TechInTheNews

Google acquires kite-power firm

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:27:38 +0000

Google has acquired a US start-up that generates power using turbines flying on robotic tethered kites.

J-Lo to create Latino mobile shops

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:34:38 +0000

A chain of mobile phone stores aimed specifically at the Latino market is to be opened by singer and actress Jennifer Lopez

Court battle for EA over game faces

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:28:41 +0000

A former college football player has won the right to sue Electronic Arts for using his likeness without permission.

Backlash over Xbox pre-owned games

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:40:11 +0000

Microsoft faces a backlash from some gamers after it emerges the company may charge a fee to play pre-owned games on its new Xbox One console.

Twitter boosts security after hacks

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:30:15 +0000

Micro-blogging site Twitter says it is bringing in a two-step login for users to beef up security following recent high-profile breaches.

Gif inventor says pronounce it 'Jif'

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:55:57 +0000

The inventor of the Gif image format says it should be pronounced Jif, despite what the Oxford English Dictionary says.

US report warns on China IP theft

Thu, 23 May 2013 06:25:47 +0000

The theft of US intellectual property is "unprecedented" and costing billions, a US report says, pointing to China as the main culprit.

Couple's £163,000 phone bill shock

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:55:08 +0000

A couple who own an electrical firm had a shock when they received a mobile phone bill for £163,000, then fought for months to have the debt cleared.

Hewlett-Packard shares jump 12%

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:10:02 +0000

Hewlett-Packard shares leap in after-hours trading, despite quarterly results showing a seventh consecutive fall in sales.

Pirate movie sites blocked in UK

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:06:13 +0000

Big UK net firms have begun blocking access to two movie streaming sites accused of flouting copyright laws.

Airbnb seeks to reassure members

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:08:18 +0000

Airbnb tells its members "we are not going anywhere", after a judge in New York ruled a man who rented out his apartment on the site broke the law.

SAP in autism recruitment drive

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:00:05 +0000

German software company SAP says it hopes to recruit hundreds of people with autism, saying they have a unique talent for information technology.

Flickr revamp revealed by Yahoo

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:31:30 +0000

Yahoo revamps its Flickr photo-sharing service, offering users up to 1TB of storage if they accept adverts.

Wi-fi shut down in Guantanamo alert

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:35:14 +0000

The US military's wireless internet service inside Guantanamo Bay has been shut down following threats by Anonymous hackers

Fast broadband roll-out begins

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:10:06 +0000

Fast broadband is being rolled out in Surrey after EU competition commissioner approved the state-funded scheme.

Ex-Nokia team makes rival smartphone

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:08:18 +0000

A smartphone created by former Nokia employees is unveiled ahead of its release later this year.

Trans-US solar plane sets new record

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:12:12 +0000

The Solar Impulse plane sets a new record for distance flown by a solar-powered craft as it completes the second leg of a bid to cross the US.

Man lists 12,000 call menu options

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:55:05 +0000

An IT manager who grew frustrated with call centre menus has catalogued shortcuts to thousands of phone services

VIDEO: Projecting an immersive experience

Wed, 22 May 2013 07:57:05 +0000

Click's Spencer Kelly looks at how projectors and computers are being used to create immersive experiences.

VIDEO: Celebrating 20 years of the web

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:06:18 +0000

Click's David Reid visits Cern to find out more about the plans to restore the world's first web page.

VIDEO: Xbox One 'unrivalled device'

Wed, 22 May 2013 02:20:59 +0000

Microsoft's Don Mattrick has described the new Xbox One as an "unrivalled device" in an interview with the BBC after the launch of the next-generation console.

VIDEO: Apple chief hits back in tax row

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:31:10 +0000

CEO Tim Cook has spoken out in defence of Apple, after a Senate committee accused the company of using "a complex web of offshore entities" to avoid paying billions of dollars in US income taxes.

VIDEO: Developers turn to indie games

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:35:38 +0000

Games developers are turning their focus towards indie games designed for smart phones or tablets, rather than traditional consoles.

VIDEO: Creative brains map a smarter future

Tue, 21 May 2013 05:14:17 +0000

New York University's Tisch School of the Arts explores the use of today's communications technologies - and how they might enhance people's lives tomorrow.

VIDEO: Wikipedia founder on Yahoo's Tumblr deal

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:52:24 +0000

The BBC talks to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales about Yahoo's acquisition of Tumblr, in a $1.1bn deal.

VIDEO: 'Internet is world devoid of empathy'

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:08:26 +0000

Former LulzSec hacker Jake Davis, who has received a 24 month sentence for computer hacking, talks to Newsnight's Susan Watts about his time as part of the group.

VIDEO: Yahoo to buy Tumblr for £700m

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:06:58 +0000

Tumblr, the blogging site set up by a 20 year old only six years ago, has been bought by the internet giant Yahoo for more than £700 million.

VIDEO: Read Klingon on your computer screen

Fri, 17 May 2013 07:39:21 +0000

Microsoft's Bing offers page translations into Klingon, Google launches a music subscription service plus other tech news.

Can science be kick started?

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:29:32 +0000

Could attempts to crowd fund research end up skewing science?

Xbox One: Web reacts to new console

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:46:08 +0000

Microsoft's new console stirs up passions on the net

Is a paperless library still a library?

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:53:27 +0000

US plans paperless public library

Some Day My Prints Will Come

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:00:04 +0000

Will 3D printing revolutionise manufacturing?

New Xbox readies for video games war

Mon, 20 May 2013 23:28:53 +0000

Will Microsoft's games machine win the next console war?

Can China become a hi-tech economy?

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:52:36 +0000

Will China's education system hold back its tech sector?

Tumblr takeover: Sex, jokes and gifs

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:17:25 +0000

Why Yahoo thinks blogging platform Tumblr is worth more than $1bn

How to hack a nation's infrastructure

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:52:59 +0000

Looking through CCTV feeds that should not be public

Televisions

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:42:43 +0000

What should be considered if you don't know 3D from your HD?

Digital cameras

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 16:08:34 +0000

Things to consider when buying a new digital camera

Laptops

Fri, 28 May 2010 10:53:51 +0000

The essential things to consider when buying a laptop

Warning to cut TV for young children

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 10:04:39 +0000

Children under three should not watch screens, psychologist Dr Aric Sigman says as he warns it may lead to increased production of dopamine in children's brains.

Gadgets taking inspiration from science fiction

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:43:13 +0000

Though the watch was invented centuries ago and cars 100 years ago, it has not stopped innovators trying to improve existing gadgets.

Japan gets phone call translator

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:00:37 +0000

Subscribers to Japan's biggest telephone network offered app that translates calls so they can speak to people using other languages.

Will driverless cars mean computer crashes?

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 01:37:55 +0000

Some believe that self-driving cars will be far safer than human-driven cars but who trusts them enough to drive in them?

Blackmail fraudsters target webcam daters

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 23:09:57 +0000

Male users of online dating and chat sites are becoming victims of blackmail and fraud in a spate of incidents, sometimes with tragic consequences, across France.

Salman Khan: From closet to classroom

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 07:45:05 +0000

Founder of the Khan Academy, Salman Khan, wants to make a world class education available to everyone.

Can Netflix compete with 'offline' TV?

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:34:50 +0000

With streaming services now established, is it time we started speaking of YouTube or Netflix in the same breath as the BBC or Sky?

How to identify 1.2bn people

Wed, 23 May 2012 02:58:07 +0000

With millions of people in India living in poverty can new technology make it easier to help identify all those without official ID cards?

Space tourism, Europe's final frontier?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:10:29 +0000

Is Sir Richard Branson's space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic, looking for a European base?

Hackers fool bank security system

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:54:39 +0000

Criminal hackers have found ways around new security devices used for online banking.

Lib Dem opposition to communications data bill 'putting country at risk'

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:27:41 +0000

In wake of Woolwich attack, Labour peers Lord West and Lord Reid lead calls for Nick Clegg to end resistance and revive bill

Political pressure is mounting to revive the communications data bill in the wake of the Woolwich attack, with Labour peers Lord West and Lord Reid leading calls for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to drop their opposition to the legislation. West said Clegg was putting the country at risk.

Clegg hailed a major political victory when he prevented the draft bill being allowed into the Queen's speech. The home secretary, Theresa May, had hoped she had changed the bill sufficiently from its original format to win the deputy prime minister's support, and even when the bill did not feature in the Queen's speech, she refused to accept that it had been killed off.

Reid, the former Labour home secretary, said such measures were essential to combating terrorism, and warned it could otherwise take "some huge tragedy" to show the decision was wrong.

Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat and a former government reviewer of counter-terrorism, reiterated his call for the bill to be revived.

He said on BBC's Newsnight on Wednesday: "We have to learn proportionate lessons from what has occurred. We mustn't rush to judgment. But we must ensure that the police and the security services have for the future the tools they need that will enable them to prevent this kind of attack taking place.

"I hope that this will give the government pause for thought about their abandonment, for example, of the communications data bill, and possibly pause for thought about converting control orders into what are now called TPIMs, with a diluted set of powers."

Lord West, the former security adviser to Gordon Brown and first sea lord, said: "The communications data bill is absolutely crucial. We may find the information we need on these mobiles is not there. It was meant to be in the Queen's speech. David Cameron and the home secretary both quite rightly wanted it, but the deputy prime minister said no and that is putting the country at risk.

"They need to look again at the bill, which has a lot of changes to stop it being a snoopers' charter. This ability is something that exists now, and will disappear. I have no doubt that if it goes we will be more at risk, so the deputy prime minister is, I believe, putting the country at risk."

The former Labour home secretary Jack Straw called for the intelligence and security committee to inquire into whether the communications bill was needed in light of the attack.

He said: "We need to know whether it would have made any difference. I don't know. I don't think John Reid knows. You have got to make sure that the proposals are proportionate".

He said the murder was an act of "stone-age savagery".

Asked whether the government may respond to the Woolwich killing by resurrecting the communications data bill, the faith and communities minister, Lady Warsi, told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "I'm sure people will analyse how things could be done better and I'm sure people will have a lessons-learnt exercise.

"But I think the wrong way to make legislation is on the back of a tragedy like this. It isn't the moment to start looking at the kind of legislation we should or should not have. I'm sure at some point it will play into the debate."

There was no immediate response from the Liberal Democrats, but Clegg's officials had previously said they were willing to look at some residual changes to make sure all mobiles were linked to IP addresses. It was not clear whether this required primary legislation.

Currently, police can identify who has made a telephone call or sent an SMS text message, and when and where. However, they cannot do the same for email, internet telephony, instant messaging or other internet-based services because communications service providers don't retain all of the relevant data.

Notes attached to the Queen's speech hinted that the security services still had ambitions to extend the willingness of the Liberal Democrats to link mobiles to internet providers. The notes said: "When communicating over the internet, people are allocated an IP address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people.

"In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them."

The government said it was looking at ways of addressing the issue with service providers and that this may involve new legislation.

Patrick Wintour

Does Kim Dotcom have original 'two-factor' login patent?

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:38:10 +0000

Owner of Mega and MegaUpload sites fighting US extradition says Google and others should help his defence fund in return for using his patent, but earlier filings cast doubt on claim

Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand-based creator of the MegaUpload file-sharing site who is fighting an extradition demand from the US, is asking Google, Microsoft and others to contribute to his multimillion-dollar defence fund in return for a licence he claims to hold on a key patent.

Dotcom, 39, says he has a patent on "two-factor authentication", used by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter, Dropbox and others to provide extra safety on user accounts. The patent was filed in 1998 under his former name of "Kim Schmitz". He also issued a veiled threat to sue the companies if they don't help.

However patent filings seen by the Guardian suggest that Dotcom's claim is predated by others filed by telecommunications companies Ericsson and Nokia in 1994 in the US, Europe, China and through the international patent system.

Under the patent system, earlier filings take precedence in any claim, which would rule Dotcom's patent invalid unless he can show that it covers elements of authentication which are not covered by the earlier one. Dotcom had not responded to an email from the Guardian raising this point by the time of publication.

Dotcom said that he would allow Google, Facebook and others to use his patent for free. "I ask you for help," he tweeted. "We are all in the same DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] boat. Use my patent for free. But please help funding my defense."

He has claimed that the costs of his legal defence, which has been going since a raid by police in January 2012 which saw him imprisoned pending an extradition hearing. He is presently on bail. Dotcom has previous convictions under the name of Schmitz in Germany for computer fraud and separately for embezzlement relating to insider trading, and in Hong Kong for securities-related offences.

The patent awarded in 1998 by the US Patent Office appears to be the only one Schmitz holds. On his Twitter feed, he said: "Big reveal: 1 billion+ two-step authentications on the internet weekly. I invented it. Here's proof", linking to the patent filing. He then added: "I never sued them. I believe in sharing knowledge & ideas for the good of society. But I might sue them now 'cause of what the US did to me."

However it is difficult to say whether such a claim would succeed. The Ericsson patent from 1994 describes "a method and an apparatus for authentication of a user attempting to access an electronic service, and, in particular, providing an authentication unit which is separate from preexisting systems."

That fits as a description of two-factor authentication, which typically uses a combination of a password typed into a browser with a code received by text message or from an app to authorise the user's access.

Charles Arthur

YouTube Comedy Week, day four: Crabstickz, the Gregory Brothers and Psy

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:09:06 +0000

YCW continues to struggle for belly laughs on day four, with the Gregory Brothers' DJ Play My Song the pick of a tepid bunch

Reading this on mobile? Click here to view

You can't accuse YouTube Comedy Week of elitism. It's not all about the big names; it's giving web-based comic talent a great opportunity to get their work seen by an (even) wider audience. So how are they doing? On the evidence of today's crop of Comedy Week videos, not particularly well. YouTube's official comedy channel brings us a series of amusing enough sketches about a nuclear family carping at one another across the dinner table. The first episode is here.

Reading this on mobile? Click here to view

Elsewhere, the British performer Chris Kendall, aka Crabstickz, chooses to commemorate Comedy Week by aping the most tired of old-media formats, the TV panel show. Worst of all, the US duo Rhett and Link have uploaded their YouTube Challenge Challenge, which invites a crowd of YouTube users to undertake mildly unpleasant stunts – eating cinnamon; singing with a mouthful of marshmallows – for the edification, or amusement, of … well, who knows?

Reading this on mobile? Click here to view

Comedy Week also brings us a live show from the American improv troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, in which sketch comedy is created and performed on the hoof in response to screened YouTube videos. A comedian and actor from the US version of The Office, Craig Robinson, gatecrashes a nail salon to serenade the clientele here, and the double act Tim and Eric perform a comic song about goatee beards here. They're passably engaging, but you'd be hard pushed to argue for the comic sophistication of either video. Best of a so-so crop is the Gregory Brothers' number, DJ Play My Song, a spoof dancefloor anthem in which a DJ finds a gyrating diva's attentions increasingly unwelcome. ("Oh, DJ, play your song now" / "No, leave me alone.") The video features Psy. Maybe there's better stuff out there that I haven't found? If so, let me know.

Brian Logan

What should I look for when buying a desktop PC?

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:30:47 +0000

Gill needs to replace an old Dell desktop and wants to know what she should know about them …

I need to replace an old Dell desktop and have no idea what I should buy. I don't use it for gaming. I do use it to watch some TV via an HDMI cable to my TV and I might want to download films. It's mainly used for photos, web browsing and emails. What sort of things should I be aware of?
Gill

There are at least two interesting types of desktop computer: all-in-ones with touch screens, and high-end gaming rigs. Traditional desktops are boring and almost nobody writes about them. However, in this case, I think boring is best. The ideal desktop is one that keeps on working quietly and reliably for five years or more.

Almost any desktop PC that you can find will do what you want, so the final choice will depend on how much space you have, and how much you want to spend. I budget £1 a day and aim to spend around £1,000, including monitor, but you could easily spend half of that.

Most desktop PCs come in tower cases of various sizes. If you want to add expansion cards and extra hard drives, then it helps to have a large case. If you're never going to open it up and add to it, a mini-tower (MT) or small form factor (SFF) case will be fine.

Most desktop PCs come with a built-in DVD optical drive that will also read and write CDs. If you want to play Blu-ray movies as well, then you will need to specify a Blu-ray drive.

It's also handy to have a built-in multi-card reader that will read SD memory cards from cameras, voice recorders and other devices. These are the modern equivalent of floppy disks, if anyone remembers those.

For internal storage, you will also need a hard drive. Check the size of the one in your current PC by opening Windows Explorer, selecting My Computer, and seeing what it says for Local Disk (C:). Make sure the PC you buy has at least twice as much storage space, preferably five times as much. Currently, 1TB (terabyte) drives are cheap and 2TB drives are affordable. You won't need that much unless you want to store lots of movies — probably more than 100, depending on length and resolution. You can always install a second hard drive later, or get a friend to install one for you.

For external connections, it's best to have some USB 3.0 ports, though most desktop PCs also have USB 2.0 ports as well, both front and rear.

Processor and operating system

The processor and memory are among the most expensive parts of a desktop PC, and they are where you can save some money, if you need to.

Currently, I recommend the Intel Core i5-3570K as the best-value Ivy Bridge chip for someone who might want to overclock it, and the Core i5-3550 for people who don't know what overclocking means. For your purposes, any Core i5-3xxx or Core i3-3xxx processor would be fine. If you're buying for the long term, it's probably not worth dropping down to a Pentium-branded chip. It's nicer to have power to spare.

Intel Core chips now have built-in graphics, which means you don't need to buy a desktop PC with a dedicated graphics card. You can always install a cheap graphics card later, if you find you need one.

Most desktop PCs come with 4GB or memory as standard, and unless you go in for heavyweight tasks such as editing movies, this is enough for Microsoft Windows 7 and 8. More memory is always better, so don't turn away the chance to have more, if the cost is nominal. Desktop PCs with 6GB and 8GB of memory are common.

You will also have to decide whether you want to buy a new screen and/or speakers, or whether you can re-use the ones you already have. If your current screen is less than 20in, it's worth considering a 22in or larger screen, now they are relatively cheap. If you plan to run Windows 8, you should also consider buying a touch-sensitive monitor.

Bear in mind that all versions of Windows support two screens without any problems. You can use the old screen alongside the new one, even if they're different sizes.

Whether to go for Windows 7 or Windows 8 is a matter of some debate. I like Windows 8 a lot on touch-screen tablets and laptops, but I don't use it on my desktops. Play with it in a shop and see how you like it.

Ideally, desktop users who are upgrading from Windows XP and not sure what to do should go for 64-bit Windows 7 Pro with a Windows 8 disk. Basically, you're buying Windows 8 but with downgrade rights that allow you to run Windows 7. The nice thing about the 7 Pro version is that it has an XP Mode that lets you run a copy of XP under Windows 7. It's a bit of a geeky approach but it does enable people to move at their own pace from XP to Windows 7 to Windows 8. Otherwise, the Great Leap Forward can come as a bit of a shock.

Picking a Dell

As you're already a Dell user, you may as well stick with the brand. Our last three desktops have all been from Dell, and none of them has given any problems. The Pentium-powered Dell Dimension 8400 I bought in April 2005 is still going strong running Windows XP (with a RAM upgrade and a new graphics card), and I added a Dell Vostro 460MT running Windows 7 on a Core i5-2500 in September 2011.

Dell's Vostro range is aimed at boring business buyers rather than consumers, so they tend to be well made and they don't include a lot of bundled crapware to mess things up. They're not the least bit flash. They also come with one year (sometimes two years) of next-business-day support.

At the moment, you can get a Dell Vostro 470MT with a Core i5-3470 processor, 4GB of memory, Nvidia GeForce GT 620 graphics card, 1TB hard drive, DVD, Wi-Fi and 64-bit Windows 7 Pro for £538.80 including VAT and shipping. It's much more than you need.

However, there's also a similar but smaller and cheaper Vostro 270S (small form factor) for £382.80. This lacks the dedicated graphics card and has Windows 8 Pro pre-installed, but saves you £156.

You could add a standard 23in Dell E2313H 1920 x 1080 (Full HD) monitor with a DVI-D connection, or even an UltraSharp U2312HM, though there are plenty of alternatives on Amazon and similar stores.

If you want to try something that isn't from Dell, the Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 72 offers some good alternatives. Prices range from about £300 to £750, depending on the processor. A model with a Core i5-3470S and a similar spec to the Dell 470 MT will cost about £500.

Lenovo also does a Tiny business desktop PC: tiny by name and by nature.

The trend over the past decade is for people to replace desktops with big notebook PCs. However, a desktop provides a bigger (and often better) screen, is usually faster, more upgradeable, and may be cheaper. It's also better for your health, because using a laptop for long periods is bad for your health. I have the physiotherapy bills to prove it.

The secret life of internet trolls: part two - video

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:00:01 +0000

The Climate Desk team meet nuclear physicist and troll-slaying online truth crusader Rosi Reed

Xbox One: should TV broadcasters be afraid?

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:53:32 +0000

Microsoft focused on TV over games as it unveiled its new generation console – and it could threaten rival platforms

Xbox One's voice and gesture-activated TV wizardry is unlikely to leave BSkyB worried about its future. But with big name games and on-demand content Microsoft is aiming to maintain Xbox's appeal in the face of consumers spending increasing amounts of time on their tablets and smartphones.

Microsoft has not given its Xbox console a major revamp since 2005; in the interim there has been a digital revolution which is having an increasingly big influence on traditional living room entertainment.

The surge of smartphone and tablet usage has given rise to the "second screen" phenomenon – effectively users looking at other content or interacting with social media such as Twitter and Facebook while watching TV – and the promise of internet-enabled smart televisions meant Xbox One had to be more than just a games console to compete.

Xbox One will allow users to flick instantly between game play and watching TV, or activities such as browsing the internet or Skyping, as well as adding interactivity to programmes, such as fantasy football elements to live NFL matches.

"The key innovation is the overlay with live TV," says Piers Harding-Rolls, games analyst at research firm IHS. "It is all about maintaining Xbox's relevance and keeping it at the centre of entertainment by offering lots of games, content and channels. In some ways it is a defensive perimeter because Microsoft, and Sony, need to stop encroachment in the TV entertainment space."

He points to "ecosystem companies" such as Google, Apple and Amazon which offer products and content across a prolific range of devices, all of which could eventually damage Xbox's core gaming business by taking a growing slice of people's spend home entertainment time.

According to data from the BBC in March 8 million requests for TV shows on the iPlayer video catchup service came from people using games consoles, with pretty much zero growth in usage in the past year.

This compares with 81 million programme requests via mobiles and tablets in March, with portable devices growing rapidly from 15% to 30% of all iPlayer usage in the last year.

IHS estimates there were 47m smartphones and 11m tablets in the UK at the end of last year, compared with 8.2m Xbox 360s.

"Smartphones and tablets are increasingly used for viewing – they are good for catchup content and video delivery. All this eats into [Xbox] play time and usage time on TV," said Harding-Rolls.

While Xbox is aiming to be the gateway point for access to TV, analysts do not consider it to be a threat to broadcasters such as BSkyB.

Microsoft may have announced a big budget programming initiative with Steven Spielberg's TV series based on the Halo game, but it is considered to be more of a PR stunt to appeal to gamers than the first salvo in the battle to become a major TV content producer and rights owner.

"What Microsoft is doing there around creating exclusive interactive content is very interesting and certainly a draw for consumers," says IHS TV analyst Richard Broughton. "Unless Microsoft decides to take a big step and buys exclusive rights, which at this stage would be a risky bet and very territory-specific, it will be playing an aggregation role."

In the UK the Xbox Live service has content from more than 20 content providers including Sky, the BBC's iPlayer, LoveFilm, music video service Vevo and Channel 4's 4oD.

By beefing up the XBox Microsoft is also aiming to head off the growing threat of smart TV manufacturers like Samsung aiming to be the gateway for internet and linear content, as well as the threat of cheap rivals such as Android-based TV-meets-gaming console Ouya.

Analysts concur that for all Microsoft's talk of a making the Xbox One an "all-in-one" entertainment device it still boils down to one thing: games.

With a rumoured price of $400 (£265) in the US, and online games and technology store Zavvi in the UK offering a pre-order price of £400, the Xbox One is considered too pricey to appeal to a mass audience beyond its gaming heartland.

"At the price they are asking the TV elements are not enough to convince a mass audience to buy into it," said Harding-Rolls. "It all comes down to high-end games – smartphones and tablets can't replicate them, they are its strongest selling point."

Microsoft is expected to make major announcements about its games lineup at the E3 trade show in the coming weeks.

"Xbox has gone for a sophisticated approach – it won't be bringing out another Xbox for maybe 10 years and it has to be prepared," says Heloise Thomson, a digital analyst at Enders. "It is about how they can make money subsequently, from selling content through the Xbox Live service and building usage. It will come down to games."

Mark Sweney

Woolwich attack: Is your mum a badass too?

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:09:37 +0000

#MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass – how about yours? A son's pride in his mother's levelheaded bravery spawned a Twitter hashtag that allowed us all to brag about our cool mums

The son of the woman who spoke to the attackers in Woolwich has inadvertently spawned a Twitter meme: #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass. Ingrid Loyau-Kennett was one of several women who spoke to the terrorists or attended the body of the victim (another woman pushed past, apparently oblivious, with heavy shopping). Loyau-Kennett spoke to the two men moments after the attack. She told the Guardian: "I was not scared because he was not drunk, he was not on drugs. He was normal. I could speak to him and he wanted to speak and that's what we did."

Basil Baradaran spotted his mum's act of bravery on yesterday's evening news. He tweeted a photo of her standing face-to-face with one of the men, while a nervous crowd waits at the far end of the road:

Of all the things today 'I didn't expect a suspected terror attack in my town and my mum, of all people, to talk to the attackers #Woolwich
– Basil Baradaran (@SiibillamLaw) May 22, 2013

My mum is a motherfucking badass twitter.com/SiibillamLaw/s…
– Basil Baradaran (@SiibillamLaw) May 22, 2013

He was soon inundated with requests from journalists. Then, early this morning, Lauren Laverne spotted his tweet and realised it had the potential to be something more:

I do feel like we all might contribute to @siibillamlaw's hashtag. #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– Lauren Laverne (@laurenlaverne) May 23, 2013

I'll start: She went from Penywell Estate to Greenham Common, via a short career as a casino dancer. #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– Lauren Laverne (@laurenlaverne) May 23, 2013

People were quick to leap on board. There were heroic mums:

Mum raised us w/ no money on a council estate but made me believe I could do anything. My PhD is down to her :) #MyMumisAMotherfuckingBadass
– Nice Reminder (@nice_reminder) May 23, 2013

She's the most positive and good natured person I've met despite living with cancer for the third time. #MyMumIsaMotherfuckingBadass
– Joe Parry (@joeparry) May 23, 2013

@laurenlaverne my mum retired, went to help people with leprosy in Darfur.. robbed and shot at by bandits#MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– Dave W (@makapala) May 23, 2013

@laurenlaverne She was the1st woman in her military band in the70s. Forced them to acknowledge her brilliance. #mymumisamotherfuckingbadass
– Shelley Jane (@ShelleyJaneT) May 23, 2013

Incidentally, #MyMumISaMotherfuckingBadass - she was the first female mounted police officer in Manchester, and is UK's longest-serving.
– Laura Corcoran (@friskylaura) May 23, 2013

There were mums who are simply lovely:

#MyMumisAMotherfuckingBadass because she says "catch. 27" instead of "catch 22" and I could not love her more for that.
– Red Boots (@redbootsblog) May 23, 2013

My mam didn't realise it was the same George Michael that was in Wham until 1998.#MyMumisAMotherfuckingBadass
– Robin (@robin_darke) May 23, 2013

And there were a fair few mums who just don't give a shit what people think:

Had my sister stolen from her by the state bc she was unmarried. Broke into the orphanage and took her back #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– Colin Beeblebrox (@Quazlor) May 23, 2013

She once egged Margaret Thatcher, and only thought to mention this to me after she died #MyMumIsaMotherfuckingBadass
– Saskia (@Saskiargh) May 23, 2013

From Oldham to Moscow to build computers in the 60s. Now tells 'funny' KGB stories when given Baileys. #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– michelle patel (@mets1977) May 23, 2013

#MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass Age 63 walked 3 miles to see Radiohead. On a Zimmer frame, with advanced Parkinson's disease, 2 nights running.
– Dick Graceless (@DickGraceless) May 23, 2013

#MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass She was 5 mins late for my christening. Vicar tried to berate her. She told him to stick his font up his arse.
– Nick Pettigrew (@Nick_Pettigrew) May 23, 2013

You can read all the contributions here. There are bound to be plenty more to come.

And if your mum fits the hashtag's description, why not let us know below?

Tom Meltzer

Amazon licenses fan fiction ebooks

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:09:21 +0000

Original authors and their amateur adapters can now jointly 'monetise' the popular spinoffs

George RR Martin hates fan fiction, Anne Rice has banned it, Ursula K Le Guin calls it "an invasion". But a host of authors have signed up to a new programme from Amazon, which encourages any fan who fancies it to write fiction inspired by their worlds, and sell it to readers through the Kindle store.

Amazon announced yesterday that it had secured licences for the bestselling Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar, for Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars and for LJ Smith's Vampire Diaries from Alloy Entertainment. The licences will allow fans to publish authorised stories set in the different fictional universes as ebooks for the Kindle, with royalties paid to both the original author and the fan fictioneer.

Amazon said the "Kindle Worlds" project was good for writers because it is "an entirely new way to monetise their valuable franchises [and] it allows them to extend their worlds with new stories and characters and more deeply engage with existing fans".

"Seeing Pretty Little Liars fans adapt and create their own stories is both exciting and flattering and I think what Amazon Publishing is offering through Kindle Worlds is a great way to reward their ingenuity," said Shepard.

A collection of established authors has already begun dabbling in the world of fan fiction via Amazon. "There's probably not an author/fangirl alive who hasn't fantasised about being able to write about her favourite show. The fact that you can earn royalties doing so makes it even better," said romance author Trish Milburn, who has been writing in The Vampire Diaries universe.

Amazon said it planned to announce more fan fiction licences soon. Martin, who has said that "no one gets to abuse the people of Westeros but me", and Le Guin, who describes fan fiction as akin to "strangers coming in and taking over the country I live in, my heartland", are unlikely to be on Amazon's forthcoming list.

Nor is Rice, who has made her feelings on fan fiction clear in the past, writing on her website: "I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes."

Alison Flood

Shazam redesigns its iPad app with television-tagging in mind

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:05:29 +0000

Auto-tagging feature runs in the background to identify shows, ads and music on the second screen

Mobile firm Shazam has revamped and relaunched its iPad app, with a new feature that automatically identifies TV shows, advertisements and music, rather than waiting for people to manually tag them.

The app also sports a redesigned homescreen, makes it easier for people to see what their Facebook friends have been watching and listening to, and plots tag charts on a map of the world to show what's popular in specific continents, countries, regions, cities and towns.

Shazam is working on similar features for an Android tablet app to be released in the coming months, and the new features will also be added to the company's iPhone and Android smartphone apps later this year.

Leading on iPad is a sign of the growth Shazam has seen on Apple's tablet. "We have seen triple-digit growth over the last year for our existing iPad app, even though we haven't really aggressively promoted it," Shazam's executive vice president of marketing, David Jones, tells The Guardian.

Across all platforms, Shazam's apps have been used by 300m people since the service launched in 2002, with 200m of those having used it in the last year according to Jones. The company recently announced that it currently has more than 60m monthly active users.

Jones cites recent research by NPD Group in the US on the growth of people using second screens while watching TV. The survey of 3,387 people found 87% saying they used at least one second-screen device while watching TV, with 49% of them reporting usage of a tablet – versus 55% for smartphones and 50% for computers.

The auto-tagging feature is a significant step forward for Shazam. Capable of running in the background while people are using other apps on their iPads, it will identify music, shows and ads and make their details available in an in-app carousel.

"We've been testing it extensively to see if it drains the battery when running in the background, but the iPad can go for a couple of days with this running," says Jones. "It doesn't change your charging behaviour – how often you have to plug in – which is very important."

There will be differences in the way Shazam's app works around the world. In the US, Shazam identifies shows on any TV channel, whereas elsewhere it remains limited to those where a deal exists between the broadcaster and Shazam – the Brit Awards earlier in 2013, for example.

"For the time being it's select television shows in the UK, but over time we want to expand that to every channel," says Jones.

"Music is still our bread and butter, but more than 10m people have Shazammed television in the last year. Those are real and meaningful numbers for networks, brands and advertising agencies."

The auto-tagging feature does raise some questions for those kinds of companies, though. With manual tagging, people are actively using Shazam to find out what a song is, or to interact with a show or ad. With passive auto-tagging, Shazam will be capturing data on content they may not be interested in.

"We've thought long and hard about that," says Jones. "If you open or favourite a piece of content that's in the carousel, we're going to consider that a tag: a piece of content of interest. If the device just auto-tags it and it stays unopened, we'll treat it as something that wasn't of interest to you."

There are more interesting implications around the idea of an app that automatically identifies and stores every show someone watches on TV, both for the way TV audiences are measured, and for the privacy of TV viewers.

Shazam seems alive to both of these. "We're not trying to do anything like audience measurement on a grand scale across our user base. We're only interested in what our consumers actually engage in, not what auto-tagging may pick up around you," says JOnes.

"We're already sitting on a goldmine of data, and we're being respectful and thoughtful about how we monetise that."

Jones is enthusiastic about the creative possibilities for brands and their agencies within Shazam's iPad app, and tablets more generally, with second-screen marketing campaigns.

"We think of iPad as just a bigger canvas for our brands and agency partners to paint on," he says. "If you think about making a television advert interactive, it's wonderful to be able to do it on a smartphone, but even better to do it on a bigger 10-inch iPad or seven-inch iPad mini."

The iPad app's relaunch comes during a busy year for Shazam as it ramps up its TV business. The company appointed a new chief executive, Rich Riley, in April, shortly after poaching BBC iPlayer boss Daniel Danker for a role as chief product officer.

Former chief executive Andrew Fisher remains with Shazam in a role as executive chairman, tasked with plotting the company's path to an IPO. In its last full financial year, which ended in June 2012, Shazam's revenues rose 39.8% year-on-year to £21.8m, but its net losses grew from £619k to £3.3m.

Stuart Dredge

Facebook's violently sexist pages are an opportunity for feminists | Emer O'Toole

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:00:02 +0000

Facebook both reflects our misogynistic society and is a conduit to change it – through campaigns such as Twitter's #FBrape

There's all sorts of stuff wrong with capitalism, but one thing I'd miss if I woke up in an economic utopia tomorrow is a good boycott. Offended by something racist, homophobic, classist or sexist about a company's product or advertising? Boycott. Tell the company why you're boycotting. Encourage others to boycott. If enough people agree with you, companies change the way they behave. Yay! If only there were as straightforward a way to react to ALL the racist, homophobic, classist, sexist arsery one encounters daily. But it's hard to boycott society (though God knows there are times I try).

Then there's Facebook. Facebook is a special case. On the one hand, it's a profit-driven corporation, but on the other, it's a corporation that makes its profits through provision of a platform for people's interests, beliefs and social habits. And when it stops being that platform, it stops making money. Sadly, we live in a society in which many people are interested in rape jokes, believe violence against women is funny and habitually consume cultural products that depict women as glossy sex things. And so, Facebook is full of pages and groups that graphically depict and explicitly condone violence against women.

As Tuesday's open letter to Facebook on behalf of more than 65 gender equality groups points out, Facebook routinely removes content that is violently racist, homophobic or Islamophobic. The company – quite rightly – would ban a group that showed two gay people lying unconscious at the bottom of the stairs with a caption like, "Next time, don't hold hands". While it'll approve content that condones tying women up and raping them, it certainly wouldn't tolerate an equally "humorous" page that riffed on the lynching of black people.

In spite of complaint after complaint, Facebook continues to deem content encouraging violence against women inoffensive. When journalists publicise a particularly indefensible page (usually a page that Facebook has already been made aware of by users), the company tends to act by shutting down that particular page. Without protocols in place to combat gender hate speech, however, this is pointless.

The question that arises is why Facebook continues to allow this kind of content to be published. It emits unconvincing chirps about being anti-censorship, but trips itself up by moderating, as pornographic, images of women breastfeeding, or body-positive pictures of post-mastectomy female torsos. This blogpost cuts wittily to the heart of the issue. The author lifts a typical porny pic from another Facebook page, Photoshops in a smattering of pubic hair, and posts it to her own group. Result? Overnight decision – a 30-day ban.

So, the censorship explanation falls flat as a beautifully tattooed post-mastectomy chest, and the question remains: why is Facebook so committed to supporting gender hate speech? One possible explanation is that its company culture has naturalised sexist norms to the point where its members truly believe, along with the creators and users of pages such as Raping Your Girlfriend, that violently misogynistic content is acceptable and funny. At base, there's little difference between classing these pages as inoffensive humour and saying: "Lighten up babe – some women can take a joke. Do you know what would sort you out? A good raping – ha ha."

But Facebook has a brand and has money to make. The #FBrape Twitter campaign is hitting where it hurts, by tweeting big advertisers with screengrabs of their carefully cultivated logos floating alongside pages entitled things such as What's 10 Inches Long and Makes Girls Have Sex With Me – My Knife! So far, many companies have responded quickly and publicly by condemning the content and complaining to Facebook about it. According to Laura Bates of Everyday Sexism, the #FBrape campaign's next challenge must be making these advertisers aware of the history of this issue – of how policy change, rather than moderation of publicised, isolated incidents – is needed.

The #FBrape campaign holds a mirror up to a pervasive element of our culture that many either fail to acknowledge or aggressively insist that feminists laugh off. Officially, violent misogyny is not condoned, and most corporations won't endanger their brands by being associated with it. Unofficially, violent misogyny is still very much de rigueur. Facebook is a conduit between these official and unofficial attitudes to women and, as such, provides an opportunity for radical intervention. Paradoxically, as a profit-driven organisation that must reflect the values of our sexist society, Facebook offers gender activists a vital chance to confront, contest and change permissive attitudes to violence against women.

Emer O'Toole

Councils embrace social media

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:45:15 +0000

More local authorities are using Twitter and Facebook to deal with customers. It means they can give a better service, but the financial benefits are hard to identify

A survey of local authorities published today by BDO shows that 98% of councils are using some form of social media, reflecting the fact that three out of four UK consumers now have an active Facebook account.

BDO, where I work as a senior manager, is an accountancy and professional services firm with a consultancy team focusing on local government. Since our first survey of local authority social media use this time last year, the impetus for digital government service delivery has grown. The Cabinet Office supports this view. Nick Hurd, parliamentary secretary in the Cabinet Office, estimates that the introduction of new digital services will save the taxpayer and service users around £1.2bn by 2015.

In particular, the demand for mobile access to services is striking. One London borough we recently spoke to found that 70-80% of hits to its website were coming from mobile phones or tablets.

The good news is that local authority attitudes to social media are changing: moving away from being traditionally risk-averse. Although one in three local authorities still has a block on social media use as standard, last year that figure was more than one in two – which is a seismic shift in local government terms, especially in an area historically considered pretty risky.

Following in the footsteps of the private sector, councils are increasingly seeing social media as a customer service tool: more than two-thirds now use social media to deal with customer queries rather than issuing press releases.

So what's the bad news? Well, despite three-quarters of local authorities believing that social media represent an opportunity to make financial savings and 40% of councils investing at least one day of staff time a week in managing it, only 5% have been able to demonstrate savings of more than £10,000.

Measuring the benefit and impact of social media is difficult, and it's not only local government that is struggling. The State of Social Media Marketing report for 2012 found that 57% of private companies are still wrestling with how to demonstrate a return on investment, and there is no easy solution to this problem.

In the immediate term, councils (like their private counterparts) do not really have a choice but to invest in social media to meet customer expectations. Yet in a time of shrinking budgets, the fact that significant financial payback may not be easily evidenced in the short term is not an easy pill to swallow.

But don't despair and hang up your Twitter account just yet. The total resource required to maintain a social media presence is still relatively low in the grand scheme of local authority delivery – especially compared with more expensive channels such as phone and face to face.

There are also a wide range of non-financial benefits that officers can use to make the case for continued commitment to social media in the short term. These benefits include building a digital relationship with customers, the ability to provide real-time customer service and, in particular, internal service improvement through immediate feedback on customer frustrations, all of which can increase customer satisfaction and reduce contact levels significantly.

Every day brings an exciting new success story which highlights the potential that social media could have for local government. As one respondent to this year's survey said "You have to be engaging, and you will want to be – because the benefits are enormous."

Kate Denham is a senior manager in the BDO local government advisory team

Zaha Hadid beyond buildings: architect launches new design gallery

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:04:45 +0000

From jewellery that should come with a hazard warning to tables that have given up on legs, Oliver Wainwright delves into the inimitable world of Zaha Hadid Design

What do you do next when you are Zaha Hadid? Twice winner of the Stirling prize and the first woman to win the Pritzker prize, the 62-year-old architect has been celebrated by both Forbes and Time magazine in their lists of the world's 100 most influential people – and she was recently named businesswoman of the year. Only 10 years ago, she had built nothing more than a pavilion in the grounds of a furniture factory, but today her 400-strong practice presides over a brimming catalogue of 950 projects across 44 countries, from opera houses to parliament buildings, and enjoys an annual turnover of £30-40m. She has become a global brand so desirable that her buildings in China are now being pirated – before they are even finished. So what territory is left to conquer?

The answer might be found by peering through the windows of an innocuous looking building on Clerkenwell Road in east London, which opened this week as the Zaha Hadid Design Gallery, part of Clerkenwell Design Week. Behind its ground-floor shop front – at which crowds of young designers have been gathering like children outside a sweetshop – an alien landscape unfolds.

It is a world of swelling shapes and heaving volumes, masses of fibreglass and resin, concrete and carbon fibre summoned into sinuous forms, as if controlled by surging ley lines.

These are sofas and side tables, chairs and shelves – but not as you know them. It is as if a furniture shop has undergone a period of accelerated evolution: within the pristine laboratory-white walls of the gallery, you might encounter a distant descendant of your dining table. It has given up on legs and a top, and is now formed instead of one continuous piece, its body dipping down in three points to meet the ground, where it rests on slender fins.

This is the Aqua table, conceived in 2005 as an offshoot of Hadid's design for the London Olympic aquatics centre. The prototype – cast in polyurethane resin – was auctioned in New York for $296,000 (then around £170,000), setting a new record for a living designer. A fibre glass version can be yours for £19,500. Furniture from the future does not come cheap.

It is the first time the practice's forays into furnishings have been brought together in one place, with a branch of the office now formalised as Zaha Hadid Design – the seventh company registered under the Zaha Hadid brand. Often the result of gallery commissions, or produced specifically for furniture fairs, these pieces have occupied a rarefied realm – conjured on the screen and digested in digital form on the pages of blogs, but rarely seen or sat on, even by the designers themselves.

As a body of work, driven by the ZHA manifesto of formal gymnastics, it makes for compelling – if sometimes nauseating – viewing. There are undulating side tables, milled into fungal forms from vast chunks of Italian marble, weighing in at 180kg each. There are shimmering shelves that have been stretched across the wall like space-age chewing gum, as well as swooshing, aerodynamic sofas that make sitting down look like an extreme sport. Everything is taut and rippling, squeezed and clenched, like it's spent too long working out in the parametric gym.

On the level below, the range moves down a scale, with napkin holders and vases given the inimitable Zaha Hadid touch. There are silk scarves printed with pretty perspectival patterns alongside a set of cutlery that could be a toolkit for performing an alien autopsy – a single place-setting sells for £200.

Declared one of the 50 best-dressed over-50s by the Guardian, Hadid's interest in fashion is shown in various prototype pieces as novel as her buildings.

The Icone handbag for Louis Vuitton, designed in 2006, is covered with a field of distorted LV logos, extruded from its surface as if accelerating at warp speed: the handbag as portal to a hyper-luxury dimension. In another case are two shoe designs, formed of rubbery tendrils that wrap around your ankles, for that "fresh from the primordial soup" look. A case of jewellery – so far only worn by Hadid herself, but planned for production – includes spinning golden vortex rings and what appears to be a multi-bladed knuckleduster, inspired by her Maxxi museum in Rome. Disparaging critics beware.

While it is fascinating to see an architect tackling everything from perfume bottles to wallpaper patterns, it all has the slight feeling of a Zaha Home: the brand of acute angles and bifurcating flow-lines rolled out across the world of interiors with promiscuous abandon.

Further up the building, open by appointment only, lies the real treasure trove, which helps explain how this unique formal approach has been incubated over the last 30 years. Here a vast archive of architectural models has been brought together on display for the first time, from the early hand-cut perspective reliefs of the Vitra fire station, to the latest 3D-printed studies for bristling towers in the middle east.

Iterative development models sit alongside polished presentation pieces, with revealing parallels drawn between projects. Only here to do you see how the plan of their 2001 entry for the Quebec National Library competition – a block cleft by winding paths of erosion – was flipped to become the elevation of their recent Pierresvives complex in Montpellier. Similarly, you can see in the chunky timber model of the Phaeno Science Centre some embryonic elements that fed into the roof of London's Olympic pool.

But perhaps the most interesting realisation is quite how much effort is put into the performance of presentation in the pursuit of winning work. The tables are lined with immaculate Perspex cases from the archive, furnished with flaps and sliding drawers, elaborate Caligari cabinets from which drawings, models and samples can be unfolded to tell the project's story in front of the client's astonished eyes.

"Zaha has always wanted to lay everything out in one place, as much as a resource for the office as for the public," says Melodie Leung, who has worked as an architect for Hadid for the last eight years and now runs the gallery. She says what is on show here is only a fraction of the archive, but it is intended as a reference library for the office as much as anything, for teams to take inspiration from previous projects.

For now it is only open to groups by appointment, but with rumours circulating that Hadid is eyeing up the Design Museum's soon-to-be-former home in Shad Thames as a permanent architecture gallery, this private wunderkammer of slippery slabs and twisting tendrils may well soon have a bigger stage.

• Guardian Reader Offer: Zaha Hadid Design will conduct an exclusive readers' tour of the gallery and archive on Saturday 1 June at 1pm. Email gallery@zaha-hadid.com with the subject Guardian Gallery Tour to register your interest. Places are limited and will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis.

Oliver Wainwright

Social media: five lessons for social entrepreneurs

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:45:22 +0000

Twitter and Facebook are valuable tools for social enterprises – but there are a number of pitfalls you should avoid

Young, new social entrepreneurs around the world face a similar problem: building an audience and sustaining virtual communities. With social media playing an important role in audience building, early-stage entrepreneurs have begun to focus on popular networking sites to leverage engagement and maximise reach. Yet this is the reason that most early enterprises often fail in garnering public interest.

Peter W Roberts, the academic director of social enterprise at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, pointed out in the Harvard Business Review that there was a definite link between successful enterprises and an established social media presence. He also suggested that the success of most of these enterprises often depended on factors relating to age [of the entrepreneur], sector and approach. However, my own learning has been different.

Organisation v cause: Most emerging enterprises focus on promoting their organisation instead of the cause. While the former is necessary, it fails to make a personal connect. Prakhar Bhartiya, the founder of Youth Alliance, told me that credibility was one of the biggest challenges when he started his organisation over a year ago. "We get around 60% of our applications on Facebook because our viral reach is high. But, initially, we had to rely on newspaper coverage or visibility through established organisations to validate the work we do," he said, "We focused on the cause we were supporting, and today, since we can boast of impact, we use it to promote our organisation. This worked for us." The trick to good organisational visibility is to allow people to understand your vision and not just your venture. Cause-driven organisations enjoy a high-recall value and have often sailed the social media wave effortlessly.

The digital disconnect: Since audience building and participation largely happens online, another challenge that young entrepreneurs face is the sheer lack of physical interaction with their audience. Young social entrepreneurs such as Kuldeep Dantewadia, founder of Reap Benefit, an organisation that focuses on low-cost waste management solutions, are still sceptical about the right use of social media communities. "For us, word of mouth has achieved the best impact. Social media is merely a validating factor. It works as a platform to spark interest rather than induce action," he suggested. "Facebook lets us know that people are interested. But this interest doesn't translate into an impulse to act."

On Twitter, too, targeted audience building seems a distant dream for those who work on the ground. "Twitter is great for conversations. But I work mostly with rural schools, and my audience, primarily school children, are absent from Twitter," Kuldeep said. "We simply didn't know how to position Reap Benefit on Twitter, so now we use it to chronicle our work instead."

Personality v problem: A good way to tell when an organisation is moving away from its goal is when it begins to leverage social media engagement by maintaining a central focus entirely on the person who is the driving force behind the organisation. This diverts an audience attention from the problem and allows the audience to favour the personality behind the cause. For instance, when one talks of Selco online, it is easy to associate the organisation with Harish Hande, its founder, instead of its great work in the field of solar energy.

Competition v collaboration: In recent years, overcrowding has led to a pressure to compete in the Indian social sector. Organisations that focus on similar social causes usually work parallel to each other when leveraging their online communities to highlight their own unique approaches to problems. But the audience eventually drifts, looking for newer interests. Healthy collaborations and strategic partnerships with other players in the sector online will encourage dialogue and create a synergy among online communities. Medhavi Gandhi, who founded the Happy Hands Foundation to help create sustainable livelihoods, is a great example. Through her work, she focused on cross-sector dialogues with the corporate world and involved them through gift giving. These partnerships helped validate her organisation's online presence as well.

Success v excess: Early-stage enterprises also make the mistake of prioritising reach while building online communities. Scheduling tools for Twitter and Facebook adverts are seen as fantastic, easy options to reach big numbers. But this doesn't help in driving engagement. And engagement is crucial to sustaining online communities. Inclusivity ensures that an audience stays interested and adds value to your organisation's outreach. Leveraging two-way communication through active forums such as Google groups or Facebook groups makes sure that conversation with the audience isn't stifled. If there is an excess of information being generated one way, it's possible to misinterpret those numbers that organisations think they are reaching.

So what is the secret to establishing a solid presence online? In all honesty, it is hard to tell. Every organisation's needs differ, as do its priorities. The key, however, is to identify the exact space where entrepreneurs can communicate their core message. Social media platforms can often tempt with numbers, but there's often more to numbers than meets the eye.

Meera Vijayann handles online communications for Ashoka India. Her articles and blogs have appeared in The Deccan Herald, The New Indian Express, Platform and CNN, among other publications

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To join the Guardian Social Enterprise Network, click here.

Fan fiction is in a different universe to Kindle Worlds | Mathilda Gregory

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:44:57 +0000

Amazon selling fanfic may sound a great idea, but the whole point of these stories is they go where the powers that be won't

It's been a tumultuous week for internet fandom. First, Tumblr was bought by Yahoo (fandom lives on Tumblr, nestled down amongst the cat Gifs), then, the real game changer, kaboom!, Amazon's Kindle Worlds.

Amazon selling fan fiction? That hasn't happened since 2006, when an over-eager fan listed their self-published Star Wars novel without a care for how George Lucas might feel about it.

But that was then. Star Wars is now owned by Disney and fan fiction (fanfic) or money is going legit. Kindle Worlds is "the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so". Cue a bazillion tweets and blogposts. Getting paid for writing fanfic? After all these years that dream is finally real?

However, that royalty offered is a lot less than Amazon's normal cut for other self-published authors who use their own characters. Franchise owners will be getting a chunky cut and authors also won't own the copyright to their ideas. If the owners of the characters you play with produce something similar and earn squillions, you'll apparently have no comeback, it seems.

Kindle Worlds licenses use from the copyright holders. So far the only licensed works come through Alloy Entertainment, which own The Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl. Presumably there are more to come. The whole thing depends on offering one of the heavy hitters of fandom, such as Harry Potter, Star Trek or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This licensing is, of course, what makes the whole thing legit, but derivative works produced under licence already exist. Look at the output of audio adventures titan Big Finish. And fan fiction isn't really the same thing as this stuff.

As Amazon puts it, "Amazon Publishing will work with (the rights holders) to establish content guidelines that balance flexibility and openness for writers with what's reasonable for the franchise". And doing what's reasonable for the franchise isn't really what fan fiction is about. Fanfic is more, "whatever, franchise, I'm doing this". In fan fiction there are no rules. And here, oh, are there ever going to be rules.

Fan fiction exists to create what the original work is failing to offer. An obvious example is slash fan fiction, which responds to the unequal numbers of male and female characters, and lack of gay people, in popular culture by creating stories where two male characters get it together. Often in very explicit ways.

Authors might be pro-fanfic, including the holy trinity of JK Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and Joss Whedon, but getting that nod isn't the same thing as being rubber-stamped by the powers that be. Licensed by the franchise means rules will keep fans stuck making more of the same stuff. Fan fiction can't play nice with the franchise. Because the whole point is it goes where the franchise can't or won't go.

Fan fiction is a place of wing fic (an alternate universe where the characters have wings) and Mpreg (an alternate universe where men get pregnant – like something from Norman Tebbit's worst nightmares). You can't package up a place like that and sell it.

And telling and retelling stories, however we want to, is bigger even than a giant like Amazon. Fanfic existed before the internet and it will still be around when we live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. After all, it's created enough of them.

Mathilda Gregory

Microsoft Surface Pro: a device of many talents

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:06:02 +0000

There's much to like about Microsoft's Windows 8 hybrid tablet-laptop – but it's expensive if you don't need all the specs

Microsoft created a stir when it unveiled its first two tablets – Surface RT and Surface Pro – at a mystery press conference in Los Angeles on 19 June last year. Indeed, it was something of a shock, because for the first time, Microsoft was competing against its biggest customers: Windows PC suppliers such as Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba.

The good news is that the Surface Pro is finally being released in the UK – it went on sale at midnight on Thursday. The bad news is that 11 months on, it's the same Surface Pro. My guess is that Microsoft is following Apple in trying to sell products on their capabilities and style, rather than the usual tech specs and discounted prices. This could be tough at a time when the free Windows 8.1 "Blue" update and Intel's next generation of Core processors, codenamed Haswell, are just coming into view.

The Surface Pro is a 2lb (903g) hybrid PC (the Surface RT is 676g) that appeals in four different ways:

• Surface Pro is a tablet designed to work with Windows 8's touch-first user interface and new-style apps, which are downloaded from the Windows Store. In this respect, its responsiveness is a big improvement over the Samsung slate that software developers and many journalists used during the Windows 8 beta test.

• Surface Pro is a full-scale Windows PC with an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of memory, and 64GB or 128GB solid-state drive (SSD). Add a Touch or Type keyboard cover, flip out the kickstand and you have the equivalent of an Ultrabook, though it's a bit tricky to balance on your knees.

• Surface Pro is a slate that comes with a digitising pen that you can use for on-screen drawing, handwriting recognition, filling in forms and so on. There has been a small but steady market for slates for commercial, industrial and health industry applications since the GRiDPad arrived, running Microsoft MS-DOS for Pen Computing, way back in 1989.

• Surface Pro is tough, thanks to its unique VaporMg construction. Microsoft dropped a Surface onto the floor during its launch and Steve Sinofsky, former head of Windows, added wheels and used one as a skateboard. It's an obvious choice for field workers, police and even military applications. Some companies are already buying. For example, if you've had OpenReach broadband technicians visiting your home or office with Panasonic ToughBooks running Windows XP, you can expect to see them using Microsoft Surfaces instead.

There are some benefits to the four-in-one design, and some drawbacks, so you will have to decide whether a Surface Pro matches your needs as well as your pocket.

The benefits: if you are mostly mobile, if you can do much of your work using commercial or in-house Windows 8 apps, and if you need a tablet that works with – in Microsoft's phrase – "your existing enterprise management infrastructure" (including Active Directory), then the Surface Pro is a very attractive product. If you need a robust machine, albeit one that's not fully sealed, it's cheap compared to the phones and PDAs sold for industrial use.

Also, if you want to switch between full PC power and tablet convenience without moving files between devices, the Surface Pro does that well. It's great for running Adobe Lightroom as a desktop program before viewing photos using tablet apps.

The drawbacks: if you want a PC to run traditional Windows XP/7 programs, and if you do most of your work with a keyboard, then it's not a good choice. A Surface Pro will do the job, but an Ultrabook or traditional laptop would be better value. Also, if your tablet requirements can be satisfied by a small, cheap Google Android or similar device, then the Surface Pro is a bigger, heavier, and much more expensive option. If you want a 15.6in laptop and a 7in tablet, the Surface Pro falls awkwardly between the two.

Hardware features

At first glance, the Surface Pro looks exactly like the ARM-based Surface RT, which is already on sale in the UK, and it takes the same Touch and Type keyboard covers. Up close, however, you notice it's thicker (13.5mm v 9.3mm) and heavier (903g v 676g). The giveaway is a thin vent that goes round the outside of the case to allow heat from the Core i5 to escape.

The left edge of the Surface Pro has a single USB 3.0 port, a rocker switch for volume control, and an audio jack. The right edge has a microSD card slot, a Mini DisplayPort, and a magnetic socket that connects to a charger and doubles as a holder for the digitising pen. The top edge has a tiny on/off button, while the bottom edge has magnetic connectors to snap in the keyboard covers.

The front of the Surface Pro has a 720p HD webcam above the 10-point multi-touch screen and a Windows Start button below it. The back has another webcam and a kickstand, which hides various bits of labelling. The 48-watt battery is sealed inside. Other features include an ambient light sensor, an accelerometer and a gyroscope. The small power supply has an extra 5W USB port so you can charge another device at the same time.

For a tablet, the Surface Pro has an impressive range of connections. For a Windows laptop, it's minimalist, though it's similar to some Ultrabooks. It is missing an RJ45 Ethernet port for a wired internet connection, one or two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, a full SD card slot, and a SIM slot for a 3G or 4G mobile connection. If you want to use it with a separate keyboard, mouse and monitor, you may want to buy a USB 3.0 dock as an extender, though you could also use the Mini DisplayPort for the screen and buy a Bluetooth keyboard.

I transferred files from SD cards using a small USB converter (£1 from a handy Poundland). If I owned a Surface Pro, I'd probably buy a large microSD card to bump up the built-in storage.

Although it's glossy and not very big, the 10.6in ClearType 16:9 widescreen is one of the best things about the Surface Pro. It's very sharp, has great blacks, and a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. In tablet format, it's great for catch-up TV using the BBC's iPlayer in the IE10 browser.

Software and services

As you'd expect, the Surface Pro comes with Windows 8 pre-installed, and this works beautifully in tablet mode. The experience is better than smartphones (which use Windows Phone, of course) and other tablets I've tried, including the Surface RT. Given that it's running on a Core i5 with 4GB of memory, of course, it should be.

Unlike most tablets, you can run two apps snapped together on the same screen, so you can run Twitter alongside a streaming video, for example. Also unlike most tablets, you can give your spouse and or parents/children their own guest accounts, and they can have touch-based picture log-ins to avoid typing.

With normal Windows XP/7 programs, the performance is smooth but not noticeably better than you'd expect.

The Surface Pro scores 5.6 on the open-ended Windows Experience Index, where the limitation is the Core i5's built-in Intel HD4000 graphics. Otherwise, the processor scores 6.9, the memory 5.9, and the solid-state drive (SSD) 8.1. The gaming graphics score of 6.4 suggests it will run some serious games, though not to the level of a typical PC gaming rig. It's more than good enough for Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and similar game apps downloaded from the Windows Store.

Although there's no crapware, the Surface Pro does come with a number of preinstalled Microsoft apps. These include Skype, SkyDrive, Mail, Maps, Weather, Photos, and Bing apps for News, Sport, Travel and Finance. The Bing apps are excellent, and really show the value of devoting the full screen area to content. Microsoft also offers a free Fresh Paint app for download, though Microsoft Paint is still provided as a desktop program. The free Microsoft Office OneNote app is also worth having.

The Photo app can consolidate photos from the picture library on the Surface Pro, and from SkyDrive, Facebook and Flickr.

The Live Tiles for Games, Music and Video are fronts for Xbox Live services, and should appeal to people who use the same services on an Xbox games console or Windows Phone smartphone. If you're doing something on one device, you can pick it up and continue on another.

Storage furore

When the Surface tablets appeared, there was a minor furore over the amount of free storage, compounded by the fact that drive manufacturers use decimal instead of binary counting. Your 500GB (billion byte) hard drive, for example, only holds 465.65GB of actual files (counting 1KB = 1024 byte, 1MB = 1024KB, and so on).

My loan Surface Pro machine had a 128GB Samsung SSD which provided 110.7GB of user storage space, of which 85GB (76%) was free. There were three hidden partitions: 200MB for the EUFI secure boot system, and two recovery partitions taking up 7.62GB and 600MB. These enable users to refresh or restore the operating system if they run into problems.

Storage isn't a problem with the 128GB version, but anyone buying a 64GB Surface Pro should be aware that only about 25GB (or less) will be available for storing files, and they may need to use removable microSD cards. With the growing use of network-attached servers (NAS) and cloud storage, it shouldn't be a major problem. For IT departments, Windows 8 supports storage pools with thin provisioning, like Windows Server 2012.

Some observations….

The Surface Pro shows an impressive attention to detail, and works really well as a portable PC and an armchair tablet. It's not perfect, of course, and some things could be improved.

Screen: combine high resolution with a small screen, and Windows features can look tiny. The Surface Pro ships with 150% scaling pre-set, which is mostly OK as long as Windows programs scale correctly; not all of them do. Incidentally, the screen has a pixel density of 208ppi, which is a "retina screen" at a viewing distance of 17 inches (43cm).

Pen: the digitising pen turned out to be much more useful than I expected. You can capture your handwriting and annotate documents in OneNote (as you could in Windows XP Tablet Edition a decade ago), and this is a great feature for meetings and jotting things down in front of the TV set. The pen also comes in useful as a mouse substitute when dealing with tiny icons in Windows desktop programs. But it would be nice if the pen fitted inside the Surface Pro rather than attaching via the magnets provided for recharging.

Battery life: I normally use a long-life laptop that nominally provides 12 hours of battery life. As this gives about eight hours of real usage, I was somewhat apprehensive about the Surface Pro's five-hour battery life. In fact, I always got at least five hours of word processing and web browsing with Wi-Fi on, a bright screen and a balanced (rather than battery-saving) power scheme. This was enough for most purposes, but you may need to pack the charger.

Instant on: Windows PCs have usually been laggards at opening and closing down, but the Surface Pro's fast start system works well enough for tablet use. Waking it up first thing in the morning takes about six or eight seconds. After that, it appears to turn off instantly (the screen blanks), and it turns on in about two seconds. It takes longer than that to type in a password, which is why I set up picture passwords with quick taps.

Apps: Being new, the Windows Store doesn't have as many apps as the Apple and Google Android stores. Still, the selection includes Netflix, 4oD, TuneIn Radio, Shazam, Dropbox, Evernote Touch, Adobe Reader Touch and almost 150,000 more. Of course, where apps are missing, you can load IE10 and go to the website using the full power of a PC.

Kickstand: this works if you have a table or other flat surface, though I stopped trying to use it on my knees: for quick access you just lay the screen flat and have the keyboard at an angle. The drawback with the kickstand is that, on a table, the screen angle is fixed. The advantage is that the front- and rear-facing cameras are then aligned correctly, but I often wanted the screen tilted further back. The workaround is to prop up the front with a book, or whatever. The kickstand wins for simplicity and portability, but it loses on adjustability.

Keyboard covers: almost everyone will buy a flat Touch or keyboard-style Type cover to go with their Surface Pro, at considerable extra cost (£99.99 or £109.99). I didn't like the Touch cover, but the Type cover is surprisingly good. When I tried some online typing tests, my score was an insignificant 1 character per second higher than on my desktop PC. Having grown up with typewriters, I prefer big clicky keys, but the Type cover does the job better than expected. Also, attaching and removing the keyboard is almost instant and you can do it with your eyes shut.

Processors and prices

The Surface Pro's estimated UK prices are £719 for the model with a 64GTB SSD and £799 for 128GB; that's without the £100 keyboard covers. This compares with £849 and £929 for the equivalent Apple MacBook Air models, which don't have touch screens, don't support digitising pens, and don't run iPad apps.

I'd like to see a cheaper Surface Pro that uses a slower Intel chip such as a Core i3 or even an Intel Atom, but then it wouldn't be such a prestige product. I don't see a way round that conundrum.

Either way, the Surface Pro should become faster and possibly cheaper later this year, when Intel launches the fourth-generation Haswell chips designed specifically for Ultrabooks. Haswell promises improved battery life and about twice the graphics performance of the current Ivy Bridge generation. Intel will start with high-end Core i7 chips, perhaps at the Computex trade show in Taiwan in early June, but the low-power versions may not arrive much before Christmas.

It's a good schedule for companies testing a few Surface Pros before ordering hundreds, but not so good for geeks who want the latest and greatest.

Microsoft could sweeten the pot by throwing in a free copy of Microsoft Office, as it does with Surface RT. Otherwise, as mentioned above, value for money depends on what you want to do with your Surface Pro. If you want an Ultrabook, a tablet, and a slate where you can draw on the screen, it's good value. If you just want a Windows 7 laptop, it's not.

The New Microsoft

One thing that's noticeable with the Surface Pro is that it's just as much of a Microsoft device as a MacBook is an Apple device, or even more so. To really exploit the system, it's best to sign in with a Microsoft account on Outlook.com or Office365 and use Microsoft's powerful cloud-based ecosystem. This includes free Microsoft Office programs in SkyDrive. The cloud also stores your settings so you can have your own Windows 8 set-up by logging into any Windows 8 PC.

With Xbox Live music, movies and games services, and apps such as SmartGlass, the ecosystem extends beyond the PC to Windows Phone 8 smartphones and the forthcoming Xbox One entertainment system, which has added some Windows 8 features. Microsoft is now close to delivering a complete ecosystem as envisaged by Ray Ozzie with the mantra of "three screens and a cloud". (The three screens are the PC, TV and smartphone; the cloud is Azure, hosting a wide range of subscription services.)

Ozzie was Microsoft's Chief Software Architect from June 2006 to December 2010, which gives you some idea of how long ago the project started, and how long it will take to bring to fruition. Win or bust, it's a full-blown attempt to transform the company.
Microsoft no longer thinks of itself as a software company: it's now a "a devices and services company", like Apple. A Surface Pro running Windows 8 is not just another PC, it's concrete evidence that Microsoft has shifted to what CEO Steve Ballmer calls "a new computing paradigm".

Pros: A light, fast, laptop in a tablet format. Great multi-touch screen with pen input. Well made. Good value if you want a hybrid tablet PC.

Cons: Compromises on size: it's small and light for a PC but big and heavy for a tablet. Sealed unit: it can't be expanded. Expensive if you don't need the features.

Jack Schofield

Boot up: Metro apps usage, Pirate Bay hacking case, iOS 7 + Flickr?, and more

Thu, 23 May 2013 06:30:26 +0000

Plus IBM's Watson heads towards phones (sorta), how Lotus lost, hyperattentive Kinects, and more

A burst of 7 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Metro Apps Usage Report >> Soluto

How often are Metro apps used?

We found that, on average, a Windows 8 user will launch a Metro app 1.52 times a day. Tablet users launch the most Metro apps at 2.71 times per day. People who have touch-screen enabled laptops launch 47% more Metro apps than people with a standard laptop…
We found that among desktop and laptop users, 60% of users launch a Metro app less than once a day. This number significantly improves with tablets, but still 44% of Windows 8 tablet users launch a Metro app less than once a day.

That latter statistic is really weird. A Windows 8 tablet where you don't launch a Metro app? (Thanks @rquick for the link.)

Xbox 360's Kinect causes trouble for users during next-gen livestream reveal >> Polygon

Xbox 360 Kinect owners had some trouble today watching Microsoft's Xbox One reveal due to device's response to "Xbox" commands spoken during the livestream.
Several users took to Twitter to document their problems, which included pausing, opening Xbox Live or quitting the stream entirely. Polygon's own reviews editor Arthur Gies experienced similar problems with his Kinect while watching the stream.

When the presenter said "Xbox Live", spectators' Kinects picked it up and obeyed. Nice demonstration. Let's hope nobody does "Xbox, wipe my files" in a demo. (Thanks @Nazo for the link.)

Flickr, Vimeo integration likely to bolster social ties in iOS 7 >> 9to5Mac

Both Flickr and Vimeo will now also be integrated deeply into the new operating system, so users will be able to sign into the respective networks via iOS 7′s built-in Settings application. Like with iOS's Facebook and Twitter ties, Apple customers will be able to log-in one time into each social network and have full sharing access.

Add salt as required. But if it's correct, note this point: it looks as though iOS 7 won't introduce Android-like "intents" to connect between apps.

IBM's Watson for smartphones? It could be. >> Android Authority

For a select few companies, Watson will begin serving as their customer service representative. IBM may also make Watson available via apps on your smartphone, as well as web chats or email queries.
For many of us, the term "customer service" relates to hold times and an agent on the other end who seems befuddled by that charge on your credit card. Watson may be able to handle that, but the aim and scope seem different. It looks like Watson will concentrate more on the financial matters for now, but could also serve to assist representatives get faster access to more poignant information. Many of Watson's guinea pigs are banks or other financial institutions, and seem intent on using Watson's knowledge to better analyze and serve their customers' needs.

Touch control is pervasive (and even spreading "back" to PCs); voice is next.

Accidental Empires, Chapter 8 - Software Envy >> I, Cringely

A wander down the alleys of early software development in the MS-DOS days, and a riff on software development. Pretty sure he's wrong about the first software patent, though he might be correct about the first to go to the US Supreme Court.

Pirate Swede in 'biggest ever' hacking trial >> The Local

Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is on trial once again in Sweden for his role in committing what prosecutors believe may have been the largest data breach in Swedish history.
Warg, who is currently serving a prison sentence after being convicted of copyright infringement in the infamous Pirate Bay trial, is suspected of having perpetrated a years-long hacker attack against Swedish IT-firm Logica through which he gained unauthorized access to personal data of thousands of people.
"This is, I believe, the largest hacking case ever in Sweden," prosecutor Henrik Olin told the TT news agency on Monday morning as he prepared to enter the Stockholm District Court for the first day of the trial.
"We're talking about customer information, information from the Sweden debt Enforcement Agency (Kronofogden), and a large number of police officers' organizational affiliations."

Alleged to have carried out the attack using a user account belonging to a lawyer who represented US film studios in the original Pirate Bay trial. (Thanks @ivanivanovich for the link.)

This is how much Nokia made from patents last year >> Seeking Alpha

…while the exact number will depend on how well the smartphone industry performs as a whole, Nokia is expected generate between $800m and $1.5bn in patent licence fees and royalty payments annually. Considering how IDC estimates that the smartphone industry is expected to double in size between now and 2017, this number can grow considerably. If we assign a P/E ratio of 10 to Nokia's patent portfolio, the patents under the mobile devices segment alone will be worth between $8bn and $15bn.

Smart digging. (Thanks @rquick for the link.)

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Charles Arthur

Chatterbox: Thursday

Thu, 23 May 2013 06:00:01 +0000

The place to talk about games and other things that matter

It's now Thursday.

Keith Stuart

Ed Miliband: a googly for tax avoiders | Editorial

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:12:57 +0000

Labour – a party that pussyfooted around with avoidance for 13 years – needs to convince the country it will do better next time

In his own mind, Ed Miliband is pretty clear about how he would like to distinguish the Labour party he leads from the Labour party that went before. He aims to be readier than Blair and Brown to challenge the powerful in general, and the economically mighty in particular.

Over three years, we've seen flashes of both halves of that – in, for example, his determination to take Wapping to task over phone hacking, and in his conference speech on predatory capitalism, which initially left pundits scratching their heads, but looked smarter as the months rolled by.

What he has not yet succeeded in doing, however, as his personal poll ratings remorselessly demonstrate, is get this mission across to the country at large, still less generate much enthusiasm. Save perhaps for down the Red Lion on Parliament Street, the rhetoric of "responsible capitalism" is not the language of the pub.

However worthy specific policy ideas – such as using procurement to encourage training, and overhauling reporting rules for listed firms – it is tough to persuade the experts that these things can achieve anything much from the opposition benches, and tougher to persuade voters to do anything but yawn.

The great PR problem with the agenda has been the absence of real-life predators to point to – demons to bring the story to life. A wave of fury over tax avoidance should transform the possibilities; voters who sweat for pay they cannot divert to Luxembourg or Bermuda rage at the antics of the Amazons and Googles who thrive upon their custom.

While Nick Clegg and David Cameron are also manoeuvring to make anti-avoidance their own, the coalition is beset by infighting, and Mr Miliband spots an open goal. He struck at it on Wednesday, by adding aggressive words about Google's aggressive tax practices into a long-planned speech at the firm's Big Tent.

The pointed naming and shaming of its absent boss soon provoked a response from Eric Schmidt himself, redoubling the handy publicity.

The remaining question, however, is whether Labour – a party that pussyfooted around with avoidance for 13 years – can convince the country it will do better next time. That will have to involve hard and specific commitments to act.

Mr Miliband is making the right noises, talking up comprehensive country-by-country reporting of corporate finances, and also signalling a willingness to act unilaterally if the PM's vaunted efforts at the G8 do not succeed.

Sadly, Ed Balls's policy papers remain overly cautious on the smallprint, replete with talk of "intelligent transparency", which can surely only be something more slippery than transparency plain and simple.

The endless questions on a tax return are tiresome, but – Labour take note – in the end the thing to do is declare on every detail.

Twitter introduces 'two-factor authentication' to stop password hacking

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:50:36 +0000

Company introduces mobile phone-based system to stop hackers from capturing control of Twitter accounts

Twitter is introducing "two-factor authentication" using mobile phone verification on the social network, after a number of high-profile cases in which passwords were stolen by hackers.

The worst case occurred in April when the Associated Press's feed was hacked by a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army, which put out a false tweet claiming President Obama had been injured in a bomb attack - briefly causing a dip in US stock markets. Organisations including the Guardian, FT, and BBC have also been hacked by the group.

With "2FA" enabled, any attempt to log in from a new device requires a code that is sent to a pre-designated mobile phone. Even with the correct password, the login will fail without the code.

As first reported by the Guardian in February, the company has made the move in the face of a growing number of such attacks over the past year, and the increasing importance of Twitter to organisations and individuals who can command huge followings.

The company says in a blog post that the introduction is the first step as it adds greater security that is being added to the service: "much of the server-side engineering work required to ship this feature has cleared the way for us to deliver more account security enhancements in the future," it says.

The setting is being rolled out gradually.

Two-factor authentication uses a combination of a password and a code sent to a mobile phone to verify a login. It is offered as an option by email services including Google's Gmail, Microsoft's Outlook (formerly Hotmail), Yahoo mail, Apple's iCloud, Facebook and cloud storage service Dropbox.

The hacks by the Syrian Electronic Army and others occurred after they hacked into email accounts using phishing - to capture the email address and password of the user - and then using that to gain access to their Twitter account. That attack only works for users who have not enabled two-factor authentication for their email - but many have not. That leaves associated accounts, including Twitter, open to hacking.

With "2FA" enabled, the SEA's hacks would not have worked because although they would have had the password for the account - or a reset code - they wouldn't have had the code sent to the mobile phone required when a new device.

Charles Arthur

Letters: Engineering can be as inspiring as space

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:01:10 +0000

The new British space race (To boldly go, G2, 21 May) has the potential to inspire young people and boost our economy. Space travel captures the imagination of budding young inventors and engineers – it is the stuff of childhood dreams. But there are other British industries at the forefront of technology that can inspire and propel young people towards careers in engineering and science. Without changing the way we teach, they will pass children by.

Engineers have designs on the future: fuel cells, driverless cars and super materials. Material scientists, for instance, delve into the depths of space at a micro-level, increasing the possibilities of product design and engineering. But children do not see this side of engineering. For them, engineers are men in greasy overalls fixing the boiler. We must bridge the gap in understanding – to plug the shortage of 40,000 science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates every year.

Our design and technology curriculum must reflect the potential of a career in engineering. Our foundation has worked with secondary schools in Bath, donating industry equipment and setting pupils briefs to make something with a purpose – much like in industry. It connects the idea that engineers design something tangible. The results have been startling, with more than twice the number of students signing up to study design and technology. A world class D&T curriculum that fuels young astronauts and aeronautical engineers alike would replicate this on a national scale. The results could be quite remarkable – getting Britain inventing again.
James Dyson
Founder of Dyson and chair of the James Dyson Foundation

James Dyson

Letters: Paying tax is absolutely a moral issue

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:01:10 +0000

CBI president Sir Roger Carr's claim that there can be no moral basis to concerns about tax avoidance is a grave misjudgment (Never mind morals, tax is all about the rules, 21 May). A great many ordinary people see payment – or rather non-payment – of tax as fundamentally a moral question. Perhaps it might be talked about as justice or fairness, but it boils down to the same thing. Christian Aid supporters have been campaigning on matters of tax justice for five years.

At the heart of their concern is the moral question of how societies raise revenues and how that money is spent. We estimate that developing countries lose around $160bn a year in tax revenue from multinational corporations. Contrast this with the UK's aid budget (£12bn) or the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's estimated cost of tackling global hunger ($50bn a year on top of existing funding to 2025). The fact that tonight one in eight people in the world will go to bed hungry shows that the moral case for a fair and just taxation system is undeniable.
Canon Geoff Daintree
Church advocacy adviser, Christian Aid

• Simon Jenkins is spot-on when he calls on David Cameron to crack down on the UK's own tax havens (Comment, 22 May). Global Witness's investigations have found numerous examples of dodgy deals routed through places such as the British Virgin Islands, favoured by tax evaders and corrupt dictators. There is often a misperception that the UK can't impose its will on these last outposts of empire. In fact, from the decriminalising of homosexuality to banning the death penalty, there are repeated examples of UK governments telling its tax havens what to do, sometimes against their will. After Radio Caroline started broadcasting from the Isle of Man, the UK banned pirate radio stations from there and from the Channel Islands.

If the PM really wants to crack down on tax evasion, corruption and money laundering, he should force the British-linked tax havens to lift their veil of secrecy, for example by requiring them to publish the names of the ultimate owners of companies and trusts registered there.
Robert Palmer
Campaigner, Global Witness

• Paying tax is a social obligation. It is the price we pay for being part of a civilised society and one defining characteristic of such is its willingness to support those who are not considered to be economically productive. This doesn't just mean the unemployed, the sick, disabled and the old, but also artists, musicians and writers, those who enrich us and our society both intellectually and emotionally.

In the commercial world, businesses view taxation as just another cost of doing business and therefore within their fiduciary responsibility to seek ways of reducing their tax obligation as part of their cost base. This is wrong. The payment of corporate tax should be viewed not as a cost of doing business but as the price for gaining access to society.

Businesses that manipulate the tax rules to reduce or avoid paying tax impoverish the society in which they operate both financially and ethically. Good corporate citizenship requires the commercial world to fully engage in society – by making a fair and equitable contribution to the tax receipts of a nation and by paying its employees an appropriate living wage.
Mike Kellett
Cardiff

• In 1974, the then Tory prime minister, Edward Heath, called an election with the question Who governs Britain? – his premise being that the unions had too much power. Forty years on we can ask the same question in respect of big business (Cut tax and we'll pay, says Apple boss, 22 May). I thought governments, elected by their peoples, decided tax rates. Apple (and Google, Amazon and the others) rely on their customers to be healthy and well-educated and for the states where their customers live and buy their products to be stable, orderly and defended.

Without all the benefits that a state provides there would be no Apple sales. Big business has grown increasingly arrogant and no longer plays and pays its part in contributing to the costs that are essential to their profits. Perhaps there should be an additional and hugely hefty tax on the products of those companies who are refusing to pay their way, so that in the end they are left with no profits to quarrel about.
Mark Doel
Sheffield

Google's Eric Schmidt believes one company is an island

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:43:10 +0000

A slip of the tongue by Google's executive chairman speaks volumes about his perception of the company's tax obligations

A week or so ago, Google's chief executive, Larry Page, caused ripples when he suggested at a public event that laws older than 50 years or so shouldn't apply to internet companies, and that it might be fun to have an island where Google could dabble in new ideas without all the silly meddling of governments. (That's only a slight paraphrase.) The only way he could have seemed more like a Bond villain would be if he had been stroking a cat while speaking.

While not an island, Google created its own patch of turf in Hertfordshire on Wednesday with its Big Tent event, which really is held in a big tent – a gigantic one with perfect Wi-Fi, and tables, chairs, coffee machines and a big stage in the grounds of the Grove hotel. Think of it as the most glamorous camping imaginable, Google's little island in the UK.

Sadly, there were no self-driving cars (buses were laid on), nor people sporting Google Glass . About 250 people turned up for a day out of London to hear deep thinking about the future, whether we'll all turn into robots, and perhaps a bit of fisticuffs about tax.

For that, we looked to Eric Schmidt, formerly the company's chief executive but now its executive chairman – in effect, its roving representative on earth. Especially on tax, he is a master at not really answering questions. He's like the un-Google. So he turned up in the afternoon to un-answer lots of questions about tax.

For someone so brainy, he has a remarkable capacity not to know things. How much money does Google ship to Bermuda under its complex tax system? He doesn't know. Couldn't Google live by the spirit as well as the letter of the law? He doesn't know enough law. How should international tax law be reformed? He's really not sure. When will Google Now (a Google program that suggests bus journeys and hotel rooms based on your travels) seem as smart as a human being? Well, that's hard to say.

If he were a search engine, you'd type your question and get a blank page back. Getting direct answers out of Schmidt would tax a saint – at a low rate, of course.

He also has a surprising capacity for going missing at opportune times. Despite having been at the Grove for a Q&A on Monday morning, and being scheduled to talk on Wednesday afternoon, he somehow missed Wednesday morning's session.

There, Ed Miliband cruelly (and cleverly) used Google's original "letter from the founders" to argue that its tax structure – "close" sales in Ireland, ship money to the Netherlands, and then ship even more money to Bermuda, where it must form a sort of digital sand dune – was short-term thinking, something that Larry Page and Sergey Brin had said they wouldn't do.

Yet when Miliband looked around to say this to Google's man – like the guest at a housewarming who slags off the owner – Schmidt, like Macavity the cat, wasn't there. Not until the afternoon, when he un-answered like a pro.

Certainly he must tut and sigh when he hears Page talk about ignoring laws and creating fiefdoms but, when he was asked about capitalism, he replied: "Of course, Google is a capitalist country …" Laughter. "Company," he said, uncomfortably. A slip of the tongue? Perhaps the truth is out. Perhaps Larry Page's island isn't so far off after all. One has to wonder – how soon can one move there, and what will the tax rate be?

• This article was amended on 23 May 2013. The original said "Despite having been at the Grove on the Monday and Tuesday for the private Google Zeitgeist, he [Eric Schmidt] somehow missed Wednesday morning's session." While Schmidt was at the Big Tent event at the Grove hotel on Monday morning, he was not present on Tuesday.

Charles Arthur

Google boss calls for a 'rational and predictable international tax system'

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:01:59 +0000

Eric Schmidt rejects Ed Miliband's criticisms of tax affairs, saying firm fears being 'double or quadruple taxed' under any changes

The Google chairman, Eric Schmidt, has told political leaders to sort out a rational and predictable international tax system, as he faced a wave of criticism over the firm's failure to pay more tax.

Ed Miliband attempted to deliver his rebuke direct to Schmidt when invited to speak at the Google Big Tent conference, although the US executive missed the Labour leader's address on Wednesday, saying he had to attend a meeting in London.

Nick Clegg disclosed at a press conference he had also criticised Google at a Downing Street meeting earlier in the week at which Schmidt was present. David Cameron's aides, after earlier denying the prime minister rounded on Schmidt at that meeting, later briefed that Google had been implicitly rebuked in the context of the prime minister's general call for greater tax transparency as part of his agenda for the G8 summit next month.

Speaking at the annual Big Tent event after Miliband had left, Schmidt said one of his key concerns about changes to the tax structure was that Google might be "doubly or quadruply taxed".

Asked by Labour MP Stella Creasy how he would reform the tax system, he suggested: "Have a rational system that's predictable and doesn't change very much.

"Virtually all the American companies have tax structures like this, and UK companies operating in the US do too. But if we pay more taxes in one area, then we pay less in another.

"Google feels very, very strongly that tax information, tax policy should be done openly. I don't think companies should decide tax policy, governments should ... we're in a very long-standing tax regime ... we need to have a conversation about this, we're not trying to do the wrong thing, we're trying to do the right thing.

"We don't want to be in a situation where we get double or quadruple taxed."

Asked how he would cope if Miliband were to come to power and, as promised, stop transfer pricing, Schmidt said: "If he does – if he does so, we will follow the rules." Transfer pricing involves firms shifting profits between countries.

Schmidt also said Google would continue to invest in the UK, no matter what tax regime was in place: "We love you guys too much. We will continue investing in the UK no matter what."

He rebuffed Miliband's suggestion there was a distinction between the letter and the spirit of the law. "You'll have to define the difference," he said to a barrister who challenged him to say whether Google would comply with the "spirit" of the tax laws, which might then lead to it being taxed more. "We're governed by US securities laws – in that scenario it might be seen as incompetence," added Schmidt.

Earlier Miliband told the meeting of the firm's staff that he was "disappointed" it had paid £6m in corporation tax on UK sales worth £3.2bn in 2011. Most of Google's profits are routed through Ireland. Miliband said the US company's employees expected it to do the "right thing", as its motto was "Don't be evil."

He said: "I can't be the only person who feels deeply disappointed that a great company like Google, with great founding principles, should be reduced to arguing that when it employs thousands of people in Britain, makes billions of pounds in revenue in Britain, it is fair that it should pay just a fraction of 1% of that in tax.

"So when Google does great things, I will praise you ... But when Google goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying its taxes, I say it's wrong."

Labour rejected Schmidt's explanation, saying Google has been making sales to UK customers from its UK staff, but pretending the transactions were being made from Ireland so the firm could register the profits as made in Ireland rather than the UK.

Booking those sales in the UK would not mean taxing profits twice – just taxing them in the UK, not Ireland.

Even after profits were shifted to Ireland, Google avoids paying 12.5% corporation tax there by switching the surpluses to tax havens such as Bermuda, according to a Reuters investigation.

This is done by using two Irish firms, (hence the name, "double Irish") one a tax resident in Bermuda and owning the intellectual property of the company. The offshore firm then charges the onshore one royalties, which shifts the profits out of Ireland and into Bermuda.

By doing so Google would not be taxed on the same profits in different countries; it is shifting profits between tax jurisdictions to avoid paying tax.

Clegg told a press conference in London on Wednesday morning: "My overall approach to tax is the obvious one. I put this directly to Eric Schmidt from Google and other business leaders at a meeting in Downing Street a couple of days ago.

"We are bringing the tax burden on corporations down by lowering the rate of corporation tax but in return people have to pay their fair share."

He said tax havens were symptoms of the growing pains of globalisation. "You have got tax systems that are national rooted in an old economy, and now we have got these new corporate goliaths that operate in this disembodied way particularly in the digital sector, that quite unsurprisingly think they can exploit the best deal for themselves in the cracks and crevices between the national tax systems."

Patrick Wintour

Charles Arthur

Who dares to dodge Google's information tax? | McKenzie Wark

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:51:49 +0000

In exchange for giving up our personal data, we get to watch each other's cat videos, while Google becomes the new state

Of course Google doesn't want to pay its taxes to the British crown, like a loyal corporate subject. In Google's mind it secretly thinks that it is now something like a state, and we are all its subjects. It is we who should pay tribute to it – and we do.

We pay it a sort of information tax. Google is the Ministry of Information Retrieval. If you want some data, you have to give up some, about who you are, what you do, what your movements are. Like most other states, Google will then sell access to you to other interested parties.

Just like any state, Google has its spies. Its Street View cars snoop the world's high-value streets. All the better to help us citizens of Google-land do what we are supposed to do there – which is shop.

If Google succeeds in selling us its Google Glass, then we all become its agents. We would be a sensory apparatus for a vast computer database whose mission is to take our perceptions, thoughts, feelings or discoveries and turn them into money.

Some might be quite happy residing in Google-land. Google Books might be better than your local library. Google Maps makes up for all the missing street signs your council can't maintain. It is entirely possible that Google has better intelligence on world affairs than MI5 or the CIA, and its designs on what to do with it might be a bit less evil.

As with any state, there's another side. The British government at least notionally acts in the interests of its citizens. There is at least some transparency, some checks and balances. But in Google-land none of this applies. It acts in the interests only of its shareholders, and that perhaps only notionally. We are not really its citizens but its peons. We always owe a debt of information to Google, no matter how much of it we have already given up.

There used to be all sorts of criticisms of the old "culture industries" like Hollywood and the top 40, which entertained us with stories or songs that always ended on an upbeat note, no matter how false. But at least the culture industries went to the bother of entertaining us. Their replacements don't even bother. They expect us to entertain each other, and pay a tax for it. Facebook or Google's YouTube are not the culture industries so much as the vulture industries, taking an information surcharge from us while we amuse each other, and selling us to advertisers. Like do-it-yourself commercial TV.

These are all elements of what I call the "spectacle of disintegration". The old spectacle of television and radio papered the world with images of what the lovely soul of the commodity was supposed to look like. We were at least still free to daydream while we sat idly watching.

But in the spectacle of disintegration, all that breaks apart. The big screen decays into so many little screens. Our leisure time is now to be spent producing information for the vulture industries of Google and co, in an unequal exchange of information. In exchange for the poll tax of personal data, we get to watch each other's cat videos, while Google becomes some new version of the state, presiding over all our bitty lives, master of all our data, in aggregate.

Like any state, Google has its patriots. But there are also those who think this latest version of the spectacle offers some quirky avenues for having fun at its expense. Its time for a certain opacity, a certain glamour of obscurity. Not all the information we offer up has to be even remotely true.

It's 45 years since the failure of May '68, that last attempt to rock the old kind of state. Afterwards the Situationists, who gave us the concept of the spectacle, disbanded. But they did not go silent. They pioneered ways of discreetly carving out spaces where other codes apply, protected by cryptic passwords. Perhaps some of their subtle arts might work within the belly of this new digital beast, so that we might live within it, but not give it our undivided attention.

McKenzie Wark

Peering at bright screens after dark could harm health, doctor claims

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:01:39 +0000

Light from TVs, computers, tablets and smartphones may disrupt sleep and raise risk of obesity, heart disease and depression

Watching TV or using computers, tablets or smartphones after dark may cause sleep loss and resultant health problems, a leading doctor has warned.

Peering at brightly lit screens at night disrupts the body's natural rhythms and raises the risk of medical conditions linked to poor sleep, including obesity, heart disease, strokes and depression, he said.

The warning, from Charles Czeisler, director of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in the US, comes as cheap electricity and more portable devices make it easier to surf the web, read books and check social media on glowing gadgets at any time of night.

Artificial light can prevent a good night's rest by dampening down the activity of neurons that bring on sleep, activating those for wakefulness, and suppressing the sleep hormone, melatonin. Together these push back the natural clock that controls the body's sleep-wake cycle.

"As a result, many people are still checking email, doing homework, or watching TV at midnight, with hardly a clue that it is the middle of the solar night," Czeisler writes in the journal, Nature. "Technology has effectively decoupled us from the natural 24-hour day to which our bodies evolved, driving us to bed later. And we use caffeine in the morning to rise as early as we ever did, putting the squeeze on sleep."

Reliable trends on sleep behaviour are hard to confirm, but a survey published last year of workers in Britain claimed that 5% slept no more than five hours a night. After a similar survey in the US suggested that nearly 30% of respondents were sleeping no more than six hours a night, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said insufficient sleep was a "public health epidemic".

Long-term sleep loss raises the risk of a range of diseases, and those who get less than five hours a night have a 15% greater risk of death from all causes than people of the same age who sleep well. Because sleep-deprived children become hyperactive rather than dozy, sleep loss might be mistaken for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Czeisler warns.

The Boston physician, who holds patents on using light to reset the body's circadian clock, claims that the number of people who aren't getting enough sleep is likely to rise because of the availability of TVs, computer screens, laptops, tablets and handheld devices that use energy-efficient LEDs. These can produce light rich in blue and blue-green wavelengths, which light-sensitive cells in the eye respond to most strongly.

Czeisler calls for night lighting that replaces the bluer hues with reds and oranges, which disrupt the body's circadian rhythms less. He criticises some airlines' decision to flood aircraft cabins with blue light – the best colour for suppressing melatonin and disrupting sleep.

Derk-Jan Dijk, director of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre at Surrey University, said exposure to artificial light in the evening made people less sleepy, and so less likely to go to bed on time. In a report last year, he concluded there was a "growing need to engineer artificial light to minimise its disruptive effect".

"Before the advent of artificial light, going to bed was determined by the Earth's rotation about its axis. Now it's determined by our behaviour, and that is the really fundamental change," Dijk said. "The main issue now is awareness. Light has an activating effect, but people don't treat light as they would caffeine. If you have problems falling asleep that might be associated with this, keep your exposure to light low in the evening."

Ian Sample

Deforestation dries up dams threatening hydropower

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:05:44 +0000

Hydropower plans in tropical regions should consider the effect of future deforestation on the water supply, says a study.

Common bacteria pinned down as cause of shrimp die-off

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:12:52 +0000

Scientists have revealed the cause of a shrimp disease that has been decimating Asian shrimp yields since 2009, and perplexing experts.

In Perspective: Modernising science's social code

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:51:21 +0000

A planned update of a 1974 UN document could create a useful template for socially responsible science, says David Dickson.

Technical input 'on the ground' deserves donor backing

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:04:00 +0000

Development needs collective local action. More science and technical advisors should be supporting that, says research officer Harry Jones.

Too many Southern NGOs follow foreign agendas

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:03:00 +0000

Former Nepali Minister Dipak Gyawali says development NGOs need to stop acting like sub-contractors and start asking challenging questions.

Science and NGO practice: Facts and figures

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:03:00 +0000

What does science have to do with NGO practice? Anita Makri explores where they overlap and what stands in the way of fruitful collaboration.

Science and NGO success stories: how collaborating works

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:02:00 +0000

From kidnap alerts to solar lighting, some NGOs find the high-tech answers they need. Andrew Williams and Imogen Mathers explain how.

Make development practitioners partners in research

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:01:00 +0000

Overcoming barriers to how research is used in practice is important — but it's just half the battle, says NGO research expert Rachel Hayman.

NGOs need more say in research priority-setting

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Funding agencies should support closer interaction between development NGOs and scientists, argues research and policy analyst Charlie McLaren.

Making space for science in NGO practice

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

There is a largely unexplored landscape of opportunity for collaboration between scientists and development practitioners.

African countries must improve livestock data

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:08:11 +0000

Scientists have flagged up the poor quality of livestock data in Africa at a progress briefing of a project that aims to change that.

Rich and poorest nations face off over TRIPS extension

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:22:28 +0000

A dispute over a fresh deal to allow the least developed nations to bypass intellectual property rights could hit development efforts.

India lacks political will for science communication

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:46:29 +0000

Budgetary constraints and political apathy have resulted in poor science communication in India, says Archita Bhatta.

US$100 chip may ease diagnosis of 15 tropical disease

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:00:03 +0000

A multitasking microchip that can test blood samples for diseases including malaria and sleeping sickness has been launched in Singapore.

Latin America up in arms over US firms' domain name grab

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:21:13 +0000

Latin American governments are contesting plans by US firms Amazon and Patagonia to take charge of new geographic Internet domains.

Latin American Radar: Riding the wave of open access

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:03:45 +0000

Latin America is embracing the free access movement in its scientific production, but there are structural and economic challenges, says Carla Almeida.

Non-native goats and iguanas threaten Pacific islands

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:30:55 +0000

Feral goats and green iguanas introduced to small Pacific island states are destroying ecosystems and native wildlife, find studies.

African soil diversity mapped for the first time

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:20:18 +0000

An atlas of a key natural resource, Africa's soil, aims to give people outside the science world insight into its importance and management.

Experts urge water's inclusion in development goals

Mon, 20 May 2013 03:00:45 +0000

Better data and governance of global water resources are called for in a bid to get water security into the post-2015 development goals.

Call to mainstream ethnobotany into development

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:44:25 +0000

Scientists must partner with development actors and local communities to safeguard important plants.