Games giant Activision has shaken up production of its best-selling Call of Duty franchise amid claims of insubordination from senior executives - marking the second major change at the publisher in under a month.

In a terse announcement on Tuesday, the company said that it would be creating a new unit to develop future titles in the series, potentially replacing games studio Infinity Ward, which it bought in 2003.

It also confirmed reports that Infinity Ward's most senior executives, Jason Ward and Vince Zampella, had left the company.

In a regulatory filing, Activision cited "breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward" and said that "this matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation".

The company has refused to comment further on the issue, and has remained silent about reports that security staff were called into Infinity Ward's Californian headquarters on Monday.

The reshuffle took industry insiders by surprise, coming just months after the latest installment of Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2 - became the biggest entertainment launch in history by making $310m on its first day.

Call of Duty - a 3D combat simulation spanning world war two and more modern conflicts - has been one of the most successful video game franchises in history, bringing in more than $3bn in sales since the first title came out in 2003.

The release last year of Modern Warfare 2, the latest instalment, was hailed as a major event and sold almost 1.8m copies in the UK in its first week alone. Such was the title's influence, that other publishers took the unprecedented step of pushing back their own releases until after Christmas in order to avoid being crushed.

Despite these successes, however, the game has not been without its critics. Modern Warfare 2, in particular, came in for scrutiny when it emerged that one mission allows players to join a gang of Russian terrorists as they attack an airport.

The leaking of footage led a string of protesters, including anti-games MP Keith Vaz, to say the game left them "shocked" and "concerned" about the levels of violence.

The abrupt decision to change control of Call of Duty is not the only sign of turmoil at the company, a gigantic games conglomerate formed by 2008's 10bn merger between Californian publisher Activision and the games unit of French media company Vivendi.

Last month the head of the company's Guitar Hero franchise, Dan Rosensweig, departed after less than a year in charge.

Reports of difficulties between senior executive have been circulating for some time, with West telling Official PlayStation Magazine last year that "we had to fight for everything" in developing new versions of the game.

Although replacing the producers of a major franchise marks a significant risk for Activision, industry analysts suggested the company may have been working to prevent future conflict.

"A greater risk would be whether or not the two heads end up taking more talent away [from Activision], or the whole team leaves," said Shawn Milne of Janney Capital Markets.

Taiwanese mobile-phone manufacturer backing Google's Android OS is accused of infringing 20 Apple patents

Apple is suing the Taiwanese handset maker HTC, alleging that it has infringed 20 patents relating to "the iPhone's user interface, underlying architecture and hardware".

Among the patents that Apple alleges have been infringed are a number relating to touchscreen interfaces for which the iPhone has become the best-known, though it was not the first, mobile device.

"We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it," said Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, in a statement. "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."

It is thought that a key element that triggered the lawsuit is that in February HTC released handsets which use "pinch-to-zoom" functionality resembling that of the iPhone.

Apple has filed the suit in the US courts in Delaware, Maryland, but also with the US International Trade Commission (ITC), which has the power to halt imports of products. That would stymie HTC and Google, whose free Android mobile operating system is built into a growing number of HTC phones, and has made significant inroads into the burgeoning smartphone market in recent months.

But the move was received with surprise in the technology community. "I don't fault Apple for acquiring patents. They have to, for defensive purposes, given the current laws," noted John Siracusa, a journalist at Ars Technica who has followed Apple closely for years. "But using them offensively sucks."

The use of the ITC could be key for Apple. A recent analysis found that where lawsuits are filed both with US district courts and the ITC, plaintiffs succeed in the latter more often than the former, by 58% to 35%. That means Apple is roughly 50% more likely to win the case with the ITC and so could block HTC imports of newer handsets.

HTC indicated that it was completely surprised by the case, and had not even received the formal complaint from Apple when the American company announced it publicly.

Apple has submitted more than 700 pages of exhibits relating to its patents to the court in Delaware, Maryland, where it is filing the case. It cites a number of handsets, including the Nexus One handset powered by Google's Android mobile operating system, and also other handsets which use Microsoft's Windows Mobile system. HTC has in the past been the largest manufacturer of Windows Mobile handsets although it has recently shifted its allegiance to Google's Android, which is free and has captured significant market share since being launched in 2008.

Apple has specified 10 patents in the Delaware filing, and a different 10 in the ITC filing.

The case is thought to be the first in which Apple has taken the first step in suing a rival mobile phone company. Although it has an ongoing patent dispute with Nokia, the Finnish mobile handset maker, the first move there was by Nokia. Apple has since countersued. The case is ongoing.

Signing up for that 'free' offer could actually end up costing you as scammers use Facebook and Twitter to tempt gadget seekers

It's a day for scams. Think you've been given the chance to sign up as an iPad tester via Facebook? No you haven't - it's a scam which actually signs you up to a premium rate mobile service, warns the security company Sophos.

"Facebook pages with names such as "iPad Researchers Wanted - Get An iPad Early And Keep It!" and "The Mega iPad Giveaway!" prey on the public's desire to own a free iPad," notes Sophos.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, has explained the scam on his blog.

Here's how it works. The scam pages typically take their intended victims through a three step process:
1) "Become a Fan" of the page; 2) "Invite your friends" to also become fans of the page, and take part in the "special promotion" [they might not stay your friends for that long afterwards - CA]; 3) "Claim" or "Apply" for your prize.

Some of the pages pretend to have thousands of positive comments from other Facebook users claiming that the offer is genuine, Sophos notes. And it's also running on Twitter - so beware there of people or accounts offering "Free Apple iPad!" or similar. (The key, among other points, is that Apple hasn't actually begun selling the iPad yet: it won't do that until April.)

When the victim applies for the prize they are typically taken to an online quiz, and their mobile phone number is requested so they can be sent the results.

"As if inviting all of your friends to participate in a scheme that you haven't properly investigated wasn't bad enough, the biggest mistake of all is to hand over your mobile phone number," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "You will be signed up for a premium rate service, costing you in the region of $10 every week, until you unsubscribe. The scammers who created the fake iPad Facebook pages are undoubtedly skimming off some of this money by bringing new unwitting subscribers to the cellphone service."

Cluley notes: "The good news is that after I alerted Facebook's security team about this page they disabled it very promptly. However, the bad news is that there are many other similar Facebook pages being created on the social network designed to scam unsuspecting users.

"Not all of them pretend to offer an iPad, so be on your guard for other scams too. The most important thing to remember is to not invite your friends to any Facebook page or application until you have thoroughly researched what it's about. Furthermore, you should never be tempted to hand over your mobile phone number to some daft internet quiz."

There's also a video showing how the scam works. The lesson: be wary. And stop wanting free stuff. There's always a price to pay.

Playstation3 owners can safely reconnect to the PlayStation Network - but has Sony really fixed the problem that killed systems, or just let the clock roll over? (Updated)

Sony says it has fixed the problem that bugged "millions" (© Metro newspaper) of PS3 users. (Update: as Charax points out in the comments, Sony is saying that the problem is resolved not that it has fixed it.)

But it's not saying precisely what caused the problem - although all the signs point to defective software in a clock system.

On the official PS3 blog it says:

"We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year. Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally. If the time displayed on the XMB is still incorrect, users are able to adjust time settings manually or via the internet. If we have new information, we will update you through the PlayStation.Blog or PlayStation.com."

Wait - the software thought that 2010 is a leap year? Truly that's some terrible software. Unsurprisingly, there are more than 100 comments on the post, though they mostly seem to be expressions of relief.

And for those who were worried that they'd lost trophies (as was happening yesterday), one commenter says "the local trophy collection is blanked for any disk game you started while this happened and you cannot synch (PSN games seem to be spared). Get a new one and the trophy list will be refreshed. If you already 100%'d a game your trophies still show up in the compare list so no worries."

So, basically, your trophies weren't wiped - the problem was that the clock fault meant the PS3 couldn't join the network and verify itself.

Yet it looks as though Sony might have fallen victim to a form of the 2010 bug - which early this year hit 30m German shoppers, because the systems they were using couldn't believe that there was ever going to be a year beyond 2009.

We await details of precisely how Sony is going to fix this - specifically, whether this problem will arise in 2012 (which is a leap year). Of course by 2014 we'll all be on PS4s... won't we?

In the meantime, is anyone finding that they can't get onto the PSNetwork, or that they have lost trophies?

Update: Ah, we wouldn't have believed it had actually happened if there weren't a Downfall video. Enjoy.

Why singer Imogen Heap wants to make electricity out of horse manure

What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?
I was going to say Macs, but everyone says that, so I'm going to go into geek mode. I have these wireless wrist microphones that I wear on stage they are throat mics that I've adapted. The audio gets picked up and goes into my computer. What's great about them is that I can wander about on stage and grab any instrument like the wine glasses I use and the mics are in the perfect position to pick up the sound. They've completely transformed me on stage.

When was the last time you used them?
I did a show in London last week, and the really cool thing was that I did an experiment where I asked the audience what key and tempo they wanted, and improvised this piece of music. I mixed and uploaded it that night, and people can buy it at my website all the proceeds go to charity.

What additional features would you add if you could?
I'd like some sensors that would detect whatever instrument I picked up. Each instrument would have a code that would switch my pre-amp compressor to the correct setting for that instrument.

Do you think they will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
I don't think they'll be obsolete, but parts of them will be such as the battery pack. Maybe in 10 years the energy from your body will be enough to power the mics.

What always frustrates you about technology in general?
When it comes to computers and software, the most irritating thing is companies not being fluid and open, so software doesn't work with competitors' machines. It just slows progress.

Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?
I have a love and hate affair with my iPhone at the moment. I have a lot of apps that conflict with each other and sometimes cause it to crash.

If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?
Don't take it out on the machines when something doesn't work it's not their fault.

Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?
Definitely leaning towards the nerdy.What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
I would say it's probably my 8-core Power Mac. I use it on my live tour it's really really fast, I love it. But I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the new iPad I wish it had a camera in it, though.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase?
I very rarely buy CDs, and to be honest is an issue with space. But there's also the convenience of downloading. I do buy DVDs at Christmas time, I bought hundreds and hundreds of pounds worth of things for friends and family. Giving an MP3 file is just not the same.

Robot butlers a good idea or not?
I think it's a great idea. Pretty much already your computer is your butler being your calendar and organiser and such but if there was something that could follow you around and make you cups of tea, I'd be very up for that. But I'd like to design my own.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
What I'd really, really love is fuel cell technology that converts horse manure into energy for your home. That would be something I'd love to invest in.

Singer Imogen Heap (www.imogenheap.com)is on tour in Europe. She plays London's Albert Hall on 5 November.

Aleks Krotoski, Bobbie Johnson and Charles Arthur dig into this week's top stories across the web, including the optimism that Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner has about the new web browser ballot that Microsoft is offering its users, the latest on the Italian scandal that's got Google's top brass in the dock and Twitter's nascent advertising-based business model that's starting to rise to the surface.

Special guest Elizabeth Varley, co-founder of forthcoming London coworking space TechHub offers her insight into the growing popularity of these new shared office facilities across the UK, and we hear from Andy McMillan, founder of Belfast's most recent coworking space, Core.

All this, plus all the feedback from across the social web - including a run down of the people you'd like us to invite to our live Tech Weekly recording at the Science Museum on Tuesday 23 March. Add your suggestions below.

Don't forget to ...

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PS3 and Wii; 29.99; cert 12+

Karaoke Revolution? That's a bold claim. Just how different can a karaoke game possibly be? In the case of Konami's latest singing title, the answer is "not very".

In fact, the revolutionary aspect appears to be its compatibility with the PlayStationEye, which allows the player to copy their image into the game. It's a neat enough touch but revolutionary? Hardly, particularly when elsewhere it's all business as usual.

On the plus side, Konami's title does reward decent singing. Blowing on the microphone scores poorly, getting the pitch and timing right scores highly. You won't get rewarded for Mariah Carey warbles and your own jazz interpretations, but hit the marks and your points will soar.

There is also a decent range of songs here, although it's slightly biased towards the younger market/current chart hits, with the likes of Katy Perry, La Roux, Lady Gaga (costumes optional), Pink and the larynx-threatening Kings of Leon making up most of the 75. However, they rub shoulders with the likes of Bowie's Space Oddity, Chris Isaak's Wicked Game and A-Ha's The Sun Always Shines on TV although the latter two feature falsetto moments which older gentlemen may wish to remember before they make their selection.

On that level, Karaoke Evolution is a good value crowd-pleaser for those who like that sort of thing. There are other positives too, with slick character and venue creation modes. It's relatively easy to vary the existing characters or create your own, for example, middle-aged, chunky, bald, beardy journalist-turned-rock god, or build your ideal combo of speaker rigs and lighting effects.

Unfortunately, it's also clear that Konami spent more on these aspects than they did the main menus which we'll charitably call functional and the actual animation. When you're up against tidily observed rivals such as Lego Rock Band, out-of-synch Zippy-esque open mouth / close mouth animation doesn't really cut it.

Career mode isn't terribly impressive, either. While it's more all-encompassing than you might fear and doesn't rely on improving your singing ability which probably makes it quite realistic the odd challenges aren't particularly compelling.

In short, then, Karaoke Revolution works best when it turns your console into a karaoke machine; much like its various rivals in fact. It's not great but it's certainly not awful and, at 30 or below for 75 songs, it is, at least, reasonable value. Karaoke Revolution? Hardly, but then Karaoke Same Old Same Old probably wouldn't shift as many units.

Rating: 3/5

The government's plans to disconnect file sharers from the internet have come in for heavy criticism in parliament, amid claims that ministers are attempting to rush legislation through without proper oversight.

In a marathon House of Lords debate over the Digital Economy bill, several members launched into strong criticisms of the proposals and said there had been an "extraordinary degree of lobbying" from copyright holders to try and push them into law quickly.

One of the most pressing issues is the so-called "three strikes rule" - which would allow anyone accused three times of copyright infringement to have their internet connection "suspended" for an unspecified period.

As well as concerns that the process does not give those accused of illegal activity proper legal recourse, some also fear that such a rule could hurt organisations such as libraries, internet cafes and universities which offer free internet access.

Responding to such claims, Lord Young, who is sponsoring the bill alongside Lord Mandelson, said that nobody could be excluded from the law - and that business and organisations should take "proportionate and reasonable measures" to prevent illegal activity.

"No one wants to see libraries or universities the subject of court action or technical measures if I stress this they are ever introduced," he said.

"No one wants to see legitimate businesses suffer as a consequence of the actions of their customers but, equally, it cannot be right that they are totally excluded from the provisions of the bill."

He suggested that all those potentially affected by the law should issue terms of service which placed the liability for file sharing on the user, rather than the wireless hotspot owner. He added that technical solutions could be used to block high bandwidth activity - such as downloading movies - or to screen out file sharing applications.

A number of other concerns were also raised during the debate, including the news that the government does not intend to pass the bill to the Office of the Information Commissioner, Britain's privacy watchdog, for oversight.

Lord Young said this was an unnecessary step - despite serious concerns about privacy implications of some - because it would simply cause more delays to prevent further delays in passing it into law.

"Formally requiring the information commissioner to approve the code is not necessary and could add significantly to the time for the approval process," he said.

This angered a number of those present, including Lord Puttnam - who accused the government of attempting to rush through legislation without giving it time for proper discussion. Such a move, he said, could result in the production of laws which would later require a hasty rewrite.

"What will end up leaving this chamber... and going to the Commons is a bill that none of us is particularly proud of," he said. "It will be a spatchcock that does part of the work it was intended to do but not all of it."

He also mentioned the "extraordinary degree of lobbying" that those involved in drafting had come up against, amid rising tension and conflicts between creative industries, internet service providers and consumer rights groups.

"I am absolutely convinced that, within the next two or three years, there will be another bill before this house which will be created to deal with the deficiencies of the present bill," he said.

Critics of the bill have regularly attacked it since the first first put forward last November, but they remain concerned that the reading the Lords could fail to erase all the problems.

The Open Rights Group, which campaigns for consumer rights online, said that some of the most controversial elements of the bill looked set to be removed, but the situation around disconnection and open wireless access remained unsatisfactory.

"We have won some significant concessions," said Jim Killock, ORG's executive director.

Meanwhile, internet service provider TalkTalk, which has been vociferous in its opposition to the plans, has said it remains wholly opposed to the scheme. Last week it said that the government was playing a game of "semantics".

"The Digital Economy bill will give rights holders the power to act as a judge and jury, allowing them to demand that ISPs disconnect their customers without having to prove their case in a court of law," it said.

The reading of the bill will continue this week.

Google has added more Chrome features for Windows users as it gains market share in browsers while others appear to be losing ground

Google has released a new beta version of its Chrome browser, which is currently growing its market share, according to a usage-based tracker. The new features of this Windows-only version 4.1 include more advanced privacy controls, more control of things like cookies on a site-by-site basis, and what Google calls the "seamless integration of translation functionality". If you already have Chrome installed, the beta replaces the current version, though you may not notice much difference.

Chrome's "Under the Bonnet" section has tabs that let you (separately) block all images, JavaScript, plug-ins and pop-ups, though it's not particularly handy if you want to toggle those settings.

The Google Chrome blog post that introduced the beta has a video demo of the translation feature. Briefly, if you arrive at a page in a foreign language, Chrome just asks if you it translated using Google Translate.

In the UK, Google says there are new extensions from TfL, TicketMaster, SeatWave, Heat, Empire, and others. Invisible Hand has one (not tried) that "searches for cheaper prices on products as you browse".

Chrome is doing pretty well, going by Net Applications' browser market share numbers for February 2010. Chrome use increased 0.4 percentage points to 5.6% while Firefox dipped 0.2 points to 24.2% and Safari slipped almost 0.1 to 4.45%. The numbers may well be arguable, but Firefox has now lost share three months in a row from a peak of 24.7% in November 2009. That's not a good trend. However, all of IE's rivals could benefit from the "browser choice screen" now being shown to many European users.

The BBC seems to have started using a Flash player verification service that stops the iPlayer from streaming for more than a minute or two to unauthorised media players, hitting users of the open source XBMC

The BBC has reportedly started using the SWF Verification routine -- aimed at protecting copyright content -- with its iPlayer streaming video service. It could be an attempt to stop third-party software from downloading videos, which usually only last for seven days. However, it has the side effect of dropping the video stream after one or two minutes when used with unauthorised players. This includes open source media players such as XBMC.

H-Online notes that: "Some open source plug-ins get around SWF verification by transparently dropping the stream, reopening it and seeking to where it was before the 'ping' came in, though this is potentially punishing on servers."

The BBC supported Linux (OpenSuSE and Ubuntu) and Mac OS X by creating a desktop version of the iPlayer that uses Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) software. Windows users can also install it.

iPlayer content reaches a wide audience not just via PCs but through the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3 games consoles and some mobile phones. But while the BBC aspires to universal access, it doesn't guarantee to deliver all its content to everyone in the UK (DAB radio coverage being particularly limited) let alone deliver it in the format that any particular group of users may choose for their own reasons.

However, as is often the case, the BBC's move may have unforeseen consequences. According to a report in The Register:

Reg reader, Tom Rouse, who alerted us to the SWF verification tweak to the iPlayer, wondered if the BBC was simply satisfying the demands of Adobe's content licence desires.
"It would seem that this move is likely [to] impact users of platforms not supported by Flash, with an unsatisfactory implementation (eg too resource intensive for the platform, with video tearing, etc.), or those who just wish to use an open source player," he said.
"Ironically, third party utilities that download files (which presumably the verification is there to prevent) still work fine. It is possible that this move will actually increase the occurrence of downloading files which will not be time limited, or torrenting of copyrighted material."

A spokeswoman for the BBC Trust told The Register: "The decision to block open source plugins is a matter for BBC Management. The Trust has not received any complaints on this issue and has no plans to look into it further at present."

There's no way of knowing how many UK-based iPlayer users have PCs but can't or won't run the Adobe AIR version, but it's probably not a large percentage of 61.4 million.

Audible is publishing lesser-known classics, including Shusaku Endo's Silence, as audiobooks for the first time

A trio of titles by acclaimed Japanese author Shusaku Endo, who was described by Graham Greene as one of the finest writers of the 20th century, are being published as audiobooks for the first time.

Endo's Silence, a 17th century-set story of two Jesuit priests who go to Japan to spread the gospel, and his novels The Samurai and Deep River, are all being made into audiobooks by provider Audible as it launches a new publishing programme looking to unearth old classics and produce the unabridged audio exclusively as downloads.

Audible is also bringing out the first-ever audiobook of Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, a lesbian novel that was banned on publication in 1928, and five unabridged titles by Eric Ambler, who was once described as "the source on which we all draw" by John Le Carr .

"Although we've got 40,000 titles on the site we felt we wanted to be increasing the rate at which we added new titles, and we were feeling a little bit disappointed at how few titles were making it from print into audio," said Audible UK managing director Chris McKee. "We've been trying to find a seam of interesting titles where we can acquire the audio rights, because very often publishers are reluctant to let them go. These titles are just slightly below publishers' radars, so we can get in, get the rights and create exciting titles which otherwise wouldn't get into audio."

Audible is also publishing downloadable audiobooks of Napoleon Bonaparte's novella Clisson and Eug nie: A Love Story, and six titles by respected British mystery writer Michael Francis Gilbert, with plans to continue to expand the programme with "dozens of new titles" over the next year, McKee said. "It's very easy to just say that what's selling in print should make it into audio, but we like to delve deeper, to look at titles which are timeless.

Because we're a digital store, we have unlimited shelf space. We know these books will sell over a period of time so we can take a longer view," he added.

The venture is not the audiobook provider's first into publishing titles itself: four years ago, McKee said, it noticed a "very high demand" for erotica, and a shortage of titles, so it commissioned writers and produced a line of books. "These have done well, but we haven't shouted about them, we've just quietly got on with them," he said. "Now, we're trying to select the unusual and the compelling for our new classics line."

Google has added to its long string of acquisitions with Picnik, one of the first good online photo-editing sites.

Google has announced that it has bought Picnik, one of the early online photo-editing sites, for an undisclosed sum. Picnik was started in Seattle in 2005, and now has a staff of 20. Part of its appeal is that it lets users edit their photos online then post them to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. It uses a "freemium" model where the basic service is free and users are asked to subscribe for access to more advanced features.

Picnik is the third company that Google has bought this year -- the others were search companies Aardvark and reMail -- and brings the total to more than 60, according to a list on Wikipedia. Its best acquisitions include Pyra Labs (Blogger), Picasa (photo album), Keyhole (Google Maps, Google Earth), Android (phone software), YouTube (video), JotSpot (web apps), DoubleClick (advertising) and FeedBurner. Somehow it missed Flickr.

The Official Google Blog says: "We're not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we'll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we'd like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks."

Picnik's blog says: "What does this mean for Picnik? It means we can think BIG. Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we'll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome."

The New York Times's Bits blog notes: "This is not the first company that Picnik's chief executive, Jonathan Sposato, has sold to Google. His first sale was a product called Phatbits that became part of the Google Gadgets platform."

I wrote about Picnik in the Netbytes column in January 2008, when it was both reasonably powerful and very easy to use. It's also in our list of 100 essential websites for 2010.

The competition includes the powerful and more professional Aviary suite, and Photoshop.com, an online version of Adobe Photoshop Express, among others.

The British executive tipped to take over the helm at chip maker Intel is taking extended medical leave after suffering a stroke.

Sean Maloney, 53 - who heads the sales division of the world's biggest computer chip company - became unwell over the weekend, the company said. It added that he has an "excellent" chance of making a full recovery, and is expected to return to work in several months.

"I visited with Sean and his sense of humour and determination to return to work fill the room," said Paul Otellini, the company's president and chief executive. "We wish him a speedy recovery and look forward to his return."

After an early career in programming, the Londoner joined Intel in 1982 and spent several years working for the company's European arm. He then rocketed through the ranks after being handpicked to be an assistant to Andy Grove, the former Intel boss credited with turning it into one of the world's most powerful technology companies. Since then he has been widely tipped as a future successor to Otellini, and is responsible for overseeing sales and marketing around the world.

Based at the company's headquarters in California, Maloney told the Guardian last year that he spends around 80% of his time travelling.

Twitter is preparing a new advertising model that will serve adverts in peoples' feeds and try to supplant third-party services such as Tweetdeck, according to reports.

A story at the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD says that "Ads will be tied to Twitter searches, in the same way that Google's original ads were. So a search for, say, "laptop," may generate an ad for Dell. The ads will only show up in search results, which means users who don't search for something won't see them in their regular Twitterstreams.

"The ads will use the Twitter format 140 or fewer characters and will be distributed via the third-party software and services that use Twitter's API. The services will have the option of displaying the ads, and Twitter will share revenue with those that do.

"Twitter will work with ad agencies and buyers to seed the program, but plans on moving to a self-serve model like Google's, down the road."

That will be a dramatic change from the present advertising model, where small text adverts appear on the top right of Twitter users' home page. It is not known how much those garner in revenue - but given the low public profile of many of the advertisers there, it's unlikely to be as much as the search deals that Twitter signed on the same day last October with Google and Microsoft's Bing.

It is not clear how soon the new service would launch, though AllThingsD suggests it could happen "in the first half of the year".

Questions have been raised repeatedly about how Twitter, which is estimated to have around 75m users, can fund its long-term existence and move to profitability.

As Twitter appears to have rejected charging for use either of the service or of its API, that seems only to leave advertising - though there is no clear information about the model behind it.

A number of third-party applications which provide access to Twitter via its API already provide ads in the "timeline" of messages as an alternative means of paying for the cost of the product.

Some of the excitement was driven by tweets by Alex Payne, one of Twitter's engineers. On Saturday he tweeted "If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)"

This was quickly picked up by the technology blog Techcrunch - leading Payne to begin refuting his tweet, and the Techcrunch post, in the same medium as before. "I don't mean that developers won't be able to compete with the site. We still release most everything API-first, of course," he explained within the hour. And then, later: "Uh, everything I like that's on the employees-only beta site is actually *built* on public API methods we've already given developers." And next, in exasperation: "I just mean that our web client team is building cool stuff. It's going to inspire desktop app developers. Same data, new perspectives." And a puzzled complaint: "I am still baffled as to why anyone pays that level of attention to what I have to say."

But given the absence of hard information from Twitter about how it plans to make a profit from its service, it's likely that people will continue trying to mine every piece of information that escapes from the company - whether actually indicative or not - to try to figure it out.

The growth in iTunes tracks sold is encouraging - but if you consider what's driving it, the picture might not be so rosy

Steve Jobs will be pleased. Not only did it happen on his birthday, but the 10 billionth song sold through the iTunes Music Store was by one of his musical heroes, Johnny Cash; specifically, "Guess Things Happen That Way", which was bought by Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia, who receives a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

Jobs however was not moved to comment on the sale; instead that was left to Eddy Cue, the company's vice president of "internet services", who said: "We're grateful to all of our customers for helping us reach this amazing milestone. We're proud that iTunes has become the number one music retailer in the world, and selling 10 billion songs is truly staggering."

Certainly it is - but how quickly will the next 10 billion roll around? Looking at the best-selling songs indicates that they have all come from the past couple of years.

There's another question too: is the number of sales of songs keeping step with the number of iPods, given that it's the iPod that is reckoned to be the driver of sales?

Certainly the data (recorded on Wikipedia) suggests that sales keep growing.

But iPod sales are growing too - and no matter what replacement period you think there is (as per our story of last November), you can't see exponential growth in sales of songs compared to the number of iPods out there. People who have iPods don't seem to buy more and more and more songs in the sort of replacement that they did for CDs replacing vinyl (understandably, as CDs are digital, just like iTunes tracks, and you can rip them).

In fact, they seem to track each other fairly closely - so that with sensible estimates of between 100m and 150m iPods actually in use (because although Steve Jobs did say at the iPad launch that 250m iPods have been sold, not all of those are still working, you can be sure), you have to think that music sales are only weakly tracking iPod sales.

The graph above shows how the number of songs sold per day has taken off. (Note: we've had to interpolate for the 7bn and 9bn figures, because Apple never announced them. But given the linear shape of the graph we felt it was fair to use a linear interpolation for them, as they fit other numbers that have been provided.)

Then there's more bad news: iPod sales fell year-on-year in the most recent Christmas quarter. So if it's iPod sales driving iTunes sales, then the signs already point towards an eventual flattening. Even now, the graph seems to show straight-line growth.

It is surely twilight of the (dumb) iPods - for the iPhone and iPod Touch are still doing well, and the iPad looks like it could do well too. But they'll never be the rocket that gets lit under the sales of downloaded music.

So it's a great day for Louie Sulcer, but for the music industry generally, this is only worth one cheer. Salvation, if it exists, will still have to be found elsewhere.

HTML5 isn't a standard yet, but the key question is: who is going to get their way with it?

Picture by Stevendepolo at Flickr. CC-BY licenced.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee doesn't have an easy manner in the flesh; there isn't the relaxed manner of a politician, whose careers depends on putting people at their ease. Instead, Berners-Lee has a darting, urgent manner. And his career has turned out to be one which ends up putting people at their unease: look around at what the web has done to the world, and the huge upheaval it's caused, and that's Berners-Lee, magnified.

Now he's turned his gaze to the Gordian Knot that is the HTML5 specification.

For this we need to backtrack a bit, and see where things have gotten to since the last time I wrote about Apple/Flash/HTML5 at the start of February.

The question then was, if Apple is not going to have Flash on the iPad or iPhone/iPod Touch because it implements HTML5's handling of video, via H.264, embedded directly in web pages via the Canvas API is Adobe's technology going to find a home in HTML5?

Since then sooo much has happened. Let's unload some links:

The Flashmobileblog looks at battery performance of Flash Player on Google's (sorta flashy) Nexus One:

"Bloggers from Daring Fireball and Macgasm have spent a little more time than expected studying the battery indicators, as opposed to the incredible advancements in web browsing for mobile phones, netbooks and tablets. "

Umm, perhaps: it depends on whether you think battery life is more important than being able to see that awesome Flash opening page for that restaurant.

An Adobe engineer said that the next version Flash will be so much better on Mac OSX, honest.

Simon St Laurent wrote, over at O'Reilly, about "the widening HTML5 chasm". (He's a former worker on the World Wide Web Consortium (aka W3C), where Berners-Lee has of course toiled for longer than one would have thought humanly possible.) He reckoned that discordant interests would leave HTML5 damaged and its credibility weakened.

And then the Free Software Foundation urged Google to kill Flash by open-sourcing its video codecs and pushing them out to YouTube users - meaning "The world would have a new free format unencumbered by software patents."

No response from Google which announced that it's dropping Gears support, so it can concentrate on HTML5 support in the Chrome browser.

Jason Garrett-Glaser, the primary x264 developer and an ffmpeg developer, noted (in a long post about Flash, Adobe, and performance) that Adobe has made two critical mistakes: first, assuming Linux and Apple's OSX didn't matter (turned out lots of important developers are there) and secondly, attacking free software:

"Practically all the websites on the internet use free software solutions on their servers not merely limited to LAMP-like stacks. Youtube, Facebook, Hulu, and Vimeo all use ffmpeg and x264. Adobe's H.264 encoder in Flash Media Encoder is so utterly awful that it is far worse than ffmpeg's H.263 or Theora; they're practically assuming users will go use x264 instead. For actual server software, the free software Red5 is extraordinarily popular for RTMP-based systems. And yet, despite all this, Adobe served a Cease&Desist order to servers hosting RTMPdump, claiming (absurdly) that it violated the DMCA due to allowing users to save video streams to their hard disk. RTMPdump didn't die, of course, and it was just one program, but this attack lingered in the minds of developers worldwide. It made clear to them that Adobe was no friend of free software."

There's plenty more in the post it's basically your essential backgrounder on the technical and financial obstacles to HTML5 video.

The key question is: who's going to get their way with HTML5? The companies who want to keep the kitchen sink in? Or those which want it to be a more flexible format which might also be able to displace some rather comfortable organisations that are doing fine with things as they are? Adobe, it turned out, seemed to be trying to slow things down a little. It was accused of trying to put HTML5 "on hold". It strongly denied it. Others said it was using "procedural bullshit".

Then Berners-Lee weighed in with a post on the W3 mailing list. First he noted the history:

"Some in the community have raised questions recently about whether some work products of the HTML Working Group are within the scope of the Group's charter. Specifically in question were the HTML Canvas 2D API, and the HTML Microdata and HTML+RDFa Working Drafts."

(Translation: Adobe seems to have been trying to slow things down on at least one of these points.)

And then he pushes:

"I agree with the WG [working group] chairs that these items -- data and canvas are reasonable areas of work for the group. It is appropriate for the group to publish documents in this area."

Chop! And that's it. There goes the Gordian Knot. With that simple message, Berners-Lee has probably created a fresh set of headaches for Adobe - but it means that we can also look forward to a web with open standards, rather than proprietary ones, and where commercial interests don't get to push it around.

The upshot: HTML5, as a standard, may still be some years off. But the fact that there's so much interest in it, and that browsers Apple's Safari, Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome are already starting to incorporate parts of its specification now means that in some parts of the web, the latest sites will work really well. The advantage there goes both to the sites and to the users of those browsers. (Remember too that Firefox is the most widely-chosen browser in the world.)

So Adobe really does have a problem now. It will be very interesting to see how it reacts, and how it keeps Flash moving forward over the next ten years. At the very least, it might want to take some advice from x.264's Garrett-Glaser: be open, don't ignore platforms, work on performance.

And where will Berners-Lee pop up next? Ah following his success in getting data.gov.uk to happen, he's now focussing on UK local authorities. If you work in one, you have been warned

Matthew Key, who runs Telefonica O2 Europe, said he had not seen a mass exodus of British customers lured on to rival networks by the iPhone.

O2 sold more iPhones in the UK than Orange in the run-up to Christmas, according to boss Matthew Key, despite the hype surrounding Orange's success in ending O2's two-year exclusive hold on the Apple device.

On Thursday, Orange announced it sold 222,000 iPhones in the last quarter of 2009, having only had the handset since mid-November.

The iPhone helped the company, owned by France Telecom, persuade more people to sign up to long-term contracts than it has ever managed in a fourth quarter before. Vodafone and Tesco Mobile are also now selling the iPhone to their customers.

But Matthew Key, who runs Telefonica O2 Europe, said he had not seen a mass exodus of British customers lured on to rival networks by the iPhone.

"I cannot tell you a specific number but [what] I can tell you is we sold more iPhones than Orange in the fourth quarter we did more than 222,000," he said, after O2 announced its fourth-quarter results. "We are seeing absolutely no evidence of customers leaving us to go back to Orange or Vodafone who had previously come to us from them to buy an iPhone."

In the last three months of 2009, O2 added 338,455 new users, taking its customer base to 21.3 million and retaining its position as the UK's largest network. Of those new users, 235,486 signed up to long-term contracts.

Its performance in terms of new customer numbers, however, was the worst of the four major UK networks. In the same period, Orange gained 404,000, T-Mobile 571,000 and Vodafone 410,000.

The industry's fourth-quarter figures, however, raise the question of whether someone has lost customers or there is double-counting, because it is very unlikely that 1.7 million people picked up a mobile phone for the first time just before Christmas.

Key reckons some players not, he stressed O2 have been throwing very cheap pre-pay deals at customers and distorting the market. It raises the prospect of a repeat of the so-called "box-breaking" that hit the industry a few years ago.

Box-breaking occurs when a mobile phone company subsidises an attractive handset for pre-pay users. People buy the handset, throw away the operator's Sim card and either have the handset unlocked so that they can use it with their existing Sim card effectively getting a cheap handset upgrade or sell it, often overseas.

On paper it looks like the operator has made a sale but over time it becomes obvious that the buyer is not using their network and effectively they have wasted the handset subsidy.

"I look at the net customer additions in quarter four and logically it cannot make sense," admitted Key. "We suspect that some of the other operators have driven business that has been about driving customer numbers in the short term, but actually in the medium term that customer will not spend any money with them."

Activity streams have become central to many social networking websites - so what happens now that Facebook has patented the idea?

Facebook caused a bit of a stir when introduced its 'news feed' back in 2006, which many suggested was a stalker's charter. But the dust soon settled down and now the feed - that list of things your friends have done recently - is basically the centre of most people's Facebook usage.

Now, however, the company is courting controversy again, after it emerged it has patented the news feed concept itself - potentially putting it into conflict with dozens of other social networking sites.

Nick O'Neill of All Facebook who first discovered the award, called it a "huge deal" and he's not wrong.

According to the application itself - submitted in August 2006 and ascribed to eight Facebook employees including Mark Zuckerberg - it covers a system that's become very familiar to us: a stream of information about the activities of our friends, contacts and links to relevant pieces of data.

"In some embodiments, the method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items.

The method further includes limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items. The method further includes displaying the news items in the assigned order to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewers.

Here's a diagram from the application that shows the system they're talking about.

Now, ignoring the stilted legalese, that seems to be a pretty good description of the feed: an algorithm that generates a stream of your activities, your friends' activities and other information drawn from that database of actions.

I don't use Facebook very much, but looking at my News Feed it would seem to cover most of what's in there: a series of status messages from various friends and contacts, some links shared by colleagues, my cousin getting tagged in a photo and an old flatmate of mine posting a photo from the NME Awards.

But I wonder whether Facebook really inventing anything here that hadn't already been demonstrated before. After all, Twitter - which uses some of the same ideas - was launched in July 2006, while Flickr had already been trialling a similar system for keeping you updated about activity on the site for a couple of years.

Facebook's application was filed on August 11 of 2006, a few weeks before it launched on the site but after those rival services were already doing some similar things.

And then, on top of the questions about whether Facebook invented the news feed (and the eternal question about software patents existing at all) there is the question of what owning the patent means.

Facebook may choose to use this as a defensive strategy - protection in case anybody else tries to sue them for copying ideas - but it also now owns an idea that is extremely commonplace online, not least in rival services like MySpace and Google Buzz.

I suspect we may be hearing more of this.

An audit of Apple's suppliers has found all sort of transgressions. But will we ever take notice of the real reasons that our cheap electronics are so inexpensive?

Was your iPod built on the back of child labour? That's something everyone should be wondering after Apple said an audit of factories highlighted numerous failures at factories that supply it - and other companies - with electronics.

The report, which is posted online, lists a litany of failures - including several instances of 15-year-olds being employed by the unnamed suppliers, nearly two-thirds of factories failing to pay workers properly, long hours and poor environmental and safety credentials. The company, not surprisingly, says it wants to "eliminate" these violations.

You can take several positions on the affair: that it's reprehensible that Apple should ever work with companies that treat employees so badly, that it's positive that an audit had picked up such transgressions, that Apple has to really up its game and make changes.

I'm not sure where I stand exactly on all of it, and the different positions aren't mutually exclusive. But I do know that there are plenty of questions about practices at the company's suppliers and partners - not least poisonings in some factories to the suicide of a worker accused of leaking iPhone details.

There's a bigger question here too: one we should all be asking ourselves whenever we're buying electronics. Why is it so inexpensive?

Yes, we often complain about the high prices of our gear, but in truth, the price is sometimes subsidised through exactly the sort of behaviour that Apple's audit highlighted.

Not everyone agrees - including Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired who is currently pushing his 'Atoms are the new bits' idea. That concept - which boils down to the idea that low-cost manufacturing will push forward a revolution in making stuff that's reminiscent of the digital explosion - relies heavily on disappearing labour costs, largely in China. When pushed recently on whether this meant slave labour, Anderson said that in China "working conditions are an issue, but rarely child and "slave" labor".

Apple may beg to differ.

Let's face it, these cheap electronics are cheap for a reason. But do revelations like this stop you from buying?

Every time you go online you increase your carbon footprint. Is it possible to be a green surfer?

Somewhere in California (and soon to be in India and possibly Iceland) there are vast tracts of hulking warehouses containing thousands of energy-guzzling servers it's farming, but not as depicted in The Archers.

Server farms provide the network to transmit websites. They are powered by electricity, predominantly from coal-fired power stations. Add in the energy required to make your PC in the first place and computing is responsible for 1bn tonnes of CO₂ each year more emissions than aviation. In pollution terms, using t'internet could be your equivalent of an Arkwright mill at full throttle during the Industrial Revolution.

Last month some headlines suggested that a Google search generated 7g of CO₂ the same as making a cup of tea. This left the eco-minded home worker in a real quandary: I chose the cup of tea. Later Google corrected this to 0.2g per search. But still, it all adds up.

The latest research suggests that you create 20mg of CO₂ per second per visit to a website. The more whistles and bells on the site the higher this gets up to 300mg of CO₂ per second for one with video content. Running an avatar in Second Life uses more electricity than a live person in Brazil. Ask yourself: is this watt necessary?

Employ a spam filter, too. In 2008 an estimated 62 trillion spam emails were sent globally, creating the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1m passenger cars.

I know what you're thinking: what's wrong with a reference book? Well, US academics remind us that driving a mile and back to the library produces 100 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a web search. Remaining ignorant is carbon free.

The entrepreneur and innovator tells Simon Garfield about inspiration, determination and why he doesn't do email

Thirty years ago this month, Clive Sinclair launched a computer that he hoped would change the world. In the majority of cases it only changed the way people played primitive computer games, but it also turned a bespectacled, prematurely balding man into a hero for our times.

In those dark days before Windows 7 and the iPad, the Sinclair ZX80 represented the pinnacle of affordable domestic computing. It was a flat box without a screen or proper keyboard, it had the memory of a hamster and at the back of it was something that looked like a radiator grille but was actually a strip of plastic designed to look like a radiator grille. It promised it could do "quite literally anything, from playing chess to running a power station", which was good value for something costing 79.95 in kit form and 99.95 assembled, about one fifth of the price of other home computers.

Sir Clive, who was knighted for services to industry at the age of 43, will be 70 later this year. He lives in an apartment overlooking Trafalgar Square, and from his adjacent office he has a magnificent view of tourists and lions (recently he also had a view of people performing on Antony Gormley's fourth plinth, but that "got a bit boring really"). He was a household name before Sir Alan Sugar, and for a while was the unlikely future of modern electronics: a bright, hi-tech uncle rejuvenating British industry blighted by decay, unions and Thatcher.

Sinclair helped transform Cambridge into the computing capital of the world, a homegrown version of Silicon Valley and Taipei, and for a couple of brilliant years he made the bestselling computers in the world. And then the competition took him on, and his great machines went the way of the Spinning Jenny, and here he is in his carpet slippers nursing a heavy cold.

He says his recollections may be a little blurry, but he is clear on one thing. Before his other inventions made him poor, the ZX80 and its successor the ZX81 made him rich. "Oh my lord, yes," he says as he settles on a sofa. "Oh good God, yes. Very much so. I'm just speaking from memory here, but within two or three years we made 14m profit in a year. That would be a lot today."

He says that the ZX80 computer was named after the year it appeared, and because the letters sounded cool and futuristic. He is keen to credit the rest of his small team at Cambridge, not least Nine Tiles, the company that made the Basic operating software. But he is a little hazier about what the machine could actually do.

"We had several routines you could be doing within minutes," he says. "People could tap in a few keys and make the display do some strange things. All very exploratory. We had a little printer, and one guy, right at the start, came out with the program that generated hypothetical dinosaurs. It invented their names, and printed out their pictures, and it could go on doing this indefinitely. Then very soon a huge number of games came out and the whole thing exploded."

"Not literally?"

"No."

The ZX80 sold about 50,000 units, and the ZX81 which replaced it cost 69.95 and sold 250,000. The brochure promised that a child of 12 would soon be mastering "decimals, logs and trig", although the trig would have to be saved to a cassette recorder. The average 2GB laptop of today has 2,000,000 times more memory than that offered by Sinclair's first machines, although he is keen to stress that computing ability isn't everything. "Our machines were lean and efficient," he says. "The sad thing is that today's computers totally abuse their memory totally wasteful, you have to wait for the damn things to boot up, just appalling designs. Absolute mess! So dreadful it's heartbreaking."

Sinclair, who is not an especially tall man, has always been a great one for the smallness of things. He made those little pocket calculators, he made black digital watches, and also those pocket televisions on which the newsreader Kenneth Kendall looked like Angela Rippon. Later he would make the little C5 (1985), way ahead of the game in the quest for an electric car, so long as you didn't actually try to take it on the road.

He says the important thing about his computers was not only their ability to help with domestic chores (when WH Smith sold them it stressed you could "flummox your bank manager"), but also their capacity to expand the user's intellectual horizons. But it was the male hobbyists who had the most fun: adverts depict fathers programming train timetables with their sons while mum brought in the Victoria sponge.

Things really took off when the ZX became the Spectrum in 1982, and colour games such as Jet Set Willy became the second major activity in teenage bedrooms. Like the Chopper bike, these amusements are now retrospectively popular again, although Sinclair sees none of the rewards. When did other companies such as Atari and Commodore begin to catch up? "I don't think they did catch up. We never had any serious competition in the sense of making machines that were cost effective by comparison. The BBC machine Acorn was quite expensive, and only succeeded because the BBC put its name to it, which was quite outrageous. Then the IBM machine took over. Not because it was a good machine it was a completely appalling design, but it was IBM, so you know "

And what computer does he now use himself?

"I don't use a computer at all. The company does."

"So you don't do email?"

"No. I've got people to do it for me."

"If friends and family want to communicate?"

"They can do that. We've got a computer in the front office, but I get someone to do it for me."

"That seems odd to me. Why is that?"

"Sheer laziness I think. I can't be bothered."

"Do you not know how to operate it?"

"I do know how to, but I don't."

"Sorry to press, but it seems the simplest thing in the world to do your own emails."

"Well I find them annoying. I'd much prefer someone would telephone me if they want to communicate. No, it's not sheer laziness I just don't want to be distracted by the whole process. Nightmare."

When he's not not doing his emails, Sinclair occasionally appears in the tabloids pictured with a blonde former lapdancer 36 years his junior ("He's actually incredibly attractive to women," his intended, Angie Bowness, whom Sinclair met in Stringfellows, has said.). The rest of the time he continues in his attempt to reinvent the wheel. He walks across the corridor to his office, where one section is given over to the A-Bike, his miniature lightweight folding bicycle. He launched this in 2006, and it costs 199.99. He says it's selling well, and that he's just solved some manufacturing problems. I pull one out to sit on it.

"They're not necessarily working models," he says, "so I'd rather you didn't."

I ask him how it folds up. "I won't go into that now if you don't mind I'm not feeling too well."

I ask him what else he is working on.

"A little electric car."

"And what can you tell me about that?"

"Not much."

"When might it be viewable?"

"I hope within a year."

"Any resemblance to previous efforts?"

"No, it doesn't look like anything we've done before."

"But obviously all the big companies are doing their own electric cars."

"But they won't be doing what I'm doing, I'm sure. As usual I hope I'll sell lots of them. But who can tell?"

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

Clear implication of Milan court's judgment against three executives is that every hosted video should be pre-screened

The judgment by a Milan court against Google's employees throws a bucketful of sand into the machinery of YouTube, the video site that the search engine company bought for $1.65bn in October 2006. The clear implication of its decision is that every video should be screened before it is put on to the site and with more than 20 hours of video uploaded every minute worldwide (Google does not break down the figure for Italy), monitoring all that content, even for a single country, could prove enormously expensive.

That in turn would put profitability for the site which is thought to have lost between $100m and $500m in 2009 further away than ever. YouTube has never made an operating profit in its five-year history, and Google has been trying to sell adverts on videos to make the site profitable.

Italy recently seems to have taken a more extreme stance over internet content than many other European countries. Its tax authorities have demanded that eBay should hand over information about its customers relating to goods sold on the site between 2004 and 2007; Yahoo was fined 12,000 last year after Milan's public prosecutor demanded information about private emails sent by suspected criminals; and the Italian interior ministry has required Facebook to hand over personal information about users who created groups said to "glorify" Mafia bosses, and again last October over a group said to promote the violent death of Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister.

Today's judgment found three Google executives David Drummond, Google's senior vice-president of corporate development and chief legal officer, Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel, and George Reyes, a former chief financial officer guilty of invasion of privacy following the uploading to Google Video in September 2006 of footage of four Italian teenagers bullying a youth with Down's syndrome. The premise is that Google is responsible for any content that appears on its site.

Google said on its blog that the ruling "attacks the very principles of freedom on which the internet is built". The company had argued that because it removed the video immediately after being notified of its content, and co-operated with the Italian authorities to identify the bullies so they could be brought to justice, it had discharged its duty. It said hosting platforms such as YouTube, Facebook or Twitter did not create their own content and so could not be held responsible for what other people upload.

Google is already fighting a number of legal actions over content on YouTube. The largest is from the entertainment company Viacom, which has accused the site of "contributory infringement" and other offences for carrying videos uploaded by users containing Viacom's copyrighted material.

The Italian decision creates a monumental headache for Google, which is already under pressure in Europe after the announcement last night that it faces an anti-monopoly investigation into whether it penalises competing websites in its search rankings. If it has to monitor every video before it appears on YouTube, that would push its costs up substantially: people are a comparatively expensive link in any business chain, which is why Google has sought to replace them with computers where possible.

The censoring of websites has become a hot issue in Italy in recent months, following a spate of hate sites against officials, including Berlusconi. The government briefly studied plans to black-out such sites after fan pages emerged praising an attack on the premier, but the idea was dropped after executives from Facebook, Google and Microsoft agreed to a shared code of conduct rather than legislation.

The ThinkPad X100e has both good and bad points, depending on whether you see it as an overpriced netbook or a cut-price ThinkPad business notebook

The IBM ThinkPad became the industry's premier notebook brand after the launch of the 700T in 1992, and its distinctive black styling and red TrackPoint became a noticeable part of business travel. ThinkPads were never cheap, but they were very durable, had outstanding keyboards, and you could get support and spare parts almost anywhere. Prices came down after China's Lenovo took over IBM's PC division, but the brand has managed to retain most of its value.

I've been carrying ThinkPads everywhere for more than a decade, so I was delighted to see the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e when it appeared at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. It was almost love at first sight. After using one (Type 2876), I'm less impressed, and my views might have tipped too far the other way.

The main problem with the X100e is trying to decide what it is. To most people, including me, it looks like the first professional netbook. To Lenovo, however, it's the entry level model in the ThinkPad X notebook range. To a netbook buyer, the 445 price looks too expensive. To a ThinkPad buyer, the X100e is less than half the price of an X201 ( 982) and it looks like a bargain. As a ThinkPad buyer who is shopping for a netbook, I'm torn between both views.

The X100e is certainly a good machine. It's better made than the average netbook, and has a very good 11.6in AntiGlare screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The ThinkPad credentials are sustained by the 2GB of memory, ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics and 32-bit Windows 7 Professional operating system. For comparison, a cheap netbook would get you 1GB of memory, slow Intel integrated graphics and Windows 7 Starter or XP. Now you know where your money goes.

Keyboards are critical for ThinkPad users, and again the X100e is hard to evaluate. By the normal standards of "isolated keyboards", it feels exceptional, with responsive keys having plenty of travel. By ThinkPad standards (240X, X31/X41/X61), it's relatively poor. In this case, of course, users also have different tastes.

The X100e has both a TrackPoint with two mouse buttons, and a multi-touch pad, with another two mouse buttons. If you're a long-time ThinkPad user, you get the same old controls. If you're a new-age mouse-padder, you also get the same old controls, but the duplication must add to the price.

But ultimately, what tips me against the X100e its 1.6GHz single-core AMD Neo NV-40 processor. It's at the very low end for a notebook chip, and doesn't offer much of a performance improvement over an Intel Atom. What you lose, alas, is battery life: the Neo consumes more power than it's worth.

Even with the six-cell battery sticking out of the back, the X100e lasts about half as long as a modern netbook around 3.5 hours of normal use. There's a cute utility that lets you turn down the CPU's power consumption, but this also degrades the performance.

For reference, the X100e scores 3.1 on the Windows Experience Index, which is down to the Neo processor. It scores 3.5 for graphics, 4.8 for gaming graphics, and 5.9 for the 250GB hard drive. If Lenovo shipped the X100e with a dual-core Atom N330 and Ion graphics, like the Asus 1201N, then it would be a really good mac hine. (Dual-core Neo X2 versions are coming, but that won't help battery life.) At the moment, however, it's a disappointment.

If you're a corporate buyer, the X100e will let you equip lots more staff with an ultraportable ThinkPad for a lot less cash. Most of them will be pleased with the keyboard, the screen, and general robustness, even if they'd rather have an X201. If you're looking for a cheap netbook with long battery life, this is not for you.

Pros: Robust; good keyboard and screen; Windows 7 Pro; it's a ThinkPad.

Cons: Poor performance by notebook PC standards; poor battery life by netbook standards.

Lenovo.com

The scientist and TV presenter tells us why it's important to check out the dark side of inventions first

Robert Winston, Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College, London, is one of the best-known popularisers of science in this country and has a reputation for taking a provocative stance on many issues. His latest book, Bad Ideas? (Bantam Press) deals with the dark side of the inventions that have shaped human history, and when he arrives at the Observer offices, this 69-year old doctor, sometime TV presenter and Labour peer is on characteristically punchy form.

Your new book is described as "tracing the fascinating history of our attempts at self-improvement but also questioning their value". In other words: not every invention is a copper-bottomed good thing. What is the downside of our inventiveness?

The book tries to argue that every aspect of our inventiveness has a downside: that there's a dark side to every advance, and that's not generally recognised at the time.

Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we're still finding things for a laser to do. But a laser can be used as a weapon. Where a laser is being used to attempt nuclear fusion, it's in a facility designed to improve nuclear weapons.

A microchip, too, is something we wouldn't dream of being without, but it does bring unforeseen consequences in how we communicate, sometimes adversely in a democracy.

When a discovery is made, a scientist probably only sees the advantage in the small arena of his or her own interest. Is it your point that society finds other uses for that invention years later?

That's right, and [it's an] interesting thing about modern science very different from what happened before the industrial revolution. Before that, even people like James Watt, who were very focused, were generalists; they had a broad idea of what they were doing. In my lab now we have one person who's very interested in kinase in the cell, for instance, but perhaps won't see the relevance of that work in a bigger context. Science and scientists have tended to have to focus on more and more difficult and defined areas, and quite often we lose that big picture. The other point is [our] responsibility to society. The science I do has always been paid for by the tax-payer, and yet we scientists think of [it being] our science, and we tend to be rather precious about that. We have to be more responsive and recognise that the adverse affects of what we do have an effect on society as much as they do on us. Our ethical responsibility is something we need to think of afresh. Ethics is not routinely taught to science students except in medicine, and I think it should be.

You've mentioned that when you were chairing the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee one of the most interesting aspects of the work was the question of science and society and what limits society might impose on science. But at the moment what we're seeing is the opposite, where science is trying to impose limits on technology to limit climate change and coming under great pressure from society not to impose limits. How would you react to that?

I don't think you can impose limits on science because the very nature of homo sapiens is that he she is an inquisitive species. You can't control science. You have to control the effects of science. It's a very interesting question about climate change. I repeatedly refer to climate change in the book but I deliberately avoided making it a book about climate change because the issues I'm interested in are more generic. But, clearly, if we are to combat climate change then a key thing is to have society onside. Without that we've failed. We need to communicate much better with society, and not necessarily trust governments, which may have other agendas. We saw this very clearly at Copenhagen and Kyoto.

Is there the prospect that we never control technology and it wipes us out?

I'm not that pessimistic. Alec Broers, in his Reith Lecture some years ago, argued that technology would solve the problems that technology had created. I'm not sure I go along with him because we should look at the downside of the technology at the very beginning of developing it. But I do think, so far, in the history of mankind, we've continued to improve our lot using technology and we've managed to control the worst aspects of that. I think climate change will be another example of where we're able to do that. Geo-engineering is pretty fanciful stuff. Nonetheless, those technologies are developing so quickly in many universities it would be inexcusable not to take them seriously. I think that somewhere we'll hit the button.

What inventions do you feel most encompass your theme the idea of threat versus promise?

Big ones, I think. Big technologies like agriculture, which is perhaps the biggest of all because that really changed humankind. It made us much more vulnerable, and it made us live shorter to start with as well. In modern terms the technology of oil is fascinating because we understood early on that oil was not as simple or as useful as it might seem. In the early days of oil, when it was over-produced, it caused immediate economic chaos, for example in Texas. And then it became obvious in the Middle East a long time ago that it was a much bigger source of conflict than we'd given it credence for. And [it] probably still is. You could argue that Iraq and even Afghanistan are in some ways linked to our usage and dependence on oil.

I've avoided that, but I'm [also] pretty hard on medicine. Medicine, which I wouldn't be without, has also been a force for... less good. For example, if you look at our mishandling of the immune system, using antibiotics in children and avoiding infection, we've certainly increased the risk of asthma. And it may be that juvenile diabetes, for example, is [also] much more common as a result.

One of the other things that worries me is that there has been increasingly an impetus to diagnose, to make medicine a more scientific subject, forgetting the patient. I think there is a turnabout now in our medical schools where we are addressing that issue, but we have produced generations of doctors who can't (because of time constraints or bureaucracy) or won't (because of the way they've been taught) actually communicate very well with their patients, and communication is a fantastic healer.

So it's often a case of two steps forward, one step back?

The genome is a good example of a technological innovation which was bruited as being an extraordinary achievement but actually has achieved very little because we don't have anything like the power to implement what we might do with it. On a broader scale, as medicine becomes more complex, more expensive, we are failing to have mature debate about who's going to pay for it in the future... that's a worrying political issue. [You] can't really trust governments, can't trust politicians.

Has any invention been unambiguously good?

There are so many, it's hard to focus on one. I've been thinking of generic technologies which all have a downside. But I'd rather live now than at any time in the past.

Rickrolling duping people into watching a Rick Astley video on YouTube will no longer work in many cases because YouTube has removed the video [update: and has now restored it]

The rickroll, one of the internet's favourite memes, has been badly hit by the removal of the video on which it was based. Instead of being tricked into watching Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up, victims who click the link get a YouTube message: "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation".

Update: If you clicked the above link earlier, then you just might have been meta-rickrolled. It turns out that the video was removed by mistake, after YouTube suspended a user account flagged by a member of its spam team. So RickRoll'D is back, and it still has more than 30m views.

Rickrolling started at the 4chan forum (via the eggroll and duckroll), but became part of the mainstream in 2008. It brought Astley a new level of fame, though one that perhaps became tiresome. In response to a Fox News query, "a spokesman for his record label wrote back a single line: 'I'm sorry, but he's done talking about rickrolling.'"

There are, of course, several videos of Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up and other songs on YouTube, so you can keep right on rickrolling people, if you really must. The problem is that removing the D version breaks a large number of internet links, and there's no way to repair the damage short of YouTube reinstating the missing video.

Also, that kind of thing ultimately reduces trust in the net....

Hat tip: Neowin and its update.

Aleks Krotoski and Bobbie Johnson meet a host of digital idealists on this week's programme, including social entrepreneurs in San Francisco like Catapult Design, Inveneo and Architecture for Humanity, who are bringing technological solutions to developing countries.

Plus musician and philosopher Jaron Lanier explains how 30 years at the heart of internet culture have transformed him from a utopian to a virtual pragmatist.

Aleks also tackles the latest headlines from around the web, including the latest on Google and China, as the US government tightens the net around the likely perpetrators, and Microsoft's decision to offer its consumers a choice of web browsers in Europe after an agreement was reached between the software giant and the European Commission.

And in a daring feat of ducking and diving, Aleks fields listeners' feedback about Google's social search golden goose, Vark.com, and asks for listeners' most wanted: who would you like to see at a live Tech Weekly event in London? Answers, please, in the comments below.

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Ten years after the millennium bug scare, there's a new computer glitch hitting users of Sony's PlayStation games consoles

Age: 10.

Appearance: Surprisingly youthful.

You do realise the millennium bug is old news? The clue's in the name. Yes, yes, but it's back! And this time it has come for our children!

What are you on about? Remember how a decade ago the bug nearly destroyed civilisation? Planes were going to fall out of the sky, nuclear power stations were going to melt down, clock radios were going to wake us in the middle of the night . . .

Unless we paid trillions of pounds to IT specialists . . . That's right. And all because other IT specialists had sold us computers that couldn't handle the switch from 1999 to 2000.

That's the kind of organised blackmail even a banker could admire. Still, what has it got to do with 2010, especially now we're several months into it? Something very similar has hit Sony's PlayStation games consoles. On Monday, when February turned into March, millions of PS3 owners had their machines' calendars reset to 1 January 2000, and lost their high scores.

Oh, the humanity! Have they been offered counselling? No, but Sony has said sorry and come up with half an explanation. Apparently, the PS3's "internal clock functionality" thought 2010 was a leap year.

It's not? That explains why Miss Right hasn't proposed. If you say so. "This is to gamers what Toyota's faulty accelerator pedal was to drivers," said the editor of one gaming site. It's not clear what will happen to PS3s in 2012, which really is a leap year.

Still, panic over, eh? Just because one hi-tech company is too cheap to buy a diary doesn't mean there are other disasters waiting to happen. The PS3 problem was not quite a one-off. In Germany, 30m chip-and-pin cards stopped working earlier this year, unable to handle the change to 2010. The bill for fixing that cock-up was put at 300m.

Do say: "Our highly trained technicians are already working on the problem."

Don't say: "They promise it'll be fixed by the day before yesterday."

Hearing to determine whether company and regulators acted quickly enough to deal with cars' acceleration problems

Toyota faces more questions from US politicians about its troubled safety record when its senior officials testify today at a Senate hearing on the carmaker's worldwide recall of 8.5m vehicles.

The Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation will hold the third congressional hearing in seven days on whether Toyota and federal safety regulators acted swiftly enough to deal with cases of sudden unintended acceleration of the Japanese company's cars and trucks. Three Toyota executives and the transportation secretary Ray LaHood are among the witnesses expected today.

The Toyota president, Akio Toyoda, pledged last week before the House of Representatives' oversight committee to be more responsive to driver complaints and government safety warnings. Toyoda made a similar promise to improve quality control yesterday in Beijing while apologising to Chinese Toyota owners.

But the company still faces lingering doubts about the cause of the problems, which it has blamed on accelerator pedals that can get obstructed by floor mats or stick due to design flaws. Safety experts have said the vehicles' electronic systems could be to blame. Toyota insists there is no evidence of an electrical cause.

The recalls have damaged Toyota's reputation and set the stage for large numbers of death and injury lawsuits amid a criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in New York, a probe by the securities and exchange commission and more scrutiny from the transportation department. The government has attributed 34 deaths to alleged sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles since 2000. Since September, Toyota has recalled about 6m vehicles in the US.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the transportation department's safety agency, is seeking records on Toyota's recalls and investigating whether electronics were behind the vehicle defects. NHTSA is also looking into steering complaints from drivers of the popular Corolla model.

Questions remain over whether the recalls have fully addressed the problem. A review by the New York Times found numerous complaints to the government about speed control problems in Toyota Camry saloons not included in the recalls.

The 2002 Camry, for example, was not part of the recall but had about 175 speed control complaints, with about half involving crashes, the paper reported on its website. The 2007 Camry, meanwhile, which was included in the recall, had 200 speed control complaints, with fewer than one-quarter resulting in accidents.

Toyota is expected to send three company executives to testify: Yoshi Inaba, Toyota's North American president; Shinichi Sasaki, an executive vice-president who oversees quality control; and Takeshi Uchiyamada, an executive vice-president who is considered the father of the Prius hybrid.

Inaba planned to tell politicians that the former transportation secretary Rodney Slater would lead an independent panel to review changes to the company's quality control systems. Inaba said in remarks planned for delivery today that Toyota dealers have repaired more than 1m recalled vehicles.

Toyota has said it plans to conduct an outside review of the company's operations, provide prompter responses to consumer complaints and improve its communications with the government on safety issues.