Samsung plans curved-screen phones

25 September 2013 Last updated at 04:55 ET

Samsung Electronics, the world's best-selling smartphone maker, is planning to launch handsets with curved displays.

The new devices will have plastic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels, the company said at a Galaxy Note 3 launch event in Seoul.

"We plan to introduce a smartphone with a curved display in South Korea in October," said DJ Lee, Samsung's head of strategic marketing for mobile.

But he revealed no further details.

Digital display technology is progressing towards curved, bendy and foldable screens.

In January, Samsung exhibited prototype products with bendy and extendable screens, but doubts remain as to how such technology can be mass-produced cheaply and reliably.

"A curved screen isn't going to radically change the user's experience of a smartphone, but it does help Samsung differentiate itself in a crowded market where most phones are homogenous, flat-screen rectangles," Ben Wood, analyst at research company CCS Insight, told the BBC.

"My understanding is that these new phones will form part of Samsung's Active range, so the curved screen is probably to do with making the phone more flexible and rugged," he added.

Curved displays already feature in large-screen TVs, such as those produced by Samsung and its Korean rival, LG Electronics.

On Wednesday, LG launched a 55in (140cm) curved OLED TV in the UK.

Samsung has also been moving into wearable technology, such as its Galaxy Gear wristwatch phone.

Smartphones are now the dominant type of phone, with CCS Insight expecting one billion to be sold in 2013 out of a total of 1.7 billion mobile phones.

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Valve announces Steam Machine trial

25 September 2013 Last updated at 14:32 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

Valve has invited members of the public to become part of tests for its forthcoming video games hardware.

The firm said it would send out 300 prototype Steam Machines, which are designed for use in the living room.

The company added that other manufacturers would begin selling devices running its games-focused operating system SteamOS next year.

The move was described as "audacious" by one analyst, but another had doubts about who would buy the devices.

Console makers - including Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft - typically do not let the public take hold of their hardware until it is ready for release.

Valve currently offers its Steam platform as software running on others' systems - Microsoft's Windows, Apple's Mac OS, Sony's PlayStation 3 and various Linux-based software. It acts as a marketplace and a way for gamers to play against each other and share titles.

Valve uses Steam to promote its own games - including Half Life, Portal, and Dota 2 - as well as those written by third-party developers, from whom it takes a cut of the sales.

It does not release sales statistics - but estimates from consultancy IHS Screen Digest suggest Steam is responsible for 75% of PC game sales, bringing in about $1bn (£620m) in 2012.

There are close to 3,000 games on the service.

In-home streaming

Valve said that members of the public picked would receive a "high-performance prototype" designed for users who wanted "the most control possible" over their hardware.

"The input from testers should come in many forms: bug reports, forum posts, concept art, 3D prints, haikus, and also very publicly stated opinions," it said.

It acknowledged that the majority of games in its library would not run natively on its equipment during the beta trial, but added that "the rest will work seamlessly via in-home streaming", indicating that they can be used if run on another PC.

The firm said a "small number" of applicants would be chosen according to their past contributions to its community, but the majority would be picked at random.

It added that those taking part would receive the boxes this year and could make changes to the hardware and software, including the installation of another operating system.

The news comes two days after the company unveiled details of SteamOS. A third announcement is scheduled for Friday.

Hard sell

"It's an audacious idea to release a Linux-based system this late in the game," said Lewis Ward, a video games analyst at market research firm IDC.

"They're going to listen very closely to their customers to see what works and doesn't work and they will crunch a lot of numbers - what we call big data.

"People may find the experience much worse than existing consoles - and it's natural to compare things - but I assume that Valve has done its homework in advance and is not going to put this out there into their hands until it feels that it's solid."

However, another industry watcher said he was surprised more information had not been provided, adding that Valve still had to prove why consumers needed another box to connect to their TV.

"I don't know who they are trying to sell the Steam Box to," said Rob Crossley, associate editor of Computer And Video Games news site.

"If they are trying to sell it to the PC audience you're saying to someone who has already purchased a £1,000 machine that they should buy another £500 machine on top to play the same games in a different room.

"That is strange proposition and I struggle to think that will be successful."

New controllers

Valve has indicated, however, that a forthcoming announcement about a controller might help woo the public.

"We have some more to say very soon on the topic of input," it said on its site.

The company's founder, Gabe Newell, told the BBC in March that it was working on a way to use sensors to measure a gamer's body states.

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Gabe Newell told the BBC about plans for a new controller in March

"If you think of a game like Left For Dead - which was trying to put you into a sort of horror movie - if you don't change the experience of what the player is actually feeling then it stops being a horror game," he explained.

"So, you need to actually be able to directly measure how aroused the player is - what their heart rate is, things like that - in order to offer them a new experience each time they play."

Mr Crossley said that this could be a winning idea.

"Valve two years ago hired a behavioural psychologist to read different things that happen to the player as they play video games," he said.

"The intriguing thing is that if a game can know how you are feeling then all of a sudden some incredible things can happen. When you are calm it can spook you, when you are stressed and fatigued it can reduce the challenge.

"This is in some ways a utopian vision for the future of video games."

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Apple Maps flaw causes runway alerts

25 September 2013 Last updated at 15:42 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

An Alaskan airport has closed an aircraft access route because of a flaw with Apple's Maps app.

Fairbanks International Airport told a local newspaper that in the past three weeks two motorists had driven along the taxiway and across one of its runways.

Apple's app had directed users along the taxiway but did not specifically tell them to drive onto the runway.

The firm has now issued a temporary fix.

Users searching for directions are told they are "not available" rather than showing the earlier route.

A spokesman for Apple was unable to provide comment.

The airport said it had first complained to the phone-maker three weeks ago via the local attorney general's office.

"We asked them to disable the map for Fairbanks until they could correct it, thinking it would be better to have nothing show up than to take the chance that one more person would do this," Melissa Osborn, chief of operations at the airport, told the Alaska Dispatch newspaper.

She added that barricades had since been erected to block access to the final stretch of the taxiway and that they would not be removed until Apple had updated its directions.

The BBC still experienced the issue when it tested the app early on Wednesday, asking for directions to the site from a property to the east of the airport. By contrast the Google Maps app provided a different, longer route which takes drivers to the property's car park.

A spokeswoman for the airport said that Apple had finally disabled the faulty directions at about 19:00BST.

Warnings ignored

Apple faced criticism after it ditched Google's service as its default maps option last year.

Complaints of inaccuracies followed, including placing Dublin Airport about 17km (11 miles) away from its true location after apparently confusing the site with a farm named Airfield.

The Australian police went so far as to warn that Apple's software was "life threatening" after motorists became stranded in a national park after being given the wrong directions to the city of Mildura, Victoria.

Chief executive Tim Cook posted a letter to the firm's website apologising for the "frustration" caused and promised "we are doing everything we can to make Maps better".

The company has since taken over several other mapping software developers including Locationary, Hopstop and Embark.

Reviews of its latest operating system, iOS 7, noted that its Maps product had improved, with the Guardian newspaper reporting that Apple's "POI (points of interest) database is getting better".

However, the latest mishap indicates problems remain.

Fairbanks Airport said the drivers involved in the 6 September and 20 September incidents had both been from out of town and had ignored signposts warning them that they should not be driving along the taxiway.

"They must have been persistent," the airport's assistant manager Angie Spear told the BBC.

"They had to enter the airport property via a motion-activated gate, and afterwards there are many signs, lights and painted markings, first warning that aircraft may share the road and then that drivers should not be there at all.

"They needed to drive over a mile with all this before reaching the runway. But the drivers disregarded all that because they were following the directions given on their iPhones."

The runway the motorists crossed was used by 737 jets among other aircraft. No one was injured.

"All these types of mapping software have flaws but the problem for Apple is that because it's such a high-profile brand, it gets a lot of attention," said Neil McCartney from the McCartney Media and Telecoms consultancy.

"It's very important for a company in that sort of situation to acknowledge a problem when it is reported and then put it right as fast as possible."

Nick Dillon, senior device analyst at research house Ovum, added that Fairbanks Airport's complaint illustrated how hard the mapping business was to get right.

"With Apple Maps the firm has made a rare misstep by releasing a product which has not lived up to its own high standards.

"Apple evidently did not fully grasp the complexity involved in deploying a mapping service and its continuing woes show that it is not an easy thing to fix."

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Computer made from tiny carbon tubes

25 September 2013 Last updated at 17:47 ET By James Morgan Science reporter, BBC News

The first computer built entirely with carbon nanotubes has been unveiled, opening the door to a new generation of digital devices.

"Cedric" is only a basic prototype but could be developed into a machine which is smaller, faster and more efficient than today's silicon models.

Nanotubes have long been touted as the heir to silicon's throne, but building a working computer has proven awkward.

The breakthrough by Stanford University engineers is published in Nature.

Cedric is the most complex carbon-based electronic system yet realised.

So is it fast? Not at all. It might have been in 1955.

Continue reading the main story

Cedric's vital statistics

• 1 bit processor
• Speed: 1 kHz
• 178 transistors
• 10-200 nanotubes per transistor
• 2 billion carbon atoms
• Turing complete
• Multitasking

The computer operates on just one bit of information, and can only count to 32.

"In human terms, Cedric can count on his hands and sort the alphabet. But he is, in the full sense of the word, a computer," says co-author Max Shulaker.

"There is no limit to the tasks it can perform, given enough memory".

In computing parlance, Cedric is "Turing complete". In principle, it could be used to solve any computational problem.

It runs a basic operating system which allows it to swap back and forth between two tasks - for instance, counting and sorting numbers.

And unlike previous carbon-based computers, Cedric gets the answer right every time.

Imperfection-immune

"People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics, but there have been few demonstrations. Here is the proof," said Prof Subhasish Mitra, lead author on the study.

The Stanford team hope their achievement will galvanise efforts to find a commercial successor to silicon chips, which could soon encounter their physical limits.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are hollow cylinders composed of a single sheet of carbon atoms.

They have exceptional properties which make them ideal as a semiconductor material for building transistors, the on-off switches at the heart of electronics.

For starters, CNTs are so thin - thousands could fit side-by-side in a human hair - that it takes very little energy to switch them off.

"Think of it as stepping on a garden hose. The thinner the pipe, the easier it is to shut off the flow," said HS Philip Wong, co-author on the study.

Continue reading the main story

How small is a carbon computer chip?

• 100 microns - width of human hair
• 10 microns - water droplet
• 8 microns - transistors in Cedric
• 625 nanometres (nm) - wavelength of red light
• 20-450 nm - single viruses
• 22 nm latest silicon chips
• 9 nm - smallest carbon nanotube chip
• 6 nm - cell membrane
• 1 nm - single carbon nanotube

But while single-nanotube transistors have been around for 15 years, no-one had ever put the jigsaw pieces together to make a useful computing device.

So how did the Stanford team succeed where others failed? By overcoming two common bugbears which have bedevilled carbon computing.

First, CNTs do not grow in neat, parallel lines. "When you try and line them up on a wafer, you get a bowl of noodles," says Mitra.

The Stanford team built chips with CNTs which are 99.5% aligned - and designed a clever algorithm to bypass the remaining 0.5% which are askew.

They also eliminated a second type of imperfection - "metallic" CNTs - a small fraction of which always conduct electricity, instead of acting like semiconductors that can be switched off.

To expunge these rogue elements, the team switched off all the "good" CNTs, then pumped the remaining "bad" ones full of electricity - until they vaporised. The result is a functioning circuit.

The Stanford team call their two-pronged technique "imperfection-immune design". Its greatest trick? You don't even have to know where the imperfections lie - you just "zap" the whole thing.

"These are initial necessary steps in taking carbon nanotubes from the chemistry lab to a real environment," said Supratik Guha, director of physical sciences for IBM's Thomas J Watson Research Center.

But hang on - what if, say, Intel, or another chip company, called up and said "I want a billion of these". Could Cedric be scaled up and factory-produced?

In principle, yes: "There is no roadblock", says Franz Kreupl, of the Technical University of Munich in Germany.

"If research efforts are focused towards a scaled-up (64-bit) and scaled-down (20-nanometre transistor) version of this computer, we might soon be able to type on one."

Shrinking the transistors is the next challenge for the Stanford team. At a width of eight microns (8,000 nanometres) they are much fatter than today's most advanced silicon chips.

But while it may take a few years to achieve this gold standard, it is now only a matter of time - there is no technological barrier, says Shulaker.

"In terms of size, IBM has already demonstrated a nine-nanometre CNT transistor.

"And as for manufacturing, our design is compatible with current industry processes. We used the same tools as Intel, Samsung or whoever.

"So the billions of dollars invested into silicon has not been wasted, and can be applied for CNTs."

For 40 years we have been predicting the end of silicon. Perhaps that end is now in sight.

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In-game app fees face crackdown

25 September 2013 Last updated at 18:52 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

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One father explains how his daughter spent £300 on app fees

A UK watchdog is threatening action against video game app-makers it finds in breach of consumer protection laws.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is concerned about in-game charges, saying it has seen evidence of "potentially unfair and aggressive commercial practices" after studying 38 popular titles. It has not said which they are.

Children might be particularly susceptible to such tactics, it warns.

As a consequence it has proposed new guidelines for developers.

These would apply to both apps and internet browser-based video games available via Facebook and elsewhere.

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The OFT's Cavendish Elithorn is worried about children being exploited

They include:

• Providing up-front information about the costs associated with a game before consumers download it
• Ensuring that gamers are not misled to believe they must make a payment to proceed if that is not the case, for example, if they could wait for a period of time instead
• Preventing the use of language or anything else that might exploit a child's inexperience, for example, implying an in-game character would be disappointed if they did not spend money
• Making it clear how to contact the business if the gamer has a complaint
• Only taking a payment if the account holder provides "informed consent", in other words a charge cannot be made because a password had recently been entered for something else

The OFT said some of the worst examples it had seen involved games that led children through an adventure but then withheld a promised reward until they spent money, and instances where the title made the player feel bad by telling them a virtual animal was "ill" but could be made better if the gamer made a purchase.

"I don't think children are always aware that when they click 'yes' it's spending money," Cavendish Elithorn, executive director at the OFT, told the BBC.

"Although parents can change their device settings to deal with some of that, many parents might not know, or it's only when they get the bill that they realise the setting was wrong.

"So, part of what we're keen to do is support parents in having the right tools to be aware of what their children are doing online."

He added that the OFT has the ability to take legal action against firms in the UK, and was working with partners in Europe, North America and Australia to try and get the same rules applied elsewhere.

So-called freemium games - where the original download is given away free of charge, but the player is encouraged to buy add-on items or services - were pioneered in Asian markets as a way to combat piracy.

They have since spread to the west with EA's Fifa 14, Disney's Where's My Water, King's Candy Crush Saga and Sega's Sonic Dash among popular titles to adopt the model.

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The BBC's Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones explains some of the things you can do to prevent charges from web and phone games

Video games trade body Tiga - which had advised the OFT on the issue - said it found the guidelines encouraging.

"Tiga understands both the legislative responsibilities and concerns of the OFT, and the daily realities of making games in the UK today and around the world," said the organisation's chief executive Richard Wilson.

"I'm pleased to say the OFT and UK games business is leading the way in addressing these issues and helping build a sustainable future for this high tech, highly skilled, global industry."

The Association for United Kingdom Interactive Entertainment (Ukie) said it was useful to have clarity about the OFT's interpretation of the law, but added a note of caution.

"It is vital that any final guidelines, whilst primarily considering the best interests of children, do not inadvertently isolate UK consumers from accessing the games that they want to play, stifle the creativity of games developers or prevent the growth of the UK games industry," said chief executive Jo Twist.

"Consumers are now often able to download and play the latest games for free.

"In-app purchasing is optional within many of these games and is a way for millions of players to access the extra content that they want."

The OFT has invited interested parties to comment on its principles by 21 November.

It then intends to publish a final version of the guidelines by February and begin enforcement action in April.

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Yahoo in recycled email privacy row

26 September 2013 Last updated at 07:33 ET By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

Yahoo email addresses reassigned to a new owner are receiving personal emails intended for the previous owner.

One man told news website Information Week that he had received emails with some highly sensitive information in them.

In June the web firm announced Yahoo addresses and IDs would be reassigned if they had been inactive for a year.

Privacy experts called on Yahoo to address the issue "immediately". Yahoo says it has taken a series of measures to overcome privacy and security fears.

"Before recycling inactive accounts we attempted to reach the account owners [in] multiple ways to notify them that they needed to log in to their account or it would be subject to recycling," a Yahoo representative told the BBC.

"We took many precautions to ensure this was done safely - including deleting any private data from the previous account owner, sending bounce-backs to the senders for at least 30-60 days letting them know the account no longer existed and unsubscribing the accounts from commercial mail."

It is also in the process of rolling out a feature called "Not My Email" where users can report an email that is not intended for them.

The process will come as little comfort to the previous owner of an email account now owned by Tom Jenkins, an IT security professional.

Mr Jenkins told Information Week: "I can gain access to their Pandora account [online radio] but I won't. I can gain access to their Facebook account, but I won't. I know their name, address and phone number. I know where their child goes to school. I know the last four digits of their social security number. I know they had an eye doctor's appointment last week and I was just invited to their friend's wedding."

Other users have revealed that they have also received messages that contain personally identifiable information.

Intimate data

"I recommend logging into your Yahoo account every six months or so in order to ensure that you retain control over it," said security expert Lee Munson.

Privacy experts said that the issues were inevitable.

"These problems were flagged by security and privacy experts a few months ago when Yahoo announced their intention to recycle old emails, and cautioned that Yahoo's plan created significant security and privacy risks. Yahoo downplayed these risks, and ignored critics, but now we see these concerns were legitimate," said Mike Rispoli, spokesman for Privacy International.

"This email recycling scheme, an effort to re-engage old users and attract new ones, is resulting in some of our most intimate data being accessed by someone we don't know and without our knowledge.

"We're talking about account passwords, contacts for friends and families, medical records - this issue needs to be addressed immediately by Yahoo if they care about the privacy of their users and want them to trust the company with sensitive information."

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Hackers steal Michelle Obama ID data

26 September 2013 Last updated at 07:53 ET

Hackers stole millions of social security numbers by cracking open the networks of large US data brokers, reveals an investigation.

The ID details of US First Lady Michelle Obama and many other famous people were exposed by the hack attack.

Journalist Brian Krebs tracked the information back to hackers who ran an online market for confidential data.

He found they got their data by compromising computers sitting on the data brokers' corporate networks.

Deep access

In March, Krebs, as well as the FBI and US Secret Service, started looking into how the exposed.su website was getting hold of social security numbers and other details of many famous Americans.

The mysterious website, which has now been closed down, published confidential information about Bill Gates, Beyonce Knowles, Jay-Z, Ashton Kutcher and many others.

The investigation into exposed.su showed it had bought its information from another site, called SSNDOB, that advertised itself as a market for just such private data. SSNDOB sold data records on individuals for as little as 50 cents (30p). The records of about four million Americans seem to have been accessed via the data-selling site.

In early summer, wrote Krebs in a blogpost, SSNDOB had itself been attacked and its database stolen, copied and widely shared.

Analysis of the SSNDOB database by Krebs and forensic computer expert Alex Holden, of Hold Security, revealed the ID data being sold had come from machines sitting on the internal networks of several American information aggregation firms. Compromised computers or systems at LexisNexis, Dun & Bradstreet and Kroll were all named by Krebs as the sources of the data.

In the commercial world, the three firms are well known for providing businesses with data about potential commercial partners and customers. The open access the hackers enjoyed meant they could run their own queries about individuals via the databases of the three firms.

"All three victim companies said they are working with federal authorities and third-party forensics firms in the early stages of determining how far the breaches extend," wrote Krebs on his blog.

LexisNexis issued a statement denying that its information was exposed.

"To date [we] have found no evidence that customer or consumer data were reached or retrieved," said the statement.

A spokeswoman for the FBI told Reuters it was investigating the breaches identified by Krebs but would give no more details.

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Taxpayers 'ripped off' on broadband

26 September 2013 Last updated at 08:00 ET By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

The taxpayer is being "ripped off" over the cost of rolling out broadband to rural areas of the UK, MPs have said.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says the government "mismanaged" the project by awarding all 26 rural broadband contracts to BT.

It also said BT had "exploited its quasi-monopoly position" as the main provider.

The government defended the process as fair, while BT said it was "disturbed" by the claims which were "wrong".

'Failed to deliver'

Making sure that those living in the countryside get broadband speeds comparable to those living in towns and cities has long been something the government has grappled with.

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Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge said taxpayers had been ''fleeced''

Commercial firms such as Virgin Media and BT see little profit in rolling out services to areas with few people living in them.

So, as an incentive, the government provided a subsidy pot of £230m for firms taking on the task, with an extra £250m available after 2015, and it awarded contracts on a county-by-county basis.

Local authorities are also contributing £730m to the project, bringing the total amount of public funding to £1.2bn.

But only Fujitsu and BT entered the bidding competition, with Fujitsu later withdrawing.

BT has so far been chosen in 26 counties and is expected to win the 18 remaining contracts.

The report by the PAC criticised the government's management of the project: "The Department for Culture, Media and Sport's design of the rural broadband programme has failed to deliver the intended competition for contracts, with the result that BT has strengthened its already strong position in the market."

Continue reading the main story

• Denmark plans to have 100 megabits per second to all by 2020
• Estonia wants 100Mbps for everyone by 2015
• France plans almost universal coverage at 100Mbps by 2020
• Germany expects to have around 70% coverage at 50Mbps by 2014
• Greece wants 100% of citizens to have access to 30Mbps by 2020
• Ireland plans 100Mbps for all by 2020
• Italy wants to see half of its citizens have access to 100Mbps by 2020
• The UK's target is 90% coverage by 2017 but at the lower speed of 24Mbps

It said its contract terms were "overly generous" to BT and did not "promote value for money".

It also accused ministers of failing to check whether BT's bids were reasonably priced and said there had been "wildly inaccurate" estimates of costs.

"Local authorities are contributing over £230m more to the programme than the department assumed in its 2011 business case and BT over £200m less, yet BT will ultimately benefit from £1.2bn of public funding," the report said.

Committee chair Margaret Hodge added: "The taxpayer has been ripped off with £1.2bn going to the shareholders of BT.

"If you (the government) had devised it differently, had bigger areas for the contracts so you could spread your costs more, allowed different technologies to be used and insisted on a 100% coverage, we would have found other people in the game and I bet we would have spent less of the taxpayers money."

Media minister Ed Vaizey told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the costs were "not out of control", stressing BT was "putting up more than a third of the costs of rural broadband".

"BT is delivering under our scheme to up to 10,000 homes now; it will deliver to millions of people over the next two years with the best value-for-money, government-sponsored broadband scheme you will pretty much find anywhere in the world."

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Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said the broadband programme is ''very good value for money''

He said only BT and Virgin had the infrastructure to roll out the broadband, adding Virgin had not wanted to open their cable up for other companies to use - whereas many companies used BT.

Vodafone said the project would "not deliver value for money nor the rural connectivity that Britain needs", and urged the government to revise the process to encompass wireless 4G.

'Transparent from start'

BT was further criticised in the report for failing to provide local authorities with full information about where exactly it would roll out superfast broadband services, which in turn hampered rivals from drawing up alternatives.

And it was criticised for including a clause in its contract preventing local authorities it dealt with from disclosing the costs involved to other authorities negotiating contracts.

This lack of transparency meant the company "exploited its quasi-monopoly position" to limit access to both the wholesale and retail market "to the detriment of the consumer", concluded the report.

BT said it was disturbed by the report, "which we believe is simply wrong and fails to take on board a point-by-point correction we sent to the committee several weeks ago".

It added: "We have been transparent from the start and willing to invest when others have not.

"It is therefore mystifying that we are being criticised for accepting onerous terms in exchange for public subsidy - terms which drove others away."

It denied it had failed to deliver value for money for the taxpayer and said that, even with the public subsidies, it would take it 15 years to pay back its investment in rural broadband.

"Rolling out fibre is an expensive and complex business," it said.

BT's "point-by-point correction", sent to the committee on 13 August, included 83 comments responding to statements made at a committee meeting a month earlier.

It described many of the comments, on issues from the percentage of households reached to the way the contracts were awarded, as "false" and "misleading".

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Dave Reynolds on fast internet services in Devon

The report recommended the government should publish BT's detailed rollout plans so other suppliers could offer services to the final 10% of the population that would not be covered under current plans.

It said the DCMS should not spend any more money until "it has developed approaches to secure proper competition and value for money".

In 2011, then Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced 90% of premises in every local authority area of the UK should have access to internet speeds above 24 megabits per second by May 2015, with a minimum of 2Mbps for others.

The process has suffered huge delays and is due to be completed in 2017, nearly two years later than planned.

But, according to Matthew Howett, an advisor at Ovum which examines the commercial impact of technology, the delays were down to the EU's failure to approve the scheme.

He said the "challenges of deploying to the most rural and remote areas of the UK shouldn't be underestimated" and that there were not many providers who could do this.

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Evernote and Post-it notes partner

26 September 2013 Last updated at 08:18 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

Memory aid app Evernote is partnering with 3M to help consumers search their Post-it note scribblings on the go.

3M will advertise its sticky notes as being "searchable and shareable" when photographed by the program. In addition it will sell special packs offering access to the app's premium features for up to three months.

Evernote previously struck a similar deal with notebook maker Moleskine.

Analysts said it was part of a wider trend to digitise traditional products.

While Moleskine owners have to buy special notebooks and use stickers to tag their handwriting and sketches - making it easier to locate the digital copies later - the Post-it deal works with normal notes.

It takes advantage of Evernote's existing ability to photograph and apply handwriting recognition to objects, but now arranges the notes according to their paper's colour.

So, for instance, yellow ones can be used to categorise work tasks and green ones shopping lists.

The software firm's chief executive, Phil Libin, told the Wall Street Journal the app would also be likely to work with sticky-notes made by other companies.

Branding deals

California-based Evernote has about 75 million users, up from 50 million in March.

It competes with Microsoft's OneNote and Google Keep, as well as smaller rivals such as Springpad and Catch.

To help make its brand stand out, Evernote has pursued a strategy of links with other firms.

Other examples include a deal to have its software pre-installed into cameras, phones, tablets and even smart fridges made by Samsung.

In addition it has partnered with smart pen maker Livescribe so that notes and audio recordings made by the product automatically upload to a user's Evernote account.

One expert said the latest move was part of a wider trend to try to apply technology to products that pre-dated smart devices.

"It's a perfect example of a traditional paper approach being digitised," said Thomas Husson, an analyst at tech advisors Forrester.

"Evernote had already done something similar with its Hello app which takes a picture of a business card, and it's magically tagged and placed in your address book.

"At the end of the day it doesn't matter whether it's paper, shoes, fridges or what have you - there has to be a digital component for even traditional physical products."

However, one retail consultant added that the success of this latest venture might depend on whether Evernote could persuade businesses - the biggest purchasers of Post-its - to spend time and money training staff to use the software.

"The challenge will be to convince them this is more efficient," said Bryan Roberts from the Kantar Retail consultancy.

"With lots of these things you run the risk of trying to reinvent the wheel when the wheel is already doing a good job, and trying to push technology into corners where it might not belong.

"But if it can show it can save an employer thousands of manpower hours a year and deliver cost savings then that becomes a compelling innovation."

Apple app backlash

The latest announcement is timed to coincide with Evernote's annual developers' conference in San Francisco, but also comes at a time when the firm is facing a backlash against changes to its iPhone app.

A redesign carried out to take advantage of the new look iOS7 operating system is proving unpopular with some.

The app's rating has fallen to two-and-a-half stars out of five in the UK App Store and has similar low scores in other markets. By contrast, the Android version, which has not been changed, has a 4.7-out-of-five star rating in the UK version of Google's Play marketplace.

"The old design for this was clean and unfussy. The new one is messy and unclear," wrote one iPhone user.

"Textured green background is dreadful for readability on a small screen," wrote another.

Some also complained of freezes and crashes, although others praised the new look calling it "beautiful".

The firm's European spokeswoman said more details about the Post-it deal would be revealed later but did not provide additional comment.

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Gates calls Ctrl+Alt+Del a mistake

26 September 2013 Last updated at 10:50 ET

Bill Gates has described the decision to use Ctrl+Alt+Del as the command needed to log on to a PC as a mistake.

Originally designed to trigger a reboot of a PC, it survives in the Windows 8 operating system as the command to access the task manager toolbar and is still used in older versions to log on.

In an interview, the Microsoft co-founder blamed IBM for the shortcut, saying he had favoured a single button.

The keyboard shortcut was invented by IBM engineer David Bradley.

Originally he had favoured Ctrl+Alt+Esc, but he found it was too easy to bump the left side of the keyboard and reboot the computer accidentally so switched to Ctrl+Alt+Del because it was impossible to press with just one hand.

During IBM's 20th anniversary celebrations, he said that while he may have invented it, Bill Gates made it famous.

His involvement in the invention has made him something of a programming hero though- with fans asking him to autograph keyboards at conferences.

Finger strike

The shortcut, also known as the three-finger salute - came to prominence in the early 1990s as a quick fix for the infamous "blue screen of death" on PCs.

But speaking at a fundraising campaign at Harvard University, Mr Gates said he thought that it had been a mistake.

"We could have had a single button, but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button."

While some loathe the clunky command, others took to news site Reddit to express their fondness for it.

"I feel a single button would be a mistake," said one.

"There's a conscious commitment and in many cases a sense of satisfying sword play in executing the two-handed finger strike of Ctrl-Alt-Del."

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