows that while Apple skimps on a couple of
white MacBook features, it's not an egregiously bad deal for $999.
Let's do a quick side-by-side of the cheapest MacBook with a
mainstream HP laptop. • For $999, you get white polycarbonate wrapped
around a 13.3- inch 1280- by-800 LED- backlit glossy widescreen
display, a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of memory, a
250 GB (5400 RPM) hard disk drive, an optical drive, and the standard
wireless features. All in a 4.7- pound package. • For $997, HP will
sell you (online) an HP Pavilion dv3 t series with a 13.3- inch 1280-
by- 800 LED-backlit glossy widescreen display, 2. 0 GHz Intel Core 2
Duo processor, 4 GB of memory, a 500 GB (5400 RPM) hard disk drive,
an optical drive, and the standard wireless features. Also, in 4.7-
pound package. Apple beats the HP by a hair in the processor category
and loses in the memory and storage departments. If polycarbonate
is, in fact, better than the plastics HP uses, then that aspect of
the design would be a win for Apple. The real win, though, is for
Apple the company. It avoids the cut-throat sub-$900 laptop market
and still sells--quite profitably--a lot of laptops. But will Apple be
able to snub this growing market of inexpensive Windows 7 laptops
indefinitely? We should know in about six months when Gartner
reports first-quarter 2010 numbers.

Firefox's crossroads: Cutting-edge or mainstream?

2009-10-25T21:33:00.001+07:00

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--John Lilly wants it both ways. Working at
Mozilla Corporation since 2005 and as chief executive since early
2008 , he helped oversee a remarkable achievement. Mozilla has built
the Firefox browser from a largely unsuccessful remnant of the
Netscape era of the 1990 s into the browser that nearly a quarter of
people on the Web use . Now the challenges are different. First, for
new growth, Mozilla must make its open-source browser appeal to an
even more mainstream crowd, one that's more interested in working
and playing online than in sticking it to Microsoft or being part of
a cause. Second, it's got to keep the loyalty of the technically
savvy early adopters and Web developers that Google now has been
courting with its Chrome browser. "We have to do both," Lilly said in
an interview at Mozilla headquarters here. "We have to be a better
browser for your standard everyday user of the Web who uses IE now,
but I think we have to redouble our efforts to be good for Web
developers." The world changed for Mozilla when Chrome burst onto
the scene in 2008 . Mozilla didn't see itself as complacent, but
Chrome was a wake-up call that "clarified some of our priorities,"
Lilly said, including snappy performance. "It made some things real
crisp," Lilly said. Indeed, in the months after Chrome's arrival,
these priorities appeared in Mozilla's Firefox planning: "Observable
improvements in user- perceptible performance metrics such as
start-up, time to open a new tab, and responsiveness when interacting
with the user interface. Common user tasks should feel faster and
more responsive." And future versions of Firefox likely will look
more like Chrome embracing some of its less obtrusive framing of
Web content and applications. 'Web-native' Google Mozilla's biggest
rivals before, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari ,
came from companies firmly rooted in the era of desktop computers
and operating systems. Not so Google, which not only has Web-based
applications such as Google Docs and Gmail to support, but also a
browser-based operating system called Chrome OS. "Competing was hard
but at some level simple. Google is much more Web-native," Lilly
said.

Universal phone charger OK'd

2009-10-25T21:17:00.001+07:00

A standard for a universal phone charger was approved this week by
the International Telecommunication Union, a branch of the United
Nations. The Universal Charging Solution will enable the creation of
one-size-fits-all chargers that can be used on any future phone,
according to the ITU . The standard is based on input from the GSM
Association, which expects the shift to eliminate 51 ,000 tons of
redundant chargers, or 13.6 million tons of greenhouse gas
emissions each year. Based on Micro-USB , the new chargers will also
be energy efficient. "Universal chargers are a common-sense solution
that I look forward to seeing in other areas," Malcolm Johnson,
director of ITU's telecommunication standardization bureau, said in
a statement. Manufacturers are not required to adopt the new
chargers, but some have already signed up, such as Sony Ericsson,
according to the BBC .

Nokia pushes back N900 Net tablet

2009-10-25T19:06:00.001+07:00

Nokia has delayed the release of its N900 Internet tablet. The N900 was previously set to arrive in October--and Nokia's preorder site still states that. However, it is now set for release "during November," Peter Schneider, head of Maemo marketing at Nokia, said Thursday in a post . Schneider did not state the reason for the delay, but Reuters reported that the company is waiting for more feedback from developers. N900 , which costs $649 , is part cell phone and part computer . It's considered a potential game-changer for Nokia, which is pushing it as "fusing the power of the computer, the Internet and the mobile phone." The device uses Nokia's Linux-based Maemo 5 operating system to offer multitasking, Web browsing via Mozilla, a touch screen, and slide-out keyboard. It includes an ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 1 GB of application memory, and 32 GB of storage (expandable to 48 GB with a MicroSD card). It measures 4.4 inches by 2.4 inches and features a 3.5- inch widescreen display.The device also sports a 5- megapixel camera.

Carl Icahn resigns from Yahoo board of directors

2009-10-25T19:02:00.001+07:00

Carl Icahn, who launched a shareholder insurrection at Yahoo last year over its handling of a takeover offer from Microsoft, is leaving Yahoo's board of directors. MarketWatch reported Friday that Icahn has informed the company he's moving on to other interests. It's been a over a year since he forced his way onto the board after expressing his displeasure at Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft's offer to acquire the company , which at one point was valued at $33 a share. Yahoo's stock closed at $17.22 on Friday. Yahoo confirmed Icahn's departure, and said in a statement: "Carl has been an important member of our Board and has helped us through some significant transitions. We are all grateful for his active role shaping the future of Yahoo." Icahn has recently turned his famously wandering eye to struggling financier CIT Group, offering it a $6 billion loan . In a letter to Yahoo, he said "I don't believe that it is necessary at this time to have an activist on the Board of Yahoo and currently, my attention is focused on other matters." He expressed his support for CEO Carol Bartz and the pending search deal with Microsoft , two strategic decisions that he said he was " proud to have played a role" in bringing to fruition. "Carol is doing a great job and I believe the Microsoft transaction will provide great long term benefits, the potential of which many still do not understand," Icahn wrote in the letter. His departure leaves Yahoo with 11 board members, which will decrease again to 10 when current director Maggie Wilderotter leaves at the end of the year.