Nokia phone gets Whatsapp button

24 April 2013 Last updated at 07:25 ET

Nokia has released a mobile phone with a dedicated WhatsApp physical button.

The feature triggers the cross-platform messaging app which offers a free alternative to SMS texts.

HTC and Nokia have previously released handsets with Facebook-devoted buttons, but this marks a first for WhatsApp.

Analysts suggested the move would make WhatsApp the text app of choice on the handsets, but suggested it would have limited impact on the wider mobile phone market.

Nokia's Asha 210 runs on the firm's proprietary Series 40 operating system and will be targeted at consumers in emerging markets looking for a cheaper alternative to the Finnish firm's Windows Phone range and other companies' smartphones. The OS supports third-party web apps and software written in the Java programming language.

To achieve a targeted retail price of £47 ($72) Nokia decided that the device's 2.4in (6.1cm) screen would not be touch-enabled.

Users have to use its built-in Qwerty keyboard and navigation button to launch and operate apps, so having a dedicated key gives WhatsApp an edge over alternatives on the handset.

In addition owners of the phone are offered a subscription to the app for the device's lifespan rather than having to pay the normal annual fee.

Nokia refused to reveal the financial terms of the arrangement and said it would monitor customer response before deciding whether to include the feature on any of its other devices.

Room to grow

Silicon Valley-based WhatsApp launched in 2009.

Its chief executive Jan Joum recently told the AllThingsD tech site that his firm had more active users than Twitter which claims more than 200 million people use its service at least once a month.

Mr Joum did not give an equivalent figure of his own. However, he did say that WhatsApp processed about eight billion inbound messages and 12 billion outbound messages a day.

According to a study published by tech consultancy Ovum, WhatsApp is the world's third most popular social messaging service after Facebook Chat and Google Chat.

Reports earlier this month suggested the firm was in talks to be taken over by Google in a $1bn deal - however, they were later denied.

A survey by Ovum suggested that 51% of WhatsApp users reduced the amount of SMS messages sent after downloading the app.

That threat has prompted some telecom operators including Telefonica to launch their own rival services, while others such as India's Reliance Communications have preferred to sign formal partnerships with WhatsApp itself.

Since Nokia's Asha range is predominantly targeted at consumers in Asia, Africa and the Middle East any benefits from the tie-up will come from those territories.

"WhatsApp is doing quite well in emerging markets, but you have local players who are outstripping it simply because they are more culturally specific and can therefore outshine the US firm," said Neha Dharia, an analyst at Ovum.

"The most prominent example is in China with WeChat.

"But the emerging markets still offer huge potential for all the social messaging apps to grow because the amount of mobile internet available is still lower than in mature markets."

However, another industry watcher questioned what impact the move would have.

"Having a dedicated hard key is a nice touch and it might help differentiate Nokia's Asha line," said Roberta Cozza, research director at tech analysis firm Gartner.

"But I don't think it will make a big difference for either of the firms involved because there are already lots of affordable low-end full-screen touch-enabled Android phones out there which can be customised to offer quick WhatsApp and other messaging software."

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BitTorrent Sync challenges Dropbox

24 April 2013 Last updated at 10:13 ET

Developers of the BitTorrent file-sharing process have opened an experimental data-synchronising tool up to the public.

BitTorrent Sync uses peer-to-peer technology to send information between users' PCs.

It eliminates the need to upload data to a third party's computer servers, as is the case with services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive.

But one analyst said businesses were unlikely to be tempted by the idea.

Davies Murphy Group's Chris Green said companies would worry about their lack of control over the new process even though it did not rely on a third-party's data centre to update what might be sensitive files.

But he said it might appeal to some members of the public for private use.

Fast and private

BitTorrent is an eight-year old San Francisco-based company offering a range of free-to-use products designed to make it easy and quick to send large files over the internet.

They work by co-ordinating the process so that devices downloading material also share small pieces of already-accessed data with others in order to share the load.

Although the technology has become associated with media piracy due to its use by some media-sharing sites, BitTorrent itself is a legal company that makes money by licensing its technology and brands to business customers.

It began testing the new tool at the start of the year. The facility is categorised as alpha - signalling it is still being tested and may be unstable - but the firm announced on its blog that it was now ready to invite the public to try it out.

It suggested users might find it quicker and more private than the alternatives.

"Since Sync is based on P2P [peer-to-peer technology] and doesn't require a pit-stop in the cloud, you can transfer files at the maximum speed supported by your network," it said.

"Your information is never stored on a server in the cloud; your data is protected by encrypted keys. Your files belong to you, and stay on the devices of your choice."

To prevent unauthorised access to shared data, the software generates a private key for each synched folder on the original device.

This is made up of at least 32 characters and must be entered into all the other devices to which the information is sent to in order for the files to be accessible.

One of the benefits of synching software is that it allows a user to ensure any changes made to a document on one machine are copied to all their other devices.

In its current state, BitTorrent Sync achieves this by noting the change and then copying the whole updated file to other computers, replacing any earlier version.

This means it may be less efficient in some cases than some of the cloud-based services that can detect which parts of a file have been changed and only copy over those bits of the data.

However, BitTorrent has indicated that it too hopes to introduce "differential sync" later this year.

Safety net

The technology has the potential to disrupt the nascent file-synching industry.

Although Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Apple, SugarSync and others offer a limited amount of free storage on their services, they make money by charging customers who need to transfer and synch large files such as video footage or lots of smaller documents.

However, Mr Green suggested the earlier cloud-based technique could ultimately prove superior.

"One of the reasons why Dropbox and Google Drive use central servers as middle-men between your devices is that the server plays an important role in ensuring the most recent version of the document gets pushed to each device and doesn't overwrite more recent updates.

"When you are working on a straight device-to-device peer-to-peer method like this it's a lot harder to ensure that safety net.

"However, there's obvious appeal for some people who like the idea of not being beholden or reliant on a third-party who may have technical problems or go bust taking all their data with them."

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Virgin bill goes viral on Facebook

24 April 2013 Last updated at 11:44 ET By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

A broadband bill sent to a deceased man, which included a fine for late payment, has been shared more than 53,000 times by Facebook users.

Social media experts say it is a reminder of the importance of responding quickly and publicly to complaints made on social networks.

The man's son-in-law, Jim Boyden, posted a photograph of the bill, along with a message addressed to Virgin Media, on the social media network.

Virgin Media said sorry to the family.

Alongside a £63.89 charge the bill stated "D.D Denied-Payer deceased", a reference to the fact the dead man's bank had refused a direct debit payment. Under this Virgin added a "late payment charge" of £10.

"We obviously apologise for the bill and have spoken to Mr Boyden to bring this account to a close more sensitively," a spokesperson told the BBC.

At time of writing Mr Boyden, who put the bill online on Monday night, had not visibly mentioned the apology on Facebook himself.

"I've just placed a little reminder on their Facebook page. This actually amused me to start off with, but their complete lack of response irks me somewhat," he added as a comment to the original complaint last night.

Virgin Media publicly apologised on the site this afternoon.

While the unfortunate action of bills being sent to those who have recently died is far from new, the viral nature of this complaint should serve as a warning to companies, said one social media expert.

"Corporations are very good at promoting themselves, they recognise that everyone needs a Twitter and a Facebook account, they are aware the networks exist but they don't have the strategies in place to deal with the issues that can arise from those networks," said Dr Lisa Harris, head of the digital marketing masters programme at the University of Southampton.

"If they do make a mistake they should say that they are human using the channels they have created themselves."

"A lot of people as a result of seeing this will now think, 'I had that problem as well' - it can mushroom. Companies need to recognize that people have more power than they used to."

BT Head of Customer Services Warren Buckley told the BBC that 40% of its customer feedback now originates on Twitter.

"Clearly we are dealing with customers who aren't happy, and we are doing that very much in public eye, but lots of customers respect the fact that we are on Twitter at all," he said.

"The key is to be honest."

Account closed

In an updated statement for the BBC, Virgin Media said the account has now been closed.

"We offer our sincerest apologies for the wording that appeared on the bill. Automated responses from banks should not appear on customer bills and we're investigating how this happened," said a spokesperson.

"We have a team in place to ensure bereavements are managed sensitively and will ensure this wording is removed from our billing system. As soon as Mr Boyden brought this to our attention, we looked into this matter straight away and can confirm the account has now been closed, with all late payment charges removed."

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Microsoft clinches new Android deal

24 April 2013 Last updated at 12:33 ET

Microsoft has revealed Chinese smartphone maker ZTE has become the latest firm to sign a patent licence deal linked to its use of the Android and Chrome operating systems.

Although both systems are developed by Google, Microsoft claims to own intellectual property rights to some of the software's underlying technologies.

It comes a week after a similar deal was struck with manufacturer Foxconn.

Huawei and Google's own hardware units remain hold-outs.

Microsoft said that 80% of Android smartphones sold in the US and a majority worldwide were now covered under licensing agreements.

The Redmond-based firm added that it had itself paid out more than £2.6bn ($4bn) over the past decade to cover its use of others' inventions.

Licensee list lengthens

According to the Foss patents blog, ZTE marks the 20th device maker known to have signed an Android licence deal with the Windows developer.

Microsoft has previously said the technologies involved included methods to make Android devices surf the web quickly and control the way users interact with documents and ebooks.

Microsoft has already signed royalty agreements with HTC, Samsung, LG, Sharp and Acer.

It added Hon Hai - parent company of device assembler Foxconn - to that list on 16 April in an agreement that covers any client who uses one of the Taiwanese firm's factories.

A deal with Huawei - which makes Ascend-branded Android devices - may also be on the cards: the Shenzhen-based firm revealed it had begun talks with Microsoft in an interview given to the BBC in November 2011.

However, it may be left to the courts to decide whether Google also needs to agree to a deal - or if Microsoft's patent claims are overstated.

Google has accused Microsoft of staging unjustified "anti-competitive patent attacks" against its mobile operating system and said its acquisition of Motorola Mobility in 2012 would help it "protect" the Android ecosystem thanks to it gaining extra patents of its own.

However, the takeover and subsequent decision to build its own laptop - the Chromebook Pixel - expose it to litigation since it now makes devices of its own.

According to Foss Patents, Microsoft is pursuing more than two dozen related patent infringement claims against Google in the US and others in Germany.

Google has also made separate infringement claims of its own against Microsoft.

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Facebook 'must remove memorial page'

24 April 2013 Last updated at 18:03 ET By Jefferson Puff BBC Brasil, Sao Paulo

A Brazilian judge has ordered Facebook to delete the profile of a 24-year-old journalist who died in May last year.

The mother of Juliana Ribeiro Campos filed a case arguing that messages, songs and photos posted by friends and family caused her extreme distress.

Ms Campos worked as a press officer in Campo Grande, central Brazil, and died from complications following surgery.

Her mother, sociology professor Dolores Pereira Coutinho, 50, campaigned for months before taking legal action.

The page has still not been removed and Facebook told the BBC it "does not comment on specific cases".

The company did not clarify whether it had already been officially notified by the court, in Mato Grosso do Sul state.

Judge Vania de Paula Arantes ruled on 19 March and again on 10 April that the page should be immediately shut down.

A further ruling was issued this week warning Facebook that it has 48 hours to completely remove the profile.

The penalty for disobeying the court was set as imprisonment.

Mrs Coutinho tried to delete the profile on her own for seven months, without success, receiving only automatic replies.

After some time Facebook withdrew public access to the profile.

The page was left as a memorial wall only available to friends, who could continue to post tributes.

However, Mrs Coutinho kept up her campaign pressing the social network's office in Sao Paulo for a decision over several months.

Late last year she decided she had had enough.

"This 'wailing wall' just makes me suffer too much," she told the BBC.

"On Christmas Eve many of her 200 friends posted pictures they had taken with her and recalled their memories. She was very charismatic, very popular. I cried for days," she said.

Judge Arantes said making the girl's profile into a "memorial wall" went against "the right of personal dignity and inflicted great suffering on the mother, due to the premature death of her only child".

Facebook guidelines include a right to remove a deceased user's timeline and all content associated with it upon request by a verified family member.

However, the social network also set out the idea of a memorial wall in the company's blog in October 2009.

"I suppose they won't totally exclude someone's presence on the website because they do not want the chain to be broken," Mrs Coutinho said.

"It's a network, and each person connects dozens of others. That's the only reason I can find for their resistance," she added, insisting that she is not seeking any form of compensation.

"I just want them to do what the judge ordered, that's all. I have the right to delete this page."

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Thumb-type keyboard takes on Qwerty

24 April 2013 Last updated at 22:03 ET

Researchers have created a new keyboard layout which they claim makes "thumb-typing" faster on touchscreen devices such as tablets and large smartphones.

Dr Per Ola Kristensson, from St Andrews University, said traditional Qwerty keyboards had trapped users in "suboptimal text entry interfaces".

The new design has been dubbed KALQ, after the order of keys on one line.

Its creators used "computational optimisation techniques" to identify which gave the best performance.

Researchers at St Andrews, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany and Montana Tech in the US joined together to create the virtual keyboard, which will be available as a free app for Android-based devices.

According to the research team "two-thumb typing is ergonomically very different" from typing on physical Qwerty keyboards, which were developed for typewriters in the late 19th Century.

Continue reading the main story

We believe KALQ provides a large enough performance improvement to incentivise users to switch"

End Quote Dr Per Ola Kristensson St Andrews University

They claim normal users using a Qwerty keyboard on a touchscreen device were limited to typing at a rate of about 20 words per minute.

This is much slower than the rate for normal physical keyboards on computers.

Researchers said the key to optimising a keyboard for two thumbs was to minimise long typing sequences that only involved a single thumb.

It was also important to place frequently used letter keys centrally close to each other.

Finding the optimal layout involved minimising the moving time of the thumbs and enabling typing on alternating sides of the tablet.

The results were said to be surprising with all the vowels placed in the area assigned to the right thumb, whereas the left thumb is given more keys.

With the help of an error correction algorithm trained users were able to reach 37 words per minute, researchers said.

Dr Kristensson, lecturer in human computer interaction in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, said: "We believe KALQ provides a large enough performance improvement to incentivise users to switch and benefit from faster and more comfortable typing."

The developers will present their work at the CHI 2013 conference (the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) in Paris on 1 May.

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Clegg rejects 'web snoop' bill plan

25 April 2013 Last updated at 07:01 ET

Home Office plans to store details of Britons' online activity will not happen while the Liberal Democrats are in government, Nick Clegg has said.

The deputy prime minister told his weekly LBC radio phone-in that "what people have dubbed the snooper's charter" was "not going to happen".

There had been reports a redrafted bill, with concessions to win over Lib Dems, might be in the Queen's Speech.

But Downing Street said discussions continued about "the next steps".

The prime minister's official spokesman said the reality was that technological change had not gone away and, while it was a sensitive issue, action was needed "to respond to those changes".

Mr Clegg said he would be willing to accept changes to take account of new technology - such as ensuring each mobile device had its own unique IP address.

But, he said: "What people have dubbed the snooper's charter - I have to be clear with you, that's not going to happen.

"In other words the idea that the government will pass a law which means there will be a record kept of every website you visit, who you communicate with on social media sites, that's not going to happen.

"It's certainly not going to happen with Liberal Democrats in government."

"We all committed ourselves at the beginning of this coalition to learn the lessons from the past, when Labour overdid it, trying to constantly keep tabs on everyone. We have a commitment in this Coalition Agreement to end the storage of internet information unless there is a very good reason to do so."

He said he did not believe that people backed the idea of a "treasure trove of data which you can then dip into if you need to", and said there were doubts whether it was even technically feasible.

Lib Dem president Tim Farron tweeted that his party had "killed the Snooper Charter" and was "standing up for civil liberties & freedom of speech".

There was no immediate response from the Home Office.

The draft Communications Data Bill was sent "back to the drawing board" in December after scathing criticism from a joint committee of MPs and peers.

The plans in the draft bill included:

• Internet service providers having to store for a year all details of online communication in the UK - such as the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it was made.
• They would also be having to store for the first time all Britons' web browsing history and details of messages sent on social media, webmail, voice calls over the internet and gaming, in addition to emails and phone calls
• Police not having to seek permission to access details of these communications, if investigating a crime
• Police having to get a warrant from the home secretary to be able to see the actual content of any messages
• Four bodies having access to data: the police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the intelligence agencies and HM Revenue and Customs

The MPs and peers added that the draft bill paid "insufficient attention to the duty to respect the right to privacy" and went "much further than it need or should for the purpose of providing necessary and justifiable official access to communications data".

Home Secretary Theresa May insisted the proposed changes were vital for countering paedophiles, extremists and fraudsters.

The home secretary wants the bill in place next year. She said the measures would help modernise crime-fighting laws, to combat criminals' use of internet-based phone calls and things like instant messaging and social media sites like Facebook.

The draft Communications Data Bill was the latest in a long-running series of attempts by the Home Office to change the law to allow greater monitoring - or access to - online activity in the UK.

The plan initially suggested when Labour was in government was for a giant database to store the details of all mobile phone calls and internet traffic, such as who called who, or who emailed who when, but not the content of the phone calls or emails.

Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch welcomed Mr Clegg's announcement.

Deputy director Emma Carr said: "Last year Skype gave British police more data than any other government, including the USA. To say that the police can't get data from the internet without this bill is simply wrong.

"Where security or child safety is at risk, companies already comply with police requests and there was a real risk this bill would make the situation worse by driving dangerous people underground into encrypted services.

"Recording the websites we look at and who we email would not have made us safer... it would have made Britain a less attractive place to start a company and put British companies in the position of being paid by the government to spy on their customers."

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Discs reveal phone pioneer's voice

25 April 2013 Last updated at 07:45 ET

The voice of Alexander Graham Bell has been identified for the first time, in a recording from 1885.

On the wax-disc recording, the telephone inventor says: "Hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell."

The recording is among the earliest held by the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the National Museum of American History.

Bell's voice was recorded on to the disc on 15 April 1885 at his Volta laboratory in Washington.

As well as saying his name, he also recites a series of numbers and lines from several Shakespeare plays. The sound clip has been posted online.

"Identifying the voice of Alexander Graham Bell, the man who brought us everyone else's voice, is a major moment in the study of history," said museum director John Gray.

"It enriches what we know about the late 1800s, who spoke, what they said and how they said it."

The disc was too fragile to play using a needle so the museum, along with researchers at the US Library of Congress and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, developed an alternative play-back system that used light and a 3D camera to turn its bumps and grooves into sounds.

Also identified was the voice of Alexander Melville Bell, the inventor's father, in a recording from 1881.

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Google offers clearer search labels

25 April 2013 Last updated at 08:15 ET

Google has agreed to alter its search results in the light of a European investigation into whether it unfairly promoted its own services.

The firm said that it will more clearly label results from YouTube, Google Maps and its other sites.

It also agreed to display links to rivals close to where it displayed its own services on its results page.

EU regulators are asking for feedback and have proposed that the concessions be tested for a month.

If the European Commission accepts them, they will become legally binding for the next five years.

As part of the agreement, Google will clearly separate promoted links from other web search results as well as displaying links to three specialised search rivals "close to its own services in a place that is clearly visible to users".

"The objective of this process is to try to see if we can achieve a settled outcome in this antitrust investigation," said Commission spokesman Antoine Colombani.

But the Microsoft-backed lobby group Initiative for a Competitive Marketplace (Icomp) was not convinced the changes went far enough.

"It is clear that mere labelling is not any kind of solution to the competition concerns that have been identified. Google should implement the same ranking policy to all websites," it said.

It added it would comment further once it had fully evaluated the proposals.

Dominant in Europe

Other concessions being offered by Google include:

• To offer all websites the option to opt out from the use of all their content in Google's search services, while ensuring that any opt-out does not "unduly" affect the sites' ranking in its general results
• To offer specialised search sites which focus on product search or local search the option to mark certain categories of information so that they are not indexed or used by Google
• To no longer include in its agreements with publishers any written or unwritten obligations that would require them to source online search advertisements exclusively from Google
• To no longer restrict advertisers from running search advertising campaigns across rival ad platforms

An earlier US Federal Trade Commission investigation into how Google displayed links to its services concluded there was no competition issue.

Explaining why it took a different view the Commission said: "Bing and Yahoo represent a substantial alternative to Google in web searches in the USA; their combined market share is around 30%. In contrast, Google has been holding market shares well above 90% in most European countries."

"The way Google presents its web search results therefore has a much more significant impact on users and on the competitive process in Europe than it does in the USA."

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Google searches predict market moves

25 April 2013 Last updated at 11:06 ET By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

The volume of Google searches for finance-related terms may predict moves in markets, research suggests.

As the search volume on generic terms such as "debt", "portfolio" and "stocks" fell, the Dow Jones average tended to go up - and vice versa.

An investment strategy based on these search volume data between 2004 and 2011 would have made a profit of 326%.

The analysis in Scientific Reports was based on publicly available data from the Google Trends service.

It joins an ever-increasing array of "big data" studies in which aggregated data are beginning to give striking insights into behaviour.

Web searches are increasingly integral to our decision-making, and because of its dominance among search engines, Google data have already proven their worth in big-data studies.

Continue reading the main story

I think it really opens clear new opportunities to understand collective behaviour"

End Quote Suzy Moat University College London

Google's own researchers found that searches can track the spread of influenza and more recently showed that they "predict the present" with regard to economic indicators.

In 2011, the Bank of England determined that searches for relevant terms could even predict house prices.

The new report gives hints that straightforward analysis of interest in general finance-related terms can be a good predictor of overall market health.

"We were intrigued by the idea that stock market data serves as a really large record of all the actions people take in the stock market, but don't necessarily tell us much about how people decided to take those actions," said Suzy Moat of University College London, co-author of the paper.

"We wondered whether by looking at Google, we could get some insight into some early information-gathering stages of how people make decisions," she told BBC News.

'Clear new opportunities'

The team started with a set of 98 search terms and tracked how search volumes on those terms varied over a period between 2004 and 2011, and correlated those with the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Generally, searches for the most finance-focused terms such as "stocks" and "revenue" went down before rises in that market average, whereas when those terms were searched for more often, the average tended to fall in subsequent weeks.

The team developed a hypothetical investment strategy through the period, buying notional stocks in weeks that financial-term search volume fell, and selling them when volume rose - a strategy that would have gained them a profit of 326%. By comparison, simply buying in 2004 and selling in 2011 would have yielded a profit of 16%.

Tobias Preis of Warwick University, another co-author of the paper, said the link between heightened search activity and dips of the market average bore out the well-known phenomenon of loss aversion.

"People are more afraid to sell something that they already have, rather than buying something," he told BBC News.

"It makes sense and is in line with the scientific concept that there are more efforts to collect information before we see subsequent negative moves on an aggregated scale.

"From a scientific point of view, it's really excellent that... we have really got the technology - or the data based on technology - which makes it possible to look to some extent into early decision-making processes."

The researchers have already been approached by executives within the financial industry to try to put their findings to use, and have recently received a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to develop a "big data" software platform specifically aimed at the emerging business models that will depend on it.

But Dr Moat said that more broadly, "big data" was a boon to studies across disciplines, from the financial to the sociological.

"I think it really opens clear new opportunities to understand collective behaviour," she explained.

"Large data sets allow us to look for patterns in people's behaviour which we can then use as a predictions for things that repeat in the future.

"Having these large data sets allows us to look for those patterns on a much more specific basis - obviously it gives us a much larger sample than a laboratory-based experiment, and more accurate information than sending out surveys."

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