News written by James Delahunty (May, 2012)

Scareware abound for Android phones.

Most people reading this page will have seen some form of fake anti-virus utility running on a Windows PC at one point or another. Now, Sophos's Graham Cluley is showing how the same tactics are being used for Android, particularly in Russia.

One particular source, in Ukraine, is responsible for a bunch of malicious websites. Some of them offer fake updates for real apps, such as Skype and Opera, while others prompt the user with fake virus scans, and fake results.

In both cases, the user may be duped into installing a fake anti-virus utility on the Android handset. Just like with Windows, the software attempts to look like a real, honest anti-malware utility. One of the variants even uses Kaspersy's own icon for the Android app.

Lawsuit targets Facebook's use of data.

It accuses Facebook of improper tracking activities, namely the continued tracking of users' Internet habits even when they were signed out of the service. The class action suit is seeking damages on behalf of all users of Facebook in the United States.

It consolidates 21 related cases filed in more than a dozen states in 2011 and early 2012. It is seeking $10,000 in damages for each U.S. user of the service, or about $15 billion.

"It's not a pipe dream," attorney Billy Murphy of Baltimore, Maryland, told AFP. "The only way you are going to stop companies from disregarding the privacy rights of the American people is to take some of their money. That's the only thing that gets their attention."

Facebook stands accused of mis-using data uploaded to the service by privacy and consumer rights groups. It has already settled a case with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for supplying user data to third parties in violation of its own Privacy Policy.

It must submit to independent audits for twenty years as a result.

China Mobile may finally get iPhone.

The world's largest mobile operator - with over 660 million subscribers - does not offer the iPhone officially, like its two smaller competitors China Unicom and China Telecom do. They also miss other smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S II, because of its 3G network, which is different from every other 3G network in the world.

China Mobile chairman Xi Guohua has confirmed that the carrier is in talks with Apple, however. "We've been actively talking to Apple on how we can cooperate," he said.

"I can't give you too many details, but I'd like to repeat that both sides do hope to boost our cooperation."

Over 15 million of China Mobile's subscribers use iPhone's that they sourced elsewhere, but they will only work on the provider's slower 2G network. The Chinese government tapped China Mobile to develop the country's own 3G network first, and the result was the TD-SCDMA standard, which is not used anywhere else.

This has had a negative long-term effect on China Mobile, because it has to heavily subsidize handsets that have chipsets which support the TD-SCDMA network. Meanwhile, its two smaller competitors have 3G networks that use the same bands and standards as the rest of the world, allowing them to offer popular smartphones. China Mobile still retains a 67 percent market share, but it is declining.

Copyright Office considering DMCA exemptions again.

Every three years it must take requests for temporary loopholes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The last time it consulted the public, it OK'd the jailbreaking of phones in order to break free from a carrier, decrypting a DVD to copy clips for use in documentaries or for educational reasons, and also the breaking of DRM on e-books so that the blind could enable read-aloud features.

Those exemptions are set to expire now, unless the Copyright Office decides to uphold them. On top of that decision, the Copyright Office is being asked to make exemptions that would allow the public to break the copy protection to DVDs in order to make backup copies or format-shift.

The DMCA does allow for fair use of content, but at the same time it outlaws the circumvention of copy protection mechanisms in order to make a copy.

It is also being asked to consider proposals to exempt the practise of jailbreaking mobile phones, games consoles and tablet PCs, so that users can have total control over their devices.

Predictably, the motion picture industry is completely against exemptions that would allow the decrypting of DVD content. "If we didn't have access controls, there might be the same kind of mass piracy we've seen with unprotected music," Clarissa Weirick, the general counsel of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, said.

Apple still has to pay €900,000 fine.

The regional administrative court of Lazio has ruled to uphold a €900,000 fine against Apple Italy, Apple Italy Retail and Apple International Sales for misleading Italians about extended warranty, the Financial Times is reporting.

In Italy, sellers of electronics products are required to provide a two-year warranty by law. The country's competition authority fined Apple in December for allegedly duping customers into paying for an extended warranty that overlapped the two year warranty they were legally entitled to in the first place.

Specifically, Apple was fined €400,000 for failing to inform the customers that they had a two-year warranty, and a further €500,000 for selling overlapping warranty.

According to Apple's Italian website, any extended warranty purchased by customers in the country is in addition to the two-year warranty they have already.

Apple must now pay the €900,000 fine, or it can choose to appeal to the Council of State, Italy?s highest administrative court. For the sake of 900k, why bother?

Sprint hopes to boost subscribers with new trade-in offer.

It said it will offer at least $100 credit toward an iPhone 4S to customers who trade in an iPhone from a competing provider. The new customer would have to sign up to a minimum two year contract with Spring to quality for the credit.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said in April that the carrier will continue to offer unlimited data for the next generation iPhone.

It has moved to capitalize on decisions by Verizon and AT&T to scrap unlimited data plans, which has not gone down well with their customers. Sprint does not expect to make a profit from carrying the iPhone until 2015, according to Hesse, who signed a deal worth $15.5 billion over the next four years to bring the Apple handset to Sprint.

"We believe in the long term," Hesse said. "And over time we will make more money on iPhone customers than we will on other customers."

Google Search has gotten a whole lot smarter.

The search giant revealed its next major improvement to search this week, the Knowledge Graph. For Google users, this means a new side-panel with information that may make retrieving information far more easy than it ever has been using Google, or any other search service.

Google summed it up by saying its search engine can now recognise "things, not strings." When you enter a string of text into Google's search engine, it will try to get results based on the words in the string that you enter. It's algorithms can help to promote the most relevant or most popular results to the top of the list, but it is far from perfect.

With the Knowledge Graph, Google recognises "things", such as the Taj Mahal. When searching Taj Mahal with Google, it simply probes results based on the words, it does not recognise or care that the Taj Mahal is a "thing" in reality. On top of that, it cannot differentiate the Taj Mahal monument from the casino in Atlantic City, or from the Grammy-award winning musician with the same name.

With the Knowledge Graph, Google will offer you the ability to specify if you want search results about the musician, and not the monument.

Motorola Mobility handsets infringe Microsoft patent.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has found that several Android handsets made by Motorola Mobility violate a single patent held by Microsoft. A trade panel announced on Friday that Motorola Mobility smartphones will be barred from import into the United States.

The order has been sent to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days in which he can decide to overturn it.

The ITC has gotten many cases related to the import of smartphones, as manufacturers fight to get their slice of the growing pie.

The ITC did not say which Motorola Mobility handsets would be blocked from import into the country. Microsoft had requested that the following devices be stopped at U.S. borders: Atrix, Backflip, Bravo, Charm, Cliq, Cliq 2, Cliq XT, Defy, Devour, Droid 2, Droid 2 Global, Droid Pro, Droid X, Droid X2, Flipout, Flipside, Spice and the Xoom tablet.

"We hope that now Motorola will be willing to join the vast majority of Android device makers selling phones in the US by taking a license to our patents," a Microsoft spokeswoman said.

Android.Opfake rips off mostly Russian users.

Symantec reports hundreds of fake websites, some which appear to be websites dedicated to specific popular apps, while others pretend to be app market sites.

When a user downloads an installation file, it appears to install the app on the device, but then redirects the user to Google Play, where they can download the app for free. By this time, the first installation - which was the malicious software - has already sent off a premium SMS message and the user will be charged for it.

Symantec has repeated its call (and that of all security software peddlers) for users to install apps only from trusted sources, and also to read the permissions that are requested by app.

It points out, as an example, that a game usually would not require the ability to send SMS messages. If you are uncomfortable with the permissions required by any apps, from any source, you should opt not to install them.

Serious questions raised about Nokia's future.

The Finnish mobile phone giant has been working to try and stabilize its finances. Over its past five quarters, it has wiped out €2.1 billion (about $2.7 billion) of its cash reserves. In a couple of years, it may burn through its total €4.9 billion reserves, analysts warn.

The cost of Nokia's debt has been rising, as questions about its ability to service its debt have been raised. "In our opinion, the company's ability to repay even its shorter-term 2014 bond could be an issue," said Societe General credit analyst Juliano Torii.

In 2007, Nokia had €10 billion in cash reserves. In 2014, it has €1.25 billion of 5.5 percent bonds maturing, followed by ?500 million of 6.75 percent notes due in 2019. Both are junk rated by Fitch and Standard & Poor's.

It is also getting increasingly expensive to insure against a Nokia default.

The company had hoped its Lumia handsets would help it to gain a larger share of the smartphone market, as it attempts to catch up with Apple and manufacturers of Android handsets. "Nokia's Lumia was an attempt to catch up, but it was simply too little too late," said Nancy Utterback, credit strategist at Aviva Investors.

Official warns Facebook investors.

Thilo Weichert, the data protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, was quoted as saying that if European privacy protection authorities have their way, that Facebook's business model will "implode."

He warned potential investors that Facebook's high valuation is based on practices that are in violation of European regulations that govern how business can utilize user data.

He is quoted as saying that it is possible Facebook will be ordered to stop transferring European user information to the United States.

In Facebook's own IPO prospectus, it warned potential investors that it is subject to complex and evolving laws and regulations regarding privacy, in both the United States and in foreign countries.

Zynga's stock plunges on Friday.

The social gaming company saw the value of its shares drop sharply at times on Friday, prompting two automatic halts in their trade. A 13.3 percent drop to $7.17 a share followed Facebook's IPO. After trading restarted, the stock rose to $7.80 per share but trading halted again.

It was speculated that the drop was due to Facebook's stock not shooting up in value immediately as had been previously expected, or that Zynga shareholders were dumping their shares to invest in Facebook instead.

Zynga relies heavily on revenue generated by Facebook users. It was not the only company that was effected on Friday by the Facebook IPO. LinkedIn, Yelp, and China's Renren (social network) saw some significant drops throughout the day too.

Zynga's stock finished the day at $7.16 per share (down 13.4 percent), it's lowest level yet.

vKontakte loses copyright case appeal.

The earlier ruling had found that vKontakte's peer to peer integration, which allowed users to share all kinds of media files, breached copyright laws in Russia.

The P2P abilities have made vKontakte very popular in the country, providing it with an edge over competitors in the social networking space. The case was brought against vKontakte by the EMI Group, which complained that vKontakte users were sharing their music without authorisation.

"This judgment sends a clear signal to those in Russia that seek to build their businesses on the back of other people's content. We urge vKontakte to take immediate steps to stop its service being used to infringe copyright on a massive scale," said Frances Moore, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

"Widespread digital piracy is preventing Russia from developing a thriving legitimate digital music sector and this in turn denies Russian artists a chance of success and starves them of investment by producers."

vKontakte is a business that has been valued at between US$1.5 and US$3 billion

Anonymous attacks Indian government, anti-piracy organization.

Anti-piracy group Copyrightlabs won a court order that forced Indian ISPs and mobile carriers to block websites which allowed users to download Bollywood titles 3 and Dhammu. The order led to Vimeo, DailyMotion and The Pirate Bay being blocked in the country.

The order came into force in mid-May, prompting Anonymous to attack 14 separate government and political sites. Targets included the Indian telecoms department, electronics and IT ministry, supreme court and sites used by the BJP and INC political parties. The Copyrightlabs website was also forced offline.

Anonymous used Twitter to explain that the actions were retaliation for the censorship enforced in India.

The tactic had only partial success as most of the sites targeted soon recovered and were only offline intermittently.

Twitter says it will honor users' request not to be tracked.

Many major web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari browser have a 'Do Not Track' feature built in. If enabled, the browsers will send code to websites that are visited, designed to alert them that the user does not wish to have his/her data tracked.

Even though the Do Not Track initiative is heavily promoted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, it is still up to individual websites to choose whether to honor it or not, under current regulations.

Facebook and Google rely heavily on user data, and so neither honor Do Not Track requests. Twitter has moved to set itself apart from others by making it policy to honor requests by browsers not to record user data.

"As always, we are committed to providing you with simple and meaningful choices about the information we collect to improve your Twitter experience," Twitter's Director, Growth and International, Othman Laraki, said on Thursday.

"For those who don't want to tailor Twitter, we offer ways to turn off this collection."

ZTE confirms bizarre security vulnerability.

An anonymous post made to Pastebin a week ago got Android forums buzzing, and caught our attention too. It described a root backdoor that was present in the ZTE Score on MetroPCS in the United States. All an app needed was a default password and it could gain root access to the device without any user interaction at all.

"I've never seen it before," said Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, describing the vulnerability as "highly unusual."

While the problem has been known about since last week, it has only been confirmed today by ZTE and reported by the mainstream media. The Chinese firm said it was working on a patch.

"ZTE is actively working on a security patch and expects to send the update over-the-air to affected users in the very near future," ZTE said in an statement. "We strongly urge affected users to download and install the patch as soon as it is rolled out to their devices."

Wikipedia does not display ads at all.

The Wikimedia Foundation is warning users that if they see ads on the mega-popular encyclopedia, then the ads are likely being provided by malicious software. Wikipedia is funded by over one million donors, most of whom give $30 or less a year, and it does not show advertisements, ever.

It was responding to growing numbers of reports that ads have been showing up on pages throughout Wikipedia. It named one culprit as a Google Chrome extension called "I want this". You can easily remove the extension in Chrome through Settings.

It has suggested the use of HTTPS Everywhere to ensure that all connections to Wikipedia are made through HTTPS, which will kill off some of the advertisements that users are seeing. Still, simply using HTTPS Everywhere will not fix the underlying problem, and so Wikimedia is suggesting that users install anti-malware solutions on their systems.

In some cases, ads might not be malicious, but might be placed on all pages if you are using public Wi-Fi or are at an Internet cafe that subsidizes its earnings through the use of ads that show up on all websites.

Police will retain data, even if suspect is released without charge.

The new system involves the use of terminals at police stations in 16 London boroughs. Police just need to connect a mobile device to the system and it can extract all the data. It will print out some information from the phone, and then store the total data digitally.

The BBC is reporting that police will retain this digital information even if a suspect is not charged with a crime. Predictably, this revelation has unnerved Privacy groups, who say it could infringe on the human rights of suspects.

"We are looking at a possible breach of human rights law," Privacy International spokeswoman Emma Draper said. "It is illegal to indefinitely retain the DNA profiles of individuals after they are acquitted or released without charge, and the communications, photos and location data contained in most people's smartphones is at least as valuable and as personal as DNA."

Police say that the data extraction will only be carried out if there is significant suspicion that the mobile phone may contain data related to a crime. "Mobile phones and other devices are increasingly being used in all levels of criminal activity," said Stephen Kavanagh, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.

Comcast will charge excessive downloaders.

It is to begin rolling out a system where those who download more than their monthly allowance will have to pay a fee. Comcast raised its download limit to 300GB after previously setting it at 250GB. Those who download 50GB more than their limit will automatically be charged an extra $10 on top of their monthly bill.

Previously, those who downloaded more than 250GB were sent a warning, threatening them with service suspension if they persisted in breaking their download limit.

Research from Sandvine Corp. shows that only 1.5 percent of the U.S. Internet users download more than 250GB per month, and only 1 percent download more than 300GB.

ISPs say they need to find a way to deter heavy downloaders since they can degrade service for other users on the network.

Comcast's Xfinity TV app for Xbox 360 has brought up some questions however, as the video streaming app does not count toward the monthly limit. Rival Netflix, however, is subject to the monthly download limit, but Comcast rejects claims that it is favoring its own product over Netflix, since Xfinity TV content is not provided through the Internet but from Comcast's own equipment.

Saverin says he is continuing to pay tax to the U.S. Government.

It was reported last week that Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, had renounced his United States citizenship, which meant that he could possibly avoid a heft capital gains tax bill from the enormous Facebook IPO.

While Saverin did not appear on the list of Facebook investors who own 5 percent or more the company, his share is still considered substantial, and is expected to profit greatly from Facebook going public. The news of his decision to drop his U.S. citizenship sparked a debate about so called "expatriate tax avoidance."

Saverin has fired back at critics, saying he decided to renounce U.S. citizenship in order to continue working and living in Singapore, where he has been living since 2009.

"I have paid and will continue to pay any taxes due on everything I earned while a U.S. citizen. It is unfortunate that my personal choice has led to a public debate, based not on the facts, but entirely on speculation and misinformation," Saverin said through a spokesman.

"As a native of Brazil who immigrated to the United States, I am very grateful to the U.S. for everything it has given me ... I will continue to invest in U.S. businesses and start-ups, and believe and hope that those investments will create many new jobs in the U.S. and globally."

Toshiba aims to double operating profit.

It has decided to halt its domestic production of LCD televisions, aiming to download its operating profit by 2014-2015. Its television business lost 50 billion Yen ($620 million) last year. The strong Yen has caused problems for Japanese manufacturing, with Hitachi making a similar move as Toshiba recently.

"We have shut down our domestic TV production. We are looking at all areas (of the TV business), number of models, numbers of panels, in order to re-strengthen this division," said Toshiba president and chief executive Norio Sasaki speaking to reporters.

It will cut the number of TV models it sells by 60 percent in 2013.

Toshiba's goal is to double its operating profit in three years to $5.6 billion. It is looking to boost sales of electronics devices and to expand its social infrastructure business.

Strong sales of Apple's iPhone models, which use Toshiba flash chips, has boosted the company.

Apple placing orders for 4-inch screens.

Rival Samsung has put an emphasis on larger screens with some of its smartphones, highlighting the difference in some of its Apple-targeted commercials for Galaxy devices.

Reuters is citing sources familiar with the situation in reporting that Apple has made the new orders from suppliers in South Korea and Japan. If Apple keeps the same dimensions for the next iPhone, the screen size change will provide 30 percent more viewing area.

LG Display Co Ltd, Sharp Corp and Japan Display Inc have already started production of the new screens for Apple, according to the reports.

The new iPhone may go into production as early as August.

Developer admits it didn't prepare adequately for Diablo III launch.

The launch of the hotly anticipated title was marred somewhat by widespread problems with the game. Since it requires a constant-on Internet connection as an anti-piracy measure, servers became overloaded quickly and many users were given an error message (Error 37) when they tried to login.

"Despite very aggressive projections, our preparations for the launch of the game did not go far enough," the developer admitted.

"We're continuing to monitor performance globally and will be taking further measures as needed to ensure a positive experience for everyone. This includes some maintenance to implement additional improvements for each region."

The developer has also decided to delay the launch of Diablo III's real money auction house beyond its original estimated date of May 22.

HBO content available to some users.

Time Warner Cable and Bright House customers who have Xbox LIVE Gold membership will be able to view some HBO content on their Xbox 360 consoles, starting from today.

HBO GO on Xbox 360 includes the entire HBO catalogue of live and on demand original content ? that means every episode of every show, from the latest hits like "Game of Thrones," to older favorites like "The Sopranos."

With Kinect, you can voice search the entire HBO catalogue.

Facebook in third largest public offering in U.S. history.

Only General Motors and Visa could beat Facebook's initial public offering, which valued the social networking giant at an enormous $104 billion. The service raised $16 billion today as investors rushed to get shares after waiting years for Facebook to finally make the leap.

It's market value is now higher than that of McDonald's, Citigroup and Amazon.com, with investors paying $38 per share. "Facebook is here to stay," said Navin Chaddha, a managing director of the Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm.

"It's a virtual economy where people are spending more time than any other Internet property."

Facebook insiders and early investors are set to cash in quickly. Last year, Goldman Sachs took a stake in Facebook, and is now set to sell off a third of that stake. Peter Thiel, the VC who backed Facebook in its early days, will sell 16.8 million shares.

Mark Zuckerberg is set to ring the opening bell for the Nasdaq from Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Friday. Facebook shares will sell to the public later in the day, under the ticker FB.

French regulator spearheading EU probe into Google privacy changes.

In March, Google onsolidated 60 privacy policies into a single one. It is now pooling data from users across dozens of services, including YouTube, Google+ and GMail. The change raised concerns among data protection and privacy regulators in the EU, as well as the United States, Japan, Australia and other places.

Google has already provided a 94-page response to a questionnaire from the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique (CNIL) in France.

"We are not totally satisfied with their responses so we have set up this meeting to discuss the issues with Google," CNIL president Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin told Reuters in an interview.

"We want to untangle the precise way that specific personal data is being used for individual services, and examine what the benefit for the consumer really is."

Google said it welcomed the chance to meet with the French regulator, and that it was confident it complied with European data protection laws.

Time Warner, Viacom opt to settle iPad streaming lawsuit.

Time Warner had released an application for the iPad that let users watch live television broadcasts as long as they were in their own home.

Viacom sued Time Warner, claiming it didn't have the right to stream its content to the iPad. Time Warner disagreed, but decided to pull several channels from its iPad streaming app regardless of its stance. Following a spat in Federal court, both sides have decided to settle the case.

Both companies issued a statement on Wednesday, saying they had "agreed to resolve their pending litigations," and that Viacom conent will now be available to Time Warner Cable subscribers for viewing in their homes via iPad.

Comedy Central and MTV will be restored first, but it will take some time to restore all streams.

Latest update fixes serious security bugs.

RealNetworks has released its latest security update for its RealPlayer software. If you use RealPlayer for Windows, it strongly recommends downloading the most current version released late last week, which patches vulnerabilities and contains bug fixes and other updates to the player.

The software contained a security flaw that, if exploited, could allow arbitrary code to be run on a device if the user visits a malicious site or opens a malicious file.

Users running older versions of RealPlayer should download the update from www.real.com to protect their computers from hackers.

For more information about the security update, see: service.real.com

Server overload is not the only headache for Blizzard.

It confirmed reports that there is a game breaking flaw in its new blockbuster for PC and Mac. Apparently, gamers get thrown out of the system if they attempt to give a shield to a character known as the Templar follower.

This new flaw follows Blizzard's efforts to address server overload problems. So many gamers were unable to play the title after launch that "#error37" was trending on Twitter. As an anti-piracy measure, you are required to have a constant-on Internet connection to play Diablo III.

Now Blizzard has confirmed the new bizarre bug. "We're aware of this issue and working to resolve it as quickly as possible. Thank you all for your reports," the developer said.

The developer had already been forced to take down websites in an effort to dedicate more servers to the game. Users on Twitter commented about how difficult it was to get the game started.

"Man, Diablo III is super hard. I've been playing for 30 minutes and haven't even defeated the login screen," one Twitter user said.

Notorious BitTorrent website down due to attack.

The website confirmed the DDoS attack on its Facebook page but only said that it "had suspicions" about who is to blame. Early reports suggested that the same Anonymous group responsible for the Virgin Media attack were behind, since the Pirate Bay denounced the attack, but experts say that it's unlikely.

"There will be further attacks, but what's significant about this whole story is that people think that it is the Anonymous attacking a site which is typically a type of site that they defend," said Andre Stewart of Corero Network Security, to BBC News.

"It could be the record labels, or a government somewhere that has had enough of not being able to catch The Pirate Bay, it could be just one person who had rented some cloud power from Amazon and is sitting in a cafe, and is able to launch an attack."

Virgin Media's main website in the UK was forced down for some time last week. A group claimed responsibility for it on Twitter, and hinted that it was revenge for blocking the Pirate Bay. The ISP responded by saying its hands are tied, since the High Court had ordered it (and other UK ISPs) to block the website.

Ofcom finds that ISPs must do more to provide information on speed to consumers.

The regulator used mystery shopping to check compliance with the Voluntary Code of Practice on Broadband Speeds, introduced in December 2008. A strengthened Code came into force in July 2011, through which ISP signatories have committed to give maximum speed estimates in the form of a range as early as practicable in the sales process.

The regulator found that information provided to consumers by ISPs has improved but has also identified areas where further work is needed. The research shows that in 93 per cent of telephone enquiries made by mystery shoppers, an estimate of the broadband speed was given by the provider, and in 72 per cent of cases an estimate was given in the form of a range.

The Code requires that speed estimates be volunteered as early as possible in the sales process. Overall, speed estimates were provided without prompting from the mystery shoppers in 59 per cent of all calls, with the most likely to provide an estimated speed without prompting being Sky (72 per cent of cases), Karoo (76 per cent) and Plusnet (67 per cent).

TalkTalk (47 per cent of cases) and BT Total Broadband (48 per cent) were significantly less likely to provide a speed estimate without prompting from the caller. Both agreed to amend staff training to address the issue.

Report details widespread over-blocking.

Mobile Internet services in the UK are subject to child protection filters that block pornographic websites. The Open Rights Group (ORG) and the LSE Media Policy Project released a report which shows widespread over-blocking as a result of such filters.

The groups found that the filters led to the incorrect blocking of political commentaries, personal blogs, restaurants' sites and community websites. The report calls on mobile operators to give parents an 'active choice' to turn filters on, and to be far more transparent about how their systems work.

It also warns against proposals to make such filtering systems the default on fixed-line broadband. The proposal is heavily backed by Claire Perry MP, and the rights' groups claim it will have the same damning consequences as it does for mobile Internet.

"This report shows how child protection filters can actually affect many more users than intended and block many more sites than they should. These blunt blocks effectively add up to a system of censorship across UK networks," said Peter Bradwell of Open Rights Group, and author of the report.

"The lessons for 'porn filter' proposals are clear. Default-on blocks can have significant harmful and unintended consequences for everybody?s access to information. To help protect children online, the Government should reject 'default on' network filtering and work to give parents simpler choices and better, device-based tools."

Handset runs Baidu's own operating system.

Its new Changhong H5018 is built by Foxconn, and runs Baidu's own Cloud Smart Terminal platform, which is based on Android. China has the world's largest number of smartphone users, so it is an important market for Baidu to stake its claim in. It will face serious competition from low-cost handsets made by firms such as Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corp, HTC, Lenovo and Xiaomi.

The 3.5-inch handset features a 480 x 320 screen, dual-SIM and is powered by a MTK6573 650Mhz processor. It has a 3MP rear-camera and a microSD slot for storage. China Unicom will carry the device initially.

To entice Chinese buyers to switch to its new handset, Baidu has included 100GB of cloud-storage from Wangpan, which would be the Chinese equivalent of Dropbox.

The Changhong H5018 will sell for less than 1,000 yuan ($158; £99). "It's a terrific market opportunity for us, and Baidu is constantly adjusting, understanding what users are interested in," Baidu's director of international communications, Kaiser Kuo, told BBC News.

Android share seen rising throughout world.

Kantar WorldPanel showed research on Tuesday that saw Android double its market share in some places. In Germany, its share almost doubled to 62 percent year-on year, while it did double in Italy to 49 percent and Spain to 72 percent.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, the iPhone 4S narrowed the gap slightly between Android and the market no.2, iOS. Microsoft's Windows Phone platform gained some ground in Germany, claiming 6 percent of the market, while it climbed between 3-4 percent in France, Britain, Italy and the United States.

Nokia's retired Symbian platform fell sharply, while Canadian BlackBerry maker Research In Motion also suffered at the hands of other platforms. In the United States, RIM's market share dropped from 9 percent to just 3 percent.

Android's growth has been attributed to the plentiful supply of new handsets, particularly from HTC and Samsung.

Firefox for Android 14 beta adds support for flash, new UI and more.

The latest release for the Android OS features a redesigned user interface, and significant performance improvements over the previous release. A new Start page has also been added.

Mozilla has also optimized the browser for better performance on Android 2.2+. Other minor changes have been made also, such as a change that will make all Google searches through HTTPS by default from now on.

The biggest change of course is the support for Flash, which has taken some time to show up.

These improvements are available for smartphone users only for now, with tablet users expected to be able to test them out soon.

Firefox for Android requires Android 2.1 and above, an ARMv7 processor, 512MB of RAM and 17 MB internal or SD card storage.

You can get Firefox for Android 14 beta from Google Play.

Nvidia closing in on mobile space.

The GPU-maker is targeting large data centers that provide cloud-based services to end users. President and Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang showed off new technology based on its Kepler GPU architecture geared toward these conditions to drive the cloud-based services of tomorrow.

"Kepler cloud GPU technologies shifts cloud computing into a new gear," said Huang at the GPU Technology Conference (GTC).

"The GPU has become indispensable. It is central to the experience of gamers. It is vital to digital artists realizing their imagination. It is essential for touch devices to deliver silky smooth and beautiful graphics. And now, the cloud GPU will deliver amazing experiences to those who work remotely and gamers looking to play untethered from a PC or console."

Nvidia today announced the launch of its GeForce GRID cloud gaming platform. With the GeForce GRID platform, gaming-as-a-service providers can deliver the most advanced visuals with lower latency, while incurring lower operating costs, particularly related to energy usage.

Gamers benefit from the ability to play the latest, most sophisticated games on any connected device, including TVs, smartphones and tablets running iOS and Android.

Low consumer impact cited as reason for snubbing Facebook ads.

Just days before Facebook is going public, General Motors Co has confirmed it will stop advertising on the popular social networking site. Facebook's IPO will value the company at as much as $100 billion, rivalling the market value of heavyweight Amazon Inc.

Reuters cited a source close to GM in reporting that the automaker will pull ads from Facebook due to low consumer impact. It will still maintain a presence on Facebook, however.

The Wall Street Journal reported that GM was spending about $40 million per year on Facebook, though only $10 million of that budget went on Facebook ads. The rest went to content creation for the company's Facebook pages, as well as to the numerous advertising agencies involved.

"This does highlight what we are arguing is the riskiness of the overall Facebook business model," said Brian Wieser, Internet and media analyst at Pivotal Research Group.

"It is not a sure thing. It sure looks likely that it will be one of the most important ad-supported media properties, but it's not certain because there will be marketers who are challenged to prove the effectiveness of the marketing vehicle."

Blizzard Entertainment putting more servers online.

The eagerly-anticipated Diablo III launched this morning, putting Blizzard's servers under enormous pressure very quickly. The PC and Mac-only game requires an Internet connection to play, even if you do not want to play online, which makes server problems far more serious.

The support forums for the title have a lot of complaints and requests for technical assistance from gamers. Blizzard said it was addressing the problem by putting more servers online as needed.

Still, the game launch was seen as a big success for Blizzard. About 1,500 fans showed up at its Californian headquarters for the midnight launch. They got to observe artists at Blizzard sketch out characters from the game, as well as watch new footage and take part in quizzes.

"There's nowhere I'd rather be tonight," fan Ian Noble said at the event.

Jay Wilson, lead designer of Diablo III, said he hoped that the fans would be excited about the new iteration of the series. Wilson joked that the developer took so long to finally release Diablo III because they were goofing off most of the time, but then said the real reason is Blizzard's commitment to quality.

Change could value Facebook at over $100 billion.

It has now set a price of shares in the company to between $34 and $38, up from between $25 and $35. It attributed the change to strong demand ahead of the IPO. Trading in the shares is expected to begin on Friday, after a couple of years of anticipation from investors.

A valuation as high as $100 billion would put it above Disney and Ford. It's listing on the NASDAQ will rival Amazon's current $100 billion valuation.

Recent questions about Facebook's long-term ability to generate revenue from its service have not dampened the interest from investors. Currently, Facebook's revenue is about 1 percent of what its market value is expected to approach.

It has singled out mobile as its most important area for expansion, and has been found to be experimenting with numerous ways to generate new streams of revenue in recent weeks.

The service boasts over 900 million users worldwide.

Siri no longer shows Lumia 900 love.

Over the weekend, iPhone 4S users noticed that if you asked Siri what the best smartphone ever was, it would return a result that recommended the Nokia Lumia 900 handset. It was reported by a lot of tech sites and blogs in a lighthearted way as another example of how Siri can give interesting answers to questions.

Now, however, if you ask Siri what the best smartphone ever is, it will respond by asking, "Wait... there are other phones?". This is a default answer that has been given previously for similar questions about phones.

"Apple position Siri as the intelligent system that's there to help, but clearly if they don't like the answer, they override the software," said Nokia spokeswoman Tracey Postill, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Nokia later stated that Postill's comments were not to be taken seriously, and that the lighthearted comment was taken out of context. Still, it does beg the question of whether Apple should have allowed Siri to find the answer to the question as it had before (in this case, from Wolfram Alpha), or changed it to a default answer.

Appeals court sends case back to district court for further review.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that the judge in a California district court was in error when he ruled that Apple failed to show that it had a case.

The case has now been sent back to the district court for review. The decision involves a single patent which Apple claims Samsung violated in the design of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The iPad-maker is seeking an injunction against the sale of the tablets in the United States.

The judge in the district court had ruled that design patent in question could be challenged as "obvious," which casts doubt on the decision to grant the patent to Apple in the first place. The appeals court disagreed that the patent could be challenged as obvious.

The court did agree with the district court on its decision on three other patents, in which case the court denied requested preliminary injunctions. Apple and Samsung are locked in a patent war across the world.

Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) nudges Apple to change adverts.

The newest iPad from Apple has been marketed with the term "Wi-Fi + 4G", since it can connect to Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks in the United States. However, in the UK and the rest of Europe, the iPad will not connect to LTE networks if they are available, because different bands are used in the European Union as those used in the United States.

Consumers complained in the UK that the "4G" element in Apple's ad campaign for its iPad is misleading. Apple says that the confusion is caused by the fact that certain cellular providers market the term 4G differently.

Still, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) approached Apple on the issue, and the Cupertino-based firm said it will change the way it markets the new iPad in the UK.

"Carriers do not all refer to their high speed networks with the same terminology," said the firm in a statement, "therefore we've decided to use 'wi-fi + cellular' as a simple term which describes all the high speed networks supported by the new iPad."

Lenovo shows off new Ultrabook.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon was just one of many new products shown by Lenovo at its Accelerate Channel Partner Conference in Las Vegas. The 14-inch (1600x900 screen) next-generation business Ultrabook has a premium carbon fiber rollcage, weighing less than three pounds. Lenovo's previous Ultrabook, the ThinkPad X1 has a 13-inch screen, and weighs more at 3.8 pounds.

It also features embedded 3G connectivity, a RapidCharge feature that can bring the battery to an 80 percent charge in 35 minutes, a backlit keyboard and HD (720p) camera.

"We crafted the ThinkPad X1 Carbon with premium carbon fiber material in order to make it incredibly thin and light, yet durable," said Lu Yan, senior vice president, Think Product Group, Lenovo.

"Our new ThinkPad laptop portfolio embodies much of the innovative thinking exemplified in the X1 Carbon, such as a backlit keyboard, super-bright high definition display, Dolby Home Theatre and rich communications features that balance business performance with personal use."

The exact hardware configuration is not yet known, except for the fact that it will be powered by an Intel Ivy Bridge processor. It will go on sale in the summer (no price information available yet).

Japanese to take on South Korean counterparts.

Reuters is citing sources close to Sony Corporation and Panasonic in reporting that the firms are in talks to combine their OLED TV production efforts. Organic-Light Emitting Diode (OLED) televisions provide better images and use less power than their LCD rivals, and are thought to be the next big thing in the declining market.

Both Sony and Panasonic have been hammered in the TV space over recent years, particularly since the start of the downturn in 2008. A strong Yen also works against both the Japanese firms in the global market.

Meanwhile in South Korea, Samsung and LG Electronics are moving way ahead of the Japanese firms in OLED, with both planning to sell 55-inch OLED televisions by the end of the year. The OLED displays are as thin as 4mm.

Sony had been making progress in OLED televisions, debuting its first OLED television in 2007. The global downturn halted Sony's progress in OLED however, and the firm has been scrambling to plug record breaking losses in its TV division, and overall poor performance. Right now, it does still make OLED screens for high-end customers, but they come with price tags around $26,000.

IObit to stop offering popular application for free.

IObit, a software developer that offers both paid and freeware applications, has warned that its popular Game Booster application for Windows will cease being available as freeware from June 30th, 2012. After this date, users will have to pay to buy a license for Game Booster.

Game Booster is a one-click application that attempts to free up system resources for gameplay. Another single click will relaunch services and other resources that were temporarily halted by Game Booster, later on. It has been downloaded millions of times from IObit and download portals.

"We intend to keep pace with what gamers care about, and improve Game Booster with practical functions to satisfy gamers' demands," says Kevin Zhou, marketing director for IObit, "Gamers ask for high speed and system stability when gaming. They want easy-to-use software rather than complicated programs that could potentially drag a CPU down."

Zhou also hints that more announcements concerning the future of Game Booster will be released as July approaches. Users who have downloaded Game Booster before July will still be able to use it for free.

Flaw can give root to any app, as long as the password is right.

The Pastebin post referred to the ZTE Score M on MetroPCS in the United States. It runs the Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) operating system.

There is a setuid-root application at /system/bin/sync_agent that serves no function besides providing a root shell backdoor on the device.

Just give the magic, hard-coded password to get a root shell:

$ sync_agent ztex1609523
# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root)

Nice backdoor, ZTE.

PSP being phased out by GameStop in U.S.

GameStop has confirmed that it is removing PlayStation Portable (PSP) inventory from the smallest 25 percent of stores, in an effort to consolidate supply.

"The consolidation is occurring to maximize the merchandising space in the smallest 25 percent of stores," the chain confirmed. "It will also provide a greater assortment in those stores that will continue to carry the category."

GameStop will continue to sell PSP titles online, and inventory will stay at larger stores throughout the U.S. for now.

The launch of the PlayStation Vita handheld in the U.S. market will probably kill off a lot of remaining demand for PSPs and games on UMD. PS Vita has no UMD drive, instead requiring that all games be purchased digitally.

Siri cheating on iPhone 4S.

Users noticed that when Siri is asked to find the "best smartphone ever," it actually gives an answer that recommends rival Nokia's Lumia 900 Windows Phone handset, and not any of Apple's gear.

The reason for Siri's betrayal of iPhone is explained easily though. The service returns results for the question from WolframAlpha, which returns exactly the same result as Siri when asked, "What is the best smartphone ever?".

WolframAlpha's results show that the Nokia Lumia 900 has four user reviews with a score of 5 out of 5, while a list of smartphones ranked by customer review does not even include an iPhone.

Since launching the iPhone 4S, Siri has given all kinds of bizarre answers to questions, ranking from answers that were hilarious to ones that actually caused controversy.

In November, Siri came under fire because it could not provide information on abortion clinics or contraception, but it could answer questions about where to have sex, or where a local escort service is located. Some groups were particularly angered that questions about abortion instead returned results for pregnancy crisis centers.

Facebook co-founder quits U.S. citizenship.

The news was reported by Bloomberg, based on an IRS notice from late April that contained a list of individuals who have chosen to expatriate.

Eduardo Saverin has sold off some of his Facebook stake, and does not appear in IPO filings that list shareholders with more than 5 percent of the company. Still, Saverin's holdings are believed to be substantial, especially as Facebook's IPO values the company at up to $96 billion.

The IPO could leave Saverin with a hefty capital gains tax bill. In the United States, for those in the higher income bracket, there is a minimum 15 percent rate for long-term capital gains. Saverin lives in Singapore, where there is no capital gains tax.

Renouncing citizenship of the United States is an irrevocable act, according to the State Department, and it is a lengthy process that includes an appearance before a U.S. diplomatic official.

Pachter thinks we should expect GTA V in October.

It was announced earlier this week that BioShock Infinite would be delayed by its developer, Irrational Games, until February 2013. The news hit shares of publisher Take Two Interactive, as it took the anticipated title out of the vital holiday season.

Ken Levine, creative director at Irrational Games, put the delay down to maximizing game quality, and said the developer simply needed more time.

Michael Pachter, of Wedbush Securities, has another possible explanation for the delay.

"We believe that October is the preferred release month for GTA V?s developer, Rockstar Games, as the studio has scheduled every prior GTA releases during that month (with GTA IV delayed to April 2008, due to bugs in the PS3 version)," Pachter wrote.

"We speculate that once Rockstar Games notified Take-Two that GTA V would be ready by October, Take-Two gave Irrational Games the option to spend more time fine-tuning BioShock Infinite. Although we were confident that both games would sell millions of units when it appeared that they would be released in close proximity, we think that the delay will alleviate any wallet-share concerns and ensure that both games receive the undivided attention of Take-Two?s management and marketing teams, and will ensure that retail support is optimized."

Infamous BitTorrent site denounces Virgin Media attack.

The Pirate Bay has declared that DDoS attacks against websites are an "ugly" method that mirror efforts to block the BitTorrent website itself. Earlier this week, Virgin Media confirmed that its website was taken offline amidst an ongoing DDoS attack, allegedly carried out as revenge for the ISP blocking the Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay took to Twitter and to Facebook to denounce attacks such as these that are carried out in its name..

"Seems like some random Anonymous groups have run a DDOS campaign against Virgin media and some other sites.
We'd like to be clear about our view on this:

We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us.

So don't fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.

If you want to help; start a tracker, arrange a manifestation, join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of bittorrent, set up a proxy, write your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol, print some pro piracy posters and decorate your town with, support our promo bay artists or just be a nice person and give your mom a call and tell her you love her."

Foxconn chairman reportedly confirms Apple "iTV".

Chairman Terry Gou revealed in a speech that the company was making preparations to start manufacturing a television from Apple, according to China Daily. Development or manufacturing of the device has not stared just yet, according to the report.

The China Daily report, which dubbed the device "iTV", also repeated rumors that it would feature Siri and FaceTime video calling.

Gou also confirmed that the recent $808 million deal with Sharp - which saw Foxconn buy a 10 percent share in the consumer electronics firm - was made in preparation for the Apple television. Reports had suggested that Apple was considering buying a stake in Sharp for panel production, but Foxconn tied up a deal instead.

Apple was reportedly interesting in using Sharp's technology to produce Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) panels for its television. IGZO panel production was started in March by Sharp, and it allows the company to produce thinner and more powerful LCD panels.

Facebook experimenting with premium posting.

The test lets users pay a small fee which will make information they post more visible to friends, family and colleagues. The test is being run in New Zealand, with Facebook saying they want to see if some users would be willing to pay a small fee to flag up their posts.

"We're constantly testing new features across the site," said a Facebook spokesperson. "This particular test is simply to gauge people's interest in this method of sharing with their friends."

The spokesperson said that different ways of highlighting posts were being tested, and for a range of different small fees. Payments are accepted via PayPal or Credit Card.

As Facebook continues to grow, revenue growth has slowed down and the firm is looking for ways to ensure it has the long-term ability to gain revenue. It announced yesterday that it will launch a new App Center that allows developers to sell games and other apps directly to Facebook users. It will take a 30 percent cut of revenue.

Bankruptcy follows legal tussle with EMI Group.

MP3Tunes is a music storage service headed up former MP3.com founder Michael Robertson. In 2007, it was sued by EMI Group and fourteen other record companies and music publishers for alleged copyright infringement offences.

In 2011, a Manhatten federal judge ruled that MP3Tunes was not violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in permitting users to download tracks, except in cases where songs have been identified as pirates tracks.

In effect, this meant that MP3Tunes was not responsible for the copyright infringement of others, but could be found liable for contributory infringement where notices of alleged infringement were provided and not acted on.

The court did find MP3Tunes CEO Michael Robertson liable for having personally transferred songs from unauthorized websites.

MP3Tunes has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, listing assets of $7,800 and liabilities of $2.1 million in its court filing.

Total spend in April down sharply.

If you combine the same of consoles and games, spending dropped 32 percent in April this year, compared to April in 2011. Gamers spent 42 percent less on games in April 2012, according to NPD, which blames a lack of compelling game launches so far in 2012.

U.S. gamers spent $630 million in April, of which $307 million was spent on buying games for consoles and handhelds, down from $533 million of April 2011. One aspect of the steep decline may have been Easter falling in March, rather than in April, according to Anita Frazier, video game market analyst at NPD.

"We usually find that Easter-related purchases generate an extra 10 per cent in revenue in the month they occur," she said, "so some of the softness compared to last April could be attributed to the shift in Easter timing."

However, Frazier said the primary reason for the drop in sales is the light release schedule by game makers in the early months of the year, commenting that when a compelling title is released by a game maker, it still sells as well as ever.

Pirate Party cannot help users to circumvent block.

The court in The Hague sided with anti-piracy group Brein in ordered the Pirate Party to stop publicizing ways to circumvent the block on the Pirate Bay website in the country. All major Dutch ISPs have been ordered to block access to the notorious BitTorrent website, as have most in the UK.

The Pirate Party also cannot offer a proxy that can let users obtain TPB's links without directly visiting the file sharing site. The group has described the ruling as a slap in the face of the free Internet.

"The judge decided to give the Netherlands another nudge on the gliding scale of censorship," it said. "More and more bits of the internet will have to be censored because they might be used to get access to 'infringing' sites, until eventually most of the internet will be unreachable."

In the UK, the Pirate Party continues to instruct users on how to get around the Pirate Bay blockade in effect in the country. It will be interesting to see if the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) tries to follow Brein and have a court gag them.

Microsoft finally bringing full browser to console.

The Verge cites sources who inform it that Microsoft is working on a version of Internet Explorer 9 for the Xbox 360 console. The full browser lets Xbox 360 users finally surf the web using the console, which is a feature that has been a long time coming.

According to the sources, Microsoft has integrated Kinect voice and gesture control to the browser, although you won't need to have Kinect to use the browser.

There is no indication of when Microsoft is planning to deliver the new browser to Xbox consoles, but E3 is approaching again so it could be officially confirmed very soon.

Government says new system is simpler.

In the UK, video games have been rated by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). Now, the responsibility is being passed on to the Video Standards Council (VSC), which will rate games to the specifications of the Pan European Game Information (Pegi) system. The change is expected to happen in July.

The BBFC will still be called upon at times to judge titles that contain gross violence, or strong sexual material.

The changes now mean that there can be criminal punishment, potentially jail time, for selling a game to a child younger than the title is rated for. The new ratings only apply to in-store purchases, and not to games sold over the Internet.

"It will give parents greater confidence that their children can only get suitable games while we are creating a simpler system for industry having their games age-rated," said Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey.

The UK games industry's trade association, Tiga, has backed the switch to the Pegi system. "It simplifies the system," said Tiga's Richard Wilson. "The Pegi system is reasonably easy to understand. The fact there are criminal sanctions in place will mean that retailers will want to train and support their staff."

Hirai says figures are a "good start."

Considering the record loss that Sony has just experienced, it could do with some good news. New chief executive Kazuo Hirai revealed that 1.8 million PlayStation Vita units have been sold by the firm so far globally.

"The last year, [we sold] 1.8 million units for US, Japan, Asia and Europe. And as a starting phase, I think it was a good start," he revealed during an earnings call. The sales figure is reportedly absent from financial reports released by Sony today.

"A game platform, like Vita - the software is the key to success, how good the software is. We have to reinforce the software area in order to improve the business, that is the basic line," said Hirai.

Sony expects to sell 16 million handheld gaming units over the coming year (10 million Vitas, 6 million PSPs).

MEPs agree on price caps, operator freedom.

Among the new regulations is a maximum limit of 70 cent per MB of data used while roaming within the EU, far below what some carriers are currently charging. Calls will also be capped at a maximum of 29c per minute (excluding VAT).

Additionally, customers can also choose a different operator abroad if they choose to do so. "In a borderless Europe, there is no place for charges that diverge so much at home and abroad," said MEP Ivo Belet.

The European Parliament is introducing these new regulations, amongst others, to prevent occurrences of bill shock within the European market. The new rules will result in significant savings costs for business travellers in the EU, and it also encourages carriers to compete, according to the EU.

The new regulations will come into effect in the European market in 2014.

New weekly chart tracks streamed music.

The Official Charts Company (OCC) in the UK is to compile a top 100 chart of music streamed from services such as Spotify. It estimates that 2.6 billion audio streams were delivered in the UK last year. The new chart tracking what's currently popular will launch next Monday.

The chart, however, does not include video streaming services, which rules out YouTube. Nielsen Soundscan has reported that a whopping 55 percent of all music streamed online comes from YouTube videos.

Nevertheless, the OCC is correct to recognise streaming music with its own charts, as music streaming has overtaken paid downloads.

Streaming has become a new source of money for the industry, but not everybody is convinced that it is enough to replace record sales, or that it is distributed fairly. Rock group Black Keys decided to withhold their new album El Camino from Spotify due to issues with royalties.

"It's set up to be a little bit more fair for the labels than it is for the artists, I think," said Black Keys' Patrick Carney. "It still isn't at a point where you're able to replace royalties from record sales with the royalties from streams."

Facebook sees apps as new stream of revenue.

The new App Center will launch within the next few weeks, providing Facebook users with a hub to find games and other apps. Developers can use the hub to provide free apps, or to sell them to Facebook's gigantic userbase.

Some concerns have been raised by investors about Facebook's long-term ability to sustain revenue, as the social network approaches an initial public offering that could value it at up to $96 billion. Growth of Facebook is being driven strongly by mobile usage, but the service only provides limited ads to mobile users.

The social networking giant has admitted that its number of daily users is fast outpacing the ads it can deliver. It does get revenue from fees on sales of goods within apps on the site, such as Farmville, but its primary source of revenue is advertising.

The new App Center will provide it with a new potential stream of revenue. Facebook users will need to use Facebook Credits to purchase apps, and the company will take a 30 percent cut of the revenue, according to spokeswoman Malorie Lucich.

Nokia doesn't expect dismissal to affect sales in Britain.

In June 2011, a High Court ruling in the UK found that Nokia was infringing a patent held by German firm IPCom. The Finnish mobile giant moved to appeal the ruling, but has had its appeal rejected, paving the way for IPCom to take further action in a case stemming back five years.

The High Court had found the IPCom 100A patent to be valid, providing the German firm a major boost in its dispute with Nokia. IPCom can now seek an injunction on sales of Nokia phones throughout the UK.

Nokia has complained that IPCom's licensing fee demands are unjustifiable and excessive. Despite the decision by the British court to reject its appeal, Nokia said the dismissal would not affect sales of its handsets in Britain.

ISPs must block notorious torrent site.

The court in The Hague has ordered Internet service providers UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort to block access to the Pirate Bay website, mirroring an order issues by a court in the United Kingdom recently.

The court decision comes just after the Netherlands became the first state in the EU to pass Net Neutrality, barring ISPs from throttling traffic to certain services, or charging for access to certain bandwidth-demanding services.

The ISPs now have ten days to comply with the court's order, after which point they can be fined up to ?10,000 per day for failing to do so.

ISPs are expected to appeal against the court's decision. They had attempted to demonstrate to the court that use of public proxy servers, or even just using Google Translate, would circumvent any such blockade, making it completely pointless.

New chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, faces enormous challenges.

The Japanese consumer electronics firm is slashing costs in an effort to halt huge losses that have plagued it in recent years. Sony's TV business alone accounts for $12 billion in losses over the past nine years. The company is planning to cut 6 percent of its workforce - about 10,000 jobs - in a bid to turn the TV unit around.

Shares of Sony Corp (valued at around $15 billion) have hit a quarter-century low. Hirai is determined to change the fortunes of the PlayStation-maker, with the firm reporting a record loss of $5.74 billion in the year just ended.

The company is to focus more efforts on smartphones and other mobile devices, its games division, advanced medical devices and batteries for electric cars. It expects to sell 33 million smartphones this year (compared to 22.5 million last year), but predicts an 11 percent decline in PlayStation sales, to 16 million units.

In the year to March 2013, Sony expects an operating profit of 180 billion yen.

"The operating profit forecast isn't far off the level seen two years ago ... This suggests we're on a recovery trend and last year was definitely the bottom," said Kenichi Hirano, operating officer at Tachibana Securities in Tokyo.

Not every app makes enough, not even close.

Stories like that of of the billion-dollar Instagram sale have put a lot of focus on the mobile app space. Research conducted by App Promo will probably dampen hopes for a lot of developers looking to become the next millionaires.

It found that more than 59 percent of apps do not generate enough revenue to break even. Only 12 percent of mobile app developers earn $50,000 or more for their apps, most of which have budgets around $30,000 for development, and also spend on average 14% of the revenue on marketing.

"With over a million applications in the market across platforms, app publishers are finding it increasingly challenging to cut through the noise and get their apps discovered and downloaded," the firm wrote in its white paper.

"Those developers that spend money and time on marketing outside of the app stores found the most success based on the revenue they had earned for their app. This core finding echoes what we believe as a leading app marketing and strategy firm, that in order to make an app a successful business you need to ensure that you have a budget and time allocated to marketing and promoting your app."

HTML5 can unlock apps from specific operating systems.

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs spoke at the CTIA trade show, arguing that HTML5 can free mobile users from limits of operating systems. He likened the current situation to the days when AOL had its customers in a "walled garden", but ultimately users decided to move away.

"In the early days of AOL we were within their walls," he said. "And it all worked great until it didn't." The next chapter of the Internet was "open", he said, and predicted that it is also the next step for mobile users.

"The Web grew by an order of magnitude," he said. "The shift changed our world. Humans don't like walls. We want to wander. And we want freedom."

Over 64% of the time users spend on their smartphones, they are using some specific app. Kovacs also admitted that browser providers, like Mozilla, have failed to innovate for the mobile space. "All we've done is shrinkage," he said, pointing out also that only 10 percent of websites are optimized for mobile screens.

Countless billions of green pigs slaughtered.

Rovio is celebrating a huge milestone for its baby, Angry Birds. Combining all versions of the game, free and premium, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, and Angry Birds Space, the phenomenon now accounts for over one billion downloads.

"We are so thankful to all of our fans for their support, and we can?t wait for them to see what we have coming up," said Rovio communications specialist Sini Matikainen.

Angry Birds exploded in popularity shortly after its 2009 launch for iOS devices. It is one of the most profitable games in history.

Operators upset about an "unfair race."

Everything Everywhere asked Ofcom - the UK communications regulator - to allow it to use some of its existing spectrum to roll out next generation 4G services in the region. Ofcom had a consultation period while it is considering EE's request, and of course, all three main rivals attacked the proposal.

O2, Vodafone and Three all expressed their opposition to the plan, calling it unfair and questioning the regulators goals for competition in the market.

"We are concerned that Ofcom's proposal to allow one operator to launch 4G early on its existing spectrum is contradictory to its objective of delivering a competitive market environment with four competing players," an O2 spokesman told the BBC.

Vodafone said that permission for EE to use existing spectrum for next generation services would represent an unfair race.

"We can't understand why Ofcom would ignore the overwhelming evidence that giving Everything Everywhere a head start could seriously undermine competition in the UK market," Vodafone said in a statement. "Put simply, why is it that the French and German runners should be allowed to start the 4G race whilst the British runner is still chained to the starting blocks? Is that what we can expect at the forthcoming Olympics?"

Norwegian teens charged with cyber crimes.

An 18 year old and a 19 year old have been arrested by police in Norway in connection with cyber attacks against several targets across the world, including Britain's Serious Online Crime Agency (Soca). Other victims reportedly include the Norwegian lottery, the Bild newspaper in Germany and several American websites.

The National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) in Norway said it was investigation distributed denial of service (ddos) attacks against websites over a period of a few weeks.

"The case is still under investigation," said Norwegian prosecutor Erik Moestue. "It is still too early to say anything about the motive for the actions."

"We have arrested the two we think were most important in these attacks, but we still want to talk to more people," he added. Two two teens arrested in the case so far were charged last week. The maximum penalty for their alleged crimes is six years imprisonment.

Irrational Games needs more time, money.

The third instalment of the mega-popular BioShock series has been pushed back until next year, it was announced today. Its developer, Irrational Games, said it needs more time and money to complete the eagerly anticipated title.

BioShock Infinite was originally due to go on sale in October this year, but has been pushed to February 26, 2013. "Bioshock Infinite is a very big game, and we're doing things no-one has ever done in a first-person shooter," said game designer Ken Levine.

"We had a similar experience with the original Bioshock which was delayed several months. Irrational Games is one of those rare developers lucky enough to ask the people who sign the cheques: 'Hey, can we have a few more."

The delay means that BioShock Infinite will avoid head-on launch competition with other heavyweights, such as Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

BioShock Infinite moves the gamer from below the waves and into a Sky city environment with an ongoing civil war between an ultranationalist ruling class and a resistance movement. At the E3 conference last year, a preview of BioShock Infinite won the Best of Show award, and received praise from critics.

Microsoft becomes seventh core member.

Hybrid Memory Cube is a revolutionary innovation in DRAM memory architecture that sets a new standard for memory performance. To help develop the new technology, Micron and Samsung lead a consortium of industry players for research and development.

Microsoft has become the seventh core member of the consortium. "The Cube represents a major step forward in the direction of increasing memory bandwidth and performance, while decreasing the energy and latency for moving data between the memory arrays and the processor cores," said KD Hallman, general manager of Microsoft?s strategic software/silicon architectures group.

The consortium lists some potential benefits from Hybrid Memory Cube usage, such as..

• HMC Combines high-speed logic process technology with a stack of through-silicon-via (TSV) bonded memory die.
• HMC delivers dramatic improvements in performance, breaking through the memory wall and enabling dramatic performance and bandwidth improvements - a single HMC can provide more than 15x the performance of a DDR3 module.
• The revolutionary architecture of HMC is exponentially more efficient than current memory, utilizing 70% less energy per bit than DDR3 DRAM technologies..
• Hybrid Memory Cube's increased density per bit and reduced form factor contribute to lower total cost of ownership, by allowing more memory into each machine and using nearly 90% less space than today's RDIMMs.

Dutch lead the EU in Net Neutrality.

The Netherlands has become the first country in the European Union to enshrine Net Neutrality into national law. Legislation had been introduced on the issue in the country in June 2011, and it cleared the second legislative chamber yesterday.

Providers of mobile Internet services in the country, such as KPN, had hoped to throttle certain bandwidth intensive services, or even charge for access to particular types of service on their networks. With the new Net Neutrality law in place, they cannot discriminate in this fashion.

Exceptions to the rules include times of significant network congestion where it is unavoidable, and for reasons of network security.

Bits of Freedom, a Dutch lobby group, said that the law also includes provisions against wiretapping, making it illegal to use deep packet inspections on customers' Internet communications without their prior consent.

MySpace shared personal information with advertisers, FTC alleged.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced yesterday that MySpace has agreed to settle charges that it misled its users about its practices of sharing information with advertisers.

The (former?) social network's privacy policy indicated that personally identifiable information would not be used for purposes other than for which it was submitted, and that data used to customize ads would not identify individual users to third parties.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute and AT&T Labs noticed in 2009 that MySpace was breaking its own privacy policies by providing the Friend IDs associated with visited pages to third parties. Every MySpace user has a unique Friend ID, and therefore this information would allow third parties to associate browsing data with users' full names.

The FTC found MySpace to be in breach of the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework in its data sharing practices and pursued it in May 2010. Now MySpace has agreed to settle the case and establish a comprehensive privacy program, submitting to third-party audits for the next 20 years.

Update addresses three security flaws.

Apple just released the latest update for its iOS devices, v5.1.1, in which it address three big security fixes.

The first fix is for a flaw that allows for the address bar to be spoofed in such a way as to trick a user into thinking they are on a certain website, when in fact they are on a completely different site. The address bar should not be spoof-able for this reason, as spammers and malware peddlers could use this flaw as part of an attack.

The second fix is for a cross site scripting (XSS) flaw that could be used to recover session authentication data or other information stored legitimately by a website in the browser. Such information could be used to impersonate a user online.

The third fix is for a remote code execution bug that could be used to push malware or other nasty code to your device without you even knowing about it, just by landing on a page that was crafted to exploit the flaw.

United States Magistrate Judge Gary R Brown laments "abusive litigation."

Brown criticised legal arguments that an IP address is sufficient for identifying an individual responsible for copyright infringement online. He made the comments in the K-Beech, Inc. v. John Does 1-37 case which deals with the illegal sharing of adult entertainment videos.

"The assumption that the person who pays for Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly downloaded a single sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over time. An IP address provides only the location at which one of any number of computer devices may be deployed, much like a telephone number can be used for any number of telephones," Brown commented.

"Thus, it is no more likely that the subscriber to an IP address carried out a particular computer function ? here the purported illegal downloading of a single pornographic film ? than to say an individual who pays the telephone bill made a specific telephone call."

Brown also noted some of the defendants claims. One woman, for example, said that her wireless router was not secured and that she lives beside a municipal parking lot where somebody might have used her connection to download or share files.

Pandora is second most downloaded app from Apple's App Store.

Chief Executive Joe Kennedy said in a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless conference that the Pandora music service has passed 150 million users. The tallies of registered and active users have increased by 50 percent since the beginning of the 2012 financial year, according to Kennedy.

A lot of the growth was attributed to mobile usage, with 70 percent of the music streamed from Pandora in April being on mobile devices.

It estimates that about 52 million users are active. Last month, around 1.06 billion hours of music was streamed, which amounts to an 87 percent increase over the same period of 2011.

Pandora faces increasing competition from rival music services, such as Spotify, which claims to have 3 million paying customers now. Still, Pandora believes this is just the beginning for the company. It is currently working to get the service integrated into cars from several automakers.

Reports claimed 55,000 accounts were affected.

A Pastebin user posted five pages of Twitter usernames and passwords on Monday, fuelling reports that there has been a massive attack on Twitter's servers. Celebrity accounts were also reported to be among the bunch of compromised details.

Twitter has denied that any major successful hack has occurred, but admitted it was still investigating the situation. A Twitter representative told Mashable that the list contained 20,000 duplicates, and also spam accounts that have already been suspended by the service.

Additionally, many of the usernames and passwords were found to not match up. The microblogging site has sent out password reset instructions to accounts it thinks might have been affected by the release of the login information, but its unclear where any legitimate details may have come from.

App uses only data, without touching users quote of call minutes or texts.

Of course there are several alternative apps that have been around before Telefonica's new "Tu Me" app, such as Skype, Viber and Whatsapp, but Telefonica says it would rather keep the customer than lost them to other products and services. Providers have long viewed apps like Skype as a threat.

The app launches for iPhones first, with an Android app set to be released very soon.

Both the caller and recipient require the app to be installed to work. Users will receive a pop-up notification when someone is trying to get in contact, although unlike Skype, users cannot make calls to normal telephone numbers.

Messages transmitted using the app will also be encrypted to ensure privacy.

"We've seen the growing popularity of communication apps on smartphones but we believe we've gone one better with Tu Me using our knowledge and insights of how people use their devices," said Telefonica Digital's chief commercial officer Stephen Shurrock.

California Judge throws out Proview iPad trademark suit.

The Chinese firm told a court in California that Apple deceived it by purchasing the rights to the iPad name through a special-purpose vehicle. The lawsuit was filed back in February of this year, while Proview and Apple are also locked in a trademark dispute in China.

Judge Mark Pierce said that both parties had agreed to settle any disagreements in Hong Kong, dismissing the case last week.

A spokeswoman for Apple told Reuters that Proview is just truing to unfairly get more from Apple for a trademark that it already paid for.

Apple claims to have bought ownership of the iPad trademark in various countries from Proview, but the Chinese company argues that Apple only dealt with one unit of Proview, and that it retains the iPad trademark in the Chinese market.

ISP forced to take website offline.

Twitter announcements suggested that Anonymous was responsible for taking the site offline, although Virgin Media says it took it down itself for about an hour during a distributed denial of service attack.

The ISP recently began blocking access to the Pirate Bay in compliance with a High Court order. Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk and O2 have also been ordered to block access to the BitTorrent website by Friday, while BT has requested a few more weeks to consider its options.

"As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling the issue of copyright infringement needs compelling legal alternatives, giving consumers access to great content at the right price, to help change consumer behaviour," Virgin Media said in a statement.

The High Court order in the UK is just another attempt to block access to one of the world's most notorious web services, which has survived raids and even legal proceedings against its founders in Sweden.

Lenovo's K Series smart TVs are powered by Android 4.0 and new Qualcomm processor.

As part of its PC Plus strategy, Lenovo has launched its K-series Smart TV products in China. The PC-maker is looking to gain more ground in the global market for "PC Plus" devices, such as Smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and so forth.

"While we continue to strengthen our position in the PC industry, we are also further expanding into the field of Internet devices, with innovative smart phones and tablets, and today, smart TVs," said Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo Group Chairman and CEO.

"As a global leader in the PC industry, our customers look to us to provide new technologies, and as we drive further into the PC­­-Plus era, we will continue to introduce new products worldwide. The PC-Plus era is a great opportunity for our customers and Lenovo intends to remain out in front, leading as always with exciting new products."

Lenovo is releasing four Lenovo Smart TV K-series devices ? the 55-inch screen K91 and K81 and the 42-inch screen K81 and K71 ? priced from RMB14,999 to RMB6,499. They are the first television products to adopt the Android 4.0 OS and a new Qualcomm dual core 1.5GHz CPU.

Judge slams "arrogant" Motorola and Microsoft.

Motorola had won the right to force Microsoft to recall and destroy Xbox consoles and Windows 7 copies in a patent licensing dispute. Though Motorola had won this right in a Mannheim court, a U.S. court ordered Motorola to hold off from enforcing the ruling until it ruled on another related complaint between the two.

In a Seattle court, Judge James Robart slammed the companies for burdening the legal system with these claims. "The court is well aware that it is being used as a pawn in a global, industry-wide business negotiation," Robart said.

"To an outsider looking at it, it has been arbitrary, it has been arrogant and, frankly, it has been based on hubris."

He also commented that the legal fees involved in the case could finance a small country. Two claims are being examined by the court related to the patent dispute between Motorola and Microsoft.

Motorola claims that Microsoft failed to pay license fees for two patents related to the H.264 video technology. Microsoft has argued that Motorola is asking for far too much in fees, claiming that if it met Motorola's demands it would face an annual bill of $4 billion.

Debug option accidentally left enabled.

Last last week, it emerged that an OS X Lion security update released in February, 10.7.3, had a flaw relating to the FileVault encryption feature. A debug option appears to have been left enabled by an engineer, which resulted in users' FileVault passwords being saved in a plain-text log file.

The file is accessible outside the encrypted area by anyone with access to the disk, or by malware that knows where to look. Not everybody will be affected though.

According to Sophos, the issue affects those who used the FileVault encryption option for their home directories with Snow Leopard. It does not impact users who did not upgrade from Snow Leopard. It also does not affect users of FileVault2 or those who have full disk encryption enabled.

Vulnerable users who opt not to encrypt their Time Machine backups also risk replicating the log file in their backups.

MP slams video games regulation.

Labour MP Keith Vaz has a history of opposition to the sale of video games depicting violence in the UK. In 2004, he claimed the killer of a 14 year old boy had been influenced by Manhunt, despite the fact that the victim himself was the one who owned the video game.

He also linked Counter Strike to race shootings in Sweden in 2010, and to shootings on U.S. campuses in 2007. This time, Vaz has linked Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with the massacre in Norway last July.

"This House is reminded of the consequences of the ineffectual Pan European Game Information (Pegi) classification system for video games following the testimony of Anders Breivik about the tragic events in Norway in July 2011," Vaz' motion reads.

Mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik has claimed that he used Modern Warfare to help him plot his July 2011 attacks in Norway.

Vaz is concerned that the Pegi classification system only assigns an age rating to a video game, and does not restrict ultra-violent content. Breivik was 32 years old when he carried out his attack in Norway.

World's second largest TV maker teams with Google to counter Apple.

It will launch Internet-enabled TVs in the United States using the Google TV platform in the week of May 21, according to the South Korean firm. The move is seen as a push from both LG and Google to dig into the emerging market as rival Apple Inc. is expected to offer up its own solution within the next year.

"Production of Google TVs will start from May 17 from our factory in Mexico and U.S. consumers will be able to buy the product from the week of May 21," Ro Seogho, executive vice president of LG's TV business unit, said.

After reviewing sales performance in the United States, LG will decide whether or not to move the business into the European and Asian markets.

IHS iSuppli estimates that the Internet-enabled TV market will grow 60 percent this year, to about 95 million units. The overall television market is expected to grow by about 2 percent this year.

Apple looking to gain control over iPhone5.com domain.

The company previously has managed to secure rights to iphone4s.com, iphoneporn4s.com, iphonesex4s.com, iphonexxxforce.com, iphone4s.com and more by filing disputes with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Now Apple has reportedly filed a complaint with WIPO over iPhone5.com, which hosts discussion forums. At present, there are some discussion threads on the boards about the case.

The company had previously opted to pay for the use of some domain names. It paid an undisclosed amount for iphone4.com and whiteiphone.com last year, but has not opted to go go the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) option instead.

Chairman's comments were "misconstrued", Nokia says.

Outgoing Chairman at Nokia, Jorma Ollila, had suggested to the Financial Times that Nokia was currently working to bring out new tablet PCs, along with tablet-smartphone hybrids. The FT article was reported around the tech world, but Nokia wants it to be clear that the company is just watching the space.

"Tablets are an important one, so that is being looked into, and there will be different hybrids, different form factors in the future," Reuters also reported Ollila as saying.

Speaking to eWEEK, a Nokia spokesperson wanted to make it clear. "What Mr. Ollila said has been misconstrued a bit," said Nokia spokesman Keith Nowak. "As we have been saying, we are watching the space with interest, but have made no announcements regarding a tablet product."

Ollila is preparing to hand over the role of chairman to Risto Siilasmaa, a Finnish entrepreneur, after spending 27 years with the company.

Premium quality "Enthusiast" and "Performance" class equipment contributes $3.2 billion in growth from 2011.

Jon Peddie Research reports an estimated 54 million Performance and Enthusiast class PC gamers worldwide at present. By 2015, the firm expects this number to swell to 72 billion, driven by new entrants and by "console converts." It predicts that the PC Gaming Hardware market will hit $23.6 billion in 2012, rising to $32 billion by 2015.

The research firm defines Enthusiast and Performance class PC gamers as those who spend over $1,000 on equipment.

"We are witnessing the market morph and grow into different areas. This has always been a strong point of PC gaming; the ability to adapt to different entertainment environments and requirements. The hobbyist aspect of the DIY market is driving billions in component sales and small form factor rigs are being hooked up to HDTVs, essentially being used as 'super consoles," said Ted Pollak, Senior Gaming Analyst at Jon Peddie Research.

Average selling prices for some components could suffer as competition heats up in 2013, but unit shipments will continue to rise, and components like SSD's are counterbalancing and buoying system integrated and DIY ASPs.

Google plans to move for a mistrial after Jury fails to answer fair use question.

The case is being watched closely by Silicon Valley, as Oracle accuses Google of infringing copyrights it holds related to the Java programming tools it provides.

A federal jury on Monday found that elements of the Android operating system infringed on technology from Java, a platform bought by Oracle only two years ago. Google had questioned whether Oracle's copyrights were even valid, and that it should be excused under fair use principles, as it only used parts of Java that have always been freely available.

Oracle is seeking over $1 billion in damages from the search giant, but the Jury's failure to determine whether Google's actions were legally protected fair use comes as a major blow to Oracle's prospects of securing such high damages.

The Jury did not reach an agreement on Google's fair use defence, prompting a Google attorney to inform U.S. District Judge William Alsup that he will move for a mistrial on the issue of the APIs. Judge Alsup ordered both sides to prepare detailed arguments on that motion, which he will consider at a later date.

Thermal runaway event was the result of a bad repair.

In November of last year, a report surfaced about an iPhone that started burning shortly after an Australian flight had landed. A cabin crew member had noticed smoke coming from near a passenger seat during the taxi to the gate after arrival at Sydney. The crew member instructed the passenger to throw the source of the smoke to the middle of the isle, and then discharged a fire extinguisher on it.

The source was identified as an Apple iPhone 4. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) launched an investigation into the incident, which also included the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) in the United States.

The investigation found that the iPhone had been repaired after the screen was damaged, and that repair was not carried out by an authorized service center. At the base of the iPhone is a 30-pin connector, held in place by two screws at either side. The investigators noted that the screw appeared to be missing.

Facebook profiles serving as proof of identity.

The bouncers have reportedly asked people to show them their Facebook profiles on their smartphones if they suspect that a fake I.D. is being used.

"I kind of just logged onto it [Facebook] and showed him the screen and then he didn't question it any further," Charlotte Neal, 20, told BBC's Newsbeat. "When it happened the first time I didn't really think anything of it. Then I thought, 'Hang on, is this really how you're supposed to check how old I am?' But I was out and I wanted to get in the club so I just agreed."

The Newsbeat website also mentions other similar reports througout the UK. It brings up some questions about basic privacy rights, and how they must be balanced with ensuring that a minor does not trick his/her way into a nightclub using a fake ID card.

One doorman questioned by Newsbeat said that there is a fine of £5,000 for a bouncer who is found to have left an underage individual into a nightclub. "Why is it so wrong for people to have to prove the ID is actually them? If you're not doing anything wrong you shouldn't have a problem," he said.

DoJ revealed executive will enter guilty plea.

Woo Jin Yang, senior sales manager at Hitachi-LG Data Storage, agreed to plead guilty in a price fixing case, the Department of Justice announced earlier this week. He was accused, along with others, of rigging bids for optical disc drives sold to Hewlett-Packard Co between the years 2006 and 2009.

His guilty plea to four felony charges filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, means he will serve a six month prison sentence and pay a fine of $25,000.

Three other executives are awaiting sentencing for their part in the crime. Hitachi-LG Data Storage was ordered to pay a $21.1 million fine in November 2011.

Sales of XPS 13 Ultrabook surpass expectations.

Ultrabooks are a new category of notebooks that combine a thin, sleek form factor with high performance. The category is being pushed heavily by Intel, which has seen a dominance of rival microprocessor technology in tablet PCs.

Dell's XPS 13 Ultrabook went on sale on February 28. According to the company, sales of the device have already more than doubled the company's internal forecast. Furthermore, the Ultrabook is enjoying demand from both consumers and large corporations.

"Since we started shipping it to customers, XPS 13 has exceeded our expectations," said Dell product marketing director Alison Gardner. "With this product, we went aggressive with the forecast."

Gardner did not share the actual sales figures for the product. Starting at $999, the XPS 13 Ultrabook is quite expensive, and highlights the challenge that Untrabook makers face trying to keep their products as thin and light as possible while not sacrificing performance.

Redmond says no to sexual content.

The firm is to tackle applications containing adult, or borderline adult, content from its Windows Phone Marketplace, enforcing guidelines that have been in place all along.

"Specifically, we will be paying more attention to the icons, titles, and content of these apps and expect them to be more subtle and modest in the imagery and terms used," wrote Microsoft's senior director for Windows Marketplace, Todd Brix.

"This is about presenting the right content to the right customer and ensuring that apps meet our standards."

Microsoft will contact developers of apps that violate the service guidelines over the coming days. The move follows policy set by Apple for its own App Store, and is seen by analysts as a move to reassure parents that the Windows Phone store is safe for kids.

Nokia jumps into worldwide patent brawl.

The Finnish handset maker has targeted HTC, Blackberry-maker RIM and Viewsonic for failing to pay licensing fees for use of its intellectual property. The firm said that the cases involved more than 45 separate patents relating to power management, application stores, navigation and data encryption.

"We have already licensed our standards essential patents to more than 40 companies," said Louise Pentland, Nokia's chief legal officer. "We'd rather that other companies respect our intellectual property and compete using their own innovations but, as these actions show, we will not tolerate the unauthorised use of our inventions."

Nokia has previously had success in forcing Apple to pay to license its technology, but it has stayed relatively quiet as other smartphone makers have torn into each other in court rooms around the world.

Nokia's latest lawsuits were filed in the US Federal District Court of Delaware, the US International Trade Commission and Germany's Regional Court in Dusseldorf.

Target to further distance itself from Amazon.

The Internet e-commerce giant used to run Target's website for years until a legal battle forced that relationship to end last year. Target now views Amazon as a serious competitor (which has learned a lot about its business) and has been moving to distance itself from it.

"Target is phasing out Amazon- and Kindle-branded products in the spring of 2012," Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder wrote in an email to Reuters. "We will continue to offer our guests a full assortment of e-readers and supporting accessories."

Target does not see e-readers from other firms as a threat to its business, while Amazon's Kindle devices are heavily linked to its online retail business. Wal-Mart confirmed that it will continue to sell Amazon's Kindle products in its stores.

Apple products have been advertised more aggressively in Target stores recently.

Judge reads certain portions of sealed 2011 Google document.

He had been quizzing attorneys of both Google and Oracle - which has accused Google of violating of copyright violations relating to the Java programming language - when he revealed that the Android mobile platform resulted in a net loss for Google in every quarter of 2010.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup had sealed an internal 2011 Google document which included profit and loss numbers for Android throughout 2010. Alsup did read certain parts of the documents aloud in court on Thursday, but did not disclose specific loss figures for Android.

Google does not publicly disclose financial information related to the Android platform.

Google denies violating patents held by Oracle, and also has questioned whether Oracle can even copyright certain parts of the Java programming language. The trial kicked off last month and is expected to last around eight weeks.

Facebook shares will start trading on May 18.

The social networking giant has set the share price between $28 and $35 per share, which values the company at between $85 billion and $95 billion - the largest ever IPO for an Internet firm. In 2004, Google had made waves with its $23 billion valuation.

Facebook counts 900 million users around the world, and recorded a profit of $1 billion last year. More than 10 percent of the company is expected to be sold when it is listed on the Nasdaq, raising up to $12 billion. It will rival the market share of Amazon and Cisco Systems.

The social network is to invest heavily in mobile services over the coming years as it aims to secure its long-term growth, after recently reporting its first revenue drop between quarters for two years.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will own 31.5% of Facebook's outstanding stock, and will control 57.3 percent of the voting power through his shares and voting agreements with other stockholders.