'Jammers' overwhelm anti-theft devices on cars and lorries and later versions could be used to disrupt air traffic

Criminal gangs have begun using GPS "jammers" imported from China to help them steal expensive cars and lorries carrying valuable loads and there are fears that terrorists could use more powerful versions to disrupt air traffic, a conference in London will hear on Tuesday.

The "jammers" put out radio signals at the same frequency at the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, overwhelming the timing signal that in-car devices use to plot their position. That means a tracker device built into a lorry with a valuable load, or a car with an anti-theft GPS device which should report its position if stolen, cannot distinguish the correct GPS signal.

"It disappears from the radar," said Professor David Last, of the University of Wales at Bangor, who has been a police expert witness in a number of cases over the past 18 months in which GPS jammers have been seized.

Some German drivers are also believed to use such jammers to try to evade GPS-based road charging, which was introduced for trucks in 2005. There have also been robberies in Russia where such jammers have been used against both GPS systems and mobile phones on lorries to prevent the driver from contacting the authorities.

In Germany, as in the UK, it is illegal to sell or use such jammers although it appears to be legal to import or own them.

Satnav devices rely on being able to "see" at least four of the 30 satellites orbiting about 20,200km (12,550 miles) above the earth: by correlating the very precise timing and identification signals they transmit, a ground-based device can calculate its own location to within about 1 metre. However, the jamming devices do not have to put out a strong signal to disrupt GPS reception.

"The problem is that the signal from the satellites is extremely weak it's the equivalent of picking up the light output of a 25-watt bulb on the satellite," said Bob Cockshott, another conference speaker who heads the location and timing program for the Technology Strategy Board, funded by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

"That means you only need a jammer with an output of about 2 watts to swamp any signal from the GPS satellites over an area of a few metres." Such a device would be billions of times more powerful than the GPS signal at ground level.

Cockshott says that such more powerful jammers could have multiple uses for criminal gangs. "They would work over tens of kilometres, so drugs gangs might use them to disrupt navigation in the Thames estuary if they were taking a delivery and didn't want rivals to be able to trace them."

Such systems have been found in the hands of criminals arrested by police over the past 18 months, said Cockshott. The jammers could be built by a competent electronics expert, though the gangs appear to prefer to import them from Chinese makers in Shenzhen.

"We need to make users of GPS aware of the threat," said Cockshott. "They need to use a complementary technology so that their systems work without GPS." Systems that triangulate on mobile phone masts, and another which uses a ground-based network, called eLoran, can operate even when GPS signals fail, he said.

Professor Last said that the use of these systems by criminals and terrorists had been anticipated since 2002, when the US government produced a report pointing out that disruption to GPS could cause "severe safety and economic damage to the US".

Charles Curry, the managing director of Chronos Technology, who also heads a consortium which is building a GPS-jamming detection system with a 2.2m UK government grant, said that the biggest fear was that a powerful GPS jammer with an output of 20W or more might be used by terrorists near an airport.

"If you lost GPS capability on planes or other things that rely on accurate timing, such as the emergency networks or power stations, then if they don't build in the ability to mitigate against such attacks there could be very serious consequences." The detection system is now in its prototype stages and would be used at airports, harbours and other locations which rely on the nanosecond accuracy of GPS outputs.

Government backtracks after proposing measures including terminating broadband connections to curb filesharing (updated)

The government has backed away from its proposals in the Digital Economy Bill to cut off people who have illegally shared files online.

In a response to a petition on the Number 10 website that petitioned Gordon Brown "to abandon Lord Mandelson's plans to ban individuals from the internet based on their use of 'peer to peer' file sharing", the government says: "We will not terminate the accounts of infringers it is very hard to see how this could be deemed proportionate except in the most extreme and therefore probably criminal cases."

It adds: "We added account suspension to the list of possible technical measures which might be considered if our measures to tackle unlawful file-sharing through notifications and legal action are not as successful as we hope. This is but one of a number of possible options on which we would seek advice from Ofcom and others if we decided to consider a third obligation on technical measures. However what is clear is that we would need a rapid and robust route of appeal available to all consumers if we decided technical measures were needed."

Although the original petition received just 550 signatures far smaller than many others that have been rejected in the past, and only 50 more than are required for the proposal to be considered it appears to have come as the government was concerned about the effect of the plans on its popularity.

The petition may also have struck a chord by pointing to the contradiction in the "three strikes" proposal and the government's aim to get everyone online. The petition noted: "The increasing role of the internet in access to society should not be underestimated. Cutting off households deprives families of education, government services and freedom of speech."

Thus the first line of the response reads: "The government wants as many people as possible to enjoy all the benefits that broadband internet can bring."

But the announcement marks a clear change from the proposals put forward in the original bill presented to the House of Lords. That offered a number of "technical measures" that should be taken to limit the internet access of people found to have broken copyright law repeatedly. Those included any measure which "prevents a subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use; suspends the service provided to a subscriber; or limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way".

Now the government is retreating from the idea of termination although it is still retaining the idea of "temporary" suspension "as a last resort".

Update: the Open Rights Group, which campaigns on digital rights, says that this is not a change in the government's position.

ORG says:

"When is 'disconnection' not disconnection? When it is 'account suspension', of course.

"The government therefore felt justified in a response to a petition on Friday in claiming that were not intending to 'disconnect' families from the net after accusations of copyright infringement. If you think they mean that their internet cabling will still be plugged in at the wall, then that's true.

"If you think they mean that these families will be able to connect to the internet, well, no they won't. Their connection will be switched off.

"Please do not be confused by the government's semantics. BIS [the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills] and DCMS [the Department of Culture, Media and Sport] decided in the summer that they would not refer to 'disconnecting' users, because that sounds harsh and over the top. 'Temporary account suspension' sounds much more reasonable.

"Language matters. What journalist is going to run a story on 'temporary account suspension' (yawn)? This is why the government has chosen these disingenuous terms: it's just more spin."

It concludes:

"'Temporary account suspensions' sound like the government would to suspend accounts for a few hours, or at most a day, to fit most people's idea of 'temporary' and 'suspension'. We doubt 'suspensions' would be so brief. We can assume what the government means to you and me is 'disconnection'."

We will speak to DBIS in the morning to see how long "temporary" is.

'Town square' site to cross barrier of western news agencies
Advanced translation software not used on divisive subjects

A new website hopes to bridge the divide between the west and the Middle East, by allowing English speakers to read news articles originally printed in Arabic and vice versa.

San Francisco-based Meedan, which launches tomorrow, will provide translations of news articles in both languages in an attempt to help foster better relations between the two.

"There is a tremendous amount of media attention focused on the Middle East, but for the most part we're looking at those stories through the prism of western news agencies," said Ed Bice, Meedan's co-founder and chief executive. "We don't have a good way of seeing the media that's being written in Arabic and represents the way the region is understanding these events itself."

The non-profit site the name of which means "town square" in Arabic will also translate from English to Arabic, as well as providing a community forum that will let speakers of the two languages communicate with each other in near-real time.

"Outside of the news agencies like the BBC and al-Jazeera that are doing programming in two languages, Arabic speakers are unable to access information written in English," he added. "The goal is to provide more media exchange across both these languages."

The system, which has been in development for more than three years, is based on advanced automatic translation technology developed by IBM and uses an international team of 30 translators and editors to find news and polish the language.

Many media organisations have partnered with translation services in recent years to help spread their information to new areas, particularly in repressive countries such as China where even the English versions of news websites are often blocked. However, that process can also capture the attention of the authorities. In December, Yeeyan, a Chinese community translation website used by the Guardian was closed down by officials in Beijing.

Bice said that the site would steer clear of controversial subjects, since the aim was to get accurate versions of news and opinion to as many people as possible.

"We are trying to respect the boundaries of speech and not agitate against them," he said. "We are respectful of the many and changing boundaries that define what can be spoken about when and where in the region."

But with language seen as a major barrier to more successful diplomatic and cultural relations, accurate automated translation has long been an ambition for generations of technologists and linguists.

While progress has been slow, many groups are now beginning to make significant steps. Late last year Google showcased a new mobile phone application that will help translate spoken words across a variety of languages reminiscent of the universal communicator devices used in science fiction programmes such as Star Trek.

But the need for accurate translation could be more pressing than ever, thanks to a decision last year by internet administrators which will soon give websites the ability to have names in new alphabets such as Mandarin, Arabic and Cyrillic.

With the potential for highly localised websites that cannot even be reached by outsiders let alone understood many have worried about the potential for a series of so-called "splinternets" to evolve.

According to Meedan's community manager, George Weyman, this means that schemes to help people overcome language barriers will become even more common.

"Everything posted on Meedan is translated first and foremost by machines, and then humans supply improvements to that. We show the translation history, much like Wikipedia, so you can see how it's evolved," he said.

"We're improving the quality of machine translation into Arabic. Over time, we should be able to translate more things, better. It's very exciting to see that happen we're ploughing a furrow that we hope will benefit many other cross-language projects on the web."

Investigators said to have linked suspected author of computer code used in attacks to Chinese officials

Investigators are closing in on the source of internet attacks that hit a string of US companies, most notably Google.

Over the weekend, two Chinese schools linked to the attacks which hit dozens of companies in an attempt to steal private information and trade secrets denied their involvement. Reports last week suggested that the source of the strikes had been traced to Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang School, a large vocational training centre in Jinan.

Today a report in the Financial Times suggests that US officials have tracked the individual they believe authored the computer code used, and have linked his work to Chinese officials.

The Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that the two schools had nothing to do with the strikes, dubbed Operation Aurora by security experts. "We were shocked and indignant to hear these baseless allegations which may harm the university's reputation," Xinhua quoted a Jiaotong spokesman as saying.

The organisation added that the evidence said to link the school to the attacks centred on the hackers' internet protocol (IP) address, which can easily be forged. "The report of the New York Times was based simply on an IP address. Given the highly developed network technology today, such a report is neither objective nor balanced," the spokesman said.

Communist party officials at Lanxiang, which trains up to 20,000 students in trade skills, said the report was false and suggestions that the attacks were performed during a class taught by a Ukrainian professor were "unfounded".

"Investigation in the staff found no trace the attacks originated from our school," said Li Zixiang. "There is no Ukrainian teacher in the school and we have never employed any foreign staff."

China has expressed concerns about its own online vulnerability, and there are reports today that a senior Chinese army officer has called for a new national body to enforce internet controls, and for a reduction in the reliance on foreign technology.

Major General Huang Yongyin said China needed to match the defensive efforts of other major nations, arguing: "For national security, the internet has already become a new battlefield without gunpowder."

Writing in the latest issue of Chinese Cadres Tribune, a magazine published by the Communist party's influential Central Party School, he said: "Lawless elements and hostile forces at home and abroad have increasingly turned to the internet to engage in crime, disruption, infiltration, reactionary propaganda and other sabotage activities."

The internet attacks, first revealed in January but which have been taking place for some time, led Google to threaten that it would stop censoring its Chinese search engine, and have raised concerns about diplomatic relations between the US and China.

US officials have been working with representatives from the companies affected believed to include Adobe Systems, Yahoo and Northrop Grumman as well as experts from the National Security Agency, the US surveillance and codebreaking agency.

Early indications suggested the attacks may have been carried out under direction of authorities in Beijing. That possibility led the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, to request clarification from the Chinese government, which denied any involvement.

Dan Blum, principal analyst for the IT consultancy Burton Group, said the preponderance of evidence pointed to Chinese involvement. "Myself, and a lot of people, are well past 99% sure," he said. "Hillary Clinton, who spoke for the US in officially denouncing the attacks, would not do so lightly, and would probably agree with me."

PS3; 39.99; cert 15+; Quantic Dream/Sony

The death of originality in modern video games has, it seems, been greatly exaggerated. Heavy Rain almost instantly telegraphs its differentiation from its gun-obsessed peers by encouraging you to brush your just-awoken character's teeth and shave him, using right-analogue-stick gestures, prescribed button-presses and shakes of the motion-sensing PS3 controller, which (very vaguely) correspond to their real-life counterparts. As you guide architect Ethan Mars through a period of family life, the novelty lies in performing mundane tasks.

Soon, though, things take a turn, when one of Mars's sons is run over during a disastrous mall visit, and he ends up divorced, in a grim flat, trying to reconnect with his remaining son, while a serial killer dubbed the Origami Killer embarks on a spree. Soon, you're introduced to another innovative game device. Over the course of Heavy Rain, you take control over three other characters insomniac photographer Madison Paige, FBI operative Norman Jaden and private eye Scott Shelby all of whom also seek the Origami Killer. When Mars's remaining son becomes his latest kidnap victim, they work out that he will stay alive until six inches of rain have fallen; an unrelenting monsoon, documented in terms of rainfall inches, adds a sense of urgency.

Heavy Rain gets closer than any previous game to conveying the sense that you are controlling the protagonists in an interactive movie firmly entrenched in the film noir genre, its storyline (twist-laden, naturally) is able to suck you in completely, thanks to the most convincing facial and bodily animation yet seen in a game. Gameplay-wise, despite the cleverly conceived controls, it remains very much rooted in the venerable point-and-click adventure genre. At key moments, you must press and hold increasingly arcane combinations of buttons, triggers and stick-gestures, a process akin to playing Twister with your fingers. At times, it appears to cheat by withholding your desired outcome, even though you jumped through the designated hoops. More than a tad frustrating, even if it does add replay value to what is a disappointingly short game.

Atmospherically it is gloriously, unyieldingly miserable and at times positively harrowing, demonstrating an astonishing and enormously laudable refusal to compromise by developer Quantic Dream and publisher Sony. Curiously, though, once the novelty of the control system wears off, the most satisfying tasks you perform seem to be the most trivial ones. When you're finally given a chance to shoot a character, rather than talking him down, you accept it with relief even though the game strongly hints that you shouldn't. At other times, your emotional investment in the characters actually proves counter-productive for example, when you can choose between multiple courses of action, yet all are complete anathema to what you would do if you were him or her. Still, it's impressive that the game makes you feel like an actor rather than a puppetmaster.

Heavy Rain is the perfect riposte to anyone who contends that games are mindless orgies of violence but, unfortunately, its determination to prove that point brings about periods of deeply annoying gameplay. However, it is at the very least an emotional tour de force, and a must-buy for PS3 owners which will generate considerable bragging rights to use against owners of rival consoles.

Rating: 4/5

Broadcaster Jonathan Ross bought one of the very first 'portable' Macs 'It weighed about 60lb'

Listen to the interview in full

What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?
I'm gonna have to start by saying I find it hard to pick favourites in anything favourite movies, favourite comics, favourite foods. I like too many things, so even in technology, that applies. If I have to settle for one thing I would say the mobile phone, and if I had to narrow that down I would say the iPhone, because it is just an incredible piece of technology as I'm sure anyone who has got one knows. It's an incredible convergence device it's changed our lives in ways that haven't even been realised yet.

When did you last use it?
About 10 minutes ago, to check my mail. I've got a BlackBerry as well, which I've been clinging on to because I convinced myself that it was a slightly more efficient tool for business. But I don't think that's true any more, now that the iPhone's gone 3GS. My only problem I've got with the iPhone is storage space.

What additional features would you add if you could?
More memory and battery life they're the key issue in all these devices, I think.

Will it be obsolete in 10 years?
In 10 years almost all the things we use right now will be unrecognisable. It's going to be commerce that drives it, as always, and at the moment because we're in the grip of what appears to be a global recession I don't know whether the pace will keep up. I guess the iPhone will change drastically, as will most things. I can't see the iPhone getting that much smaller, but I imagine it will get slimmer and more portable. I don't think it will change that much, because I think it's pretty nearly a perfect thing.

What frustrates you about technology?
PCs and Apples and devices that don't work together. I'm someone who have a lot of these things bouncing around, and I'm very much someone who grabs hold of the new item and gives it a go. So often I'll find that an old computer won't talk to a new computer, and I'd like to be able to synch my mailbox in about 10 or 20 different computers.

Is there any particular piece of technology you have owned and hated?
Oh, loads of stuff. I bought the very first Apple Mac portable, which was only portable if you were Arnie fucking Schwarzenegger. It weighed about 60lb and it came in a case that was about two foot by about a foot and a half. I've still got it, it still works. That wasn't one I hated, I'm just saying I've always bought the early stuff. I still stupidly will blunder in and buy the next thing when it comes out.

If you had one tip for getting the best out of technology, what would it be?
I'm not a great one for giving advice, which is probably just as well. Learn to use the item you've got to its full potential. Often we buy a new thing and use it in the same way we used its predecessor we don't realise it's got so much more to give.

Are you a luddite or a nerd?
Clearly, I'm in the nerd school. But in some ways I'm fairly luddish, in that I sometimes resent the march of technology and change for the sake of it.

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
It would probably be a car. I bought myself a Morgan, because I always loved the look of those old cars, and even that only cost about 28 grand, so it's not wildly expensive for a car. I would probably invest in a robot. If Honda started selling Asimos, I'd probably save up and buy one, because I love the idea.

Mac or PC, and why?
Mac all the way. They're better looking, they're more interesting, they're certainly easier to use, and they've always suited my lifestyle more. It's what I grew up with. For me, it was always Mac and it always will be.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download?
I buy DVDs; I don't buy CDs so much, I get given a lot. I think I'd probably download music more than a movie I don't like streaming movies much because the bandwidth isn't quite there yet. There's something about having the hard DVD in your hand at home.

Robot butlers a good idea or not?
It's a fucking great idea. That's it. That's all you need to know. What's wrong with a robot butler? Once again, though, I bet the battery life won't quite be good enough, I bet they'll sometimes malfunction, and I bet the Windows ones won't talk to the Mac ones. But yeah, bring it on.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
Apart from a robot butler, I've always loved the idea of a reliable, not-too-dangerous jetpack. But you know, I'm really happy there are other people out there, smarter people, making new stuff for us all the time.

Jonathan Ross is hosting the British Academy Film Awards tonight. His first comic book, Turf, is published in April

About 75,000 personal computers in almost 2,500 companies and government agencies worldwide have been caught in a botnet based on a new variant of the ZeuS Trojan

About 75,000 personal computers in almost 2,500 companies and government agencies across the globe have been caught in a botnet uncovered by a researcher at the US-based NetWitness network forensics firm. Hackers were able to collect logins and passwords for Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail and other accounts, including online banking sites. They were also able to access some corporate servers used to store confidential data, including one used for processing credit-card payments.

Companies reportedly attacked include Paramount Pictures, Merck, Juniper Networks and Cardinal Health in the US, but affected computers in more than 200 countries including Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. The Wall Street Journal reported that Merck and Cardinal Health said they had isolated and contained the problem, and Merck said "no sensitive information was compromised".

NetWitness's Alex Cox uncovered the botnet while installing monitoring software to help a large corporation deal with cyberattacks. He found a 75GB cache of data generated by the botnet, which NetWitness has called Kneber after a username linking the infected systems. NetWitness said in a statement: "Disturbingly, the data was only a one-month snapshot of data from a campaign that has been in operation for more than a year."

The PCs in question, almost all running Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, had been compromised by a new variant of the well-known ZeuS Trojan, which is one of the "top five" in its class. Cox told the SearchSecurity.com site that the variant used in the latest attacks had a detection rate of less than 10% among antivirus software. The botnet communication was also shielded from detection by existing intrusion detection systems.

"This is not about a single piece of malware on 75,000 machines, it's about how bad the security industry is responding to these incidents and how bad the problem is," said Cox.

SearchSecurity.com said "the cybercriminals exploited vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash as well as holes in Adobe Reader and Acrobat using malicious PDF applications in spear phishing attacks, according to Cox. They also used exploit kits to set up drive-by attacks to infect victims."

The discovery of the Kneber botnet follows publicity about attempts to penetrate Google and other companies, dubbed Operation Aurora. In this case, the botnet command centre appears to have been in Germany, while ZeuS appears to be mainly the work of cybercriminals based in Eastern Europe. ZeuS is often used to collect data from online forms, including names, dates of birth, and account names and passwords, and one special feature is that it can work with the Firefox web browser.

Amit Yoran, chief executive of NetWitness and former Director of the National Cyber Security Division, said: "While Operation Aurora shed light on advanced threats from sponsored adversaries, the number of compromised companies and organizations pales in comparison to this single botnet. These large-scale compromises of enterprise networks have reached epidemic levels. Cyber criminal elements, like the Kneber crew quietly and diligently target and compromise thousands of government and commercial organizations across the globe. Conventional malware protection and signature based intrusion detection systems are by definition inadequate for addressing Kneber or most other advanced threats."

NetWitness also said that "over half the machines infected with Kneber also were infected with Waledac, a peer to peer botnet." This suggests some level of co-existence if not active cooperation between cybercriminals, where a PC could continue to operate in one botnet even if the other was found and removed. Earlier this month, there was a small "botnet war" after the upstart Spy Eye appeared with a feature called Kill Zeus. This aims to remove ZeuS from the victim's PC, giving Spy Eye exclusive access. However, by far the biggest and best botnet is still Conficker, with more than 5m PCs.

The digital guru tells us why he wants to reinvent the web

Even if he didn't sport dreadlocks, you could easily recognise Jaron Lanier as a digital utopian. The 49-year-old native New Yorker has been involved in the web for 30 years, a key figure, along with visionaries such as Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow and authors Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly, in nurturing its early culture from hobbyist pastime to global communications revolution. He popularised the notion of virtual reality, and his ideas about open culture and open access paved the way for the triumph of first-generation web success stories such as Google and Amazon and second-generation online applications including Twitter and Facebook.

Now, however, Lanier who is also an accomplished musician feels increasingly sceptical about the way the web is developing. In a new book, You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto (Allen Lane, 20), he describes the development of what he calls digital Maoism: here, users of the web are a proletariat toiling for the benefit of an all-powerful (virtual) bourgeoisie. This volte-face perhaps says more about the journey that this philosopher has travelled than the evolution of our online world.

What is digital Maoism? Twenty-five years ago some friends and I had this thought that perhaps the internet would be a fount of wealth and opportunity, that it could be entirely open such that people could give away the fruits of their brains and hearts, and the rewards they would get in return would be huge. Unfortunately, I've come to believe that was a mistake.

We're faced with a stark decision: we give people a way to live off their brains to earn with dignity, to not have to constantly sing for their supper or we have to accept that our problem is socialism, that we're trying to shut down personal reinvention and self-determinism and want to create a system where people will be universally supported by some institution. I personally support the former.

I call the alternative digital Maoism because, unlike other Marxists, the Maoists had this real distaste for people earning from their brains. They worshipped the peasant, the person who's really toiling. Every time we give a musician the advice to give away the music and sell the T-shirt, we're saying, "Don't make your living in this more elevated way. Instead, reverse this social progress, and choose a more physical way to make a living." We're sending them to peasanthood, very much like the Maoists have.

So what is the solution? Criticism is always easier than constructive solutions. In You Are Not A Gadget I propose five different approaches to a solution. The one I am the most hopeful about is to return to the very first vision of the web: a universal micro-payment system. For practical purposes, that would mean that there's only one copy of a creative thing, and you pay a half penny every time you access it.

With things like the iPad and the Kindle and Xbox Live, we're creating this big studio system. I'd much rather see a world where, when you make some quirky comment on a blog or news story or you upload a video clip, instead of just a moment of fame for your pseudonym, you'll get 50 bucks. The first time that happens, you'll realise that you're a full-class citizen. You have the potential to make money from the system. Once you hit that point, you'll realise there's a social contract, and then maybe you'll stop illegally downloading content for the same reason you don't break into houses or cars even though you could: because it's part of a system that's better for everybody.

People would try to play that system. Wouldn't that create an environment where people seek to earn back based on what they think would be a hit? I don't doubt that would happen. But having everything freely accessible to everyone else actually just creates a mediocre mush. The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox, when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters, the decision is made by committee, and that's crap. You want people and groups who are able to think thoughts before they share.

You say that this open system ultimately ends in mediocrity, but online, people gather into single-interest groups to preach to the converted, parsing and creating what it is they want to see. That's the same process. Human beings either function as individuals or as members of a pack. There's a switch inside us, deep in our spirit, that you can turn one way or the other. It's almost always the case that our worst behaviour comes out when we're switched to the mob setting. The problem with a lot of software designs is that they switch us to that setting.

When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do. Whenever that situation exists, there's a sequence I find to be common whether it's a jihadi chat site or a chat site about beach balls. Initially people aren't sure what the pack is. Somebody tries to ridicule something else, and other people who want to play it safe join in so that they're not the target. Gradually, the pack forms. You can tell it's formed by two things: an internal enemy and an external enemy. The internal enemy is the low person on the totem pole who gets ridiculed. And then there's the external enemy, the "other". What we have online is a total lack of communication across those boundaries but this is the inevitable consequence of matching the human spirit as it really exists, our true biology, with this open mush environment. We see this in playgrounds, we see this pack mentality in other, non-web environments.

That's because it comes from the people, not from the machine.

You present a compelling idea that software designers are psychologically manipulating us, through the very way they're designing their systems: to engage us, to facilitate their applications. Do you think they're aware of this? No, absolutely not. I'm not suggesting a conspiracy. What it is instead is religion. There's this theological drive to equate people and computers, more and more designs have that quality. So one of the ways in which the web 2.0 stuff suppresses individuals and brings out this mob identity is because it allows us to pretend that the machine is becoming intelligent and doing work. Larry Page can say that Google's servers are coming alive, but that's because we don't see the people behind the curtain.

Humans are able to create and appreciate culture. You argue that culture is disintegrating. Aren't mash-ups evidence of a sophisticated repackaging of culture?

The difference between real culture and fake culture is whether you internalise the thing before you mash it. Does it become part of you? Is there some way your meaning, your spirit, your understanding has touched this thing? Or is it just a touch of novelty for a moment to get some attention? Culture involves some work, some risk, some exploration, some surprise.

As a digital optimist, can you see anything good from the web in general? Oh, I think the web has been a massive success. The web gave us the first empirical evidence that vast numbers of people really are creative, really do have things to offer, and really will do it really will get their acts together. I am a huge enthusiast overall of what's happening online. The stuff I don't like is web 2.0. It regiments and anonymises people. I think that's a huge wrong turn.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the industry's largest trade show, some of the biggest names in technology competed for attention. Here are some of the highlights, in pictures

The proposed link-up between Microsoft and Yahoo has been approved by European regulators, paving the way for the two companies to combine their search engines and take on Google together.

Senior figures said that plans to implement the 10-year agreement, which was first announced last summer, were now underway after the European Commission said it did not believe the deal would harm consumers. The US Department of Justice had previously said that it was happy with the proposal.

Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft's technology will now power Yahoo search, with the two companies sharing revenue generated by the site.

Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz, who brokered the deal soon after being installed in the job last year, said that the idea was to allow her company to focus on providing services that internet users enjoyed - not on developing the technology.

"This breakthrough search alliance means Yahoo can focus even more on our own innovative search experience," she said in a statement.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said that the two companies could offer better competition to Google together than separately.

"Although we are just at the beginning of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone," he said. "I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to our advertisers and publishers."

The approval marks the latest step forward in an arduous process that first started more than two years ago with Microsoft's surprise $44bn bid to buy Yahoo outright.

The Californian web company initially rebuffed those advances, with co-founder Jerry Yang - then chief executive - repeatedly saying that the deal undervalued Yahoo.

While Microsoft submitted a renewed bid shortly afterwards, Yang attempted to engineer a deal with Google that would fend off the software giant - only to see Google pull out after the agreement was questioned by US regulators.

Yang stood aside in January last year to be replaced by Bartz, while at the same time Microsoft relaunched its own search engine under the name Bing and began investing heavily in marketing as it attempts to claw back market share from Google.

In a posting on Yahoo's website, the head of the company's search team said it was "full steam ahead".

"With Microsoft providing us the underlying list of search results, our Yahoo team can now focus on making the overall experience of finding stuff online and getting things done easier for you," said Shashi Seth, the company's senior vice president of search products.

Despite its troubles in recent years, Yahoo remains the world's second-largest search engine. In the US, Google is responsible for 66% of all searches, with Yahoo significantly behind with 17.5% and Microsoft trailing in third place with 10%.

According to worldwide figures from web company StatCounter, however, the gap is even wider globally - with Google receiving around 90% of searches, Yahoo 4% and Bing 3.4%.

The deal is still pending approval from authorities in Asia, but the first full implementation of the joint agreement is not expected to be in place until 2012.

With the iPad and e-readers on the rise, will pirated books become as common as illegal music and films?

For years, we have been able to combine our taste for music and film with our desire to stick it to the man, and all from the safety of our PCs. Our literary habits, however, have perforce remained largely legal. The closest we could come to the same thrill is by wearing a deep-pocketed coat to WH Smiths which is such an analogue approach to theft. Soon, however, even the bookish will be able to frustrate Lord Mandelson because, at long last, thanks to the iPad, digital book piracy is almost upon us.

The surest sign of this is that industry figures have started producing dubious statistics to show how endemic it is. In the US, it's just been announced that 10% of books read are now pirate texts. The same report claims that piracy has cost US publishers $3bn. But the source of the statistics was a company named Attributor, who provide online piracy protection for the publishing industry. Like a plumber tutting over the state of your pipes, they have a vested interest in finding problems.

A glance at the top seeded ebooks on Pirate Bay shows that Christopher Ricks isn't about to lose much sleep over the downloaders. Filling the top slots are Windows 7 Secrets, Adobe CS4 for Photographers and, shamelessly playing up to the stereotype of all geeks being lonely boys, the Jan/Feb edition of Playboy magazine. According to Freakbits, the only non-technical or sexual downloaded book in 2009 was the Twilight series a choice that only goes to show how masturbation and Photoshopping mess with the mind.

More mainstream books are found on Scribd, a site you might well use it's great for finding free books, citations and excerpts. It's also home to an awful lot of copyright infringements. You can find everything: Tintin in America, Martin Amis's Time's Arrow, Alastair Campbell's The Blair Years, Richard Brautigan. Heck, there's even a bunch of Guardian book bloggers, bundled together in a self-published book of literary quotations.

The interesting thing is just how openly available these books are from the site's servers. In fact, Scribd has a very old-school approach to piracy. It pitches itself as a document-sharing service, just as Napster pitched itself as a way of sharing sound files a euphemism as transparent as a newspaper ad offering "escorts".

Publishers' lawyers will most likely eventually compel Scribd to close, or to turn it into a legal online shop (authors such as Stephen King already sell their digital copies through the site). Certain juicy targets for piracy, such as Stephanie Meyer or JK Rowling, have already had their legal battalions ensure no illicit Potters or vegetarian vampires appear online. That the rest of the industry hasn't yet bothered shows how small the impact of piracy has been on publishers thus far. Faber clearly don't see the need to police the Alan Bennett plays available on Scribd, since most of their audience still prefer physical copies.

The blog The Millions recently hosted an amazing interview with an American book pirate who provides e-copies of books because of his open-source, anti-copyright beliefs. Dutifully, he scans and proofs every book he uploads. The thought of all that repetitive effort, a kind of digital ironing, is quaintly charming like a farmer tending to his patch with a sickle, his back squarely turned to the rolling Google combine harvester. It's such a lot of work and, outside textbooks, it makes so little impact that publishers haven't needed to pay the lawyers' fees to stop it.

But this is about to change. As e-readers become ubiquitous, publishers know they need to go digital. And being digital, no matter how much drm you shove in, means content will be pirated. Anyone will be able to get any new book you want if you know how to look for it.

But, despite the statistics, I don't believe book piracy will ever be as endemic as it has become with music and film. We've moved on from the pre-iTunes days when the only way of getting an MP3 of a song was to find it on Napster. Publishers were keen to get on board with the iPad straight from launch because they knew it was the safest way to protect and to disseminate their product. One editor at a big publisher told me just how desperate his company have been to woo Apple over the last 18 months.

More importantly, though, publishers have a headstart on the music and film industries and already have some experience of what happens when controlled content is made widely available for free. Victorian publishers were convinced public libraries would ruin them: they didn't. Lending libraries brought books off the estates and into the tenements, and publishers were suddenly selling a lot more books to a lot more people. This happened as the result of a system that, like Spotify, allowed readers to legally obtain books for free while the authors still received some money. If the publishing industry can remember its own history, digitisation should be a doddle.

NPA says members believe BBC apps 'will undermine the commercial sector's ability to establish an economic model'

The technology industry breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday, after the world's largest computer manufacturer, Hewlett Packard, announced a 20% jump in quarterly profit.

The Californian company said that revenues and income had risen significantly from this time last year, in what many saw as the strongest sign yet that the economic slump's impact on technology spending was almost over.

Revenues for the first quarter of 2010 were up 8% to $31.2bn ( 19.9bn), with profits rising to $2.3bn - up from $1.9bn a year ago. The company also said it was expecting more signs of recovery in the coming year, with projected earnings narrowly ahead of expectations.

"HP is well-positioned to outperform the market," said chairman and chief executive Mark Hurd, who has worked to cut costs at the company since taking over in 2005.

The growth largely came from HP's computer and printer manufacturing businesses, as consumers - who had been reticent about purchasing during the downturn - started buying again.

While figures released by industry analysts Gartner suggested that shipments in western Europe were flat, the company experienced what Hurd called "accelerating market momentum".

That could be partially due to the impact of Microsoft's Windows 7, which launched last autumn and gave many PC manufacturers a boost by encouraging shoppers to purchase new hardware.

The company's services business - which expanded significantly in 2008 with the $12.6bn purchase of EDS - did not enjoy a revival, however, with revenue falling by 1%.

HP's results will please investors and analysts, but they have not been without its costs. The company has cut tens of thousands of jobs in the past two years, including 25,000 as a direct result of the EDS acquisition, and plans a further 8,600 by October.

Last month more than 1,000 HP staff who work for the Department of Work and Pensions took strike action in protest at job losses.

Shares rose marginally in after hours trading, to 50.12.

The new VoD service looks impressive, but it could struggle over charging - and making it on to TV screens as well as computers

SeeSaw's launch yesterday left unanswered a range of questions, largely related to its all-important business model.

The impression I formed is that it is being rushed onto the market, to take advantage of the rapidly rising tide of interest in on-demand programming, which has been warmed up by the BBC iPlayer.

SeeSaw is attempting to get a foothold for its brand in the UK video-on-demand market, which will soon become crowded with some really big opposition, led by BSkyB.

The Arqiva-owned VoD service is simple to call up and use at the moment, and it is entirely focused on television programmes, with some 3,000 hours in its library.

SeeSaw currently is offering users within the UK only free programmes, which are streamed live over the web to their computer.

But in a few months, by June, comes the tricky bit, adding on a pay-per-programme feature, which, according to one executive, will prove much more testing: that's the bit that is not yet ready.

So far it is using the well-designed technology behind Project Kangaroo, which was to be the joint BBC, ITV and Channel 4 on-demand service until it was torpedoed last year by the Competition Commission. This was then snapped up by broadcast transmission company Arqiva, which has deep pockets.

Each show you watch on SeeSaw has just two minutes of advertising, a pre-roll and middle break. The advertising will either be sold by the sales forces of programme suppliers, such as Channel 4 and Channel Five, or a third sales house, Video Initiatives. SeeSaw also promises to target adverts and programme offers, as it acquires information about the tastes of users.

The price of such advertising, compared with broadcast television, is painfully low. So the business model's success must depend, to a large measure, on subscription, and striking keen but acceptable prices.

When the subscription option is introduced users will most likely have to supply their credit card details once, and then will be debited for small payments as they select programmes. But finding an acceptable balance and presenting free and pay together might be tricky. John Keeling, SeeSaw platform controller, said the pay area would be made clear to users.

The window to "rent" a television programme and view will be shorter than the seven-day period for free VoD catchup services such as the iPlayer, just 48 hours, with terms clearly spelt out to users.

Popular US shows will be among the programming users are asked to pay for and Pierre-Jean Sebert, the SeeSaw chief executive, said his buyers were currently talking to the Hollywood studios.

There is also one obvious gap in SeeSaw's UK programming ITV has yet to decide whether to join. ITV had been wooed by SeeSaw's US rival Hulu, which is looking to launch in the UK and wanted exclusive rights.

The real weakness of SeeSaw and other VoD offerings is that they still remain a service primarily aimed at computers and laptops, rather than plugging directly to television screens. Nor will it deliver HD-quality pictures.

However, several people at the launch, including Keeling, told of how their children had used their PlayStation consoles to run SeeSaw-streamed programmes on a traditional TV set.

One of the biggest managerial things in SeeSaw's favour, is that the launch team is largely formed from the TV industry, rather than technology.

Google's new video map of the Trans-Siberian Railway is a thing of beauty, says Benji Lanyado, but can virtual travel ever replace the real thing?

Yesterday I browsed the Trans-Siberian Railway. Yup, browsed it. I loitered on the platform at Yaroslavsky station before accelerating into identikit Muscovite suburbs, then glided across the Volga, raced through the Lower Urals, sped across the Barguzin Mountains, before pulling up in Vladivostok a few minutes later.

My humble steed, of course, was the wonderful new map-cum-video guide unveiled by Google Russia and Russian railways. The project sews together a series of videos shot from the window of a Trans-Siberian carriage as it spans the 5,752-mile length of the world's most famous long-distance railway.

Various images and bite-sized history lessons pop up along the way, and, from time to time, the window seat footage is complemented by city video tours courtesy of the perky Yelena Abitayeva. Even the soundtrack is considered - with optional Russian radio, balalaika music, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace read in Russian, or simply the rumbling of the train wheels.

Desktop travelling has become an increasingly all-inclusive experience over the past few years. There was a time when all we had were actual holiday snaps. Then came online albums and video clips, usually aimed at office-bound friends on Facebook.

Then it got a bit weird. Rather than risking the imperfection of a real-life holiday, people began living out their getaways virtually, saving up their Linden dollars for a holiday home on the outer rim of a floating unicorn island on Second Life.

Then we were all at it, escaping grey Tuesday mornings for a 360-degree peek around the Vancouver Winter Olympics venues, or for a wander around stately British landmarks. And then we all started hooking our brains up to wires and transporting into worlds populated by strangely attractive blue people and exploring the floating mountains of Pandora on dragons and... oh, wait.

There's only so far this can go, really. For now, anyway. But it's fun. As far as I'm concerned there's every reason to get deeply excited about video-maps of the outskirts of Irkutsk, and yes, these desktop adventures probably can go some way to sating our ever-itching, increasingly penniless wanderlust.

And there's that gnawing evolutionary thing, too. If seeing distant lands is increasingly unaffordable and/or unsustainable, perhaps these online portals are the best we can hope for. And when things of beauty like the Trans-Siberian map arrive - watch as dawn breaks through columns of steel over the Zeya river - I begin to wonder: could this ever replace the real thing?

Could rather odd little projects like Twinity, which aim to create virtual, navigable versions of cities across the world, be the cut-price holiday fad of the future?

Hmmm. On second thoughts, hopefully not.

Aleks Krotoski: Are we empowered, connected and enlightened with the world's knowledge at our fingertips?

As church leaders call for a technology fast on pancake day, we review applications from Metro, Freeview and Localpeople

Have you read that church leaders are calling on people to have a "technology fast" for Lent and try a day without their TV, iPod, computer or mobile? We love our technology here on PDA, so instead we're going offer you a feast of iPhone apps.

The iPhone is a high-carb food source, bringing publishers a steady stream of revenue. Those joining the feast this week come from the world of television (Freeview), newspapers (Metro) and hyperlocal websites (Localpeople).

Since launching at the end of January, freesheet Metro's iPhone app has been downloaded 100,000 times, making it No1 in the free news app category as well as catapulting it to the top 10 of free apps overall.

To be honest, Metro's app is a bit frustrating, as allows the user to see tiny versions of the print pages, which they can browse only by flicking through them. According to Associated Newspapers 20.5% of visitors read more than 20 pages per visit, but afterwards they might be so frustrated that they never visit again.

Operations director Stuart Wood still has high hopes for the app. He said that the page model is attractive to advertisers and he expects to make revenue from the iPhone app. "For advertisers and sponsors, the iPhone app offers further benefits, such as links direct from the newspaper editions to their websites, driving customers and revenue streams," he said.

Like Metro, Freeview's iPhone app is free. The digital service launched a free TV guide as an iPhone app "designed to help viewers plan their TV viewing whilst on the go". That is good. Now you don't have to wait for the fight about the remote with your partner, you can argue on the way home! Plan ahead and catch your favorite shows before your partner bags them as Freeview has a lot of content worth fighting about.

Last but not least in today's iPhone feast is Localpeople, the iPhone app launched by the hyperlocal project of the same name. Localpeople is a network of websites for people to connect in the same area. Initially launched to cover the south-west of England the project has grown from 23 to 70 sites (including London).

The iPhone app enables the user to read the local news nearby and browse businesses in their area using Google Maps. It includes a "top places nearby" feature with content provided by real users, not advertisers.

Do you think a technology fast is a good idea? What iPhone apps would you download before you start?

Photoshop, the ubiquitous photo manipulation program that is 20 years old, is now so popular it's a verb in common usage

You're browsing the online catalogue for Heine, the German interiors-and- everything-else shop, when a "secretary table" catches your eye. The white one looks hideous, but there's a brown one so you click the picture to see it in more detail. It looks nice, but there's something unsettling about the picture. The table looks fine, but the chair behind it somehow manages also to have a leg in front of the table. It's interior design, as done by MC Escher.

Except this isn't the fine artwork of Escher it's lousy gruntwork by someone using Photoshop, the image manipulation program that turns 20 next Friday. The image is just one of a whole stream that have been sent to the Photoshop Disasters blog since it started in March 2008. An eerily unreal, doll-like Ashlee Simpson graced its first post.

Photoshop has, like Google, transcended its origins in the world of computing, and become a verb. But whereas "to Google" is almost always used positively to express usefulness, Photoshopping is almost always a term of abuse: "That picture was Photo shopped" has become a shorthand way of saying it is untrustworthy and misleading (Adobe, the company that sells Photoshop, decries its use as a verb: "It must never be used as a common verb or a noun," it tuts. Too late.)

Examples of its use, or misuse, are legion: a faked image of John Kerry and Jane Fonda apparently sharing a platform at an anti-Vietnam war rally which dragged at Kerry's 2004 US presidential bid; a picture of missiles being fired at Lebanon by an Israeli jet which turned out to have been "tweaked" by the photographer - the caption suggested that missiles were being fired, while the (single) item being let off by the plane was an anti-missile flare; Kate Winslet's legs magically elongating when she appeared on the front cover of the February 2003 edition of GQ.

The defence put up by Dylan Jones, GQ's editor, of the Winslet images was telling. He said that her picture had been manipulated "no more than any other cover star", and that "practically every photo you see in a magazine will have been digitally altered in this way . . . these pictures are not a million miles away from what she really looks like". In other words, that's not actually what she looks like. And, Jones is saying, we should be used to it by now.

Altering images is certainly nothing new. The technique of "retouching" photos and fiddling with negatives has a long and inglorious history dating back to the 1860s, and one stirring picture of General Ulysses S Grant astride a horse in front of his troops at City Point, Virginia, during the American civil war. It turned out to be a compo site of three pictures, in which the body isn't Grant's at all.

Stalin's infamous purges also included photographic ones, of all the political figures who had fallen out of his favour. Visual trickery has peppered politics ever since: in 2007, the then culture secretary James Purnell was grafted into a picture of the opening of a new hospital.

But it was Photoshop that made altering images routine. It began circumspectly as a program written by Thomas Knoll, who, in the autumn of 1987, was doing in a PhD in computer vision but for fun wrote a program to display images with grey in them on a black-and-white monitor. Knoll called the program Display, writing it on his Mac Plus computer. Then his brother John, who worked at George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic company, which did the visual effects for the Star Wars films, noticed its potential. They collaborated, bought a Macintosh II capable of displaying colours! and set to work; the program's name mutated until they hit on Photoshop.

In September 1988, Adobe Systems signed a licence to distribute it wisely, the Knolls took a royalties deal that made them very rich. And on 19 February 1990, Photoshop 1.0 became available. At the time it fitted on to a single floppy disk nowadays it takes a DVD although it had, even then, fallen foul of piracy after the Knolls demonstrated it to some Apple engineers, who "shared" the demo disks that were left behind with a few hundred of their closest friends. Nowadays, Photoshop is reckoned to be one of the most pirated programs in the world, behind Microsoft's Windows. Its high price around 560 is indicative of the fact it has no real rivals.

Photoshop quickly became embedded in computer culture. Apple would try to prove its computers were faster than those running Windows by holding "Photoshop bake-offs" during Steve Jobs's keynote addresses: a Windows machine and an Apple one would run through an automated process to tweak and manipulate an image in exactly the same way. Oddly enough, the Apple machine always won.

Photoshop has even created its own two-player sport, "layer tennis". The first player "serves" an image: the opponent then alters it and sends it back; the first player continues the process. Done in public, with commentary, it takes on its own strange allure.

Do not, though, expect to join the ranks of elite players immediately. Seeing Photoshop running on a computer is like viewing the cockpit of a 747; what, you wonder, do all those buttons do? Many experts say they have taught themselves how to use it over a decade or more. Creative technology consultant Richard Elen describes it as less like flying a plane, more like dealing with a huge house some people never visit all the rooms. "I probably use 50%-70% of what the apps can do," Elen says. "There are features I seldom, if ever, use. Others I use all the time clone tools, for instance [which copy an item inside an image] and I think I'm fairly adept at them."

Russell Quinn, a computer scientist and self-taught Photoshop user, says it's "akin to picking up a guitar for the first time. The whole world is there for the taking, but it's difficult to get started." He thinks two years is a reasonable timescale to get on top of it.

Steve Caplin, who has done photomontages for the Guardian for 20 years, recalls his first use of the program: "An illustration in Punch of the Queen. Photoshop was very much simpler then, but it had real power." He too has featured on the Photoshop Disasters blog "A missing shoulder on the cover of my book, ironically called How to Cheat in Photoshop!" and says he feels real sympathy for those who have run into trouble with the program.

"It's all too easy to overlook something that's then blindingly obvious when it's printed. It's just like spelling mistakes in print, really."

This article was amended on 12 February 2010. The original referred to a case where a photo of an Israeli jet firing one missile was "tweaked" to show more than one. The reference has been corrected because it was the photo caption that suggested missiles were being fired, while the projectile shown was an anti-missile flare.

Aleks Krotoski is joined by Lord Robert Winston, Professor of Science and Society at Imperial College, London, to discuss why every new technology we develop makes us as a species more vulnerable.

We also hear from Richard Wray from the frontline of the Mobile World Congress about Windows' latest operating system for mobile devices, and Bobbie finds out all the dirt on vark.com, the social search company that Google recently purchased for a whopping $50 million.

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Microsoft has slashed the UK price of the version of Office 2010 that most business users will buy, while also offering a new Starter version free with new PCs

Microsoft has slashed the UK price of the version of Office 2010 that most business users will buy, while also offering a new Starter version free with new PCs.

A new version called Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 will be priced at 239.99, where the previous Standard version of Office 2007 cost 349.99. The new package also includes the OneNote note-taking program plus Office Web Apps, so users will get more software as well as a price cut.

Further cost savings will be available for those willing to do without the usual packaging and physical DVDs and buy what Microsoft calls Product Key Card versions of Office. The key card only provides a license key that can be used to activate a copy of Office 2010 that has been pre-installed on a new PC or perhaps downloaded online. This drops the price of Office Home and Business 2010 from 239.99 to 189.99. With the top-of-the-range Office Professional, the Key Card cuts the suggested price from 429.99 to 299.99.

The familiar Office Home and Student version continues with, again, the addition of OneNote and Office Web Apps. 2010 prices will be 109.99 for a boxed copy and 89.99 for the keycard. Members of a family can install this version on three PCs.

The cheapest version of Office 2010 will be free, but only when pre-installed on a new PC from selected PC manufacturers. Chris Adams, Office Product Manager for Microsoft UK, says Starter 2010 provides "lightweight versions of Word and Excel" that lack advanced features such as change tracking. "Starter is really replacing Microsoft Works," he says.

Office Home and Student includes Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, and Office Web Apps. Office Home and Business 2010 includes all of those plus Outlook 2010. Office Professional also adds Publisher 2010, Access 2010, and "premium technical support". The Office range has been reduced to three packages, though there will also be Volume Licensing for Office 2010, to be announced, for large enterprises.

UPDATE: We originally gave the price of the boxed version of Office Professional 2010 as 399.99. The correct price is 429.99. Microsoft has apologised for supplying us with the wrong figure.

Departure of Owen Van Natta, the social networking site's chief executive, calls into question Rupert Murdoch's digital strategy

Days after MySpace, the struggling social network site, replaced its chief executive, a leading media pundit has said that interference from its owner, Rupert Murdoch, has left the business in a state of "total desperation".

Last week the site, which was bought by Murdoch's News Corporation in 2005, made the shock announcement that Owen Van Natta was stepping down as chief executive after less than a year in the job.

Since then, reports have suggested that his departure was the result of tension between Van Natta and Jonathan Miller, the former chief executive of AOL who now operates as the head of News Corp's digital businesses.

But Michael Wolff, author of The Man Who Owns the News, a biography of Murdoch, said that the roots of MySpace's problems were much deeper. "It certainly is not [Van Natta's] fault he inherited a business in which you could only manage decline," he said.

Instead, he suggested, the reshuffle is indicative of a wider panic over the way in which News Corp deals with its online businesses.

"The thing that's going on at News Corp right now is total, total desperation over this digital stuff," he added. "Rupert is saying, 'What's going on with MySpace? What's happening? Why isn't this working?' It's impossible to explain to him that it's not working because it's over, because this is the way the technology business goes. Once it's past, it's really past. There is almost no way to get that back."

Five years ago, Murdoch surprised the media industry by spending $580m on MySpace, at that time an up-and-coming force in the rapidly expanding business of social networking. With the acquisition, News Corp believed it had acquired a significant lead in online media through a site that boasted a huge following and good relations with the music industry.

While the site has generated plenty of cash for News Corp at one point, advertising on the home page alone was valued at $1m a day a series of missteps has left it in turmoil, struggling for success and flailing in the wake of its rivals.

Competition has chiefly come from Facebook, which first overtook MySpace in popularity last summer and has gone on to significantly extend its lead since then.

Figures from comScore, the internet traffic analysts, suggest that MySpace has about 57 million users in the US, down from a peak of more than 75 million. Facebook, meanwhile, has experienced incredible expansion in the past 18 months and now boasts more than 400 million users worldwide.

Shift of power

While that shift of power has left the site looking like second best, it has had other, material implications: last year Google chopped the value of a contract with MySpace to provide search services by $100m after the social network missed its traffic targets.

Faced with this growing litany of problems, Murdoch brought in Miller, who left AOL in 2006, to oversee MySpace and News Corp's other digital businesses. Once installed, Miller acted quickly, first removing the website's co-founder Chris DeWolfe as chief executive, then bringing in Van Natta a former Facebook executive to refocus the business.

With a new executive team in place, the company sold off a number of smaller properties that it had acquired and slashed more than 700 jobs worldwide, nearly half its total workforce.

One person familiar with Miller's approach is Jason Calacanis, who sold his online publishing company to AOL in 2005. He says that, under the circumstances, bringing in a new chief executive with a reputation for deal-making was a mistake, but that the company could still rebound.

"Jon is a really great manager of product people, and the people MySpace needs right now are product people," Calacanis said.

"It was probably, in hindsight, a misstep to put a deal person into a company that needs product leadership. But they took quick action to reverse that, which I give them credit for."

However, history is not on the side of MySpace. Social networking has been a graveyard for the media industry, with users happy to leave behind sites that fail to continue innovating, in favour of younger, faster rivals. Friends Reunited, bought by ITV in 2005 for 120m, was sold off last year for a mere 25m, while AOL is said to be looking to offload Bebo, which it bought for $850m in 2008.

Faced with struggles across News Corp's digital businesses, Murdoch and his lieutenants have begun taking an aggressive approach, calling for news sites to charge readers for content and labelling Google a "parasite". He aims to put his newspapers, including the Times and the Sun, behind a paywall, something described by the co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, as a vain attempt to "put the genie back in the bottle".

Wolff said that this was a result of Murdoch's fundamental misunderstanding of the differences between the technology and media industries. While the 78-year-old mogul craves leadership in the digital world, Wolff suggested that a career spent building traditional media businesses has left Murdoch struggling to understand the speed and innovation required on the internet.

"He absolutely has no idea," he said. "If people really quite understood how little feeling he has for this business, they would fall down laughing or crying."

An addictive new website that links strangers' webcams is gaining popularity and notoriety

A new website that has been described as "surreal", "addictive" and "frightening" is proving a sensation around the world and attracting a reputation as a haven for no-holds-barred, explicit material.

Chatroulette, which was launched in November, has rocketed in popularity thanks to its simple premise: internet video chats with random strangers.

When users visit the site and switch on their webcams, they are suddenly connected to another, randomly chosen person who is doing precisely the same thing somewhere else in the world.

Once they are logged in together, chatters can do anything they like: talk to each other, type messages, entertain each other or just say goodbye, hit the "next" button and move on in an attempt to find somebody more interesting.

Chatroulette describes itself as a "brand new service for one-on-one text, webcam and microphone-based chat with people around the world", but no one is sure who started the site. The owners did not respond to an attempt to contact them by email, and they have gone to great pains to protect their identities. This may be because Chatroulette appears to operate largely as an unregulated service and, as a result, has rapidly become a haven for exhibitionists and voyeurs.

A large contingent of people seem intent on using the service's string of random connections as the basis for some sort of sex game.

Users regularly describe unwanted encounters with all sorts of unsavoury characters, and it has become the defining aspect of the site for some. Veteran blogger Jason Kottke, who has spent years documenting some of the web's most weird and wonderful corners, tried the site and then wrote about witnessing nudity, sexual activity and strange behaviour.

"I observed several people drinking malt liquor, two girls making out, many, many guys who disconnected as soon as they saw I wasn't female, [and] several girls who disconnected after seeing my face," he said, adding that he also witnessed "three couples having sex and 11 erect penises".

Yet despite the highly offensive nature of much of the site's content, Kottke like thousands of others has been hypnotised by the glimpses the site offers into other people's lives. "Chatroulette is pretty much the best site going on the internet right now," he wrote.

Although the site says that it "does not tolerate broadcasting obscene, offending, pornographic material" and offers users the option to report unsuitable content, the restrictions do not seem to prevent users from broadcasting explicit videos of themselves online.

However, like the chatroom explosion in the late 1990s or the early days of YouTube, spending time inside Chatroulette is becoming a peculiarly modern form of entertainment, particularly popular with students in campuses around the world. In just a couple of months the site has expanded significantly as it tears through universities by word of mouth, spreading virally in a similar manner to sites such as Facebook. This has catapulted the site up the charts and brought it increasing amounts of attention from bloggers. The site had just a handful of visitors at launch, but now boasts more than 10,000 concurrent users at any one time often rising to 16,000 and beyond.

One chatter, who identified himself as Dan from Philadelphia, said that he had been using the site since very early on and that it was largely populated by people looking for any kind of instant amusement. "Everybody wants to be entertained," he said.

He said he regularly goes on the site with a group of friends to hold "Chatroulette dance parties" playing records and dancing in front of the camera in an attempt to bring a smile to the face of any passing visitor.

Although Chatroulette takes the idea of random connections between people to extremes, its raison d' tre is not entirely new. Internet chatrooms have been around for a generation, while an explosion of webcam sites emerged in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, millions of people use video chat services such as Skype every day to talk to their friends and families, and YouTube which was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65bn is among the biggest sites on the web.

There are also a number of self-broadcasting services online, including blogTV, Justin.tv and qik.com though most provide only one-way connections.

With constant campaigns against cyberbullying and abuse on the internet, there are still questions about potential abuses of Chatroulette and its dangers, but the site's rise is creating interest in many quarters.

Among those wanting to chart its development is Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist with Union Square Ventures who has invested in dozens of dotcom companies, including Twitter.

While Wilson says the level of "perversion and sexual innuendo" is sky-high and does not suggest that anybody puts money into the service he admits that it taps into something primal about the web.

"The internet is this huge network with over a billion people worldwide on it. Chatroulette feels like a pretty cool way to take a quick trip around that network, meeting people and talking to them."

Does the Microsoft co-founder who pushed tablet computers back in 2001 think that the iPad is the perfect version? And what about the iPhone, which competes with Windows Mobile?

Bill Gates has said in an interview with the news site Bnet that he doesn't think the iPad is a dramatic move compared to what Microsoft has done with tablet computers - but admitted that he is envious of the iPhone's features.

Interviewed by Brent Schlender, Gates - who said in 2001 that he thought tablet computers would be the predominant form of computers sold "within five years" (but saw that prediction fail), was lukewarm at best.

"You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard - in other words a netbook - will be the mainstream on that," he told Schlender.

Gates has long been a proponent of voice recognition technology for computers: in 1998 he tried to demonstrate a voice-drive system at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle, and forecast that by 2011 computers would be able to recognise their owners' faces and voices.

But the iPad, which is a completely touch-driven system, using fingers rather than an easily-misplaced stylus for its control - just like the iPhone - does not impress him in the same way.

"So, it's not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with iPhone where I say, 'Oh my God, Microsoft didn't aim high enough.' It's a nice reader, but there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.'"

Gates's admission that he looked at the iPhone, unveiled three years ago in January 2007 and which went on sale in June that year, and thought that "Microsoft didn't aim high enough" is a startling revelation from the man who drove the company to focus on mobile.

The iPhone has leapfrogged Windows Mobile in share of the smartphone market since its launch; Microsoft has not released figures for the number of licences sold for the past financial year, but it has seen high-profile defections by companies such as HTC to Google's Android mobile operating system.

The iPad has garnered great excitement from publishers and TV companies which see the possibility of selling more content through online stores akin to the iTunes Music Store and App Store.

However Cambridge City Council has denied reports that it was planning to buy a number of iPads for its councillors in order to save paper. It called the reports in the local and national press incorrect, and implied that it is instead looking at Windows-based tablets.

Whether it was democracy in action, or defence against malicious attempts to disrupt research, climate scientists were driven to siege mentality by persistence of sceptics

In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature.

As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of creating the definitive account of the controversy. This is an attempt at a collaborative route to getting at the truth.

We hope to approach that complete account by harnessing the expertise of people with a special knowledge of, or information about, the emails. We would like the protagonists on all sides of the debate to be involved, as well as people with expertise about the events and the science being described or more generally about the ethics of science. The only conditions are the comments abide by our community guidelines and add to the total knowledge or understanding of the events.

The annotations - and the real name of the commenter - will be added to the manuscript, initially in private. The most insightful comments will then be added to a public version of the manuscript. We hope the process will be a form of peer review. If you have a contribution to make, please email climate.emails@guardian.co.uk.

The anonymous commenting facility under each article will also be switched on so that anyone can contribute to the debate.

This story is dark; there are no heroes. Environmentalists will be distressed at what happens in the labs; many may think we should not publish for fear of wrecking the already battered cause of fighting climate change. But some of it, according to the British government's Information Commissioner, may have been illegal.

Remember two other things. First, this was war. The scientists were under intense and prolonged attack, they believed, from politically and commercially motivated people who wanted to prevent them from doing their science and trash their work. And they had, as their most vocal protagonist Professor Michael Mann puts it in one email, "dirty laundry one doesn't want to fall into the hands of those who might potentially try to distort things ..."

Meanwhile, their attackers came to believe that the scientists were fraudsters. In many ways, what follows is a Shakespearean tragedy of misunderstood motives.

There are two competing analyses of what "climategate" means. One sees it as the mob entering the lab the story of a malicious attempt to disrupt, cross-question, belittle and trash the work of mainstream scientists. This may or may not have been the motivation for the original hack, but it has certainly been the motive of some who have driven the news agenda since.

The second analysis sees it as democracy in action the outcome of an entirely laudable effort by amateur scientists and others outside the scientific mainstream, headed by Canadian mathematician Steve McIntyre, to gain access to the complex data sets behind some of the climate scientists' conclusions, and to subject them to their own analysis.

The interweaving of these two narratives has created the tragedy of climategate. The bunker mentality of climate scientists such as the key email correspondents headed by the director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, Phil Jones is exposed in the emails. But so too is the chaos caused in the labs by the efforts of outsiders to question what was going on, without using the established rules of science, like working through publication in peer-reviewed literature. The clash of cultures between the blogosphere and the pages of august journals such as Nature could not be greater.

All this happened against the backdrop of a long-term assault by politically motivated, and commercially funded, climate-change deniers against the activities of many of the key scientists featuring in the emails. Indeed it is striking that people with a limited scientific involvement with CRU who have been victims of past attacks such as Kevin Trenberth of the US government's National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory became regular email correspondents with Jones and his colleagues. They were huddling together in the storm.

Through the emails we also see that some insiders were always demanding more openness from their colleagues and providing candid criticism of shoddy or mistaken work. One person stands out in this: Tom Wigley. He was Jones's former boss, having preceded him as head of CRU. Now based at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado, Wigley kept up a vigil for honesty and integrity in emails over many years. If there is a hero in this sorry tale, perhaps it is Wigley.

The science discussed in the emails is mostly from one small area of climate research the taking of raw temperature data from thermometers, satellites and proxy measures of historical temperatures such as tree rings and turning it into useable information on temperature trends. The result being iconic graphs like the famous "hockey stick", first published 12 years ago and one of climate science's most famous and controversial products. It shows a long period of natural stable temperatures followed by a sharp, exceptional warming in the late 20th century.

In this area of work, CRU has been crucial. Under Jones's management, it has assembled the most comprehensive thermometer data record in the world, much of it under contract to the US Department of Energy. It is also home to some leading tree-ring researchers like the deputy head of the CRU, Dr Keith Briffa. The acerbic correspondence of Jones and Briffa with Michael Mann of Penn State University, the chief creator of the hockey stick graph, is a central feature of the emails.

CRU's work is the prime (though not the only) basis for the claim that man-made global warming is happening now and is exceptional in history. But as it comes under assault, it is worth remembering that it does not directly touch on other key issues like the physics of climate change, forecasts of future climate change and so on. Even if all the work of CRU were revealed as entirely phoney, which is far from being true, it would not demonstrate climate change was a hoax, or even much alter predictions of future climate.

The emails reveal that Jones, Briffa, Mann and other emailers were the gatekeepers of the science on which they worked. These men (there are virtually no women in the emails) reviewed papers by colleagues and rivals. They held key writing positions with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its assessments of the science of climate change. So if they are damaged, then so is the IPCC.

Their correspondence reveals that there is some basis to the charge, made in October 2009 by climate contrarian Ross McKitrick, an environmental economist at the University of Guelph in Canada, that that "the IPCC review process is nothing at all like what the public has been told. Conflicts of interest are endemic, critical evidence is systematically ignored and there are no effective checks and balances against bias or distortion." There are more than a thousand leaked files of emails to and from scientists and CRU. The emails are clearly a small subset of all the emails that would have been sent and received by CRU scientists since the first one in 1996. Nobody is yet clear why this set made it into the public domain, but they are overwhelming between CRU scientists and foreign compatriots. They include technical discussions about tree ring chronologies and data analysis, scheming about how to repel Freedom of Information (FoI) requests, and bitching about their enemies among the sceptics the group the scientists referred to as "the contrarians".

Our analysis finds previously undisclosed evidence of slipshod use of data and apparent efforts to cover that up. It also finds persistent efforts to censor work by climatic sceptics regarded as hostile especially those outside the scientific priesthood of peer review or those able to generate headlines in media outlets thought unfriendly, like Fox News.

We would agree with Judy Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, a leading climate scientist who maintains contacts with both camps, who says: "There are two broad issues raised by these emails ... lack of transparency in climate data, and 'tribalism' in some segments of the climate research community."

McIntyre's war

Climategate would not have happened without one man: a Canadian squash-playing blogger and data obsessive in his 60s called Steve McIntyre. Hero or villain, his data wars with Mann, Jones, Briffa and Santer largely created the siege mentality among the scientists, set them on a path of opposition to freedom of information, and by drawing in scores of data liberationists inside and outside the science community, almost certainly inspired whoever stole and released the emails.

McIntyre, a trained mathematician, had a successful career heading small Canadian minerals companies, often using his statistical prowess to analyse mineral prospecting data and out-bet his rivals. In 2002, he took up a new hobby investigating climate change science. It started with an email from his home in Toronto to Jones at CRU asking for some weather station data. Initially the exchanges, as revealed on McIntyre's website ClimateAudit, were civilised. But as the years passed, and his data demands grew greater, relations soured.

From the start, McIntyre deconstructed studies that claim to show evidence of large-scale warming of the planet and of the human fingerprint in that warming. He pioneered the use of freedom of information legislation in the US and UK to demand the raw data behind the studies. It was not normal practice for scientists to publish this full data, nor the computer programmes they devised to analyse it.

McIntyre clearly doubted the statistical techniques being employed by the climatologists, and felt that, as a trained mathematician, he could do better despite his ignorance of climate science. And, as he grew more suspicious, he suspected them of cherry-picking data. He wondered exactly how Mann turned dozens of studies on the past climate, including a series of tree rings studies managed by Briffa at CRU, into his neat hockey stick graph. And he questioned the reliability of the thermometer data used by Jones to produce his graphs of warming over the past 160 years.

He found that no independent researchers had seriously tried to replicate the findings a cornerstone of scientific inquiry. "Nobody's ever checked this stuff with any sort of due diligence," he said recently. He says too much is taken on trust in the cosy, collegiate world of science.

The climate scientists came to regard him as a meddling, time-wasting and probably politically motivated wrecker, who rarely published his own papers and devoted his retirement to trashing theirs. So when he tried to access their raw data and computer programmes, they resisted. The emails reveal that the researchers shared tactics, encouraged each other and competed for the rudest invective against McIntyre. And they grew even angrier as other wannabe investigators joined the data hunt. Men such as Doug Keenan, a former financial trader on Wall Street and the City of London, and a retired electrical engineer from Northampton called David Holland.

Many have accused McIntyre, Keenan and others of being hired hands of corporations out to fight climate change legislation. The Guardian has found no evidence of that. Instead, they appear to be an unanticipated outpost of the rise of "grey power", retired numerate professionals with time on their hands, an obsessive streak in their heads and a cause to pursue. The story of the battles of McIntyre and his acolytes to access the raw data, and the protracted and generally failed attempts by the scientists to repel him, is the central story of the leaked emails from 2003 onwards.

At first McIntyre published regular peer-reviewed scientific papers, co-authoring a couple with Ross McKitrick. The mainstream climate scientists responded angrily to them. They often used their influence to exclude what they regarded as substandard papers from major journals. So McIntyre, McKitrick and other sceptical authors, like Patrick Michaels of the University of Virginia and the Cato Institute and later Keenan, increasingly used Climate Research and Energy and Environment two peer-reviewed journals widely disliked by mainstream climate scientists.

Tensions were strained further when McIntyre published more of his deconstructions of published papers on his website, but without scientific peer review.

Strident though his website often is, McIntyre has usually avoided outright personal abuse. The abuse was usually only a link away on other sites, however. And few of McIntyre's targets distinguished him from more politically motivated foes. Santer, for instance, concluded in one email in 2008 that McIntyre "has no interest in rational scientific discourse. He deals in the currency of threats and intimidation." He believes McIntyre saw himself as the "self-appointed Joe McCarthy of climate science".

Last September, RealClimate, a website run by Mann and other climate scientists, summed up how mainstream scientists felt about this kind of scientific discourse. "The timeline for these mini-blogstorms is always similar. An unverified accusation of malfeasance is based on nothing, and it is instantly telegraphed across the denial-o-sphere while being embellished along the way to apply to anything hockey-stick shaped and any and all scientists. The usual suspects become hysterical with glee that finally the 'hoax' has been revealed ... After a while it is clear that no scientific edifice has collapsed and the search goes on ... Net effect on lay people? Confusion. Net effect on science. Zip."

McIntyre, they complained, kept his hands relatively clean. He never talked about a hoax being exposed, and rarely questioned the "edifice" of climate science. He just picked away, providing fodder for his more excitable and less fastidious fans. As the RealClimate post went on: "Science is made up of people challenging assumptions and other people's results ... What is objectionable is the conflation of technical criticism with unsupported, unjustified and unverified accusations of scientific mal-conduct." McIntyre rarely makes such charges personally but, they complained, he "continues to take absolutely no responsibility for the ridiculous fantasies and exaggerations that his supporters broadcast".

There was a clash of cultures, too, between the ways of Canadian mining prospectors and those of academia. As one academic put it to me: "I think McIntyre confuses the more aggressive and confrontational style of business he used as a geophysical consultant with the more even responses in scholarship exchanges." On the other hand, the CRU emails hardly suggest that the scientists are shrinking violets. When Australian climate sceptic John Daly died, Jones commented, "In an odd way this is cheering news."

In the final months before climategate, the battle was not a cultural one, or even really about climate change. It was about data pure and simple. McIntyre wanted the scientists' data. In one week in the summer of 2009, he showered CRU with 58 freedom of information requests. He often made it clear that he did not have any particular reason for requiring the data. He just wanted to liberate it. It was a battle to break down the walls of the ivory towers, to blow apart the cosy world of peer review. It was a battle for the heart and soul of science, and for its lifeblood: data.

Then came the stolen emails. Whether hacked from outside or leaked from inside, the emails lit a fuse, but the fuel of mistrust had been piling up for years. As a result, the bonfire has been spectacular.

Scientists in the firing line

Many of the researchers caught up in the "climategate" saga have spent years in the firing line of sceptics. And they have felt the heat.

In late 2006, I interviewed a number of them for an article in New Scientist magazine, which focused on how the propaganda war was shaping up prior to the publication of the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment the following year.

Kevin Trenberth had suffered abuse for publicly linking global warming to the exceptional 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, which culminated in hurricane Katrina. He told me: "The attacks on me are clearly designed to get me fired or to resign."

Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in California, and formerly of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was attacked for his role in writing the 1995 IPCC report, which claimed to see the hand of man in climate change. He said: "There is a strategy to single out individuals, tarnish them and try to bring the whole of science into disrepute."

Prof Mike Mann of Pennsylvania State University, fresh from his battle over the hockey stick in 2001, said: "There is an orchestrated campaign against the IPCC."

Funding trails to some of the more prominent sceptics also emerged at that time. Steve McIntyre, who runs the influential sceptic blog Climate Audit was free of financial conflicts of interest, but it emerged that prominent sceptic Patrick Michaels received hundreds of thousands of dollars in "consultancy" fees from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, a coal-burning electric company based in Colorado. A leaked letter from the company's general manager, Stanley Lewandowski, said: "We believe it is necessary to support the scientific community that is willing to stand up against the alarmists."

The funding of climate sceptics has a long and probably ongoing history. In 1998, I revealed in the Guardian leaked documents showing that the powerful American Petroleum Institute (API) was planning to recruit a team of "independent scientists" to do battle against climatologists on global warming. The aim was to bolster a campaign to prevent the US government ratifying the Kyoto protocol.

The API's eight-page Global Climate Science Communications Plan said it aimed to change the US political climate so that "those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality".

The leaked document said: "If we can show that science does not support the Kyoto treaty this puts the US in a stronger moral position and frees its negotiators from the need to make concessions as a defence against perceived selfish economic concerns."

Its first task was to "identify, recruit and train a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach". It is not clear if the plan went ahead, but the policy objective was achieved.

Several staff require continued care after 47 were treated last year for effects of n-hexane at factory that supplies Nokia

Workers at a Chinese factory that makes parts for mobile phone companies including Nokia have been in hospital for months after being poisoned by a chemical used in production.

The owner of the plant says it stopped using the screen-cleaner n-hexane in August last year after 47 workers were taken ill. But the lingering effects of the chemical have left several requiring continued medical care.

Taiwanese firm Wintek is known for its touch-screen panels for mobiles and owns several factories in mainland China. It is reported to make the iPhone's touch-screen panels and has been widely touted as a potential supplier of iPad components for Apple.

Nokia said the n-hexane was not used on its production lines but that it had ensured measures were taken to protect workers' safety at the plant in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

It is not clear why Wintek started using n-hexane to clean screens instead of alcohol, nor when it did so, although the health problems appear to have surfaced in July. The issue gained attention when 2,000 workers from the factory went on strike last month over a pay dispute and cited lingering anger about the chemical incident.

Deng Yulong, a 19-year-old worker, told Chinese Central Television she became sick soon after starting work at the plant. She suffered from weakness and severe headaches and fainted twice in the factory.

Repeated exposure to the chemical at high concentration can cause nerve damage and muscle weakness, with symptoms in severe cases lasting for as long as two years.

A spokesman for Wintek said that "almost all" of the affected workers were back at work but that some remained in hospital. He could not say how many had recovered.

He said that n-hexane was commonly used in the industry, adding that the problems arose because no prior evaluation of the plant was carried out. Because some areas were not ventilated, the concentration of the chemical built up and poisoned the workers.

The spokesman added that the company had paid the workers' medical bills and regular wages, topped up with food and nutrition supplements amounting to more than their usual wage.

In a statement, Nokia confirmed the Suzhou factory provided parts for its handsets, but said n-hexane was not used in manufacturing its products or their components.

It said: "We became aware of the allegations regarding the use of n-hexane in July 2009 and started our investigation immediately. Although it was confirmed that the n-hexane was not used on our production lines at the supplier ... we agreed on a development plan for health and safety management at Wintek's Suzhou factory and a series of corrective measures have been taken since then."

The company added: "Nokia firmly believes that all employees have the right to ethical and legal treatment. The health, safety and wellbeing of our employees are vital to the success of our business."

It said it expected suppliers to take a similar approach and demonstrate their progress in these areas, working with them to go beyond legal compliance to meet the company's standards.

A spokesperson for Apple confirmed that the company had received the Guardian's email queries, but no response was forthcoming despite repeated phone calls. Wintek says it cannot identify its clients and Apple does not normally comment on suppliers.

Chinese media have reported workers' claims that colleagues died from exposure to the substance, naming one possible fatality, but the local government and Wintek says that no one died of n-hexane poisoning.

Anticipation and suspicion run high before launch of Bloom Box, claimed to be a cheap source of clean energy from a device the size of a loaf of bread

A new but still unseen technology that its creator claims can be an off-grid source of cheap, clean electricity in a device the size of a loaf of bread is about to get its close-up.

The formal debut of Bloom Energy's much-hyped fuel cell, known as the Bloom Box, will take place at eBay's headquarters in California on Wednesday, and will reportedly attract figures from the former secretary of state, Colin Powell, who is on the company's board, to the state's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The anticipation can be gauged by a segment on the CBS network's flagship television programme, 60 Minutes, on Sunday which talked about the "holy grail" of clean energy technology. A clock on Bloom Energy's website which contains little information bar an inspirational video of astronauts and of winning runners cresting the tape at the finish line counts down the minutes until the launch.

Venture capitalists have reportedly poured $400m into Bloom Energy's project since founder KR Sridhar began his work eight years ago. Twenty companies, including Wal-Mart and Google, are trying out the device. Sridhar has also attracted the high-profile support of Powell, who proclaimed last year: "I have seen the technology and it works."

But industry watchers say they remain unsure exactly how it works. They also say Sridhar has aroused suspicion with his secretive approach, which includes working in an HQ with no sign outside.

Scientists and entrepeneurs have been trying for years to create a low-cost option for generating and storing fuel. Sridhar has told reporters his work draws on his research on generating oxygen for Nasa's missions to Mars. The Bloom Box allegedly reverses this process, using natural gas or plant waste as fuel while producing relatively little carbon dioxide.

Sridhar gave CBS the first glimpse of the technology, explaining that the boxes are produced from stacks of ceramic plates. The plates, which are made of sand, are painted with special green and black inks. He declares that one such stack, or cell, can power a light bulb; 64 can power a coffee shop.

Nasa has been using similar devices aboard its vehicles for years but Sridhar's achievement was to make the technology affordable, he told the Atlantic magazine last December.

He has been running a pilot project of the technology at the University of Tennessee for the last two years, where the Bloom Box reportedly proved twice as efficient as traditional power sources and produced 60% fewer emissions.

But its real potential lies in its claimed ability to use any fuel source gas, plants, wind, solar, etc to generate power, which would theoretically enable the Bloom Box to operate entirely off the electricity grid. That would offer developing countries, such as Sridhar's native India, the chance to provide cheap, clean electricity to remote villages.

"I want to open up access to energy the way that PCs and the web opened up access to information," Sridhar told the Atlantic. "So people can live where they want, and still be connected, without someone telling them when they can do their laundry."

Five signatories add names to letter in bid to pressure parliament to vote for internet piracy measures in digital Britain bill

TV and music impresario Simon Cowell and author Sir Terry Pratchett have written to MPs and peers urging them to vote in favour of tougher internet piracy measures included in the digital Britain bill as "a matter of urgency".

Cowell and Pratchett are among five signatories from across the UK's creative industries to a letter designed to put pressure on parliament to make the bill's anti-piracy proposals law.

The other signatories are Tim Bevan, co-chairman of Working Title Films, leading TV producer Stephen Garrett and Paul Greengrass, the British director of United 93 and the last two Bourne movies.

One of its key DEB clauses will give the courts the power to cut off consumers who download pirated music and films by forcing internet service providers to hand over details of persistent offenders.

The controversial proposal is fiercely opposed by ISPs including Carphone Warehouse, which argue it is not their job to police the internet, but the creative industries view it as crucial to the survival of the film, music, TV and publishing businesses.

In the letter, sent to parliamentarians today, Cowell and the other signatories say: "Britain is admired for its creativity and its sense of fair play."

The country's musicians, singers, actors, writers and directors, they say "contribute more than 7% to the UK economy".

"The digital economy bill.... will ensure that British creators, entertainment companies, and the 1.8 million people who work in and around the cultural sector are respected and rewarded in the future as they have been in the past."

"Digital entertainment services are really beginning to take off," the letter says, "but for these new business models to develop, it is critical that more is done to prevent the illegal services providing easy access to free content".

Greengrass is president of Directors UK, a campaigning body that also collects payments on behalf of TV and film directors. Garrett is executive chairman of Kudo Film and Television, which makes programmes including Spooks and Life on Mars.

There are concerns within the creative industries that the bill will not become law in the current session of parliament. A general election is widely expected to take place on 6 May and parliament will be dissolved before that.

Leading figures in the industry fear that if the measures designed to prevent consumers from illegally downloading content are not enacted now, the political momentum behind them will be lost for good.

There is no guarantee that the next government would reprise the legislation in its first few years, when more urgent manifesto commitments are likely to take precedence.

The Conservatives are opposed to some parts of the digital economy bill, including a provision to create independently financed news consortia, which will be given public money to make regional news programmes screened on ITV1.

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, has threatened to block the bill if that commitment is not removed. "This is a red line for us. We want this clause out of the bill", he said last month.

The opposition has the power to derail the legislation because of the crowded parliamentary timetable in the run-up to the election.

To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

After several years of building a sizeable database of sceptic arguments it was a natural progression to the iPhone

iPhone app takes on the sceptics

With so much confusion about the climate debate, where do you turn for truth? The most reliable source of information is the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Everyone, even scientists, have their personal opinions and preconceptions. But to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, you have to back up your opinions with rigorous analysis of empirical data that survives the scrutiny of experts in the field. It's not a perfect process but it's the highest standard available for published science.

Consequently, the approach I have taken on my blog Skeptical Science is this. I look at each global warming sceptic argument, find any relevant peer-reviewed papers and endeavour to explain in easy-to-understand terms what the research says. In late 2009 after several years of building a sizeable database of sceptic arguments, I was contacted by the owners of a Melbourne software company, Shine Technologies. They suggested turning the database into an iPhone app that could be downloaded from iTunes for free.

This was a timely idea. In recent months, the climate debate has taken a nasty turn. Instead of discussing science, sceptics were attacking scientists with repeated attempts to discredit the IPCC and the scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. This may be a politically effective tactic. But personal attacks don't change the fact that ice sheets are shrinking, sea level is rising, glaciers are retreating and many other physical realities of global warming are manifesting themselves before our eyes. It's imperative that the climate debate focuses on science. Hopefully an iPhone app would be an effective medium to make climate science readily available to the public.

On February 10, we launched the Skeptical Science iPhone app. Word spread quickly through Twitter and various blogs. The response was, to put it mildly, polarised either very positive or angrily negative. iTunes reviews were all either 5 stars or 1 star.A few days later, an interesting development came about when the sceptic website Climate Realists issued a strident warming against the app:

WARNING! There is an iphone app trying to put down what we have to say under the heading of "Skeptical Science". We need as many of you as possible to promote that this iphone app is yet another attempt to discredit "Climate Realists".

This caught the attention of the Guardian whose article was a significant step in taking the app into mainstream consciousness. The comments thread featured some fierce discussion my favourite part being one commenter who rebutted sceptic objections with content from the iPhone app. This was followed by a not-so-positive review from the Telegraph, which concluded, "iPhone owners are all Lefties. Still, perhaps you could use it to keep track of what the enemy is up to. It is free, after all." The subsequent discussion there was not quite as fierce but I suspect that's largely due to the Telegraph readers being more universally opposed to the notion of man-made global warming!

So within its first few weeks, the Skeptical Science app is already making waves. Meanwhile, Shine Technologies are already working on the next version. The launch version has a report function that lets users tell us when they've encountered a sceptic argument. This gives us an insight into which sceptic arguments are most popular. As time and location are also stored, this provides intriguing possibilities for creating "heat maps" (pardon the pun) of sceptic activity.

The app regularly updates itself with new data, papers and arguments. Last week, the argument "Phil Jones says global warming stopped in 1995" was added to the app, examining his actual words and the relevant temperature data. The next argument in the pipeline is "record snowfall disproves global warming". What the peer review science has to say on this topic is both surprising and fascinating should be a useful addition to the app!

Study suggests the increased dumping of used computers, mobile phones and other electronic equipment poses a serious threat to health and the environment

The world must do more to cope with the drastic rise in electronic waste, according to a UN study published today.

The report suggests that in some countries, the amount of e-waste being produced including mobile phones and computers could rise by as much as 500% over the next decade. Such rapid growth, it argues, will create intractable problems for people's health and the environment as the waste, much of it containing toxic material, decays.

"The issue is exploding," said Ruediger Kuehr, who oversees zero-emission initiatives at the United Nations University. "We see the hunger for mobile phones, computers and also any other kind of electronic and electrical equipment in some developing countries."

The findings are being unveiled at a meeting of the UN Environment Programme (Unep) in Bali today, along with a call for greater efforts to fix the problem.

"This is a global question," said Guido Sonnemann, programme officer for Unep. "This problem is not going away, it's growing."

While many of the materials used in electronic equipment can be reused in new products, recycling capacity is being outstripped by the growth in demand for phones, computers and other devices.

Despite a number of conventions aimed at preventing the indiscriminate dumping of e-waste, the problem is snowballing, with billions of people now regularly using advanced electronics.

The problem is particularly acute in parts of west Africa, where ship-loads of e-waste are dumped on a daily basis and scavenged by children who break down the electronics to recover valuable metals that they can sell.

Kuehr said the issue was vitally important for countries where economic growth is highest and dumping most prevalent.

"It's definitely in the countries which have substantial increase in consumption countries like China and India, which are still substantial targets for illegal imports of e-waste," he said. "The same applies for countries like Nigeria."

The problem is not confined to developing countries, however.

"There's still a high growth rate in developed countries," said Kuehr. "It's an increasing, growing and pressing problem everywhere, including Europe. The collection rates are simply too little."

Although there is legislation to encourage e-waste recycling in some parts of the world including the WEEE initiative in Europe the UN argues that this alone is insufficient.

Instead, it advocates a number of solutions, including supporting local communities to increase the amount of "informal" recycling, where valuable materials are scavenged for resale and reuse.

It also wants better enforcement of recycling and anti-dumping laws and greater action from manufacturers, and is urging local governments and consumers to recycle old technology rather than dump it.

"We see the need for stronger awareness and action to solve the e-waste problem," said Sonnemann. "You need to get a process that is not harming health or the environment."