US team's battery 'breakthrough'

17 April 2013 Last updated at 14:23 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

A new type of battery has been developed that, its creators say, could revolutionise the way we power consumer electronics and vehicles.

The University of Illinois team says its use of 3D-electrodes allows it to build "microbatteries" that are many times smaller than commercially available options, or the same size and many times more powerful.

It adds they can be recharged 1,000 times faster than competing tech.

However, safety issues still remain.

Details of the research are published in the journal Nature Communications.

Battery breakthrough

The researchers said their innovation should help address the issue that while smartphones and other gadgets have benefited from miniaturised electronics, battery advances have failed to keep pace.

Batteries work by having two components - called electrodes - where chemical reactions occur.

In simple terms, the anode is the electrode which releases electrons as a result of a process called oxidation when the battery is being used as a power source.

The cathode is the electrode on the other side of the battery to which the electrons want to flow and be absorbed - but a third element, the electrolyte, blocks them from travelling directly.

When the battery is plugged into a device the electrons can flow through its circuits making the journey from one electrode to the other.

Meanwhile ions - electrically charged particles involved in the anode's oxidation process - do travel through the electrolyte. When they reach the cathode they react with the electrons that travelled via the other route.

The scientists' "breakthrough" involved finding a new way to integrate the anode and cathode at the microscale.

"The battery electrodes have small intertwined fingers that reach into each other," project leader Prof William King told the BBC.

"That does a couple of things. It allows us to make the battery have a very high surface area even though the overall battery volume is extremely small.

"And it gets the two halves of the battery very close together so the ions and electrons do not have far to flow.

"Because we've reduced the flowing distance of the ions and electrons we can get the energy out much faster."

Repeatable technique

The battery cells were fabricated by adapting a process developed by another team at the university which is designed to make it faster to recharge the batteries than lithium ion (Li-on) and nickel metal hydride (NiMH) equivalents.

It involves creating a lattice made out of tiny polystyrene spheres and then filling the space in and around the structure with metal.

The spheres are then dissolved to leave a 3D-metal scaffold onto which a nickel-tin alloy is added to form the anode, and a mineral called manganese oxyhydroxide to form the cathode.

Finally the glass surface onto which the apparatus was attached was immersed into a liquid heated to 300C (572F).

"Today we're making small numbers of these things in a boutique fabrication process, but while that's reliable and we can repeat it we need to be able to make large numbers of these things over large areas," said Prof King.

"But in principle our technology is scalable all the way up to electronics and vehicles.

"You could replace your car battery with one of our batteries and it would be 10 times smaller, or 10 times more powerful. With that in mind you could jumpstart a car with the battery in your cell phone."

Safety fear

Other battery experts welcomed the team's efforts but said it could prove hard to bring the technology to market.

"The challenge is to make a microbattery array that is robust enough and that does not have a single short circuit in the whole array via a process that can be scaled up cheaply," said Prof Clare Grey from the University of Cambridge's chemistry department.

University of Oxford's Prof Peter Edwards - an expert in inorganic chemistry and energy - also expressed doubts.

"This is a very exciting development which demonstrates that high power densities are achievable by such innovations," he said.

"The challenges are: scaling this up to manufacturing levels; developing a simpler fabrication route; and addressing safety issues.

"I'd want to know if these microbatteries would be more prone to the self-combustion issues that plagued lithium-cobalt oxide batteries which we've seen become an issue of concern with Boeing's Dreamliner jets."

Prof King acknowledged that safety was an issue due to the fact the current electrolyte was a combustible liquid.

He said that in the test equipment only a microscopic amount of the liquid was used, making the risk of an explosion negligible - but if it were scaled up to large sizes the danger could become "significant".

However, he added that he soon planned to switch to a safer polymer-based electrolyte to address the issue.

Prof King added that he hoped to have the technology ready to be trialled as a power source for electronic equipment before the end of the year.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team is one of several groups attempting to overhaul the way we power gadgets.

Researchers in Texas are working on a kind of battery that can be spray-painted onto any surface while engineers at the University of Bedfordshire are exploring the idea of using radio waves as an energy source.

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Anonymous offers citizen journalism

18 April 2013 Last updated at 07:05 ET

Anonymous, the controversial hacking collective, has a new venture - a website for crowdsourced news.

Its citizen journalism site Your Anon News takes its name from the group's social media news feeds and aims to collect breaking reports and blogs.

The site will include feeds for livestream events "as they are taking place instead of the 10-second sound bites provided by the corporate media".

The group has raised $54,798 (£35,924) to get the site up and running.

Anonymous memorabilia

The money, collected on fundraising site Indiegogo in the account name "Jackal Anon", will be used for development and hosting fees.

More than 1,000 people contributed to the fund and were rewarded with Anonymous memorabilia including mugs, t-shirts and hoodies.

The aim of the site is to bring together and expand its Your Anon news (YAN) service that currently runs on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.

"We know it would be beneficial to our followers to exist as a community beyond simple social media interactions," it added.

Its vision will the same though: "Our goal was to disseminate information we viewed as vital separating it from the political and celebrity gossip that inundates the mainstream."

But not everyone is convinced about its output.

"I think it is highly likely to be biased," said Prof Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey.

"The group have shown that they have a very particular political agenda, and so I can imagine this news feed will be on a par with a newspaper that has very obvious political leanings.

"The really obvious issue is that there is a lack of accountability. With an organisation that is by definition "anonymous" how can one trust that what is being promulgated is accurate?" he added.

North Korea

It is not clear whether the citizen reporters will be paid or whether the site will rely on volunteers.

This month Anonymous has turned its attention to the political tensions on the Korean peninsula, with Operation Free Korea targeting North Korean websites and social networks.

Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean news site was forced offline and Twitter and Flickr accounts breached.

In February, the group fell victim to its own security breach when one of its popular Twitter feeds was taken over briefly by rival hacktivists.

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Clothes get 'computerised fabrics'

18 April 2013 Last updated at 08:01 ET

Clothes that change their colour and shape depending on the wearer's movement are being developed by researchers at a Canadian university.

The project - dubbed Karma Chameleon - involves weaving electronic fabric into clothes in a way that allows the storage of energy from the body.

Uses for the technology include a dress that "changes itself", and a shirt which can charge a phone.

However, it could be decades before the clothes are available to buy.

"We won't see such garments in stores for another 20 or 30 years, but the practical and creative possibilities are exciting," said Prof Joanna Berzowska, of the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

"Our goal is to create garments that can transform in complex and surprising ways - far beyond reversible jackets, or shirts that change colour in response to heat."

Concept designs

Many researchers around the world are looking at smart fabrics in various shapes and forms.

In the military, British soldiers' uniforms could soon use electrically conducting yarn woven directly into the clothing, replacing cumbersome batteries and cabling.

Other innovations include the possibility of clothes which are able to warm the wearer - opening up the chance of wearing Hawaiian shirts and shorts in the winter months.

Although the garments designed by Ms Berzowska and team are still years from being made available, prototype designs have been developed to show the concepts in action.

One other suggested use is as a performance device - where the state and shape of the fabric is controlled by someone other than the wearer.

Ms Berzowska's ideas will be presented at a conference dedicated to smart fabric innovation to be held in San Francisco this week.

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Twitter launches #Music service

18 April 2013 Last updated at 09:23 ET

Twitter has unveiled a new music app which will recommend tracks based on who you follow on the social network.

Songs can be played directly in the app via services such as Rdio, Spotify and iTunes.

The software displays songs your friends are currently listening to - as well as suggestions from artists.

It follows moves by other social networks such as Facebook to incorporate music recommendations into their services.

Last year, Spotify announced its own "follow" system, but the functionality is yet to be rolled out to users on mobile.

Twitter's app - called #Music - is expected to be made available to download for Apple's iPhone shortly.

No app has been made for users on Google's Android or the Windows Phone platforms - but there will be a web browser-based version.

It will initially be available in the UK and Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with more countries being added soon.

Surfacing songs

The app was likened to a "21st Century mixtape" unveiled on Good Morning America.

In a blog post, Twitter's Stephen Philips explained: "It uses Twitter activity, including tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists.

"It also brings artists' music-related Twitter activity front and centre: go to their profiles to see who they follow and listen to songs by those artists."

He added that half of the social network's users follow at least one musician.

"This is why artists turn to Twitter first to connect with their fans — and why we wanted to find a way to surface songs people are tweeting about."

Ahead of the app's release, Twitter gave several musicians early access. They included Moby, who wrote: "It's a really interesting music resource."

Apple's failure

Many companies have tried to tap into the potential of social recommendation for music.

London-based Last.fm, which was bought in May 2007 by CBS for £140m, analyses what a user listens to and offers suggestions based on the tastes of other Last.fm members who enjoy similar artists.

Apple also dipped its toe into the market with Ping - a service built into its iTunes software that promoted music it thought users may like.

At its launch, the late Steve Jobs said: "We think this will be really popular very fast because 160 million people can switch it on today."

Ping was closed in September last year.

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Google and Microsoft profits rise

19 April 2013 Last updated at 03:41 ET

Technology giants Google and Microsoft have both reported rising profits.

Google's net profit climbed to $3.35bn (£2.19bn) in the first three months of the year, up 16% from a year earlier, boosted by online advertising revenue.

Microsoft said it made $6bn in profit during the same period, a jump of more than 17% from a year ago.

Its earnings, which beat market forecasts, came despite a lukewarm reception for Windows 8 and a decline in global PC sales during the period.

Meanwhile IBM reported a fall in first quarter profits and revenues after the technology services company failed to complete deals in time and was hit by the depreciation of the Japanese yen.

'Fantastic' margins

Analysts said that Microsoft's profits were boosted in part by changing the way its sold its products to corporate clients, as well as cost-cutting measures.

"Microsoft has successfully transitioned into an enterprise software company and these results show that," said Kim Caughey Forrest, a senior analyst at Fort Pitt Capital.

"The strength of server and tools, and the actual way they sell licences to business, is making up for the missing PC sales.

"The margins are fantastic and the online services division seems to lose less money each quarter," she added.

Meanwhile Google's profits were driven up by growing income from online advertising, which helped boost overall revenues to nearly $14bn for the quarter. That is up from $10.7bn during the same period last year.

The results also suggested that Google may be beginning to build confidence with advertisers. The amount paid per advert is still declining, but at a slower rate than last year.

Management changes

Continue reading the main story

The CFO departure is a little bit troubling. We've had a lot of executives leaving Microsoft recently"

End Quote Brendan Barnicle Pacific Crest Securities

Despite the stronger-than-expected numbers, Microsoft announced that its chief financial officer (CFO), Peter Klien, would be leaving the firm at the end of June.

Mr Klein, who has been with the tech giant for 11 years, is the latest in a series of executives to leave the company.

His departure comes just months after the Steven Sinofsky, the head of Windows division, quit the firm.

The departures of the two senior figures have come as there have been questions over the leadership of chief executive Steve Ballmer.

These doubts have been driven in part by slowing growth, and amid concerns that Microsoft had not been able to make a significant impact in the new and fast-growing sectors such as the smartphone and tablet PC markets.

The leading smartphone and tablet PC makers, such as Samsung and Apple, rely more on operating systems such as Android and iOS, rather than Microsoft's Windows, which has enjoyed a dominance in the traditional PC market.

The fear for Microsoft is that as more people use smartphones and tablet PCs to access the internet, it may see its market share decline.

These concerns have grown after Windows 8, which is designed to make PCs work more like tablet computers, was greeted with mixed reviews at its launch last October.

More positively, analysts said that Mr Klien's departure from the firm suggested that an imminent departure of chief executive Steve Ballmer was unlikely.

"The CFO departure is a little bit troubling. We've had a lot of executives leaving Microsoft recently," said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.

"This also makes a departure by Steve Ballmer less likely. It would be very unusual to have a CEO leave soon after a CFO departure."

Yen impact

Also on Thursday, IBM reported first quarter earnings of $3bn, down 1% from a year earlier, with revenues falling 5% to $23.41bn - lower than analysts' expectations.

IBM said its results had been hit by delays in completing deals, with about $400m worth of contracts that were expected to be counted in the first quarter of the year now being moved into the second.

In addition, the company said that the recent weakening of the yen had affected its earnings. The depreciation of the yen means that it earns fewer dollars from sales in Japan.

"Despite a solid start and good client demand, we did not close a number of software and mainframe transactions that have moved into the second quarter,'' said IBM's chief executive, Ginni Rometty.

"The services business performed as expected with strong profit growth and significant new business in the quarter.''

IBM's chief financial officer Mark Loughridge said it was "hard to measure" whether the recent series of US budget cuts - the sequester - had affected the firm.

"I can tell you that our US federal business was down 13%, which was certainly a drag on the US performance," he said.

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Cispa cyber bill passed by US House

19 April 2013 Last updated at 06:06 ET

The US House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act.

Cispa is designed to help combat cyberthreats by making it easier for law enforcers to get at web data.

This is the second time Cispa has been passed by the House. Senators threw out the first draft, saying it did not do enough to protect privacy.

Cispa could fail again in the Senate after threats from President Obama to veto it over privacy concerns.

A substantial majority of politicians in the House backed the bill.

The law is passing through the US legislative system as American federal agencies warn that malicious hackers, motivated by money or acting on behalf of foreign governments, such as China, are one of the biggest threats facing the nation.

"If you want to take a shot across China's bow, this is the answer," said Mike Rogers, the Republican politician who co-wrote Cispa and chairs the House Intelligence Committee.

'Fatally flawed'

Cispa has also secured the backing of several technology firms, including the CTIA wireless industry group, as well as the TechNet computer industry lobby group, which has Google, Apple and Yahoo as members. By contrast, the social news website Reddit has been vocal in its opposition to the bill. In March, Facebook said it no longer supported Cispa.

The bill could fail again in the Senate after the Obama administration's threat to use its veto unless changes were made. The White House wants amendments so more is done to ensure the minimum amount of data is handed over in investigations.

The American Civil Liberties Union has also opposed Cispa, saying the bill was "fatally flawed". The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reporters Without Borders and the American Library Association have all voiced similar worries.

Cispa's authors say existing amendments have addressed many of the criticisms and more oversight was being given to data before it was handed over.

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Sony hacker Recursion goes to jail

19 April 2013 Last updated at 06:35 ET

A 25-year-old man known online as Recursion has been sentenced to a year in jail for hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Cody Kretsinger pleaded guilty last April, and admitted being part of an infamous hacking group known as Lulzsec.

After his jail term, Kretsinger will be required to do 1,000 hours of community service, a Los Angeles judge ruled.

Sony said the hack caused more than $600,000 (£392,000) in damage.

Not to be confused with the attack on Sony's PlayStation Network, the Sony Pictures hack in July 2011 involved breaching the company's website and accessing a database of customers' names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

Around 50,000 of the names were later posted online.

Kretsinger pleaded guilty to counts of conspiracy and unauthorised impairment of a protected computer.

Prosecutors declined to say if Kretsinger was also co-operating with authorities in exchange for leniency.

Lulzsec in the dock

It follows guilty pleas last week from other hackers involved with Lulzsec.

At Southwark Crown Court in London, 26-year-old Ryan Ackroyd, from South Yorkshire, admitted to being part of the group that targeted the NHS and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

He is to be sentenced next month with three others: Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, from Peckham, south London, Jake Davis, 20, from Lerwick, Shetland, and Ryan Cleary, 21, of Essex.

Kretsinger's guilty plea came a month after it was revealed that another prolific hacker, known as Sabu - real name Hector Xavier Monsegur - had been co-operating with US authorities to provide information on people suspected of being part of Lulzsec.

Murdoch and CIA targeted

The group emerged as a splinter group of the Anonymous hacking collective in May 2011.

The name stood for Lulz Security - in which "Lulz" is derived from the popular internet term "lol", meaning "laugh out loud".

Members employed techniques to flood websites with high traffic - known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks - in order to render them unusable.

Lulzsec claimed to have attacked the Sun newspaper's website, on which a false story was planted suggesting that Rupert Murdoch, CEO of its News Corporation parent company, had died.

In the US, the group was credited with attacking the website of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Lulzsec had previously posted a story on American broadcaster PBS's website, suggesting that the dead rapper Tupac Shakur was alive.

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Blackstone pulls out of Dell bid

19 April 2013 Last updated at 10:03 ET

Blackstone has decided not to submit a bid for computer company Dell, citing falling sales and fears over the company's finances.

Blackstone said it was concerned by an "unprecedented" drop in PC sales.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn and a consortium led by Michael Dell, the company's founder, are still in the bidding race.

Blackstone said it continued to view Dell as "a leading global company with strong market positions".

But it also said that the two worrying conditions meant it was nevertheless withdrawing its interest in the company.

Since Blackstone submitted its bid, Dell had reduced its operating income projections for the current year to $3 bn (£1.95bn), down from $3.7bn.

Michael Dell, joined by private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners, has proposed a $24.4bn buyout of the company.

The bid has drawn opposition from some shareholders who believe the offer is too low.

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BadNews bug hits Android app store

19 April 2013 Last updated at 10:35 ET

Security researchers have identified 32 separate apps on Google Play that harboured a bug called BadNews.

On infected phones, BadNews stole cash by racking up charges from sending premium rate text messages.

The malicious program lay dormant on many handsets for weeks to escape detection, said security firm Lookout which uncovered BadNews.

The malware targeted Android owners in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other countries in eastern Europe.

The exact numbers of victims was hard to calculate, said Lookout, adding that figures from Google Play suggest that between two and nine million copies of apps booby trapped with BadNews were downloaded from the store.

In a blogpost, Lookout said that a wide variety of apps were harbouring the BadNews malware. It found the programme lurking inside recipe generators, wallpaper apps, games and pornographic programmes.

The 32 apps were available through four separate developer accounts on Play. Google has now suspended those accounts and removed all the affected apps from its online store. No official comment from Google has yet been released.

Lookout said BadNews concealed its true identity by initially acting as an "innocent, if somewhat aggressive, advertising network". In this guise it sent users news and information about other infected apps, and prompted people to install other programmes.

BadNews adopted this approach to avoid detection systems that look for suspicious behaviour and stop dodgy apps being installed, said Lookout.

This masquerade ended when apps seeded with BadNews got a prompt from one of three command and control servers, then it started pushing out and installing a more malicious programme called AlphaSMS. This steals credit by sending text messages to premium rate numbers.

Users were tricked into installing AlphaSMS as it was labelled as an essential update for either Skype or Russian social network Vkontakte.

Security firm Lookout said BadNews was included in many popular apps by innocent developers as it outwardly looked like a useful way to monetise their creations. It urged app makers to be more wary of such "third party tools" which they may include in their code.

Half of the 32 apps seeded with BadNews are Russian and the version of AlphaSMS it installed is tuned to use premium rate numbers in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan.

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Amazon to pilot TV shows online

19 April 2013 Last updated at 11:11 ET By Helen Bushby BBC entertainment and arts reporter

Fourteen pilot shows - including Alpha House and Zombieland - are to be put to the public vote on Lovefilm and Amazon.com.

Viewers can submit feedback influencing which shows get made into full series.

The 14 shows are made by independent production companies and produced by Amazon Studios, the film and series production arm of Amazon.

"This is the first time Amazon Studios has done this," said Simon Morris, Lovefilm's chief marketing officer.

Eight adult comedies and six children's animation series will be put to the public vote.

The shows will be aired on Amazon's pay subscription services - Amazon Prime in the US, and Lovefilm in the UK - but Morris told the BBC they would be available to everyone and not just subscribers.

The adult pilot shows include Alpha House, about four senators who live together in a rented house in Washington DC and stars John Goodman, who was recently in Oscar-winning film Argo.

"Bill Murray has got a cameo in Alpha House, looking a bit older, a little bit more bedraggled, but definitely Bill Murray," Mr Morris added.

Onion News Empire is set behind the scenes of the Onion News Network, a satirical daily news service, and "shows just how far journalists will go to stay at the top of their game", according to Amazon Studios.

It stars Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor as the "egomaniacal lead anchor".

Musical comedy Browsers stars Cheers and Frasier actress Bebe Neuwirth as the "terrifying" boss of a news website in Manhattan.

Other pilot shows include Zombieland - based on the film of the same name - featuring four survivors attempting to outwit zombies, while animated comedy Dark Minions, written by Big Bang Theory's Kevin Sussman and John Ross Bowie, is about two "slackers" working on an intergalactic warship.

The children's shows include animations Sara Solves It, where Sara and Sam solve maths-based mysteries, and Creative Galaxy, an interactive art adventure series.

"This isn't X Factor for some new titles where you get to vote and they're fairly gimmicky," Mr Morris said. "It has a unique position in the world in that it has a platform that's a pay platform, it has an entertainment platform."

He said that the "world of digital has been growing, driven in large part by the BBC iPlayer, from about 2008" and that he saw this move as the next stage.

"Mass-market digital consumption and streaming have come of age in the last few years," he added.

'Promotional tool'

But Toby Syfret, TV analyst for Enders Analysis, was sceptical about the venture, describing it as a "gimmick" and said he did not think it would make much of a dent in the TV landscape.

"I think the success of this will have a huge amount to do with the publicity they can get for it."

Amazon and Lovefilm were able to put pilots to the public vote because "they are not TV channels with set budgets", he said, adding that "you cannot sustain a programming operation if you let viewers decide - you're losing control of the purse strings".

He also queried whether programme-makers would want the public vote to potentially leave them "committed to the most expensive thing which is least good".

"Programme makers may end up saying 'we'll go with it, but it's a bit expensive so we'll cut the budget' - and then you've done what the public's asked but it's been slashed by half," he added.

"Ultimately, this is a promotional tool - Amazon's thinking that Netflix has done it this way [by broadcasting Kevin Spacey's House of Cards drama series] so we'll come at it from another way."

Earlier this year, the streaming TV and movie service Netflix made and broadcast House of Cards, and revealed plans to make at least five new shows a year.

YouTube, owned by Google, also recently launched its original channels initiative with 20 new channels coming from the UK.

Mr Morris said that the key thing that marked his venture out was that "the platform is open".

"Not everyone has the opportunity to go and pitch an idea to HBO in New York, not everyone can get on a plane to Cannes and pitch a script," he said.

"But there is now a vehicle whereby people are in a place that independent writers - whether they've got a track record or not - can put content through and it can be evaluated and brought to market. And that's the exciting thing about this."

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Samsung unveils biggest smartphone

11 April 2013 Last updated at 06:58 ET

Samsung has unveiled the biggest smartphone to date - the Galaxy Mega, which features a 6.3in (16cm) screen.

The firm suggested its size made it ideal for watching videos or running two apps alongside each other.

Samsung helped popularise the so-called "phablet" category - in which phones approach tablet dimensions - with its original 5.3in Galaxy Note in 2011.

That proved more popular than many expected, but one analyst suggested the latest device might be a step too far.

Samsung is marketing the Android-powered handset as having a high-definition screen - however, a spokesman was unable to confirm whether it supported 720p or the "full HD" 1080p resolution.

Another South Korean firm, Pantech, currently lays claim to offering the biggest "full HD" smartphone with its 5.9in Vega No 6 which was announced in January.

China's Huawei had previously boasted having the biggest largest-screened 720p smartphone with its 6.1in Ascend Mate.

Samsung also makes the Galaxy Note 8.0. Some versions of this 8in-screened device feature an HSPA+ radio allowing them to make calls, but the machine is being promoted as a tablet with phone functionality rather than the other way round.

'Too cumbersome'

Samsung suggested that, despite its dimensions, the Galaxy Mega was still small and light enough - at 199g (0.44lb) - to fit into users' pockets and be used with one hand.

However, the firm is hedging its bets by offering a smaller 5.8in-screened version as an alternative.

Both will go on sale in May, with Europe and Russia the first regions to be offered the devices.

Tech consultancy Davies Murphy Group said that within the Android market there had been a notable shift towards people wanting to buy a single device rather than both a smartphone and tablet.

However, its principal technology analyst, Chris Green, suggested that at 6.3in it would be a "folly" for most users to swap their current handsets for the larger of the two Galaxy Megas.

"There is genuine demand for larger smartphones - the problem is at what point does a smartphone turn into a tablet," he told the BBC.

"When you've got this up against your head you'd have to argue you're using a tablet and not a smartphone - it's definitely going to compromise its functionality because it's simply too big and too cumbersome to use as a traditional telephone device.

"But ignoring the phone functionality, as far as the rest of the smart device goes it looks quite phenomenal."

Samsung was the most popular smartphone maker in 2012 accounting for 30.3% of all shipments, according to analysts at IDC.

Its rival Apple - whose largest handset has a 4in screen - came in second with a 19.1% market share.

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New LED light 'can halve energy use'

11 April 2013 Last updated at 09:01 ET

Lighting company Philips has developed an LED lamp that it describes as "the world's most energy-efficient".

It said the prototype tube lighting LED is twice as efficient as those currently used in offices and industry around the world but offers the same amount of light.

Being able to halve the amount of energy used could bring huge cost and energy savings.

Lighting accounts for more than 19% of global electricity consumption.

The prototype tube lighting produces 200 lumens per watt (200lm/W) compared with 100lm/W for equivalent strip lighting and 15lm/W for traditional light bulbs.

Continue reading the main story

Light-emitting diodes have been around for years.

Traditionally, they have been used as indicators on electrical devices, such as standby lights on TVs. This was because LEDs were available only in red, but recent advances mean that other colours are now available, and the light emitted is much brighter.

White light (used for general lighting) using LEDs can be created via a number of techniques. One example is mixing red, green and blue LEDs.

It is suggested that LEDs can last for up to 100,000 hours, compared with the 1,000 hours of traditional incandescent light bulbs and compact fluorescent lamps' (CFLs) 15,000 hours.

The technology is also much more energy-efficient, using up to 90% less energy than incandescent bulbs.

The long lifespans and low energy use make LEDs economically attractive because even though the fittings cost more, the running and maintenance bills are lower.

"This is a major breakthrough in LED lighting and will further drive the transformation of the lighting industry," said Rene van Schooten, chief executive of light source and electronics at Philips.

"It's exciting to imagine the massive energy and cost savings it will bring to our planet and customers," he added.

The lamps are intended to replace the fluorescent tube lighting used in offices and industry, which currently account for more than half of the world's total lighting.

In the US, for example, such lighting consumes around 200 terawatts of electricity annually. Swapping to the energy-efficient lamps could save $12bn (£7.8bn) and stop 60 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere, according to Philips.

LED light bulbs are more efficient than traditional incandescent ones because there is less energy loss through heat.

However they tend to be more expensive than ordinary light bulbs.

Philips expects the light to go on the market in 2015, initially to replace office lighting.

Ultimately though it is seen as a real alternative to lighting in the home.

The company has not yet published prices but a spokesperson told the BBC that the cost would not be significantly more than current LED tube lights.

The Energy Saving Trust - a UK charity which provides advice on how to cut carbon emissions - said manufacturers' claims always had to be treated with caution, but added that if Philips could bring the product to market it would represent a major advance.

"The typical performance of LEDs we have trialled and tested before has typically been in the range of 50 to 70 lumens per watt which is significantly better than traditional lighting - so if this new Philips product can perform as claimed then it represents a huge leap forward in performance," James Russill, the trust's technical development manager, told the BBC.

"It is also good that this product is aimed at office environments, where lighting is often left on for 24 hours per day - the potential for reducing electricity demand is therefore very high."

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Web games get fair trading scrutiny

11 April 2013 Last updated at 19:32 ET

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Cavendish Elithorn, OFT: "It's important parents understand... how much they're going to cost"

Web and phone games aimed at children that charge for extras are being investigated by the Office of Fair Trading.

The OFT wants to find out if the games put undue pressure on children to pay for additional content.

Many games ask players to pay to get coins, gems or other virtual items to speed their progress through levels.

The OFT wants to hear from parents who have seen firms aggressively pushing in-game content to children.

High cost

The investigation comes alongside media reports about children spending large sums on virtual items for smartphone and web games.

In March, five-year-old schoolboy Danny Kitchen, from Bristol, managed to rack up charges of more than £1,700 while playing the Zombies versus Ninjas game on his parents' iPad. The money has since been refunded by Apple.

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The BBC's Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones explains some of the things you can do to prevent charges from web and phone games

In January this year, regulator PhonePayPlus revealed it had seen a 300% increase in complaints from consumers about the bills generated when they buy add-ons for games and other apps.

In its investigation, the OFT wants to find out if the games are "misleading, commercially aggressive or otherwise unfair" when they give people the chance to buy extras. It also wants to find out if children are being specifically targeted by such applications.

"We are concerned that children and their parents could be subject to unfair pressure to purchase when they are playing games they thought were free, but which can actually run up substantial costs," said Cavendish Elithorn, the OFT's senior director for goods and consumer.

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Makers of games that strongly encourage children to buy or pressure them to ask parents to buy on their behalf could be breaking laws on fair trading, said the OFT.

Mr Elithorn said the OFT did not want to ban in-game purchases, but wanted to be sure that games-makers are complying with relevant laws. Consumer groups or parents with evidence of games aggressively marketing in-game extras should contact the OFT, it said.

Figures gathered by the OFT reveal that the vast majority of the most popular smartphone games were free to install but raised cash for their creators via in-app purchases. Such extras were priced very differently, it said, with some costing only a few pence but the most high-priced were £70.

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Airport tech reveals hidden artwork

11 April 2013 Last updated at 20:41 ET By Jason Palmer BBC science reporter, New Orleans

A technique based on the same kind of technology used in airport scanners has revealed images beneath a fresco held at the Louvre museum in Paris.

Trois Hommes Armes de Lances was known to be a fresco forged by Giampetro Campana on a wall from Roman times.

The new research suggests that under that forgery lies a real Roman fresco.

The discovery was announced at the American Chemical Society meeting by Bianca Jackson of the University of Rochester in the US.

Terahertz waves are known for their ability to penetrate materials without damaging them, and have in recent years been added to the suite of tools used to examine items of cultural heritage.

These tools span much of the electromagnetic spectrum from X-rays to ultraviolet to the infrared - and of course microscopy with visible light.

Safe application

Terahertz light - which lies between infrared light like that used by remote controls and the microwaves in the appliance of the same name - has become popular in scanning technology at airports and museums' back rooms because it can extract information without risk of damage.

"It's very desirable for cultural heritage conservation because with a lot of other techniques like X-ray or ultraviolet, there is some molecular breakdown in the materials," Dr Jackson told the meeting.

"So even though you're using the equipment to get information to conserve it, you're at the same time risking some deterioration of the object."

Giampetro Campana was a renowned collector from the mid-19th Century who specialised in Roman artefacts. But late in his career he took to restoring - or outright creating - Roman-style works and passing them off as genuine.

Previous studies of Trois Hommes Armes de Lances had used X-ray fluorescence - which yields a list of all the atoms within an object - but showed that there were atoms present in the work that were not present on the surface.

Dr Jackson and her colleagues were called in to apply terahertz imaging to find out what lay beneath.

"After quite a bit of data processing, we were able to pull out some signs that there is a figure beneath… what looked like two eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth, a shadow for a chin," she said.

It remains to be proven that the image beneath is of Roman origin, but the collector's history seems to suggest it. The original may simply have been of poor quality.

"If you go on Ebay and you can get a Roman coin from 200BC for 25 cents, there's a reason - it's not high quality," Dr Jackson told BBC News.

"So he probably painted over it because he could get more credit if he had a nice painting."

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Google builds data-after-death tool

11 April 2013 Last updated at 22:14 ET

Google will allow users to decide what happens to their data after they die or become inactive online, the first major company to deal with the sensitive issue.

The feature applies to email, social network Google Plus and other accounts.

Users can choose to delete data after a set period of time, or pass it on to specific people.

Internet users around the world have expressed concern about what happens to their data after their demise.

"We hope that this new feature will enable you to plan your digital afterlife - in a way that protects your privacy and security - and make life easier for your loved ones after you're gone," Google said in a blogpost.

California-based Google also owns YouTube, photo-sharing service Picasa and Blogger.

Google said users can opt to have their data deleted after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity. Alternatively, certain contacts can be sent data from some or all of their services.

However, the company said it would text a provided number or email a secondary email address to warn users before any action is taken.

People are increasingly placing content on social networks and data storage facilities hosted in cyberspace, or the "cloud".

Other companies have also attempted to tackle the questions that raises after a person's death. Facebook, as an example, allows users to "memorialise" an account.

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Twitter move hints at music service

12 April 2013 Last updated at 04:53 ET

Micro-blogging site Twitter is rumoured to be launching a new music service after buying the music discovery site We Are Hunted.

We Are Hunted confirmed the deal, adding "there's no question that Twitter and music go well together" - and said it was shutting down.

The hashtag #music is also featured on the newly-launched music.twitter.com.

Reports suggest the new service will offer personalised recommendations on music through its own dedicated app.

US celebrity host Ryan Seacrest confirmed the existence of Twitter's new app on Thursday via a tweet: "playing with @twitter's new music app (yes it's real!)... there's a serious dance party happening at idol right now".

The music app could be announced as soon as Friday.

The We Are Hunted acquisition actually happened in 2012, according to reports, suggesting that the music service has long been in the works.

In seven years, Twitter has accumulated 200 million users worldwide, who now send an average of 400 million short messages - or tweets - every day.

Twitter's latest move comes as music streaming - where the songs are hosted on servers by companies such as Spotify rather than bought and kept on consumers' computers - has taken off amid a boom in digital downloading.

The streaming market is now worth £49m to record labels in the UK, the trade body BPI has said.

It comes as iPhone-maker Apple is reported to have agreed a deal with the biggest music label Universal to create an internet radio service similar to Pandora using its iTunes platform.

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Cyber thieves target bitcoin owners

12 April 2013 Last updated at 06:01 ET

The bitcoin virtual currency has had a volatile 24 hours that saw values plummet, hack attacks, trading shutdowns and bitcoin-stealing malware.

From the high of $260 (£169) for each bitcoin on 10 April, bitcoins are now worth less than $100 (£65) each.

The main bitcoin exchange shut down for 12 hours to install hardware to help it cope with trading volumes.

In addition, malicious software is emerging that seeks out and empties the virtual wallets of bitcoin owners.

MTGox, on which most bitcoin trading takes place, was overwhelmed earlier this week by the amount of people who joined the exchange to trade the virtual cash. The computer problems prompted a round of panic selling that forced values to plunge.

The exchange went offline to beef up its hardware to cope with trading volumes and stem the fall in value. However, soon after trading resumed the site came under a sustained hack attack which saw it bombarded with data. In a tweet, MTGox said the it was being hit by a "stronger than usual" attack.

It went offline again to avoid the attack and when it re-started, bitcoins continued to fall in value. Early on 12 April each bitcoin was worth about $90 (£58).

'Litecoins'

Owners of bitcoins have also become the target of cyber thieves keen to cash in on the boom in the digital currency.

A phishing gang posted a message to the discussion forum of a website used by many bitcoin traders saying MTGox was about to start trading "litecoins" - an alternative to bitcoins. In the message was a link that supposedly connected to an official MTGox chat site.

In fact, the site that people were taken to if they clicked on the link was fake and, via a booby-trapped update file, installed malicious software that then emptied digital wallets of bitcoins. At least one trader was hit in the attack and lost 34 bitcoins as a result.

In a post about the theft posted to the Bitcointalk forum, the victim said he was "stupid" not to have taken more trouble to stay safe but added: "This is a serious loss for me, and unless this is handled correctly this can also badly affect the community."

It has also emerged that Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who famously sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claiming they had the original idea for the social network, have substantial bitcoin holdings. In an interview with the New York Times, the pair said they owned about $11m of the virtual coins - about 1% of the global supply.

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Rural mobile funds 'not being spent'

12 April 2013 Last updated at 06:40 ET

Funds set up to improve poor and rural access to mobile services worldwide are "inefficient and ineffective", according to a report.

More than $11bn (£7.2bn) has yet to be spent, according to the GSMA, which brings together global mobile operators, handset makers and internet providers. "Very few funds, if any, would appear to disburse all that they collect," it said.

Less than 12.5% of the funds are meeting their own targets.

Universal service funds (USF) are set up by levies on telecoms in individual countries, which are then used to increase consumer access based on criteria such as income distribution, rural and urban population ratios, literacy and geography.

But the GSMA report estimates that more than one-third of the 64 funds surveyed have yet to disburse any of the contributions they have collected.

"Our research shows that, despite the fact that there is an ever-increasing amount of money sitting unused in these funds, governments continue to collect still more from the mobile operators," said Tom Phillips, the chief regulatory officer at GSMA.

"The situation needs urgent government review and attention, as the money collected to date far exceeds the amount that is needed to ensure universal access."

Among the funds dubbed by the GSMA as "ineffective or severely constrained and/or legally challenged" are those set up in Brazil, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, France and Italy.

The Indian USF, for example, contains more than $4bn in unspent money but still imposes a 5% levy on operator revenues.

The USFs in Afghanistan, Bolivia, South Africa and the US have been accused of "poor or inefficient administration" of the money, the global body said.

But the GSMA cited Colombia as an example of the way USFs should be structured, with a reduction in levies and a transparent public bidding process.

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Google makes anti-trust concessions

12 April 2013 Last updated at 07:20 ET

Google has proposed a package of concessions as it seeks to end a long-running investigation into its European search business.

The suggested changes to its business were made following talks with European Commission competition regulators.

Since November 2010, Brussels has been looking into Google's search business following complaints from rivals.

Google said it was continuing to co-operate with the Commission investigation.

Test case

The anti-trust investigation was kicked off by rivals such as Microsoft, as well as mapping firms and web retailers which said the way Google ran its search business made it hard for them to compete fairly.

In a statement, Antoine Colombani, the Commission spokesman on competition policy, said it had completed its preliminary assessment a few weeks ago and had told Google of its concerns.

This, he said, had prompted Google to submit a formal proposal to the Commission about what it would do to change the way it operated. By making formal proposals, Google hopes to head off potentially huge fines.

Among the measures, Google is believed to have offered to label its services to make it more obvious to people what they are using and to make it easier for people to use rival advertising services, the Reuters news agency reports.

The proposals will now be subjected to a "market test" to gauge the response of rivals and to see if the suggested remedies meet the Commission's requirements.

Speaking in Washington, Joaquin Almunia, the EU competition commissioner, said any agreement reached with Google would be legally binding.

In January, the US Federal Trade Commission ended its anti-trust investigation and won a pledge from Google to end some practices, such as scraping data from websites to help target adverts, that had triggered the competition probe.

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Google chief wary of mini-drones

13 April 2013 Last updated at 06:17 ET

The influential head of Google, Eric Schmidt, has called for civilian drone technology to be regulated, warning about privacy and security concerns.

Cheap miniature versions of the unmanned aircraft used by militaries could fall into the wrong hands, he told the UK's Guardian newspaper.

Quarrelling neighbours, he suggested, might end up buzzing each other with private surveillance drones.

He also warned of the risk of terrorists using the new technology.

Mr Schmidt is believed to have close relations with US President Barack Obama, whom he advises on matters of science and technology.

"You're having a dispute with your neighbour," he told The Guardian in an interview printed on Saturday.

"How would you feel if your neighbour went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their backyard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?"

Warning of mini-drones' potential as a terrorist weapon, he said: "I'm not going to pass judgment on whether armies should exist, but I would prefer to not spread and democratise the ability to fight war to every single human being."

"It's got to be regulated... It's one thing for governments, who have some legitimacy in what they're doing, but have other people doing it... it's not going to happen."

Small drones, such as flying cameras, are already available worldwide, and non-military surveillance were recently introduced to track poachers in the remote Indian state of Assam.

The US and Israel have led the way in recent years in using drones as weapons of war as well as for surveillance.

America's Federal Aviation Administration is currently exploring how commercial drones, or unmanned aircraft systems, can be safely introduced into US airspace.

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Film studios seek takedown privacy

5 April 2013 Last updated at 07:22 ET

Two film studios have asked Google to take down links to messages sent by them requesting the removal of links connected to film piracy.

Google receives 20 million "takedown" requests, officially known as DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices, a month. They are all published online.

Recent submissions by Fox and Universal Studios include requests for the removal of previous takedown notices.

Google declined to comment.

The notices are requests for individual web addresses to be removed from Google's search engine results because they contain material uploaded without the permission of the copyright holders.

By making the notices available, Google is unintentionally highlighting the location of allegedly pirated material, say some experts.

"It would only take one skilled coder to index the URLs from the DMCA notices in order to create one of the largest pirate search engines available," wrote Torrent Freak editor Ernesto Van Der Sar on the site.

Similar notices have been received by the Lionsgate studio, makers of the Twilight movies and The Hunger Games, and tech giant Microsoft, according to Torrent Freak.

Mr Van Der Sar added, however, that the requests may well have been a "by-product of the automated tools that are used to find infringing URLs" and not deliberately included.

According to its transparency report, Google complied with 97% of the requests it received for links to material published outside copyright to be removed from its search engine between June and December 2011.

The website Chilling Effects, a collaboration between a number of US law schools and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, publishes the notices, and is still visible via Google Search.

David Petrarca, who directed a couple of episodes of HBO drama Game of Thrones, the most pirated TV series of 2012, was reported to have said at a literary festival in Australia that piracy gave the series a "cultural buzz" but has since denied that he is in favour of the activity.

"I am 100 per cent, completely and utterly against people illegally downloading anything," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"I think most people would be willing to pay for a show they love."

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Hack attacks hit Bitcoin value

4 April 2013 Last updated at 07:28 ET

Online services and exchanges dealing in Bitcoins have been hit by hack attacks that led to a drop in the value of the virtual currency.

Trading on the MTGox exchange, which handles most trades in Bitcoins, was sluggish yesterday as the site fought off an attack.

The attack helped to force a swift fall in the price of Bitcoins.

In addition, the Instawallet website - where people store Bitcoins - is offline indefinitely after an attack.

Website bombarded

The value of Bitcoins surged to a new high this week with each one worth about $142 (£94). Barely a week ago, each virtual coin was worth only $90.

But Bitcoins dropped sharply in value as the MTGox exchange came under a sustained attack by hackers. The vast majority of trade in Bitcoins takes place via the site.

In a tweet on its Twitter feed, MTGox said it was fighting off a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which involves a site being bombarded with huge amounts of data. The attack was one of several against the site this week,

The attacks, coupled with a spike in trading volumes, combined to cause delays in trades being confirmed and led the value of Bitcoins to drop sharply to about $120.

Continue reading the main story

The attacks could be the work of malicious hackers who were trying to 'game' the MTGox exchange"

End Quote

The attacks could be the work of malicious hackers who were trying to "game" the exchange and manipulate the value of Bitcoins so they could cash in, MTGox said in an interview with ComputerWorld. Attackers are thought to be working to a cycle in which they sell Bitcoins when values are high, then mount an attack that forces prices to crash, buy up the cheaper coins and then let the value climb again.

MTGox said it did not know when or if the attacks would cease but said Bitcoin owners should not panic and sell off as values fluctuated. A spokesman for the exchange added that it was in the middle of rebuilding its trading technology but the new system, which would do a better job of handling the high volume of trades, would not be ready until the end of this year.

In a separate development, Instawallet has shut down "indefinitely" after hackers "fraudulently accessed" its core database. In a statement posted on the Instawallet site it said it planned to open a claim process shortly so people could reclaim their Bitcoin balance.

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Anonymous 'hacks' North Korea pages

4 April 2013 Last updated at 07:33 ET

The hacking collective Anonymous has said it has been "hacking" and vandalising social networking profiles linked to North Korea.

The group has issued several warnings since the country's threats have intensified.

Uriminzokkiri, a news site, has been forced offline - while Twitter and Flickr accounts have been breached.

Anonymous also claimed to have accessed 15,000 usernames and passwords from a university database.

As part of action which the loosely organised collective has called "Operation Free Korea", the hackers have called for leader Kim Jong-un to step down, a democratic government to be put in place - and for North Koreans to get uncensored internet access.

Currently, only a select few in the country have access to the "internet" - which is more akin to a closed company intranet with only a select few websites that are government-run.

The country recently allowed foreigners to access mobile internet, but this service has since been shut off.

In a message posted online, members of Anonymous wrote: "To the citizens of North Korea we suggest to rise up and bring [this] oppressive government down!

"We are holding your back and your hand, while you take the journey to freedom, democracy and peace.

"You are not alone. Don't fear us, we are not terrorist, we are the good guys from the internet. AnonKorea and all the other Anons are here to set you free."

'Tango down'

Urminzokkiri's Twitter feed started displaying messages reading "hacked" at around 0700 BST. The account's avatar was changed to a picture of two people dancing, with the words "Tango down".

On Urminzokkiri's Flickr photo page, other images, including a "wanted" poster mocking Kim Jong-un, were also posted.

Anonymous has posted what it said was a sample of the hacked information.

However, some have questioned the reliability of the details as some of the email addresses were in fact Chinese.

Also unreachable on Thursday was the website of Air Koryo, the country's airline, which launched its online booking site late last year.

Like the main Urminzokkiri homepage, it is suspected the Air Koryo site has been hit with a Distributed Denial of Service attacked (DDoS) - a technique which involves flooding a website with too much traffic for it to handle.

Although a highly secretive nation, North Korea puts considerable effort in to having a strong presence online.

Various YouTube accounts attached to the regime post news items and propaganda videos on a regular basis.

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Hewlett-Packard chairman steps down

4 April 2013 Last updated at 18:18 ET

Hewlett-Packard has announced a boardroom shake-up that includes its chairman Raymond Lane stepping down.

Mr Lane was re-elected by only 58.8% of shareholder votes at last month's annual meeting.

In an HP statement, Mr Lane said he had taken the decision "after reflecting on the stockholder vote last month".

He is the most prominent casualty of the acquisition of British software company Autonomy, much of the value of which has now been written off.

The computer giant's board has been criticised by shareholders for paying $11bn (£7.2bn) for Autonomy. Critics complain not enough due diligence was done before the company was bought.

But HP claims that Autonomy took steps to inflate its own value, which Autonomy's former management denies.

The allegations are currently being looked into by the US Department of Justice, the UK's Serious Fraud Office and the UK accounting regulator.

Mr Lane will remain on the board, but two other directors, John Hammergren and G Kennedy Thompson are to leave.

Ralph Whitworth, a veteran shareholder activist, has been appointed interim chairman.

He told shareholders at the annual meeting that they should prepare for an "evolution" of the board.

HP is in the process of cutting jobs and changing strategy as its PC and printer business declines.

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Vodafone and China Mobile team up

4 April 2013 Last updated at 20:58 ET

The two biggest telecommunications companies in the world have created a consortium to bid for mobile licences in Burma.

The licence, which is expected to be awarded in June, is to operate a nationwide network for 15 years.

The country has taken steps to reform its economy, but mobile phones remain too expensive for most people.

There is only 10% mobile penetration in Burma, which has a population of more than 60 million, according to Vodafone.

The government has said it wants to boost coverage to 80% by 2016.

That has led to a stream of companies hoping to take advantage of this newly-opened market.

"Myanmar will be an important new market for the global mobile industry," Vodafone and China Mobile said in their statement.

A separate consortium also indicated its interest. Billionaire George Soros' Quantum Strategic Partner has joined forces with Digicel and Serge Pun, a businessman in Burma, to bid for licences as well, they said in a statement.

Other companies bidding for licences include Singapore's SingTel, Qatar Telecom and Norway's Telenor.

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Samsung expects 53% jump in profit

5 April 2013 Last updated at 01:08 ET

Samsung Electronics has forecast a 53% jump in profit for the first three months of the year, boosted mainly by growing smartphone sales.

It expects to make an operating profit of 8.7tn won ($7.7bn; £5bn) for the period, up from 5.7tn won a year ago.

Samsung has enjoyed massive success with its Galaxy range of smartphones and displaced Apple as the world's biggest smartphone maker last year.

Analysts expect its profits to rise further in the coming months.

They have forecast robust sales for Samsung's latest smartphone model, the Galaxy S4, which is set to hit the stores later this month.

The smartphone, launched earlier this year, allows users to control its screen using only their eyes and has the ability to take two different pictures at once.

Analysts widely regard the phone to be a serious competitor to Apple's iPhone5.

"We expect some 22 million Galaxy S4 smartphones to be sold in the second quarter alone," said Seo Won-seok, an analyst with Korea Investment & Securities.

Mr Seo said that he expected Samsung's earnings to hit the 10tn won mark in the April to June quarter, boosted by GalaxyS4 sales as well as improving conditions in the memory chip market.

Samsung, which is also the world's biggest maker of memory chips, will release it final quarterly results on 26 April.

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Privacy fears over Facebook home

5 April 2013 Last updated at 05:46 ET

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Mark Zuckerberg: 'The home screen is really the soul of your phone'

Facebook's "home" software for Android phones could "destroy" privacy, warn industry watchers and analysts.

Unveiled on 4 April, home is a "wrapper" for Android and puts Facebook feeds on a phone's main screen.

But the detailed data that could be mined from home users could intrude on private life, commentators warned.

Many took issue with the claim that home put people, not apps, at the heart of the mobile experience, saying it would help Facebook sell ads.

Handset home

Home was shown off in a presentation given at Facebook's campus by the social network's founder Mark Zuckerberg. He said it was an attempt to do away with app-centred systems that were a legacy of the computer world in which people clicked on an icon to start a program.

Once installed on a phone, home takes over the lock screen and main display turning it into a live feed of information, notifications and images Facebook users are sharing.

The "always on" nature of home bothered industry watcher Om Malik from tech news website GigaOm who said it could be a route to gathering data about users that would otherwise be hard to find.

"This application erodes any idea of privacy," he wrote. "If you install this, then it is very likely that Facebook is going to be able to track your every move, and every little action."

Users of home could see their privacy "destroyed", he warned.

Harry McCracken at Time pointed out that many other apps can grab data like home but said it would be "comforting" to get confirmation from Facebook that it had no plans to datamine the lives of its users.

Their worries were echoed by Natasha Lomas at TechCrunch who said "The Facebookification of the mobile web is a threat to openness, to choice, to privacy - but only if you care about those things".

Ms Lomas wrote that home would create many winners and losers and said it was a way for Facebook gradually to take over more and more functions on phones. Home will have monthly updates and Ms Lomas expected many of those to use Facebook as the core controls for a handset.

She also wondered if home would be a success or prove unpopular with users.

"Facebook thinks it's more important to people than it actually is," Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, told Reuters.

"For the vast majority of people, Facebook just isn't the be-all and end-all of their mobile experience," he said. "It's just one part."

"I see a more apathetic response among Facebook users than Facebook might be expecting," he added.

Jan Dawson, senior telecoms analyst at Ovum, said home was the "next best thing" to creating a Facebook operating system for mobiles.

Mr Dawson added that the change would let Facebook track more of a user's behaviour on devices and to serve up ads.

"That presents the biggest obstacle to success for this experiment: Facebook's objectives and users' are once again in conflict," he said. "Users don't want more advertising or tracking, and Facebook wants to do more of both."

The software will be available via Google's Play Store as a download and will work only with phones running Android 4.0 or higher - this accounts for about 50% of all Android phones. Home will be available on 12 April in the US and soon after in other territories.

No information was given about whether home would be redeveloped to work with Apple or Microsoft phones.

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Libraries to store UK web content

5 April 2013 Last updated at 06:04 ET By David Sillito Arts Correspondent

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Richard Gibby from the British Library says there is a common belief that the average web page lasts just 75 days

Millions of tweets, Facebook status updates and even a blog about a bus shelter in Shetland are to be preserved for the nation.

The British Library and four other "legal deposit libraries'" have the right to collect and store everything that is published online in the UK.

It is estimated around a billion pages a year will be available for research.

It follows 10 years of planning and will also offer visitors access to material currently behind paywalls.

The other institutions involved are the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, the University Library, Cambridge and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.

The archive will cover 4.8 million websites and will include magazines, books and academic journals as well as alternative sources of literature, news and comment such as Mumsnet, the Beano online, Stephen Hawking's website, and the unofficial armed forces' bulletin board, ARRSE.

Ben Sanderson from the British Library said while people may think information on the web lasts forever, huge amounts of research material has already disappeared.

He added the public had already "lost a lot of the material that was posted by the public during the 7/7 bombings".

MP's blog sites have also been lost following a death or an election defeat.

Continue reading the main story

Many Facebook comments are public and people don't realise they're publishing to the world"

End Quote Jim Killock Open Rights Group

Top 100 websites

Mr Sanderson explained that with much of public life having migrated to the online world, material that is now published physically gives only a part of the story and debate within modern Britain.

He said: "It will be impossible to tell for instance the story of the 2015 general election without accessing what appears on the web".

The new databases will cover all areas of interest, for example the website Style Scout - a fashion blog documenting London Street Fashion - will give historians a snapshot of what people were wearing in 2013.

As part of the launch of the process, the British Library has commissioned a survey of the top 100 websites that ought to be preserved for historians and researchers.

Among the sites recommended to keep material from are eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Tripadvisor and Rightmove.

Some other lesser known ones include the Anarchist Federation, the Dracula Society and The Dreamcast Junkyard - a blog dedicated to the community of gamers who continue to play Dreamcast games online, despite the fact they were officially discontinued in 2002.

The British Library is also asking for advice from the public as to which websites should be preserved to give an accurate picture to future generations.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, told the BBC News website: "The idea of the British Library preserving published content from UK websites is a great one.

"My concern is that a lot of Facebook comments are public and people don't realise they're publishing to the world. That's Facebook's fault, not the British Library's - their user settings need to be changed in line with people's expectations.

"Twitter, on the other hand, is avowedly public - it's very clear you're publishing to the world."

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Smart bracelet protects aid workers

5 April 2013 Last updated at 07:09 ET

A hi-tech bracelet could soon be helping civil rights and aid workers at risk of being kidnapped or killed.

When triggered, the personal alarm uses phone and sat-nav technology to warn that its wearer is in danger.

Warnings are sent in the form of messages to Facebook and Twitter to rally support and ensure people do not disappear without trace.

The first bracelets are being given out this week and funding is being sought to make many more.

The bracelets have been developed by the Civil Rights Defenders campaign group in a bid to help workers in war zones and other areas of conflict.

The chunky bracelet has mobile phone technology buried within it that can send prepared messages when the gadget is triggered.

Alerts can be sent manually by a rights worker if they feel under threat or are triggered automatically if the bracelet is forcefully removed. The alarm sends out information about its owner and where they were when they were attacked. Other staff nearby will also be alerted so they can start to take action to help anyone in distress.

Civil Rights Defenders wants people to sign up to monitor the bracelets of individual rights workers via social media. It hopes the global involvement will act as a deterrent to anyone planning attacks on aid workers.

"Most of us, given the chance, would like to help others in danger," said Civil Rights Defenders' executive director Robert Hardh. "These civil rights defenders are risking their lives for others to have the right to vote, or to practise religion or free speech."

Those who monitor bracelets can also help bring pressure to bear on governments to find or release people abducted or jailed. In total, 55 bracelets will be given out by the end of 2014.

The rights group started work on the gadget in the wake of the kidnapping and murder of Chechen rights worker Natalia Estemirova in 2009. Ms Estemirova had been involved in documenting the alleged abuse of civilians by government-backed militias.

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Sky message switch resurrects emails

5 April 2013 Last updated at 10:30 ET

Many UK customers of Sky are being deluged with thousands of old and deleted messages as the company switches email providers.

In recent weeks Sky has stopped using Google to provide email services in favour of Yahoo.

But the change has caused trouble as many customers are reporting that formerly deleted messages have been delivered again and again.

Some have spent hours clearing the messages out of overflowing inboxes.

Discussion forums on Sky's support site have been filling up with messages from disgruntled customers complaining about the switch. The company, which has more than four million UK broadband customers, changed from Google to Yahoo this week.

The switch has seemingly resurrected many messages users formerly deleted with some reporting that they had to go through thousands of messages before deleting them for a second time. Some unlucky customers had to suffer thousands of deleted messages being re-delivered several times.

Many others said the switch had wiped out email settings, deleted aliases and re-set filters. Customers called on Sky to do a better job of responding to complaints and explaining why old messages were turning up.

On its support site, Sky acknowledged the problems the changeover had caused.

It said it was aware of the issue and had "an ongoing investigation and are working to resolve it". It pledged to provide an update late on 5 April about its efforts to fix the problem.

It said the problem emerged during migration as it was copying all customer emails to Yahoo's mail servers. The issue should recede as mail services were synchronised, it said.

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