Nintendo says Super Mario in-browser game 'illegal'

Super Mario Brothers was first copyrighted in 1985

 

A browser-based re-creation of the popular Super Mario Brothers console game has fallen foul of Nintendo's copyright lawyers, The Washington Post has reported.

College student Josh Goldberg created the Full Screen Mario site in HTML 5 so people could play the game in a web browser rather than on a games console.

But Nintendo has asked him to remove the content saying it infringes its "intellectual property rights".

The game is still operational.

Mr Goldberg, who admitted he did not get permission from Nintendo to re-create the game, said he began the project in October 2012 as a computer programming exercise.

He "didn't care" about copyright issues because he "didn't think it would be a big project", he told the newspaper.

But after little initial interest the game is now receiving 300,000 unique visitors a day, Mr Goldberg claims, after Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow blogged about it.

Unfortunately for Mr Goldberg, the site's popularity also brought it to the attention of Nintendo's lawyers.

"Nintendo's like Disney - it will not tolerate their characters being used on anything," said Keza MacDonald, UK games editor for IGN.com, the video game and entertainment site.

"Earlier this year Nintendo stopped people posting footage of their games on YouTube, so this behaviour sounds entirely consistent."

At the bottom of the site's home page the site declares: "Mario, Super Mario Brothers, and all associated games and media are property of Nintendo and/or Nintendo of America Inc., and are protected by United States and international copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws."

Super Mario Brothers was copyrighted by Nintendo in 1985, but under US law, corporate copyright lasts for 95 years.

Wikipedia probe into paid-for 'sockpuppet' entries

Wikipedia receives about 500 million unique visitors a month

 

Wikipedia editors have expressed "shock and dismay" at the discovery of hundreds of user accounts set up to make paid-for entries.

Paid-for advocacy and the adoption of fake "sockpuppet" identities for promotional purposes are against the free web encyclopaedia's policies.

Sue Gardner, executive editor of the Wikimedia Foundation, said "as many as several hundred" accounts were suspect.

Editors have blocked or banned more than 250 accounts, she added.
"Our goal is to provide neutral, reliable information for our readers, and anything that threatens that is a serious problem," said Ms Gardner.

"We are actively examining this situation and exploring our options."

Wikipedia considers paid-for advocacy a "black hat" practice, she said, that "violates the core principles that have made Wikipedia so valuable for so many people."

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organisation that operates Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia.

According to investigations by the service's editors, most of the disputed entries appear to originate from a US company called Wiki-PR, which claims to "build, manage, and translate Wikipedia pages for over 12,000 people and companies."

The editors say promotional entries - which were posted by an account called "Morning227" as well as by others - have been commissioned by Silicon Valley dot-coms, small financial institutions, authors, medical doctors, a musician and an oil company, amongst others.

Citations are taken from a number of blog-like websites that accept "citizen journalist" material, including CruchBase, DigitalJournal.com and Technorati.com.

Entries "often have a promotional tone and always contain material that is either neutral or that is flattering of their subjects, never material that is critical or negative," Wikipedia said.

However, Wiki-PR disputed the idea it had broken Wikipedia's rules by promoting or advertising its clients' agendas, saying it merely wanted to ensure they were "presented accurately" on the site.

"The PR in Wiki-PR is a misnomer - we're a research and writing firm," Jordan French, the firm's chief executive, told the BBC.

"We research the subject and write in an accurate and properly referenced way about it, filling a hole at Wikipedia for many subjects - concepts, companies, people, even astronomy - in which other editors lack an interest.

"We're part of the fabric of Wikipedia - an integral part - and useful where volunteers don't want to or cannot put in the time to understand a subject, find sources, code, upload, and professionally monitor a page.

Facebook lets beheading clips return to social network

Facebook announced in May that it would ban videos showing

 graphic violence while it carried out a review

 

Facebook is allowing videos showing people being decapitated to be posted and shared on its site once again.

The social network had introduced a temporary ban in May following complaints that the clips could cause long-term psychological damage.
The US firm confirmed it now believed its users should be free to watch and condemn such videos. It added it was, however, considering adding warnings.
One suicide prevention charity condemned the move.
"It only takes seconds of exposure to such graphic material to leave a permanent trace - particularly in a young person's mind," said Dr Arthur Cassidy, a former psychologist who runs a branch of the Yellow Ribbon Program in Northern Ireland.
"The more graphic and colourful the material is, the more psychologically destructive it becomes."
Two of the firm's official safety advisors have also criticised the decision.
Facebook allows anyone aged 13 and above to be a member.
Its terms and conditions now state that it will remove photos or videos that "glorify violence" in addition to other banned material, including a woman's "fully exposed breast".


New rules

The BBC was alerted to Facebook's change in policy by a reader who said the firm was refusing to remove a page showing a clip of a masked man killing a woman, which is believed to have been filmed in Mexico.

It was posted last week under the title, Challenge: Anybody can watch this video?

Some Facebook users complained about a video showing a decapitation being allowed to remain on the site.

 

"Remove this video too many young innocent minds out there shouldn't see this!!!" wrote one user in the comments section below.
"This is absolutely horrible, distasteful and needs to be removed... there are too many young minds that can see this. I'm 23 and I'm very disturbed after seeing a couple of seconds of it," wrote another.
The social network later confirmed it was allowing such material to be posted again.
"Facebook has long been a place where people turn to share their experiences, particularly when they're connected to controversial events on the ground, such as human rights abuses, acts of terrorism and other violent events," said a spokeswoman.
"People are sharing this video on Facebook to condemn it. If the video were being celebrated, or the actions in it encouraged, our approach would be different.
"However, since some people object to graphic video of this nature, we are working to give people additional control over the content they see. This may include warning them in advance that the image they are about to see contains graphic content."
The firm also disabled the adverts for third-party products that had been appearing alongside the video.

Advisors concerned

Facebook originally pulled decapitation videos after the Family Online Safety Institute - a member of its Safety Advisory Board - complained that they "crossed a line".

The charity's leader Stephen Balkam told the BBC he was surprised by the latest development.

"I would have expected a heads-up on this," he said.

"I went to have a look at the video and there's no warning label nor is there any condemnatory context. It's just sort of up there and the first image you are presented with is a woman's head being held by a guy.

"I'm very unhappy that these have gone back up and that they have gone up without any warning. First thing tomorrow morning I intend to raise this with Facebook."

Another of the board members, London-based Childnet International, said it also had concerns.

"Such content should be taken down," said its chief executive Will Gardner.

"There is a need to raise issues happening around the world, there is that argument, but some content is horrific.

"We would want to see steps to try and protect people from coming across such content. I'll tell Facebook what our view is, absolutely."

'Profoundly shocking'

Decapitation videos are available elsewhere on the net - including on Google's YouTube - but critics have raised concern that Facebook's news feeds and other sharing functions mean it is particularly adept at spreading such material.

Some psychologists have raised concerns that watching graphic violence can harm the viewer

 

"I have seen some of these videos - they are profoundly shocking," said John Carr, who sits on the executive board of the UK government's Council on Child Internet Safety.
"Facebook has taken leave of its senses. Those videos will fuel countless nightmares among the young and the sensitive."
The idea of Facebook issuing a blanket ban had, however, concerned some freedom-of-speech campaigners who had suggested it was the responsibility of parents - not the company - to protect children on the internet.
However, the French digital rights group La Quadrature du Net said it was still concerned that Facebook was reserving the right to take down the videos if it took issue with the way they were presented.
"It shows how much Facebook is in power to decide whatever will or will not be expressed through its network," said the organisation's co-founder Jeremie Zimmermann.
"It plays a profoundly anti-democratic role when it makes any such choice, whatever the limits are and whatever the good reasons it uses to make the decision. Only a judicial authority should be able to restrict fundamental freedoms according to the rule of law."

Nokia Lumia 1020 review: More camera than phone

Nokia Lumia 1020's camera is surely a photographer's delight.

The 41MP camera of this smartphone works with the help of oversampling technology. The phone does not actually capture 41MP images, but in 34MP (16:9 aspect ratio) or 38MP (4:3 aspect ratio) resolution. Default images taken by the phone have 5MP resolution, but what Nokia's way of processing images does is reduce the noise to a minimum, thus providing you extremely clear photos, even indoors.

Lumia 1020's camera boasts of lossless zoom, wherein you can crop a small portion of the high-resolution photo without losing any clarity at all. The image quality of Nokia's 5MP images is much better than what you get from any other 5MP camera, and even some 8MP ones.

You can operate the phone's camera in either automatic mode or manual mode (namely the Pro Camera app). The handset boasts of 3x (lossless) digital zoom, ISO settings between 100 to 4000, shutter speed from 1 to 16,000 and optical image stabilization. Lumia 1020 has several 'Lenses' that we have seen in previous Nokia smartphones, such as Panorama, Cinemagraph, Camera 360 and Smart Cam.

The standard camera app takes 5MP photos, while you need to use the Pro Camera app to take the 38MP photos. Nokia Pro Camera lets you shoot in manual mode, which means you have full control of the camera settings. On the other hand, the standard mode adjusts the settings automatically, giving you the best possible image quality under the available lighting conditions.

No matter what the light conditions are, the images are undeniably of high quality. Lumia 1020 captures large photos and the level of details is so good that you can even zoom at a particular portion of a picture without worrying about pixelation.

One big problem we have with Lumia 1020 camera is the slow image processing of both high as well as low-resolution photos. The phone takes great pictures, but you cannot rely on it if you want to capture photos quickly.

Another issue is that the smartphone heats up when the camera is used for too long. In fact, if mobile internet is kept active while taking photos, the phone heats up in just 15 minutes. We don't know whether this issue plagued just our review unit or all Lumia 1020s in the market, but it certainly needs to be looked into considering camera is the device's key selling point. 

Similarly, close-up shots aren't really good and you need to be at least 12-15 inch away from the object in order to take the best photo. The performance of the camera is poor when it comes to detecting fluorescent light. If you are using the flash, you might see a hint of yellow in the images.

But under normal settings when the flash is turned off, the pictures that the camera clicks are excellent. The colours are bright and vividness of the images is maintained.

Now the big question: Is Lumia 1020 really the best smartphone camera in the market? Well, it depends. If details in a photograph really matter to you then Lumia 1020 is the best option. But if you simply believe in capturing simple moments of life and details aren't that important, then rivals that take images faster provide a better option. 

In a nutshell, Lumia 1020 has a great camera, however, it cannot be a substitute to a high-end digital camera. Also, storage too may be prove to be a constraint when the file size of many photos reach 10MB. 

Huge camera hump, no problem
Nokia Lumia 1020 is, basically, Lumia 920 with a huge camera hump at the back. The device has the same specifications and operating system as last year's Nokia flagship, but with the added benefit of a powerful camera. The most powerful camera in any smartphone, in fact. However, this does not bode well for the overall design of the handset.

Though it is slimmer and lighter than Lumia 920, it cannot be put flat on a table or any other surface. The design could have been better, but thankfully it is not as bad as Galaxy S4 zoom. Plus, we found that the huge camera hump does not adversely affect the everyday usage or seem awkward to hold in the hand.

The rest
Other than the camera, Lumia 1020 does not offer much to explore. The hardware, software and design make it an almost exact replica of Lumia 920. Everything - from the chipset to the screen to the operating system - has been analyzed in previous reviews.

The hardware is not great but still workable. Apps and games run smoothly and the AMOLED screen looks good; you can even get rid of the greenish tinge that such displays show by tweaking the settings. Sunlight legibility and viewing angles are great, as was the case with earlier top-end Lumia phones. Software-wise, you get the same fare that other Lumia smartphones have. 

Last words
Nokia Lumia 1020 is a great option for those who want a camera more than a smartphone. Both photos and videos are of high quality, though there is the issue of heating up after prolonged use.

But as a smartphone, Lumia 1020 is just passable. It offers nothing more than what Lumia 920 does and it seems that Nokia doesn't really mind that, judging by the negligible upgrades.

Go for it if you want a camera more than a phone. Otherwise, Samsung Galaxy S4 and Apple iPhone 5 (and the upcoming iPhone 5S) are great options as well, providing a more balanced mix of hardware, software and camera.

Twitter’s I.P.O. Plan Has an International Focus

 

The company’s filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission reports that more than 77 percent of its 218 million monthly average users in the three months through June were outside of the United States.

 

In its documents for the most anticipated stock sale since Facebook went public last year, the company noted that it was targeting Argentina, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa for faster growth than in the United States.

 

The company also revealed in the prospectus — the first look at Twitter’s financial health after it announced last month its intent to go public — that it earned far more of its advertising revenue from American users than from foreign users.

Zachary Reiss-Davis, an analyst at Forrester, said the social network would eventually need to show how it could evolve its global advertising efforts and make its offerings more sophisticated.

 

“Twitter has done a good job of growing its international user base,” he said, “but now it has to work with marketers to create advertising experiences that work for those international users and for marketers.”

 

Perhaps surprisingly, Twitter’s most active market after the United States is Indonesia, according to Semiocast, a French market research firm. Elsewhere in Asia, Japan and India have also embraced it.

 

In India, Twitter is widely used by Bollywood stars like Amitabh Bachchan, who has 6.5 million followers on the service.

 

Yet the budding tech giant faces a series of technical challenges in turning user interest into cold cash, ranging from spotty Internet connections to government bans on the service and fast-growing rivals.

 

The Twitter platform is language-agnostic, meaning there’s nothing to stop someone from broadcasting messages of up to 140 characters in Swahili, Arabic, French or, for that matter, Klingon or Latin. And the use of characters in Japanese and Chinese, for example, means a user can pack more meaning into a tweet than is the case in English.

 

Analysts say the social network’s uses, ranging from sharing mundane thoughts on local television shows and sports to organizing social protests and political gatherings, has played a major role in its adoption in both emerging and developed countries.

 

Twitter said in its filing that it intends to “continue to increase the monetization of our platform” by improving its ability to single out users for “promoted” tweets, or ads, and by expanding its outreach to international advertisers. The company said in the filing that 75 percent of its users entered the service through mobile devices during the second quarter and that 65 percent of its revenue came from mobile ads.

 

But many users in emerging markets still use low-cost phones that are not designed to take advantage of Twitter’s mobile offerings, meaning the quality of its overseas customer base will depend partly on the continued penetration of higher-end smartphones. The company will also likely have to ramp up its global work force as it looks to increasing sell advertising in regions with multiple languages and cultures.

 

“Twitter is going to need people on the ground to build relationships,” said Ed Barton, a director at the consulting firm Strategy Analytics in London.

 

Twitter also faces challenges expanding in countries with authoritarian governments. It said in its S.E.C. filing that “we expect to face challenges in entering some markets, such as China, where access to Twitter is blocked, as well as certain other countries that have intermittently restricted access to Twitter.” Such restrictions will remain a risk for the future, it noted.

Twitter’s problems in China are shared by several other Web services, like Facebook and YouTube, and there is little sign that this will change soon.

 

The Beijing authorities are wary of the potential of social media to be used to rally opposition to the government and have largely limited social media to China-based organizations, like the microblogging site Weibo, that engage in extensive self-censorship.

 

Twitter also faces competition for people’s time from rival services. Hundreds of millions of Internet users, mostly in Asia, have turned to smartphone-based messaging services like Line, WeChat, WhatsApp and KakaoTalk, which provide free phone calls and chat functions. While these services are private, and most Twitter comments are public, some people use the services in similar ways to communicate with groups of friends.

 

Advertising on Twitter, still relatively undeveloped even in the United States and other Western markets, is in its infancy in Asia, analysts say.

 

“It’s a region with a lot of competitive, regulatory and monitoring issues,” said Neha Dharia an analyst at Ovum, a research firm. “I would say they still have a very long way to go in terms of monetizing the user base. Having said that, there is also tremendous potential.”

 

And while concerns have been raised in the United States about security agencies potentially tracking individuals’ activities on Twitter, analysts say that the company’s American roots give it credibility with some international users, particularly civilians in authoritarian countries.

 

“For some people outside the U.S., Twitter’s location is perceived as a positive,” Mr. Barton said.

HTC Reports Its First Loss, but Samsung Shows Vigor

 

TOKYO — The diverging fortunes of two of the leading smartphone providers in Asia were demonstrated on Friday when Samsung Electronics of South Korea predicted better-than-expected quarterly earnings, while HTC of Taiwan reported its first loss.

 

Samsung, which is benefiting from its status as a leading maker of semiconductors as well as smartphones, said it expected to post operating profit of 9.9 trillion won to 10.3 trillion won, or about $9.2 billion to $9.6 billion, in the third quarter, up from 8.06 trillion won a year earlier. Sales are expected to rise to a range of 58 trillion to 60 trillion won, from 52.2 trillion won a year earlier.

 

The outlook contrasts strikingly with the report from HTC. The company posted a net loss of 2.97 billion Taiwan dollars, or about $101 million, in the third quarter, after net income of 3.9 billion Taiwan dollars a year earlier.

 

Both companies are feeling pressure on the low end of the phone market, where new competitors, mostly in China, are doing well in what is the fastest-growing segment of the market. HTC has focused on premium models, however, despite the demand in the lower end of the market, where Lenovo, ZTE and Huawei, all Chinese companies, are growing rapidly.

 

Samsung, however, has strength at the top. It also has a diversified mix of products that provide additional cash. Samsung is not only the biggest maker of smartphones, it is the leading maker of memory chips. It sells chips to other companies, like Apple, in addition to supplying them to its own smartphone production lines.

 

“Samsung’s diversity of profit streams plus strength and scale in all tiers of smartphones helps them to continue to grow profits,” Mark Newman, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, wrote in a note to clients.

 

Samsung did not provide an explanation of its growth, but analysts said the company was probably benefiting from a recent increase in the price of memory chips after a fire at a factory owned by a Samsung rival, SK Hynix, in Wuxi, China.

 

While the torrid pace of sales of high-end smartphones like Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has eased somewhat, the company sells a range of lower-price devices, too. This positions it to benefit from expected strong growth in low-price and midrange smartphones, analysts say.

 

Samsung’s numbers were preliminary; final results are expected to be reported at the end of the month.

 

Over the last few years, the performance of Samsung has been roughly inverse to that of HTC, whose problems continue to deepen. Though HTC previously forecast a quarterly loss, the number reported on Friday was even bigger than analysts had expected. The company’s flagship smartphone, the HTC One, has failed to catch on with high-end users, who have favored devices from Samsung and Apple.

 

HTC’s sales plunged to 47.1 billion Taiwan dollars in the third quarter from 70.2 billion dollars a year earlier.

 

According to Gartner, a research firm, the company’s share of the worldwide smartphone market fell to 2.6 percent; in 2010 and 2011, it flirted with double-digit percentages of market share.

 

Horace Dediu, an independent telecommunications analyst in Helsinki, Finland, said it could be difficult for HTC to recover. When other phone makers posted their first quarterly losses, it was only a few years before their handset businesses were sold. Others got out of the phone business entirely.

 

What Mr. Dediu referred to as the “post-traumatic life expectancy of phone vendors” has been shortening. Motorola lasted five years; Nokia and BlackBerry only two.

 

“Once you hit any bump in the road, you are essentially derailed,” he said. “In the phone space, you hit one bad quarter and you are out.”

 

Only one major cellphone maker, LG of South Korea, has recovered from a deep crisis in its phone-making division, Mr. Dediu said. But LG’s smartphone arm is just one part of a diversified conglomerate, like Samsung, helping it to ride out the dips.

 

HTC has also suffered from internal discord, and a series of executives have quit the company in recent months. One of the company’s top design executives, Thomas Chien, was arrested in August in connection with a police investigation of theft of trade secrets from HTC.

 

Cher Wang, HTC’s chairwoman, said in a recent interview that Mr. Chien, who could not be reached for comment, was trying to recruit HTC employees for a new company he was planning to form.

 

She insisted that the executive departures would have no effect on the company’s operations, saying that all of the HTC material that the employees were accused of taking had been recovered.

 

“In terms of technology, it’s not going to affect us,” Ms. Wang said. “It will not have any detrimental effect on us.”

 

The worse-than-expected results will put pressure on HTC to find a business partner, Mr. Dediu and other analysts said. There has been speculation that the company could link up with one of the growing Chinese companies looking to expand outside their home territory.

 

“The question is whether anyone in China needs them now,” Mr. Dediu said.

China employs two million microblog monitors state media say

Sina Weibo, launched in 2010, has more than 500 million registered users with 100 million messages posted daily

More than two million people in China are employed by the government to monitor web activity, state media say, providing a rare glimpse into how the state tries to control the internet.

The Beijing News says the monitors, described as internet opinion analysts, are on state and commercial payrolls.

China's hundreds of millions of web users increasingly use microblogs to criticise the state or vent anger.

Recent research suggested Chinese censors actively target social media.

The report by the Beijing News said that these monitors were not required to delete postings.

They are "strictly to gather and analyse public opinions on microblog sites and compile reports for decision-makers", it said. It also added details about how some of these monitors work.

Tang Xiaotao has been working as a monitor for less than six months, the report says, without revealing where he works.

"He sits in front of a PC every day, and opening up an application, he types in key words which are specified by clients.

"He then monitors negative opinions related to the clients, and gathers (them) and compile reports and send them to the clients," it says.

The reports says the software used in the office is even more advanced and supported by thousands of servers. It also monitors websites outside China.

China rarely reveals any details concerning the scale and sophistication of its internet police force.

It is believed that the two million internet monitors are part of a huge army which the government relies on to control the internet.

The government is also to organise training classes for them for the first time from 14 to 18 October, the paper says.

But it is not clear whether the training will be for existing monitors or for new recruits.

The training will have eight modules, and teach participants how to analyse and judge online postings and deal with crisis situations, it says.

The most popular microblogging site Sina Weibo, launched in 2010, now has more than 500 million registered users with 100 million messages posted daily.

Topics cover a wide range - from personal hobbies, health to celebrity gossip and food safety but they talso include politically sensitive issues like official corruption.

Postings deemed to be politically incorrect are routinely deleted

'Terminator' self-assembling cube robots revealed by MIT

The research has been carried out by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

 

Cube-shaped robots that can flip, jump and assemble themselves into different shapes have been unveiled by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The small robots, known as M-Blocks, have no external parts but can move using an internal flywheel mechanism.

They stick together using magnets.
The scientists envisage miniaturised "swarmbot" versions self-assembling like the "liquid steel" androids in the Terminator films.

More realistically, the researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), believe armies of such cubes could be used for making temporary repairs to bridges or buildings, or as self-assembly, re-configurable scaffolding.

Modular robots have the advantage of being able to adapt to whatever task or terrain is presented to them.

The modular M-Block robot with its innards and flywheel exposed

John Romanishin, one of the research scientists at CSAIL leading the project, said: "We want hundreds of cubes, scattered randomly across the floor, to be able to identify each other, coalesce, and autonomously transform into a chair, or a ladder, or a desk, on demand."

The M-Blocks are currently controlled by computer instructions sent over wireless radio, but in future the researchers hope algorithms can be loaded on the blocks directly, making them entirely autonomous and capable of adapting to different environments.

Blocks equipped with sensors and cameras would be able to work out how to accomplish specific tasks in combat or emergency situations, the scientists hope.

Barclays Bank computer theft: Eight held over £1.3m haul

Eight men have been arrested in connection with a £1.3m theft by gang who took control of a Barclays Bank computer.

Searches are currently being carried out at addresses across London where property has been seized, including cash, jewellery, drugs, thousands of credit cards and personal data.

The men, aged between 24 and 47, were held on Thursday and remain in police custody.

Blackberry reveals date BBM messaging will go to rivals

Until now the BBM app had been limited to Blackberry's own devices

 

From this weekend, users will no longer need to own a Blackberry device to access its BBM messaging service.

 

Blackberry has confirmed BBM will be available as a free download for Apple and Android devices but not for Windows phones.

 

The move comes as the Wall Street Journal reports that Blackberry will lay off 40% of its staff before 2014.

 

Widening the appeal of BBM could be a clever way for the company to reinvent itself, said experts.

 

"Blackberry is having a tough time, sales are down, it is losing market to Windows phones and it needs to do something to stop the rot. This is as good a move as any," said Chris Green, principal technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group Europe.

 

"Offering it across other platforms broadens the appeal of BBM," he added.

 

BBM will be available for Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean while iPhones running iOS 6 or iOS 7 can also download it. It will be available for Android from Saturday and for iOS from Sunday.

 

"With more than a billion Android, iOS and Blackberry smartphones in the market, and no dominant mobile messaging platform this is absolutely the right time to bring BBM to Android and iPhone

customers," said Andrew Bocking, vice-president for BBM in a blogpost.

 

Reinventing itself

 

BBM has been described as Blackberry's "crown jewels" and the service hit a chord with a mass consumer audience.

Offering it to a wider public will not make any money for the company.

"It could even cost it money," said Mr Green.

"The firm is having to reinvent itself and whether that will be by focusing on software, monetising BBM, licensing its products or joint ventures is not yet clear. At the moment it is throwing everything out there," said Mr Green.

Blackberry chief executive Thorsten Heins revealed the plan at the company's annual developers conference in May.

At the time, Mr Heins said that the move was a "statement of confidence" and would allow Blackberry Messenger to "become an independent multi-platform messaging solution".

It could prove disruptive to other messaging services such as Skype and Whatsapp.

Google revamps logo and search page

Google's old logo (above) had drop shadows, but its new one is flatter

 

Google has begun rolling out a redesign of its homepage - the world's most visited web address.

The revamp features a flattened, reshaped logo and replaces the previous menu bar with a smaller range of links on the page's right-hand side.

The move comes in the same month that Yahoo's logo and Microsoft's Bing search tool have also been updated.

A Google spokeswoman said that similar changes would now be "slowly rolled out" across its products.

A blog post added that the firm intende to "streamline" users' experience of its services to prevent "distractions".

It is the first change to Google's logo since 2010. Not all users will be able to see the redesign yet.

"This is the season for consumer tech updates and whether you sell a product or it's free everyone wants to look fresh ahead of the Christmas shopping season," said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at the tech consultancy Forrester.

"What they are doing is actually pretty subtle and that's because these software companies depend on user loyalty - they don't want to do anything that would alienate their customers."

Another analyst suggested that cutting down the number of links would encourage people to use Google's social network, Google Plus.

To reveal other products - such as Google Drive storage, YouTube videos or the Android app Play Store - visitors to the firm's search page must now click on an icon made up of small squares.

"I do think that there is a move to try to make Google+ more central to everything its users do," said Carolina Milanesi from the tech advisors Gartner.

"It might be the case that it is not obvious to some people that they need to click on the box to reveal the firm's other services."

Grand Theft Auto 5 in Amazon embargo breach

Grand Theft Auto 5 is due for official release on Tuesday 17 September

 

Amazon.co.uk has delivered copies of the eagerly awaited Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA5) video game ahead of the official launch on Tuesday, breaching a strict embargo set by its maker.

Some customers who had pre-ordered the title received it days before the launch day.
Rockstar North, the title's Scottish creator, is reportedly investigating but has yet to comment publicly.

Amazon said only "a small number" of customers had been affected.
"We have established processes in place to deliver new titles to customers on their release date and are looking into the circumstances that led to a small number of customers receiving this game earlier than intended on this occasion", an Amazon spokesman told the BBC.

Will Guyatt, spokesman for video and entertainment site IGN.com, told the BBC: "I got an early copy on Saturday, which I paid for myself, and was delighted on a personal level. But it's obviously going to cause problems for Rockstar.

"There are about 2,000 shops stocking the game ready for launch on Tuesday, so the number of people posting spoilers online is a bit sad", he said.

Grand Theft Auto 5 may turn out to be the most expensive video game ever made

Mr Guyatt said he had ordered his copy of the 18-rated violent crime game in March, but others in his office who had ordered it at a later date had not yet received their copies.

"This kind of thing has always happened in the games industry, but with the rise of social media a lot more people know about it now", Mr Guyatt said.

"I can't see what Rockstar can do about it."

Some retailers, such as Cex, have been selling pre-release copies of the game for up to £75, the BBC has learned, nearly double what other stores are planning to charge.

One Cex employee confirmed that there were 13 copies of the game available in a north London outlet, and 25 available in an east London store.

 

iPhone shortages frustrate networks on launch day

Short supply of the latest Apple iPhone has left mobile networks "frustrated" and "concerned", the BBC has learned.

Several networks said that stock of the latest premium model - the 5S - was severely limited in the UK, and would likely cause disappointment.

None of the networks contacted wanted to be identified over worries they could be further disadvantaged when supplies were replenished.

Apple told the BBC it did not comment on stock levels.

However, networks contacted by the BBC pointed out that supplies of the new 5C, a lower-cost phone and newcomer to Apple's range, were plentiful.

Insiders from two of the companies told the BBC they suspected Apple was trying to drive sales of the cheaper 5C model, but that their own figures suggested customers had been hesitant to place orders.

Apple has prevented networks and retailers from allowing customers to pre-order the 5S.

One network spokesman said they had "crates and crates" of the 5C, but that the higher-end 5S was being "drip fed" into the market, and networks and retailers had been left "in the dark" about Apple's schedule for replenishing the stock.

He added that he was concerned that customers would be angry at the networks for the delay, rather than at Apple.

Less than one hour after going on sale in the UK, the 5S was listed on Apple's website as being unavailable for 7-10 business days for the UK.

 

 

Voyager probe 'leaves Solar System'

Voyager will live out its days circling the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy

The Voyager-1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to leave the Solar System.

Scientists say the probe's instruments indicate it has moved beyond the bubble of hot gas from our Sun and is now moving in the space between the stars.

Launched in 1977, Voyager was sent initially to study the outer planets, but then just kept on going.

Today, the veteran Nasa mission is almost 19 billion km (12 billion miles) from home.

This distance is so vast that it takes 17 hours now for a radio signal sent from Voyager to reach receivers here on Earth.

"This is really a key milestone that we'd been hoping we would reach when we started this project over 40 years ago - that we would get a spacecraft into interstellar space," said Prof Ed Stone, the chief scientist on the venture.

"Scientifically it's a major milestone, but also historically - this is one of those journeys of exploration like circumnavigating the globe for the first time or having a footprint on the Moon for the first time. This is the first time we've begun to explore the space between the stars," he told BBC News.

Sensors on Voyager had been indicating for some time that its local environment had changed.

The data that finally convinced the mission team to call the jump to interstellar space came from the probe's Plasma Wave Science (PWS) instrument. This can measure the density of charged particles in Voyager's vicinity.

Readings taken in April/May this year and October/November last year revealed a near-100-fold jump in the number of protons occupying every cubic metre of space.
Scientists have long theorised such a spike would eventually be observed if Voyager could get beyond the influence of the magnetic fields and particle wind that billow from the surface of the Sun.

When the Voyager team put the new data together with information from the other instruments onboard, they calculated the moment of escape to have occurred on or about 25 August, 2012. This conclusion is contained in a report published by the journal Science.

"This is big; it's really impressive - the first human-made object to make it out into interstellar space," said Prof Don Gurnett from the University of Iowa and the principal investigator on the PWS.

On 25 August, 2012, Voyager-1 was some 121 Astronomical Units away. That is, 121 times the separation between the Earth and the Sun.

Breaching the boundary, known technically as the heliopause, was, said the English Astronomer Royal, Prof Sir Martin Rees, a remarkable achievement: "It's utterly astonishing that this fragile artefact, based on 1970s technology, can signal its presence from this immense distance."

Although now embedded in the gas, dust and magnetic fields from other stars, Voyager still feels a gravitational tug from the Sun, just as some comets do that lie even further out in space. But to all intents and purposes, it has left what most people would define as the Solar System. It is now in a completely new domain.

Voyager-1 departed Earth on 5 September 1977, a few days after its sister spacecraft, Voyager-2.

The pair's primary objective was to survey the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - a task they completed in 1989.

They were then steered towards deep space. It is expected that their plutonium power sources will stop supplying electricity in about 10 years, at which point their instruments and their 20W transmitters will die.

Voyager-1 will not approach another star for nearly 40,000 years, even though it is moving at 45km/s (100,000mph).

"Voyager-1 will be in orbit around the centre of our galaxy with all its stars for billions of years," said Prof Stone.

  In 1990, Voyager-1 looked back and took a picture of Earth - a "pale blue dot"

The probe's work is not quite done, however. For as long as they have working instruments, scientists will want to sample the new environment.

The new region through which Voyager is now flying was generated and sculpted by big stars that exploded millions of years ago.

There is indirect evidence and models to describe the conditions in this medium, but Voyager can now measure them for real and report back.

The renowned British planetary scientist Prof Fred Taylor commented: "As a young post-doc, I went to [Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] and worked for a while with the team that was doing the science definition study for the Outer Planets Grand Tour, which later became Voyager.

"It seemed so incredible and exciting to think we would see and explore Jupiter and Saturn close up, let alone Uranus and Neptune.

"The idea that the spacecraft would then exit the Solar System altogether was so way out, figuratively as well as literally, that we didn't even discuss it then, although I suppose we knew it would happen someday. Forty-three years later, that day has arrived, and Voyager is still finding new frontiers."

The Sun sits in an extensive bubble of hot gas called the heliosphere

Samsung backs Apple's 64-bit chip smartphone chip switch

Samsung has indicated that the successor to its Note 3

 handset will have a 64-bit processor

 

Samsung has confirmed its next high-end smartphones will feature 64-bit processors.

 

The announcement follows the launch of the iPhone 5S, the first handset to include the technology.

Apple boasted its A7 chip offered "desktop-class architecture".

 

However, experts say most apps are unlikely to see much immediate benefit from the shift from 32-bit tech and that it could introduce compatibility problems in the future.

 

The Android operating system would need to be updated before Samsung's Galaxy devices could take advantage of a shift to 64-bit.

 

Faster work

 

The number of bits in relation to a microprocessor affects the size of the numbers that can be handled by it registers - a type of storage that can be read very quickly.

This has implications for the amount of memory that can be directly accessed without data having to be swapped back and forth to slower storage.

In the case of 32-bit architecture, the amount of memory than can be addressed is two to the power of 32, in other words 4.3 billion values, or four gigabytes of memory.

In the case of 64-bit architecture the processor can theoretically address 18,400,000 trillion values.

 

If a program has been written to take advantage of a 64-bit operating system, it should mean the processor can access data that is in this larger memory rather than retrieving it from, for example, the hard disk.

 

This speeds up the whole processing chain.

Another advantage is that the processor can take advantage of machines with more physical memory.

Operating systems written for 32-bit chips can only access up to 4GB of RAM, but those written for 64-bit processors can, in theory, support up to 16 billion gigabytes of RAM.

 

Boosting the amount of RAM allows software to become more complex and the computer to run more programs simultaneously without having to swap as much data to other types of slower memory.

However, it also makes the equipment more expensive and power-hungry.

For that reason, smart-device makers have tended to shy away from taking advantage of 32-bit chips' upper RAM limit.

Samsung's forthcoming Galaxy Note 3 handset goes the furthest, with 3GB of RAM. The device also features a bigger-than-normal 3,200 mAh battery.

Incompatible apps

Samsung Electronic's co-chief executive announced its plan to use 64-bit chips, in an interview with the Korea Times newspaper.

"Not in the shortest time," said Shin Jong-kyun. "But yes, our next smartphones will have 64-bit processing functionality."

Apple dedicated part of its iPhone 5S launch to highlighting its shift to a 64-bit processor

 

 

However, bearing in mind there will remain many iOS and Android handsets on the market that still rely on 32-bit chips, this may deter developers from taking advantage of the switch in the short-term.

"People who have the old 32-bit processors will not be able to run software that is built specifically for the 64-bit processors because the latter uses a different instruction set," explained Prof Alan Woodward, from the University of Surrey's computing department.

"However, if people write in 32-bit, it will run on many of the 64-bit processors because they still support the old instruction set.

"So, you can get the whole market by writing the app in 32-bits, but you can only get a very small part of the market if you write specifically for 64-bits."

Once sales of the new devices do grow, makers of video games and software to create 3D-animations might be among the first to make the switch since their programs are among the most processor-intensive and thus most likely to see the biggest benefit.

One iPhone and Android developer welcomed the move.

"Yes, many apps won't be able to take advantage of 64-bit at the outset," said Stephen Lum from Visual Candy Apps.

"But the beauty of what Apple did is that they said it takes an iOS developer, like me, two hours to convert to 64-bit. That is awesome."

However, one industry watcher warned that the switch might create compatibility problems unless app stores continued to offer two different versions of the same program to accommodate both types of chip.

"When app makers do decide to transition to fully 64-bit, it will create a divide in the market," said Chris Green, from the Davies Murphy Group consultancy.

"We saw exactly the same thing happen in the Windows world when software makers moved from 32-bit to purely 64-bit."

Rise of ARM

For now British chip designer ARM may prove the biggest beneficiary.

ARM's shares rose following news that Apple was licensing its 64-bit chip architecture

Smart-device makers are able to offer 64-bit tech because they have licensed the firm's ARMv8 architecture, which it first announced in 2011.

The news means the company will enjoy bigger fees. ARM's share price has risen about 10% since the start of the week.

Some have speculated that Apple's announcement might foreshadow the US firm ditching Intel chips in its laptops and desktop computers and moving to its own processors.

"Apple's new A7 chip is not powerful enough to be a PC chip, but the architecture is going that way," said Prof Woodward.

"They might be readying themselves. I think this is the beginning of a long road."

 

 

Twitter plans stock market listing

The BBC's Samira Hussain says it is hoped Twitter will "learn some lessons"
 from Facebook's stock market listing

Twitter says it plans to join the stock market in the most hotly anticipated flotation since Facebook's last year.

Referring to the official paperwork needed to join the market the company tweeted: "We've confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned [initial public offering]."

Investors value Twitter, founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, at more than $10bn (£6.3bn).

Twitter gave no further details as to the timing or price of the offering.

It is on track to post $583 million in revenue in 2013, according to advertising consultancy eMarketer.

Once a company has filed paperwork with US regulators for a planned IPO it enters a so-called "quiet period" when it is not allowed to speak with the press.

According to the Securities and Exchanges Commission's website, a company can file a confidential prospectus for a public share sale if it is classified as an "emerging growth company" with revenue of less than $1bn.

Mobile first

On Monday, Twitter said it had acquired MoPub, a mobile-focused advertising exchange, for a reported $350m, as part of its continued push to boost advertising.

"Twitter was more or less a mobile-first platform from the start and so the company built its experience to work relatively well across devices," Clark Fredriksen of eMarketer told the BBC.

"Ultimately, they did a good job of monetising their mobile user base."

Some speculate that the timing of the IPO has to do with the company's desire to further grow - as well as with its desire to reward investors, who have poured more than $1bn into the company.

"For one thing it gives its investors a way to get some of the money back that they put into the company at the beginning," said Andrew Frank, social media expert at tech advisors Gartner.

"It gives the employees a similar kind of event to reward them for the success they've had so far.

"It gives Twitter itself extra funds to invest in new projects and innovation. It also gives it the status of having a position on the stock exchange, which of course puts the firm in a different league to a start-up."
Learning from Facebook
"Twitter is one of the last of the major developed social networks to file [for an IPO] - we've already had Facebook and LinkedIn," said Colin Gillis, a New York-based tech specialist at BGC Partners.

Demand for Facebook shares was high when they first listed,

but the share price has disappointed investors since then

Facebook listed on the stock market in May last year. Although it initially created excitement among investors, its share price performed poorly, before recovering this summer.

Mr Gillis said it was impossible to say how great the demand for Twitter shares would be until the company released a valuation.

"There's a few issues [such as] how many revenue streams can be developed beyond just advertising, the impact of more people accessing the service via smartphones," Mr Gillis said.

Analysts say Twitter must continue to innovate under the scrutiny of public ownership.

"One of the things they will have to focus on is making sure that they keep their users very actively engaged," Nate Elliott, an analyst at the tech consultancy Forrester, told the BBC.

"One of the things Facebook has done very successfully over the past year and a half has been to show that not only is the number of users growing, but that those users are becoming more active."
'This tweet is going public?'
Twitter's tweet announcing its filing immediately went viral - it was re-tweeted more than 8,000 times within an hour of its posting.

For many users, it seemed apt that the company would use its own platform to announce the news.

"Naturally Twitter announces its IPO via Twitter. What other way?" one read.

Twitter later sent a follow up tweet, which read simply: "Now, back to work."

Apple's shares fall on emerging market concerns

There are worries the new cheaper iPhone may still be

relatively expensive for emerging market buyers

 

Apple's shares fell more than 5% as investors worried that the firm's latest iPhone models may not help it increase its share in emerging markets.

It launched two models on Tuesday, the iPhone 5S and a cheaper iPhone 5C.
But the basic 5C model, with 16 gigabytes of storage, has been priced at £469 ($740), which analysts said was still expensive for emerging markets.
Apple has found it tough to boost its share those markets against competition from firms such as Samsung and Huawei.
"Investors were put off that Apple's price point didn't go low enough to attract a new market," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott.
"It doesn't have the same range in price that Apple's competitors have," he added.
Apple shares closed at $467.7 on Wednesday, down by 5.4%.