White House threatens Cispa veto

17 April 2013 Last updated at 08:25 ET

The White House has threatened to veto a controversial act due to go before the House of Representatives this week.

The US government wants more privacy protections in the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa).

After failing to pass through the Senate last year, the bill has already had several amendments.

Intended to protect corporate networks from cyber-attacks, it allows private companies to share cybersecurity information with government agencies.

Opponents say that this is creating a backdoor for governments to snoop on individuals' data, a point taken on board by the government.

A White House statement said: "The administration remains concerned that the bill does not require private entities to take reasonable steps to remove irrelevant personal information when sending cybersecurity data to the government or other private sector entities."

'Fatally flawed'

Despite this, the bill has found many friends including large technology firms such as AT&T, Comcast, Intel and Oracle.

This week IBM has sent 200 executives to Washington to lobby for the bill.

In a statement the firm said: "IBM believes we can build stronger, more efficient defences against cyber-threats by enabling better information sharing and providing clear authority for the private sector to defend its own networks, as proposed in the Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa)."

But opponents remain concerned the bill allows a wide range of data to be shared with government. Last month a petition with 100,000 signatures was submitted to the White House.

Opposition has been particularly vocal from privacy groups, with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) describing the latest iteration of the bill as "fatally flawed".

The bill's sponsor, Republican Mike Rogers, caused anger on Twitter when he suggested in a speech that the typical opponent of the bill was "a 14-year-old tweeter in the basement".

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Video games face tax break probe

17 April 2013 Last updated at 10:30 ET

The UK video games trade body Tiga says it is "disappointed" that the EU has decided to probe a planned tax break.

The deduction was due to have been introduced on 1 April, but was delayed after the European Commission failed to approve the plan.

On Tuesday the regulators ruled an in-depth investigation was needed as they believed there was "no obvious market failure" that needed to be addressed.

The UK government says it remains committed to the proposal.

The scheme would see 25% tax relief offered on up to 80% of a game's production budget if the cash was spent designing, producing and testing the title in the UK.

Games with a primary focus of gambling or advertising would not qualify, and titles involving pornography or other "extreme material" would also be excluded.

The chancellor George Osborne described the relief as being ""among the most generous in the world" when he announced the proposal in December.

Canada and France already offer similar incentives, but in the French case the tax break is limited to games whose development costs total at least 150,000 euros (£129,128; $196,876).

The UK decided not to impose such a threshold after a consultation exercise highlighted the value of offering the relief to the fast-growing smart device video games market.

The government suggested other restrictions would prevent the offer being abused by non-commercial games.

Subsidy race risk

Tiga suggests that Canada's tax breaks had proved particularly enticing to the industry causing "several hundred" jobs to be lost in the UK over recent years. Quebec offers tax credits covering up to 37.5% of video game labour expenses, and Ontario up to 40%.

However, the lobby group told the BBC that interest in shifting production had "dried up" following the chancellor's Autumn Statement.

Despite this the EU's competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia said he doubted that aid was needed to stimulate video game production, and added that he feared giving the UK the green light to introduce relief could spark a subsidy race across the bloc.

"The market for developing video games is dynamic and commercially promising," he said.

"It is not clear whether the taxpayer should be subsidising this activity. Such subsidies could even distort competition."

France introduced its games tax relief scheme in 2008. When the measure came up for renewal in January 2012 the EU carried out a 12-month investigation before agreeing to allow it to continue.

Tiga said that outcome gave it reason to be optimistic that the UK's plan would also survive.

"I would be surprised if it took as long to agree as in France's case because we've had the precedent, and UK officials have been discussing their scheme with the EU for some time," said Richard Wilson, Tiga's chief executive.

"Certainly the expectation that the relief is incoming has already had an impact. In the past year Activision, Blizzard, Microsoft and Konami have all created jobs here for the first time in some years."

Not all industry insiders are in favour of tax breaks.

Several US-based visual effects (VFX) professionals have mounted a campaign to ban such subsidies for their business.

VFX workers provide services to movie, television and video game sectors including creating high-end animations and keying footage of actors on to computer-generated backgrounds.

The campaigners claim that "tax kickbacks" have caused instability in their business as VFX facilities are being put under pressure to shift work to wherever the best subsidies are on offer, to allow the studios that commission their work to qualify for the discounts.

"This has led to some studios actually requiring VFX facilities to open satellite studios in subsidised regions and move the work there," they said in a letter.

"Many that have not been able to make the jump have gone out of business. Many professionals who are unable to move are laid off, leading to bankruptcy and often foreclosure if they own a home."

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US team's battery 'breakthrough'

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

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

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

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

However, safety issues still remain.

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

Battery breakthrough

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Repeatable technique

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Safety fear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sat-nav warns of cyclist crash risks

17 April 2013 Last updated at 16:42 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

A sat-nav system which warns lorry drivers when they are approaching roads where they are most at risk of hitting a cyclist has been unveiled.

Navevo's device is currently limited to offering alerts in London where transport officials provided details of the 100 most dangerous spots.

But the Hertfordshire-based firm says it intends to expand coverage to other areas later.

A cycle safety group welcomed the news but said further action was needed.

The announcement comes just over a week since a cyclist was killed while cycling to work at University College London.

Dr Katharine Giles was fatally injured after being hit by a tipper truck turning onto a Westminster street.

Her death prompted the mayor, Boris Johnson, to discuss banning heavy goods vehicles (HGV) from the capital unless they were fitted with cycle safety equipment.

Sound and vision

According to Transport for London - which provided the hotspot data - 53 cyclists were killed on London's roads between 2009 and 2012.

Of those 28 were the victims of collisions with large goods vehicles.

Continue reading the main story

These safety innovations are interesting but there is something else coming down the road that could really help save cyclists' lives.

There's a plan to change European rules that dictate how long a lorry can be.

They were originally brought in to stop trucks getting too big and wrecking roads and bridges, but the unfortunate side-effect has been to stunt the size of the cab at the front.

That's why they're all shaped like a brick, which limits how aerodynamic they can be, and how safe for other road users.

The rule changes won't mean bigger loads, but they will pave the way for different, bullet-shaped cabs, and that means bigger windows and fewer, dangerous blind-spots where cyclists can disappear.

It'll be a good four or five years before you see different shaped lorries on the roads, but some believe they could help save hundreds of lives every year.

The authority said it hoped latest innovation might help address the problem.

"This is the first time that this information has been made available to a company specifically to provide additional information for HGV drivers," a spokesman told the BBC.

"We are happy to work with other developers should they wish to provide similar information within their products."

In Navevo's case the data will be used to flash a warning symbol on its sat-nav maps when a driver approaches a "warning zone" with a 50m (164ft) radius circle drawn around the area.

In addition the machine can be set to sound an audible tone when the vehicle enters the highlighted space.

The firm said it opted not to sound the alarm at every junction as it would have proved counterproductive, but said that it planned to add to the initial 100 locations in London as well as expanding to other cities.

It added that the updates would be offered to all purchasers of its ProNav PNN420 system free of charge.

"The safety of drivers, cyclists and other users of the road is a concern for everybody and we are proud to lead the navigation industry by launching this world first safety feature," said chief executive Nick Caesari.

British Cycling - the national governing body for cycling which campaigns on road safety - said the move was a step in the right direction.

"Any technology that can help protect cyclists is welcome and we applaud TfL and Navevo for coming up with a system that can warn drivers about particularly dangerous junctions," said policy director Martin Gibbs.

"However, this issue cannot be solved by technology alone.

"Over half of cyclist deaths in London involve HGVs so we'd like to see restrictions on the times when they can enter cities as well as mandatory fitting of sensors, side-bars and better HGV education on cyclist awareness."

Navevo's system is based on historic data showing the most popular cycle routes and common HGV travel plans, and seeing where they coincide.

However, Volvo recently unveiled a more active approach to the problem.

The Chinese-owned vehicle manufacturer has announced an update to its pedestrian detection radar system which will also identify cyclists. If a collision is anticipated the system sounds an alarm and automatically deploys the brakes.

The optional extra is due to be introduced in 2014 and will initially be limited to seven car models in the firm's range.

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TalkTalk fined over silent calls

18 April 2013 Last updated at 06:37 ET

Telecoms operator TalkTalk has been fined £750,000 by the regulator Ofcom for making an excessive number of abandoned and silent calls.

In total the company made about 9,000 silent or abandoned calls to potential customers in 2011.

They were made through two call centres during a telemarketing campaign to attract new subscribers.

TalkTalk said it had terminated its relationship with those businesses as soon as the problem was discovered.

Software error

Ofcom said TalkTalk had exceeded the limit for such calls on four separate occasions in a seven week period.

Continue reading the main story

Silent and abandoned calls can cause annoyance and distress to consumers"

End Quote Claudio Pollack Ofcom

Abandoned calls occur when a person answers the phone, but the caller then hangs up.

A silent call is where the phone rings, but there is only silence on the other end of the line, and no information message is played.

Ofcom said such problems were often caused by answer machine detection (AMD) technology.

Sometimes the software mistakenly identifies an answer machine or voicemail, and terminates the call, even though it has been answered by a human being.

Fines raised

"Silent and abandoned calls can cause annoyance and distress to consumers," said Claudio Pollack of Ofcom.

"Companies must abide by the law and Ofcom's policies. If they fail to do so then Ofcom will take firm action," he said.

TalkTalk said it was fair that Ofcom had imposed the fine, and blamed the two call centre operators concerned, Teleperformance Limited and McAlpine Marketing Limited.

It said it was in the process of recovering the fine from them.

"TalkTalk demands high standards from the companies it works with and as a result TalkTalk immediately stopped using these suppliers," said a spokesperson.

Last year, energy firm Npower was fined £60,000 by Ofcom for a series of abandoned calls which were made in 2011.

Two years ago the maximum fine for abandoned calls was raised to £2m.

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Anonymous offers citizen journalism

18 April 2013 Last updated at 07:05 ET

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

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

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

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

Anonymous memorabilia

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

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

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

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

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

But not everyone is convinced about its output.

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

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

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

North Korea

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

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

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

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

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Coral robot turns to Kickstarter

18 April 2013 Last updated at 07:40 ET

Scientists developing a robot to repair coral reefs around the world have turned to crowd-sourcing website Kickstarter to raise funds.

The Coralbot team from Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University are hoping to raise $107,000 (£70,000) before June.

The campaign, which began this week, has more than 80 backers and has raised nearly $3,000 (£1,900) so far.

Coralbots are able to navigate their way across damaged reefs, transplanting pieces of healthy coral as they go.

Belize mission

The robots have already been tested at sea, but the team is keen to move to the next stage - giving them computer vision to "see" healthy bits of coral and design arms to pick up and put down the pieces in the right places.

"Kickstarter funds will let us purchase and assemble this kit, and allow us to conduct our first live demonstration of the robot team on a coral reef in a public aquarium," said marine biologist and Coralbot team member Lea-Anne Henry.

"This will provide a conservation solution that paves the way for coral reef restoration across the globe."

The team has developed several different coralbot models, but plans to work with one dubbed Nessie.

It wants to build two robots and demonstrate what they can do at an aquarium in Edinburgh in the autumn.

If successful, the robots will then be sent on their first mission, to repair coral reefs in Belize.

Preservation need

A quarter of all marine life inhabits coral reefs, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

In coastal areas, they also provide an important barrier against natural disasters such as storms, hurricanes, and typhoons.

There are fears coral reefs may begin to disappear within 50 years.

Besides destructive fishing practices, other contributing factors are careless tourism and carbon-dioxide emissions that make seawater more acidic, leading to the death of key coral species.

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Clothes get 'computerised fabrics'

18 April 2013 Last updated at 08:01 ET

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

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

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

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

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

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

Concept designs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Nokia shares fall after sales drop

18 April 2013 Last updated at 08:11 ET

Shares of Nokia have fallen 13% after higher sales of its Lumia smartphones failed to offset a decline in its mobile phone unit in the first quarter.

In its earnings report, the Finnish firm said sales of Lumia handsets rose 27% in the first quarter of 2013, but that total sales of mobile phones fell 30% to 1.59bn euros.

Revenue fell 20% to 5.85bn euros, down from 7.35bn euros a year earlier.

Nokia is trying to catch up with rival smartphone makers Apple and Samsung.

The company reported a 339m-euro (£290m) loss in the January-March period, down from a loss of 1.57bn euros last year.

In the first quarter of this year, Nokia shipped 55.8 million handsets. It sold a total of 11.1 million smartphones including 5.6 million Lumia phones, 500,000 Symbian units and five million units of its entry-level Asha phones, which fell 46%.

"The shortfall is in the cheaper mobile phone side, where both volumes and average selling prices came lower than expected. That is of course a bit worrying, since that has been their bread and butter business in the Devices and Services unit," said Hakan Wranne, analyst at Swedbank.

"I think we will see the market's profit estimates for 2014 come down," he added.

The only bright spot in the report was Nokia's Lumia smartphone range, for which the company expects to see more demand in coming quarters.

The Lumia uses Microsoft Windows software, after Nokia abandoned its own operating system two years ago.

"Six million Lumias is quite promising," said Francisco Jeronimo, research manager at IDC, a tech research firm.

"They are on a right track and we can see a much better year for Nokia smartphones. They are far from volumes of Samsung and Apple, but that is not where Nokia is trying to compete now. Nokia is trying to go for the mass market.

"They are trying to compete on the segment where consumers are moving from feature phones to smartphones, but they want cheap smartphones."

In other areas of the company, its telecoms equipment venture, Nokia Siemens Networks, reported a fall in sales.

"We have areas where we are making progress and areas where we are further increasing the focus," said Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop, who was hired in 2010 to revive the company.

"For example, people are responding positively to the Lumia portfolio and our volumes are increasing quarter over quarter.

"On the other hand, our mobile phones business faces a difficult competitive environment, and we are taking tactical actions and bringing new innovation to market to address our challenges," he added.

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Twitter launches #Music service

18 April 2013 Last updated at 09:23 ET

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surfacing songs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apple's failure

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

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

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

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

Ping was closed in September last year.

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