• Internet cams video feeds exposed

Thousands of Trendnet security camera webfeeds have been breached and shared on the internet, including live video from children's rooms.

  • Symantec code 'extortion' claim

Hackers demanded money in return for keeping stolen source code a secret, security firm Symantec says.

  • Google targets tech 'moonshots'

The search giant hosts meetings to find technological answers to the "world's greatest problems".

  • Wolfram Alpha unveils Pro service

The data-crunching site unveils a premium service that allows users to upload data, photos and sounds for analysis.

  • Brazil sues Twitter over alerts

The Brazilian government files a lawsuit against Twitter, demanding it block material that helps motorists evade drink-driving traps.

  • Ofcom wants Openreach price cut

Telecoms regulator Ofcom tells BT Group to cut the wholesale prices it charges for use of its lines

  • Cyberbullying warning from NSPCC

More must be done to help tackle cyberbullying with friends and family best placed to see warning signs, according to the NSPCC.

  • Official Turing pardon refused

The government rejects a petition for computer pioneer Alan Turing to be granted an official pardon.

  • Teacher's Facebook drinking posts

A teacher is reprimanded after comments about drinking and parties appeared on her Facebook site and were viewed by pupils.

  • Acta protests spread over Europe

Dozens of protests are planned across Europe in opposition to the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

  • Google introduces Chrome for phone

Search giant to replace web browser in Android smartphones with revamped version named after its Chrome desktop product

Google is to replace the web browser in Android smartphones with a revamped version named after its Chrome desktop product, as the search giant redoubles its efforts to knock Microsoft off the top perch in the battle of the browsers.

Chrome for phone, which is faster, links to the user's desktop and allows an unlimited number of pages to remain open simultaneously, begins its public "beta" trial on Tuesday, and may move to a full launch this spring.

The upgrade reinforces Google's push to eat into Microsoft's dominance of web browsers. Since Chrome for desktop computers was launched in October 2008, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has dropped from a 67% to 37% market share, according to analysis by StatCounter.

Chrome, which has 200 million users worldwide, overtook Firefox, an independent open source browser funded by a trust, as the second most popular in December 2011 and now has a 29% market share, with Firefox at 25%.

In a move designed to tie users more closely to Google products and services, Chrome desktop users will be able to call up on their phone, at the touch of one button, the last set of web pages opened on their desktop.

The feature should be useful for those leaving the office in a hurry: look up the location of a meeting but forget to print out the map, and the phone can open the map page without having to carry out a new search. Start work on an online document at the office and continue adding to it on the move without having to spend time retrieving it.

Bookmarks saved on Chrome for desktop are also automatically available on the browser of any smartphone, tablet or laptop also using Chrome. A user's various Chrome browsers will synchronise with each other every two minutes.

Google claims Chrome is faster than many other browsers because of technology that anticipates which page a user is going to click on next so that it can start pre-loading it, and in a demonstration at Google's London headquarters on Tuesday, Chrome completed the loading of pages containing rich media such as photos and videos more quickly than Apple's Safari browser on an iPhone.

Chrome for phone will work only on the latest version 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google's Android phone operating system. The browser will only be available to Android phones during the trial period, but a Google spokesperson said it hoped eventually to release versions for all operating systems including Apple's iOS for iPhones.

Chrome will come pre-installed on Android phones as the default browser, although users will be free to select a rival such as Firefox, Dolphin and Opera. The advent of an improved browser is likely to slow the adoption on smartphones of independent alternatives, which have attracted praise in comparison with Android's current offering.

Google calls this seamless link between devices the "personal web", and it is clearly designed to ensure that it retains control of the gateways to the internet on all devices.

The development is yet another sign that Google is deploying a strategy very similar to Apple's ? tying customers into the brand on whatever screen they happen to be using. Unlike Apple, Google does not manufacture hardware, and wants its software to be available on any device its users choose to buy.

Chrome's presence as an operating system on desktop computers is also negligible. But with most activities moving off the desktop and on to the internet, a suite of tools such as email, Chrome and Google Docs, plus sharing services like Google+ and YouTube, have given the company a daily visibility on Apple and Microsoft machines that no advertising spend could buy.

So much so that it no longer feels appropriate to refer to Google as a search giant. Although without search dollars, none of these market share building but so far loss-making activities would be possible.

  • Anonymous publishes trove of emails

Law firm represented Frank Wuterich, who pled guilty to his part in the death of 24 Iraqi civilians, but served no jail time

Hackers associated with the Anonymous activist group have leaked a trove of emails hacked from the law firm representing staff sergeant Frank Wuterich, accused of leading a group of Marines responsible for the deaths of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians at Haditha.

The group has published files taken from Puckett & Faraj, the law firm that represented Wuterich on Pirate Bay, a file-sharing site popular with hackers, and published extracts on another site, Pastebin, although some of those postings now appear to have been removed.

Last month Wuterich plead guilty in a military court to dereliction of duty, telling the judge that he regretted ordering his men to "shoot first, ask questions later."

He was demoted to private and technically sentenced to 90 days confinement but, by the terms of the plea deal, he will not serve any time. The sentence means none of the marines accused in the incident will face time in prison.

In the emails, Neal Puckett, the law firm's founder and a former marine, writes to one of Wuterich's supporters: "Frank Wuterich represents the best this country has to offer and deserved nothing less. I was inspired by his insistence that he take responsibility for all that his Marines did or failed to do that day. He refused to have it any other way."

The website of Puckett & Faraj was unavailable Monday and the firm declined to comment about the alleged security breach.

In other emails released by Anonymous, members of the firm appear to worry that hack may "completely destroy the Law Firm."

The hack was the latest in high profile release by Anonymous members in less than a week. Last week the collective released an 18-minute recording of the FBI and British police discussing delays in court proceedings against two alleged members of the LulzSec hacking group.

  • TalkTalk loses another 50,000 customers

Broadband and TV provider has lost 170,000 customers since November 2010, but revenues remain stable at £422m

TalkTalk has reported a fifth consecutive quarter of customer defections, with 50,000 lost in the three months to the end of December as the company continues to trail larger rivals BT Group and BSkyB.

The broadband and TV provider has lost 170,000 customers since November 2010, bringing its total down to 4.079 million, as BT and Sky continued to attract the lion's share of new broadband customers and poach business from rivals.

However, TalkTalk's share price raced up 9% to 130p in morning trading on Tuesday, as investors cheered a raised profit forecast from chief executive Dido Harding.

Full-year underlying earnings are now expected to be between 18% and 19% of revenues, up from previous guidance of 17% to 18% and an improvement on last year's 15.6% margin.

Revenues in the third quarter remained stable, rising £1m from the second quarter to £422m, but were down 5% on the same period the previous year. However, the business is becoming more profitable as the number of customers using its network of lines "unbundled" from BT's exchanges continues to grow.

Average revenue per user for TalkTalk broadband customers increased to £25.30, compared with £24.70 in the previous quarter.

"We are growing the number of customers on our network every week and that is what is driving the performance of our business," Harding said.

"We have continued to improve our customers' experience with further falls in customer service call volumes and an increase in the rate of online self-service. As a result, churn has stabilised and we remain confident of a return to positive total net adds in the first half of 2012."

TalkTalk had originally hoped to start growing customer numbers in the final months of 2011, but a mounting subscriber exodus delayed that target.

Formed through the rapid mergers of broadband companies including Tiscali, Pipex and Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk has been struggling to integrate its billing platforms.

It was fined £3.1m by Ofcom after wrongly billing thousands of Tiscali customers for services they did not receive.

The group has lost 43,000 broadband customers in the past two quarters, including 7,000 of the 200,000 former Pipex subscribers in the most recent period.

Levels of customer churn were not disclosed, but TalkTalk said it remained stable on the previous quarter despite the Pipex defections, with call volumes to its customer service centre down 26% year-on-year and 60% of customer contacts now taking place online.

TalkTalk unbundled ? installed its own equipment ? in 130 new BT exchanges during the quarter, bringing the total to 2,338, with a further 119 expected in the final quarter.

The work is designed to improve customer numbers and profitability, because TalkTalk can offer lower prices but still make a bigger profit margin on unbundled lines.

The group said 80% of its customers are now on fully unbundled lines.

HomesafeTM, an optional product which blocks pornography and self-harm sites, has been activated by a further 60,000 customers, bringing the total to 270,000, despite concerns raised by internet privacy groups over its ability to track every website visited by a user.

The company is about to begin consumer trials of on-demand internet TV service YouView, a joint venture with other backers including the BBC and BT.

YouView and is on track for its scheduled launch this spring, TalkTalk confirmed.

The arrival of YouView could boost the numbers buying super-fast fibre optic broadband from TalkTalk, which remain low at just 5,000.

"At the moment there are very few households who genuinely really need fibre but that will change over time as demand for multiple live video viewing within a single household grows," Harding said.

  • Apple cracks down on 'appayola'

Pay to inflate your App Store ranking, and you could be booted out of the iOS ecosystem

Ferocious competition on the App Store means many iOS developers eagerly embrace any tool or service promising to send their apps soaring up the charts. However, Apple has reminded app-makers that using some services may lead to them being stripped of the right to release apps for its store.

The idea of appayola ? paying to artificially inflate an app's chart ranking ? isn't new. A previous Apple crackdown saw developers barred from using the platform of US startup TapJoy, which involved offering free virtual currency or rewards in one game if a player installed another.

The latest controversy focuses on an unnamed startup, first referenced by a developer posting on the forum of mobile games site Touch Arcade. In it, they claimed to have been contacted by a company charging $5,000 to guarantee a Top 25 App Store placement for a free app.

"He said he had outsourced someone to build him a bot farm and the bots will automatically download his clients' apps and drive up their rankings," claimed the developer.

"He even told me that even though I might see my app climb up the app store, they aren't "REAL" at first until it gets to the top and that's when REAL HUMAN players will start seeing my app and play it."

The post named one iOS games publisher, CrowdStar, as being one of the heaviest users of the unnamed bot farm, although its co-founder Suren Markosian posted a defence on the same forum thread, suggesting that "I don't think this post is based on any deep knowledge on how top players are marketing their games in the app store".

He pointed to the use by his company and rivals of "legitimate" advertising services including Flurry, ChartBoost and Apple's own iAds.

"While I sympathize with the smaller developers who may not have as much funding as we do and feel that we are getting a free ride the fact is we are spending significant marketing dollars to achieve top ratings," wrote Markosian.

What does Apple think of this marketing dollars investment, though? The company has responded swiftly to the forum thread and subsequent coverage online, posting a message on its website for iOS developers warning them off artificial inflation of their apps' chart rankings.

"Once you build a great app, you want everyone to know about it. However, when you promote your app, you should avoid using services that advertise or guarantee top placement in App Store charts," says the message.

"Even if you are not personally engaged in manipulating App Store chart rankings or user reviews, employing services that do so on your behalf may result in the loss of your Apple Developer Program membership. Get helpful tips and resources on marketing your apps the right way from the App Store Resource Center."

Well, indeed. The problem here is that the freemium apps market on iOS ? particularly games ? is so crowded and yet so lucrative for the apps that manage to cut through the crowd. It's been that way for a while, too.

In July 2011, analytics company Flurry claimed that 65% of the revenues generated by the 100 Top Grossing games on iOS were from freemium titles, up from 39% in January 2011. Apple's own Rewind chart in December 2011 showed that seven out of the ten Top Grossing iOS apps that year were freemium games.

The potential rewards mean developers and publishers will continue to hustle by any means necessary to boost their apps and games into the upper reaches of the App Store chart, dancing around Apple's guidelines as much as they can.

That said, long-term business models are not built on bot farms. The bots aren't buying virtual items or currency, they're not using these apps after the initial download, and they're not telling their friends about them.

A bad freemium game might crack the Top 25 due to appayola firms, but as those "REAL HUMAN PLAYERS" start to bite, it will sink quickly. Chart algorithm tweaks emphasising active usage rather than simply downloads may speed that process.

Even so, it's dispiriting to think of the App Store's Top 25 chart as a ranking of publisher marketing-spend rather than app quality, and as a place where even the great games face having to resort to bots simply to get a fair shot at finding an audience.

Dispiriting, but no surprise to most iOS developers. The interesting question right now is not how Apple can squash the bots, but how developers can focus on building sustainable businesses outside the Top 25.

  • The top 50 Android tablet apps

Whether you've got a Samsung Galaxy Tab, Amazon's Kindle Fire or another Android tablet, you'll be looking for some great apps. We've picked some of the best

Apple sold 15.4m iPads in the final quarter of 2011, but there is more to the market than one manufacturer and OS. Strategy Analytics estimates that 39% of the 26.8m tablets that shipped that quarter were running Google's Android operating system.

Yes, that's shipments as opposed to sales: it's anyone's guess how many of those devices remain on shelves and in warehouses. Even so, more Android tablets are emerging, with some ? Amazon's Kindle Fire in the US and Samsung's Galaxy Tabs elsewhere in the world ? building some momentum.

One of the key selling points for Apple's iPad is the more-than 140,000 native apps available for the device. Android devices have a way to go to catch up in terms of overall quantity, but the number of quality apps for Android tablets has been improving steadily.

Hence this roundup, following our separate rundown of the 50 best iPad apps in September 2011. Shortly after that was published, we began gathering suggestions for inclusion in an Android follow-up, and have spent the months since then drawing up our own longlist of possibles.

Some caveats. First, this is aimed more at people unboxing an Android tablet for the first time, so some of the suggestions may seem obvious to experienced owners. Second, any selection of this kind will be tinged by the personal preferences of the writer.

In both cases, your criticisms and alternative suggestions are welcomed in the comments section. We have also opted against restricting the list to apps optimised for Honeycomb-only software, given the existence of a number of tablets running earlier versions of Android.

A third caveat: Android being what it is, we can't guarantee that all 50 apps will be available or run well on all the devices out there, particularly at the cheaper end of the market.

Proceed with caution, but please do report back on your experiences with specific devices. On with the show...

SOCIAL MEDIA / WEB

FEEDLY free. Looking for an Android alternative to Flipboard? Feedly is worth a look, promising a personalised magazine pulling in stories from Google Reader, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and other services.

FIREFOX free. Now optimised for tablets as well as smartphones, Firefox offers a useful alternative to the default Android browser, including the ability to sync bookmarks and history with the desktop version.

IM+ PRO £2.99. This catch-all messaging app combines Skype, Facebook Chat and a host of instant messaging services into one, with the option to ping text, photos and voice notes to contacts.

NEWS360 FOR TABLETS free. Another news aggregator, News360 gets content from more than 10,000 news sites, promising to learn from your social and RSS accounts what you like to read about, in order to filter accordingly.

TABLIFIED MARKET HD £0.94. If this article is a starting point for discovering new Android tablet apps, Tablified Market should be your next port of call. It's a discovery app that promises to 'find Tablified apps so you don't have to'. A good database with regular updates.

TAPTU ? DJ YOUR NEWS free. Another social news-reading app, this, which accesses stories from sites using their RSS feeds. At its most useful when you dive into its tools to "remix" different feeds into single streams about whatever topic you like.

TWEETCOMB free. Keen Twitter users should appreciate TweetComb, which is a Twitter client focused on tablets running the Android Honeycomb software. It makes good use of the larger screens, and its notifications can be tweaked to your preferences.

CULTURE

BBC NEWS free. The Beeb's official news app was updated with an Android-focused edition in January 2012, with a choice of landscape and portrait modes, swipe-based navigation through stories, and ? later in the year ? a live stream of the BBC News channel itself.

CNN APP FOR ANDROID TABLET free. News network CNN's Android app is a very polished way to get the latest stories, including text and video reports. Its tablet-optimised design stands out, while its iReport feature aims to get users filing their own stories.

COMICS free. ComiXology's combined comics store and reader app boasts of being the only one offering titles from both Marvel Comics and DC Comics. A wide catalogue of titles is available to buy in-app, while the reader's "Guided View" technology works well for finding your way through cells.

GOOGLE BOOKS free. Google Books is a tablet window to Google's cloud-based e-books service, where you can shop for e-books to read across multiple devices, or choose from a wide selection of free titles.

GOOGLE READER free. The existence of apps like Taptu and News360 is sometimes used as an argument for RSS being old hat ? even though they rely on the technology to pull in content. If you're more old-school in your RSS habits though, Google Reader is very good.

IMDB MOVIES & TV free. The world's biggest database of film and TV information is really impressive on Android tablets, enabling you to browse the database and watch trailers. There's a US focus, but it's still useful.

KINDLE free. A firm favourite on iPad as an alternative to Apple's own iBooks, the Kindle app is also a must-have on Android tablets. Buy from Amazon's e-store and then read the e-books on your slate, syncing with any other devices you use too.

NETFLIX free. Netflix launched in the UK in January 2012, meaning that its impressive tablet apps now have an audience on this side of the Atlantic too. Browse its catalogue of films and TV shows, then watch them on the device.

THE CAT IN THE HAT £1.90. The Dr. Seuss classic has been turned into a faithful book-app that looks as good on tablets as on smartphones. The illustrations are familiar, while there's voice narration and zooming words to aid young readers.

TUNEIN RADIO PRO £0.61. The TuneIn Radio app has been a huge success on various platforms, and while it doesn't make major use of tablet bells'n'whistles, we'd still recommend it for Android slate owners. Find radio stations from around the world and, well, tune in.

ZINIO free. An increasing number of magazines are launching bespoke apps for iPad, if not Android tablets. One good way to plug the gap is Zinio, which sells digital replicas of a large range of mags from its in-app store.

GAMES

ANGRY BIRDS free. Okay, somewhat obvious. But amid all the big-number milestones and commercial spin-offs, it's easy to forget that at its core, Angry Birds is a very, very good game. It's just as suited to tablets as smartphones too.

BACKBREAKER THD £3.09. The Super Bowl may be over for another year, but NaturalMotion's casual gridiron game is fun all year round, as you dodge and spin past hordes of defenders. This version showcases the Nvidia Tegra processors inside some Android tabs.

BLOOD & GLORY (NR) free. Glu Mobile's take on the Infinity Blade beat 'em up is notable for two reasons: first it's on Android, unlike its inspiration. And second, it's a freemium title, so you don't have to pay to initially play it.

DUNGEON DEFENDERS SECOND WAVE free. This is another game that'll show off the graphical grunt of your (high-end) Android tablet. The gameplay is a mixture of action-RPG and tower defence, as you set your defences then run around swinging at attackers as they pile in.

GRAND THEFT AUTO III £2.99. 10 years after it was first released for consoles, GTA III returns for tablets (and smartphones). It has dated wonderfully, with its mix of crime and, well, more crime still feeling fresh. What's more, it has survived the transition to touchscreen tablets, with well thought-out controls.

MINECRAFT: POCKET EDITION £4.29. Tablets lend themselves to relaxed usage while loafing about on a sofa. The perfect game for this scenario is Minecraft, as you wander a blocky landscape digging, building and admiring the views.

ONLIVE free. Streaming games service OnLive turns your Android tablet into a fully-fledged games console, complete with (if you buy it) a joypad peripheral. Assuming your Wi-Fi connection is up to the task, this is technically impressive, with an increasing catalogue of games to have fun with.

OSMOS HD £3.18. Currently part of the excellent Humble Bundle for Android, Osmos is a trippy puzzle game that involves absorbing glowing "motes", complete with an atmospheric electronica soundtrack.

SHADOWGUN £3.49. First-person shooter Shadowgun is a visual feast, as you battle an army of cyborgs and droids inside "maniacal genius" Dr. Edgar Simon's mountain base. It's shooting to become the mobile and tablet world's Halo, and on this evidence, that's not a crazy ambition.

SLEEPY JACK £1.99. 3D shooter Sleepy Jack runs as a universal game across Android tablets and smartphones, and is addictive enough that you'll want to play it on both. 40 beautiful worlds to fly through provide plenty of depth.

ANOMALY WARZONE EARTH HD £2.49. A simple twist on the tower defence genre makes Anomaly Warzone Earth instantly stand out from the herd: you play the attackers rather than the defenders. A deep campaign mode and attractive visuals makes it even more of a treat.

WORLD OF GOO £2.99. Just as much of a joy on Android as it is on iPad, World of Goo gets you dragging and stretching virtual goo-balls into objects to get you through puzzle-packed levels. Wonderfully tactile, and challenging without ever making you throw your tablet through the window. A good thing, really.

PRODUCTIVITY / TOOLS

CATCH free. Early Honeycomb tablet owners were buzzing about this cloud app, and justifiably so. Not a million miles away from Evernote, it's about scribbling notes, recording voice memos and taking photos, then storing them in the cloud ? with a Streams feature particularly useful for collaborative work.

DROPBOX free. An increasingly essential service no matter what device you own, Dropbox gathers your photos, documents and videos ? among other files ? for access on the go. As on other platforms, the interface is clean and efficient, for speedy use.

EVERNOTE free. As with Catch and Dropbox, Evernote's strength comes when you use it across several devices, not just one tablet. Sync text notes, lists, voice memos and photos across them all, with sharing features built in too.

FILE MANAGER HD free. Another app from the early days of Honeycomb, which offers a simple-yet-slick way to manage files on your tablet, browing by lists or grids. One of those apps that might not be sexy on the surface, but which will be used regularly.

GOOGLE DOCS free. Another of Google's own apps, this, which aims to provide a neat native way to access Google Docs ? including offline ? on Android tablets. Again, simplicity and speed is the focus, to make it quick to edit and share documents.

HD WIDGETS £1.29. Widgets are one of the ways Android obviously differs from iOS, and HD Widgets offers a bunch of examples, from clocks to weather reports. Tablet tweakers will love it.

MINDJET FOR ANDROID free. If Evernote and Catch are more about notes, Mindjet is more about richer brainstorming sessions, making good use of the large tablet screen to organise your thoughts and make them understandable for future reference.

QUICKOFFICE PRO HD £12.97. If you're not ready to move into Google's cloud, what about this app for creating, editing and sharing Microsoft Office documents? Support for documents, spreadsheets and presentations makes it flexible, and it also plays nice with Evernote and Catch.

SKITCH free. Evernote's second app in this list is more for fun, letting you scribble on photos and images to annotate them. It's very easy to use, and while doodling rude things on friends' mugshots is the obvious use, there are work applications too.

SLIDEIT KEYBOARD £3.79. Android tab owners are spoiled for choice when it comes to alternative on-screen keyboards, so we've chosen two of the best here. SlideIT delivers on its promise of speedier typing with finger-tracing rather than tapping.

SPLASHTOP REMOTE DESKTOP HD £4.56. Remote access used to be a corporate thing, but nowadays even consumers are keen on the idea of accessing their main PC or Mac from their tablet. Well, some consumers. SplashTop Remote is one of the best known ways to do it, and one of the friendliest too.

STICKY NOTES HD TABLET WIDGET £1.22. You could argue that shoehorning virtual sticky notes onto a digital device is pure nostalgia. You might have a case. Even so, Sticky Notes HD does it well, stacking the virtual Post-Its neatly so you don't lose your reminders.

SWIFTKEY TABLET X KEYBOARD £3.49. The second soft-keyboard app in this roundup comes from SwiftKey, with its clever prediction algorithm to guess what word you might be typing next. Cleverer still is the way it can learn your most common words by tying into Facebook, Twitter and Gmail.

LIFESTYLE / SCIENCE

ADOBE COLLAGE £6.99. At a time when social media startup Pinterest is gathering a head of steam, Adobe's Collage app looks onto a good thing. It's about making moodboards with a mixture of photos, scribbles and text, importing several file-types and content from Google and Flickr.

ADOBE PHOTOSHOP TOUCH £6.99. Another Adobe app here, but one that'll be more familiar to veterans. It's a touchscreen-optimised reboot of the Photoshop editing software, with some powerful features if you know what you're doing, and syncing back to the desktop version if necessary.

ACCUWEATHER FOR HONEYCOMB free. Whether sunshine, rain or the kind of snow that brings Britain's infrastructure to a halt (i.e. two inches), AccuWeather offers a tablet-friendly window on the weather around the world.

GOOGLE SKY MAP free. It's currently being cut loose ? sorry, open sourced ? by Google, but its in-house Sky Map app remains a joy. Hold your tablet in the air at night, and get an instant guide to what all those stars are called. A handy search mode is good for planet-spotting too.

GOOGLE EARTH free. Zooming around the planet is as fun a tablet experience on Android as on iPad, with 3D buildings and some nifty tweaks for larger-screened devices.

OPENTABLE free. Restaurant reservations service OpenTable does a very good job of finding nearby eateries, plotting them on a map, and helping you decide whether they're worth booking.

SKETCHBOOK PRO free. Autodesk's painting and drawing app has been tuned for Honeycomb-toting tablets, helping you sketch on-screen. Professionals may get most out of it, but the app is fun and rewarding even for less artistic Android owners.

  • Facebook: the revenge of the nerds

Facebook's success isn't just a sweet retort to founder Mark Zuckerberg's critics, it's a confirmation of what makes Silicon Valley tick: techies, geeks and nerds

We'll look at the other side of the coin in a moment, but first let's give credit where it's due and admire the obverse: I'm delighted to see Facebook going public, just deserts for Mark Zuckerberg and his group of very smart techies.

If you have the time and inclination, take a walk through Facebook's SEC S-1 filing in preparation for its IPO ? you won't regret it. Pay particular attention to the manifesto Zuckerberg calls The Hacker Way and allow this ageing geek (I'll soon be 28) to sing its praises. Consider this verse:

We have a saying: "Move fast and break things." The idea is that if you never break anything, you're probably not moving fast enough.

Where others have stumbled as they shuffled, Zuckerberg and his gang have raced to create a technical giant. The infrastructure required to support 845 million "monthly active" users that upload 250m photos each day might not be Google-sized (yet), but it's definitely Google-class.

To show off this plumbing, Zuckerberg & Co. took a few pages from Apple's (and Google's) stylebook: They stuck to a simple, clean UI ? unlike Myspace and its pavement pizza chic.

Facebook's success isn't just a sweet retort to Zuckerberg's critics, it's a confirmation of what makes Silicon Valley tick: techies, geeks, and nerds. While the technoïds aren't always right ? far from it ? the great ones end up making and running great companies.

The establishment bluestockings may roll their eyes at the hoodies and bare feet, but look at what happens when the suits take over. Look at HP, Yahoo, or Cisco; regard Apple during its dark age.

It wasn't very long ago, I recall gleefully, that the kommentariat cluck-clucked disapprovingly over the founder's "obvious'' immaturity, his tactless management style, his poor public-speaking manner. But when you read Facebook's S1, you'll realise how good a negotiator Zuckerberg must have been early on.

Since its inception, the company has raised about $1.5bn (£952m), an unusually large amount for a startup, and well above the threshold that usually translates into management castration as investors demand a bigger share of the spoils, ransom for their assumption of greater risk.

Instead, Zuckerberg got investors to go for the radius of the pizza as opposed to the angle of the slice, their ownership percentage. Zuckerberg may own "only" 28% of Facebook, but he manufactured agreements that give him effective control of the company with 57% of voting rights.

Some will downplay the achievement: "He must have gotten good advice." Of course ? but he followed it. When you're in charge, the quality of the advice is no excuse for bad performance; conversely, good advice shouldn't be used to dismiss good results.

Speaking of which, in 2011, the company's revenue was $3.7bn, with a tidy $1bn profit and $3.8bn in cash ? to which they'll be adding at least $5bn in the upcoming IPO. This is a nicely profitable company.

The Washington Post's Wonkblog put Facebook's performance in graphic perspective:

Take a look at the number of employees: a mere 3,200. With $3.7bn in revenue, that works out to $1.2m per worker. Turning to cash per worker ($3.9bn/3,200=$1.2m), Facebook is about as rich as Uncle Apple's $1.3m cash per "full-time equivalent" employee. It's a remarkable achievement for any company, and unheard of for one so young.

But it's not all roses.

As Zuckerberg's Letter To Investors properly contends, Facebook can "change how people relate to their governments and social institutions" and "improve how people connect to businesses and the economy".

Making tons of money in the process is totally legit ? as long as a key condition is met: informed consent. And "informed consent" mean just that: information that a reasonably attentive individual ? as opposed to an Apple patent attorney ? can understand.

On this count, Facebook's actions have been less than transparent. Perhaps it's a consequence of the Hacker Way: ship first, ask questions later. Or perhaps Facebook is betting we're too lazy and ignorant to read the fine print, just like wireless carriers who try to dazzle us with their sleight-of-plan hoodwinks.

Furthermore, Facebook's ubiquity and power raises the spectre of yet another Walled Garden: is Zuckerberg's company killing the Open Web by superimposing a proprietary lattice of connections between users, including companies that use Facebook to do business with its community?

Many have noted that Google can't really index the Facebook web. As John Batelle puts it:

Sure, Google can crawl Facebook's "public pages," but those represent a tiny fraction of the "pages" on Facebook, and are not informed by the crucial signals of identity and relationship which give those pages meaning.

(True. But does Google want to index Facebook? Behind the Open posture stands Google's real aim: bulldozing anything and anyone standing between their ad engines and their targets.)

Lastly, let's consider the Web 2.0 proverb: if the product is free, you are the product. With that in mind, I couldn't help wince at the opening of Zuckerberg's Letter To Investors:

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission ? to make the world more open and connected.

It reminded me of the Don't Be Evil puffery in Google's own S-1:

Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served ? as shareholders and in all other ways ? by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo short-term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.

When I read those words back in 2004, I thought Google was either incredibly naive or a little too obvious in its do-good posture. Either way, we know what has happened: Google needs to be all things to all people, all the time, everywhere, on every device, in order to irradiate us with its advertising photons. Google's motto should be Disintermediation R'Us. Instead, its mission statement reads:

Organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

? all in the name of selling ads.

In his letter, Zuckerberg comes up with a similarly lofty sentiment:

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future.

I don't mean to diminish Zuckerberg's accomplishments. He's built an epoch-making company, I'm delighted by the team of highly skilled technologists he's assembled ? a team that includes some dear friends of mine ? and the tech culture they evince.

He's surrounded himself with sharp business people and extracted oodles of money from strong investors; he's Bill Gates/Larry Ellison/Page+Brin caliber or above ? and I'm thrilled to see the former naysayers now eating out of his hand.

So why not just say something like:

We help people connect in safe, convenient and innovative ways. In doing so, we've built a business of historic proportions. We make money selling advertising that is finely tuned to reach our users in cost-competitive ways. Because we believe in Facebook's unlimited potential, we will manage ourselves for the long term rather than for short-term profit. We have built an ownership and control structure to accomplish this goal.

There's good evidence that the people who buy Amazon, Google and Facebook shares are willing to let these companies run for the long term rather than for the next quarter. Smart people don't need lofty mission statements to guide their investments, they watch what the execs do and decide if they're using "the long term" as an excuse or if they're really aiming for it.

JLG@mondaynote.com

  • UK opposition to Acta grows

Protests against controversial copyright agreement planned for London, Glasgow and Nottingham on Saturday

The Pirate Party UK will join an international day of action against controversial copyright agreement Acta on Saturday with protests planned for London, Glasgow and Nottingham.

Acta, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, sparked opposition from internet users who fear it will lead to online censorship.

Pirate Party UK leader Loz Kaye said: "We saw what the combination of protest and political pressure achieved with the dropping of Sopa [the Stop Online Piracy Act].

"But the threats to digital rights and civil liberties aren't over. It's vital that we send a clear message that the people of Europe don't want Acta."

A far-reaching agreement that aims to harmonise international standards in areas that often fall victim to intellectual property theft, such as music, film and fashion, Acta has been signed off by the UK and more than 20 other EU member states.

Opponents fear that it will also lead authorities to block content on the internet.

It has already been signed by the US and is to be debated by the European parliament in June.

Acta prompted widespread protests in Poland and led to attacks on Polish government websites by hacking collective Anonymous.

Finlay Archibald, spokesman for Pirate Party Scotland, added: "I hope to see many of my fellow citizens out next Saturday to demand that free speech and privacy online be eroded no further, and to let the political establishment know that they cannot simply bypass democracy like this without people noticing."

  • Google and Facebook block content in India

Judge tells 21 companies to bar access to material deemed religiously offensive, or face China-style action

Google and Facebook have removed content from some Indian websites after a court warned that India would crack down "like China" if they did not take steps to protect religious sensibilities.

The two are among 21 companies ordered to develop a mechanism to block material considered religiously offensive after private petitioners took them to court over images deemed offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

Individuals have brought two cases against internet companies in India, fuelling fears about censorship in the world's largest democracy.

"[Our] review team has looked at the content and disabled this content from the local domains of [Google] search, YouTube and Blogger," said a Google spokeswoman, Paroma Roy Chowdhury.

At the heart of the dispute is a law India passed last year making companies responsible for user content posted on their websites, and giving them 36 hours to take down content if there is a complaint.

Last month, the companies said it was impossible for them to block content. Roy Chowdhury declined to comment on what had since been removed, and a Facebook representative said only that the company would release a statement later.

A New Delhi lower court hearing one of the cases, a civil suit brought by an Islamic scholar, told the companies on Monday to put in writing the steps they had taken to block offensive content, and submit reports within 15 days.

"Microsoft has filed an application for rejection of the suit on the grounds that it disclosed no cause of action against Microsoft," a spokesperson for the company said. "The matter is sub judice and no further comments can be given."

That suit was brought by a scholar, Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasm, who runs a website called fatwaonline.org, which gives answers to moral questions.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft have appealed in the Delhi high court against a separate criminal case successfully brought by Vinay Rai, a journalist.

The high court has yet to rule on their appeal, but the sitting judge warned in January they were responsible for content on their websites and said he could, "like China", block sites if the company failed to put its house in order.

In the Rai case, the court ordered the companies to stand trial for offences relating to the distribution of obscene material to minors, after being shown images it said were offensive to the prophet Muhammad, Jesus and various Hindu gods and goddesses as well as several political leaders.

"If the companies have actually removed some content, they should put in place a mechanism to do it regularly, instead of waiting for a court case every time," Rai said.

Fewer than one in 10 of India's 1.2 billion population have access to the internet, but that still makes the country the third-biggest internet market after China and the US. The number of internet users in India is expected to almost triple to 300 million over the next three years.

Despite the new rules to block offensive content, India's internet access is still largely uncensored, in contrast to the tight controls in place in neighbouring China. But, like many other governments around the world, India has become increasingly nervous about the power of social media.

While civil rights groups have opposed the new laws, politicians say posting offensive images in a socially conservative country with a history of violence between religious groups presents a danger to the public.

  • John Naughton: Welcome to the desktop degree

Three courses created at Stanford University prove that free online education can compete with traditional teaching methods

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in 1995 to be precise, a scholar named Eli Noam published an article in the prestigious journal Science under the title "Electronics and the Dim Future of the University". In it, Professor Noam argued that the basic model of a university ? which had been stable for hundreds of years ? would be threatened by networked communications technologies.

Under the classical model, universities were institutions that created, stored and disseminated knowledge. If students or scholars wished to access that knowledge, they had to come to the university. But, Noam argued, the internet would threaten that model by raising the question memorably posed by Howard Rheingold in the 1980s: "Where is the Library of Congress when it's on my desktop?" If all the world's stored knowledge can be accessed from any networked device, and if the teaching materials and lectures of the best scholars are likewise available online, why should students pay fees and incur debts to live in cramped accommodation for three years? What would be the USP of the traditional university when its monopolies on storage and dissemination eroded?

If that was a good question in 1995, it's an even better one today. The answers offered by traditional universities over the years varied according to status and mission. Some universities went into denial and pretended that Noam's "dim future" wouldn't happen to them. Some decided that their USPs ? their elite brands ? would protect them from the gathering storm. Others decided that they would become primarily research-driven outfits with undergraduate teaching being regarded as a tiresome chore that could be outsourced to graduate instructors. A few experimented with distance teaching and the delusion that putting their educational "content" online would solve the problem. But, different though these responses were, all universities were agreed on one thing: in the end, students would have to come to them because only universities could give them the appropriate credentials. QED.

In behaving thus, universities put themselves in the role of the mythical frog in a saucepan of water that is being slowly heated on a hob. As time passes, the frog notices gradual changes in the temperature, but each increment seems relatively tolerable, so the creature adapts to it. But then there comes a moment when the water boils...

Some things have happened recently that make one think that perhaps the water might be reaching boiling point for traditional universities. The key development is a set of three courses created by Stanford University academics and colleagues in three subject areas: machine learning, database design and artificial intelligence. What makes these significant is that they are: intellectually demanding; free; presented entirely online; taught by world-class academics; and inclusive of assessment as well as tuition.

Take the "Introduction to AI" course, for example. It's based on a course taught to conventional Stanford undergraduates and introduces students to the basics of artificial intelligence ? which includes machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, robotics, and natural language processing. It's taught by Sebastian Thrun, who in addition to being a professor at Stanford and an expert in robotics is also a vice president at Google, and Peter Norvig, Google's director of research. And it's very serious academically ? an undergraduate- or early graduate-level course that requires around 10 hours a week, has weekly assignments and mid?term and final exams. In order to receive a "statement of accomplishment", students have to take both exams.

The statistics for the venture are intriguing: 160,000 students signed up, from more than 190 countries, with a median age of around 30. But the really staggering thing is that about 23,000 of them stayed the course and finished it. A friend of mine, Seb Schmoller, took it and reports that it was worthwhile but pretty tough going. The project has been so successful that Professor Thrun has set up a spin-off company which plans to enrol 500,000 students on its first two courses: "Building a search engine" and "Programming a robotic car".

Now you could argue that Thrun (and Stanford) are just treading a path that was already laid down by MIT and our own Open University ? free content and sophisticated online pedagogy ? and that's true. But up to now, universities have held back from offering qualifications for their free online offerings. That too is about to change: starting this spring, students taking MIT's free online courses will, for a small fee, give them academic credentials if they pass the assessment.

The game's on, folks. Who says that a watched pot never boils?

  • Apple pulls iPhones from German store

iCloud service could also be forced to turn off 'push' email as battle escalates with phone firm, which Google is acquiring

Apple briefly pulled several models of the iPhone and iPad from its online store in Germany after Android handset maker Motorola Mobility (MMI) won a court injunction over the phones in Germany. A separate ruling over its "iCloud" service means it might be forced to turn off "push" email for users in the country.

Apple has appealed the rulings. But the phones and tablets were removed from Apple's German online store after Motorola, which is due to be acquired by search giant and Android owner Google, won a court ruling in December relating to an alleged infringement of wireless patents for 3G connections by Apple handsets including the iPhone 4 and the 3G version of the iPad 2.

MMI won a separate court injunction against Apple on Friday that could force the US electronics giant to block a key function of its iCloud email system for users in Germany. That would require MMI first to post a ?100m (£83m) bond

to cover potential outcomes.

The court injunctions are the latest in a string of patent disputes between Apple and MMI, which Google is buying for $12.5bn.

The German court's ruling on Friday means that Apple must switch off the so-called "push" email service for users of iCloud and MobileMe in that country. German iPhone owners will still be able to access email, but the BlackBerry-like function that sends new messages automatically to the phone will be unavailable. Apple said in a statement that the patent was "invalid" and said it would appeal against the ruling.

The independent patent expert Florian Mueller, who first reported the rulings, told the Guardian that Apple would be forced to comply with the injunction if Motorola Mobility posts a ?100m bond. "They will have to deactivate the feature if and when [Motorola Mobility] seeks enforcement," he said. "The ruling per se doesn't force them to do anything, but if [Motorola Mobility] posts another ?100 million euro bond and demands that Apple comply with the injunction, then they'll have to do that."

Apple said that the separate removal of iPhones and iPads from its German website would not affect buyers from retail stores and other authorised outlets in the country.

A spokesman for Apple said: "All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple's online store in Germany shortly. Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago."

Updated to show that MMI needs to post a ?100m bond, not ?100

  • RIM to developers: BlackBerry is ready to compete

At its first DevCon event in Amsterdam, RIM touts the upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS as a 'future-proof' platform for use in many devices, as it tells developers its success is built on their support

(ZDNet UK - Mobile IT)

  • Gov?t and business to pool clients' personal data

Government departments such as the DWP and private sector bodies will share the information they hold in order to detect tax, welfare and insurance fraud, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has said

(ZDNet UK - Security)

  • Google set to build backbone of its 1Gbps fibre network

The company pushes forward with its Google Fibre plan to build gigabit broadband networks and provide super-fast internet access with the news it is ready to begin laying fibre-optic cable in two cities

(ZDNet UK - Networking)

  • Nicira reveals network virtualisation details

The start-up's Network Virtualization Platform allows virtual networks to be created on top of any type of network hardware, with the promise of reducing vendor lock-in and providing more flexibility in administering security

(ZDNet UK - Networking)

  • Anonymous activists release PCAnywhere source code

An Anonymous-associated hacker says the source code is for Symantec's PCAnywhere remote access software, and the activist has threatened to publish code for Norton Antivirus 'within seven hours'

(ZDNet UK - Security Threats)

  • Woman gets replacement jaw via 3D printer

An elderly woman has received a replacement titanium jaw made using a 3D printing technique, an operation that demonstrates the potential of patient-specific body implants

(ZDNet UK - Emerging Tech)

  • Symantec offered hackers $50k in source code sting

As part of a sting operation, Symantec promised to pay a hacker group $50,000 to keep the source code for some of its flagship security products off the internet, the company confirmed on Monday

(ZDNet UK - Security Threats)

  • Symantec offered hackers $50,000 in source code sting

As part of a sting operation, Symantec promised to pay a hacker group $50,000 to keep the source code for some of its flagship security products off the internet, the company confirmed on Monday

(ZDNet UK - Security Threats)

  • Android malware shifts shape on every download

Symantec, along with other companies, is reporting it has seen Android malware that automatically changes each time it is downloaded ? much like server-side polymorphic viruses aimed at desktops

(ZDNet UK - Security)

  • Smartphones overtake PCs in shipments for first time

Hardware makers shipped more smartphones than PCs last year, according to an analyst report, driven by lower prices and a rising appetite for internet browsing on handsets

(ZDNet UK - Mobile Devices)