Average speed 46% below that promised by ISPs
Mandatory code and clear penalties vital, experts say

Millions of broadband users are being sold short by providers that are delivering speeds far below those advertised, according to research published today.

Data released by Ofcom, the communications regulator, shows that the gap between the headline broadband speeds customers sign up for and the connection they actually receive has widened sharply in the last 12 months. The average actual speed is now just 46% of what was promised, down from 56% a year ago.

Internet service providers are even advertising maximum speeds which in practice no customers receive, according to Ofcom, which is now pushing for tighter controls on selling broadband in the UK.

"There is a very big difference between the headline services that are advertised and the actual speeds that are delivered," said Ed Richards, Ofcom's chief executive.

Consumer groups said the research showed that many ISPs were letting their customers down.

"If consumers pay for a Ferrari-style internet service, they should not get pushbike speeds. Broadband users should get what they pay for," said Robert Hammond, head of post and digital communications at Consumer Focus.

Peter Vicary-Smith, chief executive of Which?, demanded an end to "misleading claims" about broadband.

"Some internet service providers continue to advertise ever-increasing speeds that bear little resemblance to what most people can achieve in reality," he said.

There is growing demand for faster broadband packages as more computer users watch television and play games online, or share their connection between several PCs. This has led ISPs to offer faster services promising "up to" 20Mbps, for example, rather than the standard maximum speed of 8Mbps. However, the UK's communications infrastructure appears incapable of supporting such services.

Ofcom reported that nearly a quarter of broadband users said they received a slower service than expected, and this was the most common complaint to ISPs.

The only ISP delivering close to the maximum speed advertised, according to Ofcom, was Virgin Media, with the advantage of a relatively new cable network in many urban areas. There was a stark difference between the performance of Virgin and the various ISPs such as AOL, BT, O2, Orange and Sky which all rely on BT's ageing "last mile" local network.

While the average speed of an "up to 20Mbps" cable service is 15.7Mbps, this fell to just 6.5Mbps for a typical "20Mbps" DSL package, which uses copper phone lines.

Ofcom said that copper lines that connect homes and small firms to the local BT telephone exchange were being "stretched to the very edge of their capability" to support high-speed internet access. Longer phone lines can only support slower speeds.

An Orange spokesperson said Ofcom's findings were "disappointing", and questioned their accuracy as only a small fraction of its customers were tested.

Another issue is that many homes will effectively share a large broadband "pipe" in the local exchange, so average speeds fall at busy times.

John Petter, managing director of BT's consumer division, insisted that the company "continues to invest heavily in our network, bringing speed improvements to customers nationwide".

"Rip-offs must end"

ISPs typically offer broadband services promising speeds of "up to" 8Mbps, 20Mbps or 50Mbps. In a damning indictment of the current situation, Ofcom wants these advertising rules tightened up so that an ISP can only promise a maximum speed if "at least some" people can receive it.

"Our beef is that people were being offered up to 8mbps, and nobody actually got 8Mbps," said Richards. He also wants broadband services to be advertised with a "typical speed range", to give people a better idea of what they will get in practice.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, agreed it was important that the way broadband is sold should be tightened up quickly.

"We need to ensure people are not being ripped off, as the lack of transparency in broadband advertising risks damaging consumer confidence in superfast broadband. The Advertising Standards Authority has announced a review into the way broadband is advertised and the need for change is now urgent," he said.

Ofcom has also put together a new code of conduct for the industry. This would allow consumers to cancel their broadband service with no penalty within the first three months if the speed was significantly below what was promised. Richards said this would encourage ISPs to improve their service. Some experts argued a voluntary code was not enough.

"Simply strengthening it does not cut the mustard we need a mandatory code with clear penalties for those that breach it," said Matthew Wheeler, communications expert at uSwitch.com. Ofcom's data also showed that Britain still suffers a significant Broadband Divide, ten years after the first high-speed services went on sale. Average download speeds of 5.8Mbps were recorded in urban areas, versus just 2.7Mbps in rural areas - where average line lengths are greater.

Richards warned that this gap was "likely to extend further before it narrows", as BT starts to build a next-generation fibre-optic network in towns and cities that will offer speeds of up to 100Mbps in some locations.

BT plans to spend 2.5bn installing fibre-based broadband in two-thirds of the country by 2015. Richards said today's data showed the importance of investment to bring fibre to as much of the country as possible.

The coalition government has said it expects the market to take the lead in delivering fibre across the UK, but BT has warned it cannot extend coverage further without some form of government support.

This article was amended on 27 July 2010. We originally referred to "Virgin Mobile" in paragraph 11 - this has been changed to "Virgin Media"

G Data and Sophos launch temporary security patches to prevent criminals exploiting .LNK shortcut vulnerability

Two software security companies today released temporary security patches for the Windows 'zero-day' vulnerability affecting all versions of the Microsoft operating system back to Windows 2000.

The security flaw acknowledged by Microsoft can affect someone who simply opens a desktop folder containing an "infected" .LNK extension. Microsoft had rushed out a workaround for the problem, but the fix automatically disabled the displaying of desktop shortcut files.

Now security companies G Data and Sophos have separately released potential fixes to the vulnerability.

G Data's 'LNK Checker' blocks the automatic execution of malicious files, displaying uninfected shortcut icons as normal, replacing with a red warning signal icon if infected. The LNK Checker is available here for free.

The Sophos Windows Shortcut Exploit Protection Tool will notify users when it detects an infected link, blocking the potential malware from running.

Ralf Benzmueller, head of G Data SecurityLabs, said: "This recent security flaw gives cyber-criminals a wide range of new possibilities to infect a PC. They only need to make sure that a .LNK file is displayed on the computer. The file which the link refers to does not necessarily need to be on the computer it can even be on the internet."

"Not only users of memory sticks are affected. In a company's IT network, for example, it is enough to save a primed and infected file on the network drive. Even basic software, like word processing programs and email clients, provide the possibility to display shortcuts. The potential for abuse is enormous. We expect that this vulnerability will be massively exploited shortly."

All versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 7 back to Windows 2000 are affected by the vulnerability. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, commented: "The threat from the exploit is high as all a user has to do is open a device or folder without clicking any icons and the exploit will automatically run. With an additional variant of the malware already on the loose, the potential for this exploit to become more widespread is growing rapidly."

Microsoft has a policy of not condoning third-party tools such as those from G Labs and Sophos, and that it will release a security update for the problem in the near future.

Are you planning to use the new security tools? Let us know how you get on.

That WikiLeaks went to the press with the Afghanistan war logs shows old-fashioned news organisations still have a role to play

Of all the questions raised by the Afghanistan war logs, perhaps the most intriguing is this: why would an organisation as independent-minded and disdainful of the traditional media as WikiLeaks seek out those very media as partners rather than going it alone?

My necessarily speculative answer is that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who's made a speciality of revealing embarrassing governmental secrets, learned something important earlier this year. That's when he briefly caused a sensation by releasing video of a US Apache helicopter firing on Iraqi civilians, killing (among others) a Reuters photographer and his driver.

The lesson: shocking material and a flair for public relations may be enough to get you noticed. But if it's credibility you want, then old-fashioned news organisations still have something to offer.

WikiLeaks made some 92,000 documents about the war in Afghanistan available to the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel a month ago, giving professional journalists time to sort, vet and craft narratives from jargon-laden field reports compiled by US officials.

The documents add sickening details to the broad outlines of what we already knew: that major elements of Pakistan's intelligence forces are in bed with the Taliban; that chaos and confusion in Afghanistan has led to civilian casualties; and that among the burdens the Afghan people must bear is a corrupt and ineffective government.

The Obama administration has lambasted WikiLeaks for releasing the documents, arguing that the situation has improved since 2009, when the most recent of the official reports were compiled. But no one has questioned the authenticity of the documents themselves, even if the reliability of the information contained therein appears to be of variable quality.

In effect, Assange chose to act as Daniel Ellsberg, the insider who leaked the Pentagon Papers the US government's own secret history of the Vietnam war to the Washington Post and the New York Times. But it was just a few months ago that Assange tried out the role of Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post executive editor who published those papers.

In April, you may recall, WikiLeaks uploaded two versions of the Apache helicopter video. One was an edited, 18-minute version that it titled Collateral Murder, which begins with a quote from George Orwell: "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." The other, 39 minutes long, was raw footage with no commentary.

The American secretary of defence, Robert Gates, denounced the video as having been taken out of context. No surprise there. But as Raffi Khatchadourian notes in a profile of Assange published in the New Yorker, the media turned Gates's way within days of the release. And in fact, when you watch the video and listen to the Americans on board the helicopter, you can see that the crew members believed, rightly or wrongly, that they were firing on a legitimate target.

Even the comedian Stephen Colbert, in an interview with Assange, dropped his rightwing-blowhard persona momentarily to make a serious point, calling the edited version "emotional manipulation" and telling his guest: "There are armed men in the group. They did find a rocket-propelled grenade among the group. The Reuters photographers who were regrettably killed were not identified as photographers. And you have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called Collateral Murder. That's not leaking. That's a pure editorial."

(An aside for British readers not familiar with Colbert and thus puzzled at my quoting a comedian: it is a sad but undeniable reality that the two most incisive American media critics today may well be Colbert and his fellow fake anchorman Jon Stewart.)

Around the time that the video was released, hubris among the WikiLeakers was thick. In the New Yorker piece, we hear from a friend and supporter of Assange's, a Dutch hacker named Rop Gonggrijp, who smugly says that "we are not the press" and "the source is no longer dependent on finding a journalist who may or may not do something good with his document".

Yet here we are, several months later, and Assange is acting very much like an old-fashioned source, seeking out journalists even as he uploads the raw source documents to the web.

In the felicitous phrase of New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, WikiLeaks is "a stateless news organisation". But as the New Yorker piece makes clear, Assange and his fellow activists are less interested in news than in making a political impact. And it is an organisation only in the loosest sense of the term. Given those realities, it makes sense for them to work with journalists rather than to posit themselves in opposition to the media.

"WikiLeaks was soaking, drowning in data," Rosen's NYU colleague Clay Shirky tells David Carr of the New York Times. "What they needed was someone who could tell a story. They needed someone who could bring accuracy and political context to what was being revealed."

What I am suggesting is not that old media have triumphed over the new. Rather, I'm simply pointing out that each has its place in the media ecosystem.

WikiLeaks, with its singleminded focus on casting about for whistleblowers and protecting their identity through encryption and secrecy, can obtain material that eludes established news organisations. And professional journalists can vet, make sense of and impart credibility to that material in ways that not all new-media ventures (at least not WikiLeaks) can.

The result is a powerful indictment of the war in Afghanistan and a major challenge to Barack Obama.

Back in character, Colbert asked Assange: "What is the purpose of letting the public know? It's like you're saying it's better to know than not to know. Have you not heard ignorance is bliss?"

It's way too late for that now.

Complaints from software makers triggers investigations
European market for mainframe computers is worth 3bn

EU regulators have begun two investigations into IBM, the world's largest computer services firm, following accusations the American company has been abusing its dominant position in the market for mainframe computers. The European market for mainframe computers and software was worth 3bn ( 2.5bn) last year. If the investigation finds that IBM abused its position in the market it could face a multimillion-euro fine. The investigations, one of which was sparked by a series of complaints over the past 18 months, come after the EU slapped a record 1.1bn fine on chip maker Intel last year and completed its long running investigation into Microsoft. Earlier this year the commission began a preliminary anti-monopoly investigation into Google, examining its power in the online search and digital advertising markets.

In a statement, the commission said its first investigation into IBM follows complaints by software vendors T3 and Turbo Hercules, and focuses on IBM's alleged tying of mainframe hardware to its mainframe operating system.

The second is an investigation begun on the commission's own initiative of IBM's alleged discriminatory behaviour towards competing suppliers of mainframe maintenance services.

Mainframe computers are used by many large companies and government institutions to store and process critical business information. It is estimated that the vast majority of corporate data worldwide resides on mainframes.

IBM is alleged to have engaged in illegal tying of its mainframe hardware products to its dominant mainframe operating system. The complaints contend this shuts out providers of other technology which could enable users to run critical applications on non-IBM hardware.

In addition, the Commission has concerns that IBM may have engaged in anti-competitive practices with a view to cornering the market for maintenance services, in particular by restricting or delaying access to spare parts for which IBM is the only source.

The initiation of proceedings does not imply that the commission has proof of infringements. It only signifies that the commission will further investigate the cases as a matter of priority.

In a statement, IBM hit back saying "certain IBM competitors which have been unable to win in the marketplace through investments in fundamental innovations now want regulators to create for them a market position that they have not earned".

The company said that the accusations made against IBM are being driven by some of IBM's largest competitors, lead by Microsoft who want to further cement the dominance of their own products "by attempting to mimic aspects of IBM mainframes without making the substantial investments IBM has made and continues to make".

"In doing so, they are violating IBM's intellectual property rights," the company added, saying it intends to cooperate fully with any inquiries from the EU. "But let there be no confusion whatsoever: there is no merit to the claims being made by Microsoft and its satellite proxies. IBM is fully entitled to enforce its intellectual property rights and protect the investments we have made in our technologies.

"Competition and intellectual property laws are complementary and designed to promote competition and innovation, and IBM fully supports these policies. But IBM will not allow the fruits of its innovation and investment to be pirated by its competition through baseless allegations."

Sureblades will produce a new type of recyclable blade in a factory metres from the Vestas plant one year after its closure

Nearly one year after Danish wind giant Vestas closed the UK's only major turbine plant, a new British blade manufacturer is opening just metres from the old factory.

Sureblades, run by a team including three former Vestas staff on the Isle of Wight, is pinning its hopes on a new type of blade that will be 100% recyclable.

Working with Southampton University for the certification of its blades, the new company already has an order placed with Irish renewable energy company C&F Green Energy for 1,000 of its blades. The 4.6m-long structures will be used in 15kW turbines, enough to power a community.

Sean McDonagh, who is heading up operations at Sureblades, said the project had been a "beacon of light" for those involved in the Vestas plant closure last August, which led to 425 employees being made redundant. "It's been tough as no money was coming in for our families, but we knew it would work in the end, because this is a product the country needs for where it's going," McDonagh said.

Based on the same industrial estate as the former Vestas factory, which workers occupied during a 11-day roof-top protest against its closure last year, the company forecasts it will take on 40 staff within the next two years. "There are two big industries down here and people [former Vestas workers] have been on one-month contracts and not able to live their lives. When people heard about us, it's like they could get on with their lives, so they've been getting in touch," said McDonagh.

Working alongside McDonagh are the former Vestas employees Keith Hunsell and Glynn Milton, and Penny Smout a former special adviser to Ed Miliband. Unlike conventional turbine blades which use an epoxy resin that cannot be broken down, the company's blades will use a material that can be melted down and made into new blades after old ones are worn out. Sureblades said it also has another two potential orders in addition to the C&F deal, and it hopes to be fully operational by September.

Last year Vestas said the closure of the Isle of Wight plant was a result of a lack of demand and planning problems in the UK. Ditlev Engel, the CEO of Vestas, said at the time: "In the UK, there is a clear division between what the government would like to see happening and what certain local politicians want to see happening, or rather not want to see happening ... there is not necessarily the same ambition levels."

The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT), which represented and supported the Vestas workers last year, welcomed the new company. The general secretary, Bob Crow, said: "The former Vestas workers behind this imaginative new project have completely destroyed the argument put forward by the company at the time of closure that there was no market for UK manufactured turbine blades. Through their efforts to create jobs they have blown apart the bogus grounds put forward at the time for closure and redundancy of the workforce."

He continued: "RMT is very proud of what our former Vestas members have achieved so far and we are right behind them. They have also shown that it is far too easy for companies in the UK to soak up government grants and then just cut and run when it suits them without any meaningful consultation, never mind a ballot of the workforce."

Bespoke computing experiences promise a pipe dream of safety and beauty but the real delight lies in making your own choices

The launch of the iPad and the general success of mobile device app stores has created a buzzword frenzy for "curated" computing computing experiences where software and wallpaper and attendant foofaraw for your device are hand-picked for your pleasure.

In theory, this creates an aesthetically uniform, and above all safe and easy, computing environment, as the curators see to it that only the very prettiest, easiest-to-use and most virus-free apps show up in the store.

I'm all for it. After all, I've spent the past 10 years co-curating Boing Boing, a place where my business-partners and I pick the websites that interest us the most and assemble them into a kind of deep, wide, searchable catalogue of things that you should know, do, and marvel at.

We've recently launched a store, the Boing Boing Bazaar, consisting of the most interesting inventions, clothing, gadgets, decor, and assorted gubbins that our readers have created, as picked by us. My Twitter account mostly consists of retweets from other twitterers my collection of the best tweets I've seen today. I am a born curator, and have spent my life amassing collections and showing them off.

But there's something important to note about all these curatorial roles I enjoy: none of them are coercive. No one forces you to read Boing Boing, and if you do, there's nothing that prevents you from reading another weblog (or a couple hundred other weblogs). Order as many gizmos as you'd like from the Boing Boing Bazaar, we'll never tell you that you can't fill your knick-knack shelves from anyone else's curated wunderkammer. Follow me on Twitter if it pleases you, and feel free to follow anyone else you find interesting.

The beauty of noncoercive curation is that there are so many reasons we value things, it's really impossible to imagine that any one place will serve as a one-stop shop for our needs.

Two categories in particular won't ever be fulfilled by a curator: first, the personal. No curator is likely to post pictures of my family, videos of my daughter, notes from my wife, stories I wrote in my adolescence that my mum's recovered from a carton in the basement.

My own mediascape includes lots of this stuff, and it is every bit as compelling and fulfilling as the slickest, most artistic works that show up in the professional streams. I don't care that the images are overexposed or badly framed, that the audio is poor quality, that I can barely read my 14-year-old self's handwriting. The things I made with my own hands and the things that represent my relationships with my community and loved ones are critical to my identity, and I won't trade them for anything.

Second, the tailored. I have loads of little scripts, programs, systems, files and such that make perfect sense to me, even though they're far from elegant or perfect. There's the script I use for resizing and uploading images to Boing Boing, the shelf I use to organise my to-be-read pile, the carefully-built mail rules that filter out spam and trolls and make sure I see the important stuff. I am a market of one: no one wants to make a commercial proposition out of filling my needs, and if they did, your average curator would be nuts to put something so tightly optimised for my needs into the public sphere, where it would be so much clutter. But again, these are the nuts and bolts that hold my life together and I can't live without them.

In a noncoercive curatorial world, these categories can peacefully coexist with curated spaces. There are hundreds of places where I can find recommendations and lists and reviews and packages of software for my computer (Ubuntu, the version of GNU/Linux I use, has its own very good software store). I can use as many or as few of these curators as I'd like, and what's more, I can add in things that matter to me because they exactly suit my needs or fulfil some sentimental niche in my life.

But I fear that when analysts slaver over "curated" computing, it's because they mean "monopoly" computing computing environments like the iPad where all your apps have to be pre-approved by a single curating entity, one who uses the excuse of safety and consistency to justify this outrageous power grab. Of course, these curators are neither a guarantee of safety, nor of quality: continuous revelations about malicious software and capricious, inconsistent criteria for evaluating software put the lie to this. Even without them, it's pretty implausible to think that an app store with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of programs could be blindly trusted to be free from bugs, malware, and poor aesthetic choices.

No, the only real reason to adopt coercive curation is to attain a monopoly over a platform to be able to shut out competitors, extract high rents on publishers whose materials are sold in your store, and sell a pipe dream of safety and beauty that you can't deliver, at the cost of homely, handmade, personal media that define us and fill us with delight.

Adults banned from searching children's computers or phones under a new law passed in Chongqing, southwest China

It is a ruling that teenagers around the world will regard with a certain amount of envy. Parents in one Chinese city are to be prevented from snooping on their children's online activity and text messages.

Adults, including family members, are banned from searching through children's computers or phones under a new regional law passed in Chongqing, southwest China, state media reported today. The regulation outlaws snooping into their emails, text messages, web chats, and browser history. The regulation is designed to protect the rights of children, but is surprising given widespread concern in China about excessive internet use among young people and their access to unsuitable material. Psychologists have sought to have internet addiction listed as a clinical disorder and treatment camps have sprung up across the country. The Chongqing Evening Post described the new regulation, adopted on Friday by officials in Chongqing, as the first of its kind in the country. Other Chinese media said it expanded an existing national rule. But both experts and children doubted whether it would have an impact in practice.

Lu Yulin, a professor at the China Youth University of Political Science, told China Daily that children were unlikely to take their parents to court.

"Parents who habitually check such information won't stop due to the regulation," he said.

Eleven-year-old Song Jingbo, from Xi'an, told the newspaper he did not think his mother and father would be able to access his data anyway, adding: "I am far more internet savvy than them."

China has the largest population of internet users in the world and minors alone account for more 126 million of them, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

... Zero. Yes, zero, according to a study by the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California Annenberg School For Communication And Journalism. We already know thanks to several other surveys that consumers aren't exactly rushing to pay for social networking online, but the Annenberg School's study shows the most extreme reaction so far, especially considering that 49% of the internet users among the 1,981 survey respondents said they did use social networking sites like Twitter.


Photo by JacobEnos on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Says Jeffrey Cole, the director of the Center for the Digital Future, "Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free. (For the record, Twitter hasn't said it has any plans to charge and Facebook now says on its home page that it will always be free).

The survey also echoed others that show that consumers - unsurprisingly - would prefer not to pay for content online. Fifty-five percent said they agreed or strongly agreed that they "prefer having free access to online content that has advertising accompanying it rather than having to pay for the content". Only 16% strongly or somewhat disagree, while the remainder say they're ambivalent.

Minority Report-style technology being trialled by two British forces following success in the US

Two British police forces have begun trials of a sophisticated computer software package which aims to boost their efficiency by predicting where and when future crimes will take place.

The system, known as Crush (Criminal Reduction Utilising Statistical History) evaluates patterns of past and present incidents, then combines the information with a range of data including crime reports, intelligence briefings, offender behaviour profiles and even weather forecasts. This is used to identify potential hot spots and flashpoints, so police forces can allocate resources to areas where particular crimes are most likely to occur.

The technology, which belongs to a fast-growing field known as "predictive analytics", is being tested secretly in the UK following a successful long-term trial in Memphis, Tennessee, where the police department credits Crush as the key factor behind a 31% reduction in overall crime and a 15% fall in violent crime. The system has also been credited with improving morale among officers of the Memphis police by boosting arrest rates and helping them to feel as if they are "making a difference".

"This is more of a proactive tool than reacting after crimes have occurred. This pretty much puts officers in the area at the time that the crimes are being committed," said John Williams of the Memphis Crime Analysis Unit.

The software behind the system has been developed by global computing giant IBM, which sees the increasing use of analytics as a massive growth area for the future and has invested more than $11bn in the field in the past four years. The names of the two UK forces using the software have not been revealed.

The increasing use of predictive analytics by law enforcement and judicial agencies around the world has sparked inevitable comparisons with the Tom Cruise science fiction film Minority Report in which police "pre-crime" units use predictions made by psychics to apprehend potential offenders before their crimes have taken place.

Earlier this year the Ministry of Justice began using predictive analytics to assess the data held within its Offender Assessment System and help predict which prisoners due for release were most likely to reoffend based on circumstances such as accommodation, education, relationships, financial management and income, lifestyle and associates, drug and alcohol misuse, emotional well-being, behaviour and attitudes.

In Florida, the US Department of Justice recently began using the same software to help predict which young delinquents were likely to go on to become repeat offenders, placing those flagged up by the computer system into specific prevention and education programmes aimed at ensuring they remained on the straight and narrow.

Critics say the use of such technology is an affront to human rights and could destroy centuries of legal precedent, leading to a generation who are innocent only until predicted guilty. While supporters point out that at present, such analysis and decisions are made by individuals prone to making mistakes and unable to take into consideration the wealth of information a computer can deal with.

According to Mark Cleverley, head of government strategy at IBM, Crush simply enhances and improves the efficiency of existing practices. "What the technology does is what police officers have always done, sometimes purely on instinct looking for patterns to work out what is likely to happen next. What is different is the scale on which the system operates and the speed at which the analysis takes place."

Last week Julie Spence, chief constable of Cambridgeshire police, complained that increasing paperwork and red tape were reducing the amount of time her officers could spend out on patrol. IBM hopes that police forces around the world, struggling with limited resources, will be eager to adopt a system which allows them to maximise the efficiency of officers on the beat.

According to Cleverley, the company is now refining the system to enable it to sample data from an even wider range of sources and process the results faster. "At some point in the future we hope to include analysis of feeds from CCTV cameras and public sources from the internet such as Facebook posts." Had such a system been in place it might have prevented Raoul Moat's rampage. Prior to his shootings he had issued threats on his Facebook account.

Hackers hijacked Europe's carbon-trading website and replaced it with spoof page detailing flaws in cap and trade scheme

Anti-carbon trading activists shut down the website of the European Climate Exchange (ECX), over the weekend, replacing the site with a spoof page lampooning the industry.

The website of the London-based carbon credit trading platform was hacked at close to midnight on Friday and showed the spoof homepage for around 22 hours. It then took technical staff another day to restore the official homepage.

Instead of its normal rolling ticker data listing bids for carbon credit futures, the ECX website blared: "Super promo climate on sale: Guaranteed profit!"

Explaining the "carbon trade scam", the spoof site decried how the EU's flagship environmental policy is "susceptible to corporate lobbying," offers industry "licences to pollute so they can continue business-as-usual," and "generates outrageous profits for big industry polluters, investors in fraudulent offset projects [and] opportunist traders."

On Saturday, shortly after the ECX website went down, activists announced their handiwork on a number of environmental discussion groups, saying: "In a public act of digital direct action, the ECX website was taken offline and replaced with our message in an effort to try to raise awareness about carbon trading as a dangerous false solution to the climate crisis."

One of the activists responsible, from the online activist group, Decocidio, told the Guardian: "We feel the EU Emissions Trading Scheme is not well understood by the general public or even within the environmental movement. It is a major fraud touted by the mainstream media, politics, industry and lobbyists as the main solution." The group is part of Earth First, a radical environmental protest organisation.

"Attempting to cause as much inconvenience, economical loss and image damage as possible, we deliberately tried to maximise the virtual damage," said the hacker, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A spokeswoman for the European Climate Exchange, Kelly Loeffler, said: "We have no comment relating to the incident as there is nothing to report publicly."

The exchange was also targeted by activists from Climate Camp last summer. They dubbed it a "climate change casino".

Damien Morris, of Sandbag, a self-described "critical friend" of the EU ETS said: "It's very unfortunate that this sort of infighting over emissions trading has developed within the environmental movement, especially on the radical end," he said. "There seems to be a large grassroots following and public presence of these sorts of ideas, but not at the more technical and realistic, solutions-focussed part of the movement."

"There is certainly a place for criticism of the ETS, but the problem with those who disagree with carbon trading is that they oppose it in principle, not in practice. It's a good idea when done properly. There are many problems with the ETS, but there is a clear pathway as to how it can be made more effective and robust."

Snark using put-downs to undermine an adversary is a great online tool. But don't mistake it for real power

This Saturday, I appeared on a panel at the Netroots Nation conference, devoted to "Bringing the Snark After Winning Elections". I shared the panel with some amazing people, who were far better at being on panels than I myself was, and I was honoured to be there. But as I sat there, advocating for snark, I'd started to realise that my own uses of it unlike, I hasten to add, those of the very effective and responsible people I was speaking with were not always admirable.

"Snark" is one of those fundamentally goofy internet neologisms that we could try to fight, but are better-off just learning to work with. The word denotes mean humour: sarcasm, venom, the art of the put-down. Mostly, it's an attitude. Snark is the kids at the back of the class, heckling the substitute teacher; it's the voice of people who feel stifled, talked down to, or left out; the tool of people who have discovered that honing in on the weaknesses of those in power, exposing them publicly (if only to their own circle of friends), and reducing them to figures of fun (if only in their own minds), makes them feel a little less helpless.

Of course, it's a powerful tool in political writing. But like most sources of political power, it should be regarded with some healthy distrust, especially by those who feel called to use it.

It's stupid to condemn "snark" across the board. For one, it's often a genuine pleasure to read. And it has a valuable place within political writing, specifically. It makes people feel better; it renders intimidating issues more approachable and makes bad news seem less overwhelming.

Snark, when used correctly, is fantastic. And taking a stand against jokes is a supremely unrewarding position; you feel like the aforementioned substitute teacher, pleading with the delinquents in the back to be quiet, knowing that no one in that classroom is on your side.

Or else, you feel like New Yorker film critic David Denby, who wrote an entire book on the subject, calling it a "nasty, knowing strain of abuse" that was spreading, in a fairly indelible metaphor, "like pinkeye" through the national conversation. Aside from comparing semi-mean internet humour to a disease that's contracted by getting faeces in your eye, however, he didn't have much to contribute. Things he did not like were deemed "snarky", and things he did like were deemed funny, and that was that.

To be fair to Denby, most conversations on the subject don't get any further; we can complain about the internet, and how it has made us all meaner, but no one can reasonably argue that all comedy should be kind, that jokes should be designed not to offend any potential listener, or even that being cruel is always uncalled-for.

But cruelty alone even deserved, funny cruelty can't create lasting, positive social change. Making fun of the opposition is gratifying, sometimes necessary. It's especially convenient to be able to do it online: if you're sick of hearing your co-worker go on about how evolution is atheist nonsense, you can make fun of creationists in a comment section on your lunch hour and feel much better about your day. But you haven't necessarily done anything to change the fact that this person's decidedly non-scientific ideas might be taught in your children's science classes.

And you haven't created anything resembling a dialogue with the person in question.

Political humour, at its worst, can be nothing but bullying. We find our targets however fringe or insignificant they are, it doesn't matter; what matters is that we disagree with them today pummel them rhetorically, leave them for dead, and congratulate ourselves for our "activism" after the fact. I know I've done it.

And I also know that, on the rare occasions when the subjects of my pummellings read my articles, they didn't exactly express gratitude to me for pointing out the holes in their arguments. Nor was the world changed because I'd made fun of an article I'd found in my RSS feed. I had created entertainment; I hadn't engaged in activism. The most I could hope for was that some real activist had read me and had been inspired to ... well, act.

Mockery and derisive laughter are the natural responses of people who feel powerless and pushed around; if there's nothing else we can do but register our discontent, we should register it. And if we can make the whole ordeal less painful with a few jokes, we should do that, too.

But we shouldn't mistake the relief it gives us for actual power. If we let it go to our heads, we run the risk of becoming slightly ridiculous. Of becoming pompous, or self-satisfied, or of blithely oversimplifying the issues for our own gain.

And on the internet, a ridiculous person is always fair game.

Our shallow obsession with gadgets disguises a conservatism where real change takes place at numbingly slow speed

A milestone has been reached, a Rubicon crossed. With the news, announced on the Guardian's front page on Wednesday, that ebook sales on Amazon have outstripped hardbacks for the first time, I have decided no longer to pay attention to hi-tech company marketing memos. That means that next time Mark Zuckerman converts another half billion users to Facebook, Jeff Bezos converts another half million words to Kindle ebook format, or Steve Jobs farts to the left or will it be to the right this time? I won't be reading.

It's not that such announcements aren't sometimes genuine news. The latest Amazon press release, for example, does confirm an admittedly fairly widespread suspicion that when consumers buy overpriced shiny gadgets, they spend a certain amount of money using them. IPhone users download apps. ITunes users download songs. Kindle users download paid-for ebooks..

No one could deny that ebook readers are catching on. What surprises me, though, amid the endless "what format do you prefer?" real and e-navel gazing that goes on whenever someone says "ebook", is how slow this catching on process is proving to be. Ebooks are cheaper to produce, aren't made out of trees, don't take up space, don't weigh anything, do fit in your pocket (as a whole library), can be viewed in a customisable font size, are easily annotated, readable in the dark, better, cleverer and better again. But still everyone says, oh I don't know, surely real books are better because, oh I don't know, you can read them in the bath. (To which the answer is yes, but you can't get real books read aloud to you while you have a proper bath).

What news stories like this really show is that the rampant technology fetishism, which runs like e-wildfire through our i-society, is really only skin-deep. To be sure, the fetishism is real enough, evidenced by the way in which our interest is so often more in the medium than its content. "What format do you read your newspapers in?" (not: "Did you read the news today?"). "Does your phone have a wide enough angle to take in the ceiling of the Sistine chapel?" (not: "The Sistine chapel's ceiling is too much to take in in one go"). If the future develops along the lines being laid by the present, the question of the century won't be: "Where were you when Barack Obama was assassinated?" but "Did you read about the dematerialisation of Steve Jobs on the iLavatory Mk 3.14 or Mk 3.14159265? Mk 3.1? Oh dear, you must be distraught?"

But the reality is that these shallow obsessions disguise a simple, pervasive conservatism. Imagine if William Caxton had returned to Westminster with his new printing press and everyone had said: "What's this newfangled nonsense? Hand-copied is much better you really get the sense you're getting something for your money. (And besides, what are you doing with this euro-tech? You can't trust it you know.")

Sure, there will have been some moaning from the guild of copyists or some such, but you wouldn't have caught Caxton printing questionnaires asking readers whether they like the new technology or not.

It's not just media technology, either. Can you imagine the architects of the great cathedrals trying to get planning permission today, or even obtaining agreement on how best to honour the spirit of the past? Hagia Sophia was built in five years following the destruction of the fifth century church, yet it's taken the architectural, engineering, design and financial might concentrated on Manhattan island nearly nine years to replace the fallen twin towers with this.

We flatter ourselves with endless talk about living at the "cutting edge" in an era of "constant change" and "permanent technological revolution". Most of the time, though, by conspiring to keep capacity at a set distance from potential, the progress implicit in the technological cycle of perpetual upgrading is an illusion we use to distract us from the numbingly slow speed at which real change actually takes place. How else do you explain that, over 80 years after women obtained equal voting rights in this country, we still can't get more than four of them round the cabinet table, or more than one woman for every nine men into our company boardrooms?

Still, at least we can read all about it on the latest iDespair format while waiting distractedly for society to upgrade itself.

BBC Trust rules that corporation's smartphone apps do not need to pass full public value test, despite rivals' concerns

The BBC Trust has given given the all-clear to the launch of the BBC's iPhone apps despite commercial rivals' concerns about their market impact.

Smartphone applications for BBC News, BBC Sport and the iPlayer did not require further scrutiny through a public value test, it said.

The trust's review included research into the apps market by a media consultancy firm, Mediatique.

BBC trustee Diane Coyle, who led the review, said: "The apps market is rapidly taking off as more people choose to get their news, sport and other online content while they're on the move.

"The trust has a duty to represent the interests of licence fee payers, who will increasingly expect to access BBC content in this way, but also to listen to concerns raised by industry.

"In this case we have concluded that while the apps market is developing quickly and we will monitor the launch of BBC apps, a PVT is not required."

The Trust said a public value test was not required because the iPhone apps did not involve the creation of new content.

But it said the impact of the BBC services on the apps market should be monitored and would be reviewed six months after launch.

"In circumstances where the BBC's apps have an unanticipated impact on the market it will remain open to the Trust to call the proposals back in for further consideration or to consider any fair trading complaints on appeal."

The apps were in line with previous BBC activity, which already offered a range of basic web apps for mobile devices, it said, adding: "The proposals are also in line with current market trends including the growing penetration of smart phones and mobile internet usage."

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".

Touchscreen computing device costing just 23 to be rolled out first to 110 million schoolchildren

India has developed the world's cheapest laptop a touchscreen device which resembles Apple's wildly popular iPad but will cost just 23.

The prototype was unveiled today by Kapil Sibal, the country's human resource development minister, who said 110 million Indian schoolchildren would be the first recipients.

Then, from next year, the device designed to bridge the digital divide and boost India's economy will become available to students in higher education.

Sibal said: "The solutions for tomorrow will emerge from India. We have reached a stage that today, the motherboard, its chip, the processing, connectivity, all of them cumulatively cost around $35 [ 23], including memory, display, everything."

Past low-cost technologies produced by the country include the 1,450 Tata Nano car and a mobile phone costing less than 11. The iPad retails at about 429 in the UK 18 times the cost of the Indian laptop.

The tablet computer, developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalooru, will eventually be made available to the public. It will run on an open source Linux operating system with Open Office software and can be powered by solar panel or batteries as well as mains electricity. It will have no hard drive but users will have access to a USB port, 2GB of memory and a video-conferencing facility, internet browsing.

Sudhir Dixit, director of Hewlett-Packard's Indian research division, welcomed the announcement. He said: "This is a very strong move with good potential. Previous initiatives with these aims have had laptops priced at around $100, so it is a development.

"The interesting thing is that slate devices are expected to come into the market and cut into sales of laptops and netbooks. The predictions are that slate devices will do to netbooks and laptops what netbooks and laptops did to desktop PCs. It gives people mobility.

"Access to IT in the education system is growing very rapidly. Because of the government's great push forward in IT, every school will have computers and, at some stage, every person will have access to IT."

More than 62m PCs are expected to be sold in India this year and the figure is predicted to top 100m in 2013. The first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010 saw a 72% growth in netbook sales.

Dixit said: "This year the IT market has begun growing very rapidly after a slump last year."

The device forms part of the Indian government's commitment to an across-the-country satisfactory standard of education by 2010. According to 2001 census figures, literacy levels in India are at 63%, lagging behind most other developing nations, including China where the figure is 93%. There are 60 million registered internet users in India, a country with a population of 1.2 billion.

Earlier this year HP Labs India announced a move to bring tens of millions of people online in the country, enabling users of low-end mobile phones to complete simple functions on websites.

The HP innovation could potentially open the customer market for small businesses from the 60 million registered internet users to the 600 million owners of mobile phones.

Technology editor Charles Arthur sees if he has the right stuff as he takes Parrot's Wi-Fi controlled quadricopter for a test flight

The iPhone 4 debacle reveals how much Apple has to learn about life at the top

Over the past two months, Apple's market capitalisation (ie its value as measured by the stock market) averaged out at $229.8bn.

The corresponding figure for Microsoft was $215.9bn. And yes, you read those numbers correctly: Apple is now worth significantly more than Microsoft, and the difference isn't just a flash in the Wall Street pan.

This has implications for all of us who follow these things. The mainstream media, for example, need to discard the rose-tinted spectacles through which they have viewed Apple ever since Steve Jobs returned to the helm in 1997. Apple is no longer the Lucky Little Company That Could but a looming, secretive, manipulative corporate giant.

Recent developments suggest that Apple itself also needs to adjust to its new status as just another company. Last month it released the iPhone 4, the latest version of its smartphone, to near-universal media acclaim. But shortly after the release of this magical device, complaints began to surface about problems with its wireless reception specifically that if one held the phone in a certain way while making a call, then it dropped the connection.

Apple at first ignored these irritating complaints, but eventually issued a soothing "Letter from Apple regarding iPhone 4". "The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple's history", it began, in best Listen With Mother style. "It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them." The "letter" went on to explain that the problem was caused by a mistake in the algorithm (ie mathematical formula) used to calculate the number of bars in the signal strength indicator. A software update would, it said, soon be available to fix that.

This patronising "letter" proved to be a spectacular (and misleading) misjudgment. "I couldn't believe this was meant to be taken seriously," wrote Dave Winer, one of the blogosphere's elder statesmen. "It's the kind of story The Onion might have written on a bad day. Or Jon Stewart. That a corporate PR team wrote this says how unseasoned their people are. That they thought this answer was going to satisfy anyone says how out of touch they are with the world they are in."

In fact the algorithm excuse was a smokescreen. The real problem was that if you hold the phone naturally, your fingers bridge the gap between the two segments of the antenna contained in the device's bezel. (Which might just explain why Steve Jobs carefully held the phone by its top and bottom edges when showing it to the Russian president recently.) So it wasn't a software problem at all, and the resulting "shitstorm" (Winer's term) grew and grew. Things got so bad that Apple eventually decided on the nuclear option: a Steve Jobs press conference.

The event was an instructive shambles. In summary, the message was: Apple is good and makes great products; all smartphones have reception problems; Apple loves its customers, which is why it built all those cool retail stores for them; the iPhone problem can be fixed by fitting a rubberised "bumper" over the bezel; and Apple will give everyone a free bumper, so what's the problem?

The press conference was instructive because it provided such a vivid demonstration of how inexperienced Apple is in its new role as just another company and how inept Jobs is when faced with the hostile scepticism that is the routine experience of other CEOs.

"When it comes to responding to hostile or sceptical media coverage," wrote one experienced commentator, "Jobs & co seem to be like a presidential contender who's been able to skip the primaries and go straight to the general election missing all the vetting and the hundreds of debates that help to surface any weakness or issues of concern, providing time to develop the skills necessary to respond to any situation. Jobs demonstrated what I've never seen him do in front of an audience: he not only lost his cool, he lost his charm. He was a like an arena rock star who can't perform acoustic."

And no free T-shirt from the gig, either.

Those wacky characters from Toy Story 3 dominate the UK's game chart as well as the box office this week

Leisure software charts compiled by GfK Chart Track
2009 ELSPA (UK) Ltd

No date yet, but at least we know that Microsoft is admitting there are 40m Xbox 360s out there

Microsoft has announced the pricing for the Kinect bundle - you know, the you-move-it-moves system that Peter Molyneux has brought to fruition (possibly with a little bit of help).

Sitting down? OK:

"Kinect for Xbox 360, which will include the Kinect Sensor and the video game "Kinect Adventures," will retail for US$149.99 when it launches Nov. 4 in North America, the company revealed. The Kinect Sensor will work with each of the 40 million Xbox 360s currently in households worldwide."

(Useful stat, Microsoft: we'll note that 40m figure for the future.).

Oh, the UK price? 129.99. Yes! Welcome to Treasure Island - again! At the prevailing currency exchange rate, that would be 98; add on VAT at 17.5% and you get 115.40 (though once you get 20% VAT, it would be 117.60. (We're not sure what magic has been woven on the product to make the price go up as it passes over water, but make sure not to wave it over the bath.)

OK, executive quote time: Josh Hutto, director of product marketing for Xbox, said that Kinect represents a great value for new and existing Xbox 360 customers. "Kinect truly is a revolutionary product," he said. "We're bringing controller-free entertainment into the living room. With one purchase, families get Kinect and the most complete and affordable way to have fun."

So - now you know how much it is going to cost, are you going to buy one? Or are you preferring the Sony Move?

A detailed email from the company which owns supportonclick.com and onlinepccare.com says its staff don't tell people their PCs have viruses - or they get fired. Could ex-staff be behind the scam?

Following our stories earlier this week about phone calls in which people are cold-called with claims that their PC "has a virus", we've been in touch with Pecon Software, the company behind supportonclick.com (presently shut down) and onlinepccare.com, which offer "remote PC" support. Pecon Software is based in Kolkata, an Indian city that has a lot of call centres. Quite separately, a lot of the scam sites that I've been trying to investigate seem to be linked to addresses in Kolkata, though none matching Pecon Software's address or other details.

On Monday I spoke at length to Vikas Gupta, who describes himself as the customer relationship manager for Pecon Software. Now he has sent a followup email which I'm reprinting (with the approval of himself and the company's managing director, Mahesh Kumar Shah).

On Monday I asked him about Pecon's connection with Supportonclick, which has been mentioned in a number of online forums as part of complaints about cold calls, which is registered to Pecon Software, and which was one of 19 shut down by the Metropolitan Police e-Crime Unit in April. Here's his response (I've tidied the grammar and spelling very slightly). His response is in blockquotes, my explanation/expansion in standard quote.:

"I would like to clarify a few points to you which may help you in your future articles on the same topic."

"When you called us, I did not have much information on SupportOnClick. But you took me wrong by mentioning that I denied knowing SupportOnClick. I did mention that I know Support on Click but did not know much of the history behind it."

(For clarification, Gupta told me he joined Pecon Software in November 2009. Supportonclick.com was registered in February 2006,)

"Today I had a discussion with the senior management where I requested them to tell me something about SupportOnClick. What I came to know was that SupportOnClick was our URL which we used to register customers from the UK & USA."

(Gupta's assertion is that Pecon Software would call people and offer them a remote support service, explaining what was involved, but without scare tactics.)

"You were correct that SupportOnClick's URL was suspended and the reason was that there were some complains that were reported to the UK-Police against this website."

"This was a shocking news for the management as well and we have contested this with the Registrar of the website & UK Police as well. After communicating to the UK Police for some time, they suddenly stopped answering our mails. We are still in the process of appealing to get the url unblocked. But as we already had a URL named www.onlinepccare.com which was then being used to register Australian Customers only, we started using OnlinePcCare as a single url for registering all new customers. As we had the registered customer database, we had then sent a mail to each and every customer and at the same time tried calling each and every customer to inform that they can still avail [themselves of] the service and are still giving a monthly checkup call to each and every customer that we have registered."

"We have plenty of evidence where we can prove that our services have been Helpful and Cost Effective for majority of our customers. But like any other business house, we may have not lived up to the expectations of some customers. As it was a new domain of business for us as well so with every mistake we have learnt and improved our services."

Now we come to the question of whether any of the 200-strong team (Gupta's figure, provided on Monday) of telemarketers who were cold-calling people in the UK, US and Australia offering Pecon's services ever introduced themselves as being "from Microsoft" or "Windows support services" or similarly misrepresented their reason for calling, and whether they would ever tell people from the outset that there were problems with their PC, rather than ascertaining if there were.

That's the continual complaint on multiple blogs and forums against the galaxy of sites (and, it seems, companies) that are calling people in this way. So, I asked Gupta on Monday, had Pecon Software ever found any of its staff doing this, and if it had, did it take any action? Or was the "something wrong with your machine" line part of the script for every person?

"Following the customer concerns, we took the strictest of actions against any tele-marketer who tried to mislead any customer. In many instances we have terminated such employees as well."

According to an email seen by the Guardian to Gupta from Mahesh Shah, head of Pecon Software, the company has terminated its contract with "around 30 employees in last two years."

"Some of the terminated employees did start a process of their own and we are in no position to check their operation's quality of marketing or services. But this does not mean that we are running a "Scam" or this "Business Model" is all about scamming."

It's worth noting that it would be entirely possible for someone to claim to be from any website (or company) and then direct you to a generic login site for the remote support software, notably LogMeIn, which is a legitimate product with legitimate uses, but which is used by scammers in this case to get access to your machine.

"We noticed that some of the customers went on to Blog against us. If you notice, you will seldom find any existing customer of Support on Click on these Blogs. The Blogging Community is generally Tech-Savvy and our services does not sound appealing to them. That is why they think that the cost of registration for our services are worthless. This again does not mean that we are Scamming people."

"You can also easily make out that their main concern is tele-marketing. You will find that people on blogs complain about the telephone calls that they are receiving in regards to their computer and with a preconceived notion about the subject from the various sources like print media or digital media, they suspect all tele-marketting calls to be fake or scams."

I had also pointed out that many of those blogs and forums with complaints about attempted or successful scams using this method were often then invaded by people claiming to have had marvellous experiences - but all written in similarly poor English, unlike the complainants, and with IP addresses indicating the writer was based in India.

"In reference to your question on India IP address in Blog: As I said, being a technology based Company, Pecon Software Limited would not do such a silly mistake. If you check some of the complaining Blogs are also from Indian IPs."

That's not my experience, though if anyone can find an example please put it in the comments.

"This was surely a strategic move against us from some of the "Mushroom" Companies that came into existence after being terminated from Pecon."

Gupta did suggest the names of a couple of sites that he thought were perpetrating this scam, though I can't repeat them for legal reasons just here.

I had also asked him where Pecon Software/supportonclick.com/onlinepccare.com got the names of people who were cold-called.

"In reference to List of People we call: If you remember, I did tell you that we have an SEO team which makes continuous effort to search for prospective clients and divert it to our site and apart from that we have a general tele-marketing approach to people whose names are available on Online Directories but we Remove "Do Not Call" Registered numbers from there. I have noticed that this has been the biggest concern in[comments on] your article and I can understand why."

"The wild guesses of people in blogs and the example given in your article where someone gets a call just after they have had some interaction with call centres based in India are baseless and most of the instances that I read in the blogs are mere coincidences. ISPs, Broadband services, Bigger Brands which people think are leaking data are generally associated with BPO's [Business Process Outsourcing] to international standards with all data protection security measures in place. Even a small company like ours takes data protection as a high priority issue. So there is no chance of getting any form of bulk data for tele-marketing from them."

"Tele-marketing can be annoying for many but the fact remains that it has been a successful tool of getting prospective clients. But we agree to the fact that it should not be misleading or "Earning by Deceiving" people."

"We are also equally worried if innocent people are being targeted by some group of people, and are interested to bring out the truth. This is not only the question of people in the UK or the "English-speaking world", it is also the question of the future of this industry [call centres] which millions of people are depending upon, directly or indirectly. It is also the question of reputation of call centres based in India and the BPO industry as a whole. Reputable companies such as Iyogi [remote computer support, registered in 2005, based in Delhi] and Qresolve [based in Gurgaon, registered in 2006], doing the same business, with thousands of employees may also get affected by the negativity being created by such articles or online blogs."

"We are open for any feedback which may improve operating style and suites our international audience. Your inputs will be very valuable for us."

So, what are your inputs, people?

Recreating existing Flash ads with HTML5/CSS3 might seem pointless, but for designers and sites looking to beat ad-blocking it might be the future. See how well you can spot the differences...

Make the HTML5 ads go away! Photo by Seeds_of_Peace on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Cover your eyes, AdBlock users: the future of the web is here, and it includes adverts.

Unless of course you reckon that Adobe's Flash is always going to reign supreme when it comes to creating animated content online, so that the combination of HTML5 and CSS3 will just never become important, or that browsers capable of displaying HTML5/CSS3 content won't become pervasive enough for it to matter.

But if you don't... over at sencha.com, you can now - assuming you're using a sufficiently modern browser - take a quiz: see if you can spot which one of the pairs of ads is done in Flash, and which is done in HTML5/CSS3. (We're not hosting them here because (a) that would be rude (b) it would be a huge hassle getting the path to the CSS files right. Off you go and take the quiz.)

Obviously, this is quite easy to figure out if you have a Flash blocker installed (or are on a platform that doesn't provide Flash - hello pretty much everyone on mobile), or if you have a browser that's not capable of displaying HTML5. But if you view it on Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera, you may find it tough to call.

This is encouraging, or scary, depending on your viewpoint: if designers can do things with HTML5/CSS3 that they used to need Flash for, then blocking out the messages (which has been a topic of heated debate from time to time) that help to pay for some ads become much more difficult - because it's all just HTML. (Though perhaps you then start to have "CSS-blocking" parsers which will watch for things such as ":hover" and "-animation-duration" in the CSS file - see for example the content of http://www.sencha.com/deploy/css3-ads/hertz/style.css, used for the Hertz ad recreation.

The details, if you're interested, of how to do the recreations are on another Sencha blogpost. Would-be HTML5 designers, take note.

Text, text, text, that's all they think about: but are all those hours on the phone and Facebook turning teenagers into screen-enslaved social inadequates? Jon Henley finds out

"I'd rather," deadpans Philippa Grogan, 16, "give up, like, a kidney than my phone. How did you manage before? Carrier pigeons? Letters? Going round each others' houses on BIKES?" Cameron Kirk, 14, reckons he spends "an hour, hour-and-a-half on school days" hanging out with his 450-odd Facebook friends; maybe twice that at weekends. "It's actually very practical if you forget what that day's homework is. Unfortunately, one of my best friends doesn't have Facebook. But it's OK; we talk on our PlayStations."

Emily Hooley, 16, recalls a Very Dark Moment: "We went to Wales for a week at half term to revise. There was no mobile, no TV, no broadband. We had to drive into town just to get a signal. It was really hard, knowing people were texting you, writing on your Wall, and you couldn't respond. Loads of my friends said they'd just never do that."

Teens, eh? Not how they were when I was young. Nor the way they talk to each other. Let's frighten ourselves, first: for a decade, the Pew Internet & American Life Project has been the world's largest and most authoritative provider of data on the internet's impact on the lives of 21st-century citizens. Since 2007, it has been chronicling the use teenagers make of the net, in particular their mass adoption of social networking sites. It has been studying the way teens use mobile phones, including text messages, since 2006.

This is what the Project says about the way US teens (and, by extension, teenagers in much of western Europe: the exact figures may sometimes differ by a percentage point or two, but the patterns are the same) communicate in an age of Facebook Chat, instant messaging and unlimited texts. Ready?

First, 75% of all teenagers (and 58% of 12-year-olds) now have a mobile phone. Almost 90% of phone-owning teens send and receive texts, most of them daily. Half send 50 or more texts a day; one in three send 100. In fact, in barely four years, texting has established itself as comfortably "the preferred channel of basic communication between teens and their friends".

But phones do more than simply text, of course. More than 80% of phone-owning teens also use them to take pictures (and 64% to share those pictures with others). Sixty per cent listen to music on them, 46% play games, 32% swap videos and 23% access social networking sites. The mobile phone, in short, is now "the favoured communication hub for the majority of teens".

As if texting, swapping, hanging and generally spending their waking hours welded to their phones wasn't enough, 73% use social networking sites, mostly Facebook 50% more than three years ago. Digital communication is not just prevalent in teenagers' lives. It IS teenagers' lives.

There's a very straightforward reason, says Amanda Lenhart, a Pew senior research specialist. "Simply, these technologies meet teens' developmental needs," she says. "Mobile phones and social networking sites make the things teens have always done defining their own identity, establishing themselves as independent of their parents, looking cool, impressing members of the opposite sex a whole lot easier."

Flirting, boasting, gossiping, teasing, hanging out, confessing: all that classic teen stuff has always happened, Lenhart says. It's just that it used to happen behind the bike sheds, or via tightly folded notes pressed urgently into sweating hands in the corridor between lessons. Social networking sites and mobile phones have simply facilitated the whole business, a gadzillion times over.

For Professor Patti Valkenburg, of the University of Amsterdam's internationally respected Centre for Research on Children, Adolescents and the Media, "contemporary communications tools" help resolve one of the fundamental conflicts that rages within every adolescent. Adolescence, she says, is characterised by "an enhanced need for self-presentation, or communicating your identity to others, and also self-disclosure discussing intimate topics. Both are essential in developing teenagers' identities, allowing them to validate their opinions and determine the appropriateness of their attitudes and behaviours."

But, as we all recall, adolescence is also a period of excruciating shyness and aching self-consciousness which can make all that self-presentation and self-disclosure something of a perilous, not to say agonising, business. So the big plus of texting, instant messaging and social networking is that it allows the crucial identity-establishing behaviour, without the accompanying embarrassment. "These technologies give their users a sense of increased controllability," Valkenburg says. "That, in turn, allows them to feel secure about their communication, and thus freer in their interpersonal relations."

"Controllability", she explains, is about three things: being able to say what you want without fear of the message not getting through because of that humungous spot on your chin or your tendency to blush; having the power to reflect on and change what you write before you send it (in contrast to face-to-face communication); and being able to stay in touch with untold hordes of friends at times, and in places, where your predecessors were essentially incommunicado.

But what do teenagers make of this newfound freedom to communicate? Philippa reckons she sends "probably about 30" text messages every day, and receives as many. "They're about meeting up where are you, see you in 10, that kind of thing," she says. "There's an awful lot of flirting goes on, of course. Or it's, 'OMG, what's biology homework?'. And, 'I'm babysitting and I'm SOOOO bored.'" (Boredom appears to be the key factor in the initiation of many teen communications.)

Like most of her peers, Philippa wouldn't dream of using her phone to actually phone anyone, except perhaps her parents to placate them if she's not where she should be, or ask them to come and pick her up if she is. Calls are expensive, and you can't make them in class (you shouldn't text in class either, but "lots of people do").

Philippa also has 639 Facebook friends, and claims to know "the vast majority" (though some, she admits, are "quite far down the food chain"). "I don't want to be big-headed or anything, but I am quite popular," she says. "Only because I don't have a social life outside my bedroom, though." When I call her, 129 of her friends are online.

Facebook rush-hour is straight after school, and around nine or 10 in the evening. "You can have about 10 chats open at a time, then it gets a bit slow and you have to start deleting people," Philippa says. The topics? "General banter, light-hearted abuse. Lots of talk about parties and about photos of parties." Cred-wise, it's important to have a good, active Facebook profile: lots of updates, lots of photos of you tagged.

Sometimes, though, it ends in tears. Everyone has witnessed cyber-bullying, but the worst thing that happened to Philippa was when someone posted "a really dreadful picture of me, with an awful double chin", then refused to take it down. "She kept saying, 'No way, it's upped my profile views 400%,'" says Philippa. It's quite easy, she thinks, for people to feel "belittled, isolated" on Facebook.

There are other downsides. Following huge recent publicity, teens are increasingly aware of the dangers of online predators. "Privacy's a real issue," says Emily. "I get 'friend' requests from people I don't know and have never heard of; I ignore them. I have a private profile. I'm very careful about that."

A 2009 survey found up to 45% of US companies are now checking job applicants' activity on social networking sites, and 35% reported rejecting people because of what they found. Universities and colleges, similarly, are starting to look online. "You need to be careful," says Cameron Kirk, astute and aware even at 14. "Stuff can very easily get misunderstood." Emily agrees, but adds: "Personally, I love the idea that it's up there for ever. It'll be lovely to go back, later, and see all those emotions and relations."

Pew's Lenhart says research [by Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research] has revealed a class distinction in many teens' attitudes to online privacy. "Teens from college-focused, upper-middle-class familes tend to be much more aware of their online profiles, what they say about them, future consequences for jobs and education," she says. "With others, there's a tendency to share as much as they can, because that's their chance for fame, their possibility of a ticket out."

The question that concerns most parents, though, is whether such an unprecedented, near-immeasurable surge in non face-to-face communication is somehow changing our teenagers diminishing their ability to conduct more traditional relationships, turning them into screen-enslaved, socially challenged adults. Yet teens, on the whole, seem pretty sensible about this. Callum O'Connor, 16, says there's a big difference between chatting online and face to face. "Face to face is so much clearer," he says. "Facebook and instant messaging are such detached forms of communication. It's so easy to be misinterpreted, or to misinterpret what someone says. It's terribly easy to say really horrible things. I'm permanently worrying will this seem heartless, how many kisses should I add, can I say that?"

He's certain that what goes on online "isn't completely real. Some people clearly think it is, but I feel the difference. It's really not the same." Emily agrees: "It's weird. If I have a massive fight on Facebook, it's always, like, the next day, did it actually matter? Was it important? I always go up to the person afterwards and talk to them face to face, to see their emotions and their expressions. Otherwise you never know. It's complicated."

Emily is fairly confident that social networking and texting aren't changing who she is. "I'm the same online and in person. All this is an extension to real life, not a replacement." Olivia Stamp, 16 and equally self-aware, says she thinks social networking actually helps her to be more herself. "I think of myself as quite a shy person," she says. "So it's actually easier to be myself on Facebook because you can edit what you want to say, take your time; you don't feel awkward. I definitely feel more confident online more like the self I know I really am, beneath the shyness."

These new communications technologies, Olivia says, are "an enhancement, an enrichment actually. They bring people even closer, in fact, without replacing anything. We're not socially abnormal. Look at us!" And the experts seem to back that up. Valkenburg says: "Our research gives no reason at present for concern about the social consequences of online communication but it's early days. What if the constant self-confirmation teens experience online turns into excessive self-esteem, or narcissism? We don't know yet."

Lenhart puts it another way. "Our research shows face-to-face time between teenagers hasn't changed over the past five years. Technology has simply added another layer on top. Yes, you can find studies that suggest online networking can be bad for you. But there are just as many that show the opposite."

We should, she suggests, "Step back. The telephone, the car, the television they all, in their time, changed the way teens relate to each other, and to other people, quite radically. And how did their parents respond? With the same kind of wailing and gnashing of teeth we're doing now. These technologies change lives, absolutely. But it's a generational thing."

This article was amended on 27 July 2010 to make clear the origin of research findings about class distinctions in teenage attitudes to online privacy.

Teenagers: how addicted to Facebook are you? How much do you use technology and what for? Post below or email g2feedback@guardian.co.uk

Lawyers for Ministry of Sound and other music labels are seeking compensation, threatening court action unless file sharers pay

Solicitors for dance music label Ministry of Sound have sent letters to thousands of internet users it believes have illegally downloaded music and says it is determined to take them to court and extract substantial damages unless they immediately pay compensation, typically around 350.

Ministry of Sound's move marks an intensification of the legal battle against file sharers, which is seeing more and more lawyers send out what critics call speculative invoicing of downloaders suspected of pirating anything from music tracks to films and games.

Soho firm Gallant Macmillan last week completed a mailout to 2,000 individuals it claims infringed Ministry of Sound's copyright after downloading and sharing music. It follows in the steps of ACS:Law, which has sent many thousands of letters demanding compensation from alleged file sharers, sometimes billing in excess of 1,000. Luke Bellamy, above, contacted Money this week after receiving a 295 demand from ACS:Law, which alleged he downloaded and shared a track from dance music group Cascada.

Some recipients of the letters, concerned about forking out huge damages, have paid up. Others have been mystified they claim never to have downloaded the tracks. Meanwhile, some legal specialists say the threats are largely unenforceable. Unless a user confesses to illegally downloading a file, or a court order is obtained to seize a computer and the file is then located on its hard drive, consumer groups say, it's hard to see how such an action will succeed.

Even the body that represents the UK recorded music industry, the BPI, which is keen to stamp out illegal filesharing, says it does not condone the mass-mailing of alleged internet pirates. "Our view is that legal action is best reserved for the most persistent or serious offenders, rather than widely used as a first response," it says.

Most recipients of the letters have binned them and, to date, avoided any further action. But Gallant Macmillan says it is taking a different approach to the other legal firms that pioneered this business, and that its sole client, Ministry of Sound, is serious when it threatens legal action. Until now, none of these cases have ended up in UK courts. A Ministry of Sound spokesman says that actions have been won in German courts, and it is confident that it can do the same in the UK.

Bellamy, 23, a lifeguard from Dudley, West Midlands, lives with his parents, but pays for the O2 broadband connection into the family home. The letter sent to him by ACS:Law claims his internet account was used to download Evacuate the Dancefloor by Cascada, from the filesharing website uTorrent.

The letter, which runs to nine pages, goes on to claim that this was in breach of ACS's clients' copyright, and offers to settle its potential claim if Bellamy pays nearly 300 in compensation.

"Getting a letter like this is extremely worrying. I have never downloaded anything from this website and yet I am being chased for this money. My parents have been worried by this, and frankly I've got better things to do with my time than deal with this."

And he is by no means alone. The internet is awash with similar complaints from anxious web users - many of whom who did download the files where they have been accused of infringing copyright, but also from plenty who insist they didn't. The letters demand anywhere between 300 and 1,200. The law firms sending the letters obtain the names and addresses of the downloaders from internet service providers (ISPs). To get access, they usually seek a high court order, and ISPs have no choice but to hand over the details.

In November 2008, Money first reported that solicitors were sending out threatening letters to net users. We featured a Hertfordshire couple sent a demand to pay 503 for "copyright infringement" or face a high court action. The 20-page "pre-settlement letter" from legal firm Davenport Lyons demanded money on behalf of German pornographers, who claimed the pair had illegally downloaded a porn film. The couple said they had no idea how to even download a film, even if they had the inclination, which they didn't.

Michael Coyle, solicitor advocate and MD of the Southampton-based law firm Lawdit, who has represented hundreds of people who have received these letters, says none of his cases have gone to court.

"A significant number of cases were connected to porn, seeking to embarrass porn users into paying up, and it developed from there. Perhaps as many as 10% of those receiving letters have paid up, but the rest have just disappeared. These firms are trying to argue that just because you pay for the internet connection you are somehow responsible for everything that is downloaded on it whether you were responsible or not. It just doesn't stand up in law," he says.

"It seems to me that the only way a claim can be upheld is if you admit it or if they inspect your hard drive."

He is so confident that a claim by the likes of ACS:Law would not succeed that he has offered to defend anyone in court for free providing they didn't download the offending file.

Following a complaint by consumer group Which? (and others) Davenport Lyons, the law firm which pioneered the approach in the UK, is facing a probe by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Which? says it has had 200 complaints from the public on this issue, and has several pages on his website advising consumers what they should do if they receive such a letter.

"Remember that you have to be actively involved to be guilty of copyright infringement," it says.

"If you're not, explain why and ask for the proof that positively identifies you as the culprit. They may make counterclaims or raise other issues when they reply but concentrate on making them prove it was you." Which? recently warned those affected not to reply to a request by ACS:Law to fill in a questionnaire the company apparently sends to all those who deny any involvement.

Deborah Prince, head of legal affairs at Which?, says people are under no obligation to fill in these questionnaires. "Which? believes it is outrageous that ACS:Law is asking consumers to provide evidence to support the claims that it is making on their clients' behalf. It should have all the evidence it needs before making these allegations. If it doesn't, then it shouldn't be asking unrepresented consumers to provide that evidence."

Andrew Crossley, head of ACS:Law, says his letters do not accuse the recipients of "downloading".

"We have written to your reader, as with everyone else we have written to, informing them that we have evidence one of our clients' copyrighted works was made available through a filesharing network to others from the internet connection they have.

"In other words, the work was uploaded, not downloaded, and is distributed many times over and given to others who in turn make it available to many others.

"All this is done without reference to the copyright owner, who receives no payment for this often repeated transaction, denying our clients income."

He says the amount demanded in the letters is a fraction of the damages that would be awarded in a successful civil action for copyright infringement, and claims illegal filesharing has been devastating to the creative industries.

He declined to comment on how many cases had gone to court, but said: "I can confirm proceedings have been issued and that more proceedings are to be issued in increasing numbers.

"The amount we request in compromise is a token payment to reflect some small amount of the losses of our clients to illegal filesharing."

With the international games industry gathered on the south coast for the Develop conference, Tech Weekly cornered legendary game designer Peter Molyneux and locked the developers behind Mass Effect, Monkey Island and the Buzz quiz series Greg Zeschuk, Tim Schafer and Caspar Field into a hotel suite together to discuss the future of gaming. Plus, one UK developer reacts to Ed Vaizey's keynote speech on government support for the games business.

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The technology scene has echoes of the post-dotcom exhaustion of 2002 as we wait for mobiles to catch up

Where have all the social networks gone? Of course, this is exactly the right time to be asking this question. Haven't I noticed that Facebook is now claiming 500 million users, in the manner of Doctor Evil in Mike Myers's Austin Powers movies? Haven't I noticed that Twitter is getting its very own data centre, all the better to spread "unimportant trivia" ( all tabloid papers) such as the Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to press a manslaughter charge over Ian Tomlinson's death ?

Well, yes, I have. But my question is actually about the broader subject. What I'm really asking is where all the new social networks have gone. In the past two years, especially as Twitter has risen over the media horizon like a sunrise, barely a week has passed without a new network culled from the web 2.0 name generator take a verb ending in -er and remove the "e" being announced, often with a press release smelling ever so slightly of desperation that another "me-too" product could become the "us-instead" replacement.

To which the response is always: that hardly ever happens. Despite the insistence of web executives everywhere that rivals online are "only a click away", you actually have to screw up royally to turn a successful service into one that people leave in droves. (So congratulations to the former managers at MySpace and Bebo: you deserve your place in those MBA case studies of the future.)

Look around, though, and sites such as blip.fm haven't taken off. True, services such as FourSquare and Gowalla seem to be on the rise although, as Leo Hickman pointed out last week, people haven't quite grasped the threat that they can pose to users. So we're back at the original questions: where are all the new social networks? I think they're gone. Done, dusted, over. I don't think anyone is going to build a social network from scratch whose only purpose is to connect people. We've got Facebook (personal), LinkedIn (business) and Twitter (SMS-length for mobile).

Today the technology scene has echoes of the post-dotcom boom exhaustion of 2002-4. Then, the ideas which sank on the reefs of too-slow internet connections and too-few internet users had to wait for computers to catch up. Digg in 2004 and Google Maps in 2005 heralded much of the expansion, showing how a mashup of information meant new possibilities, and the whole "Web 2.0" concept began to germinate.

Now we're waiting again for mobiles, and especially smartphones allied to mobile networks, to catch up with what ambitious startup companies want to do. Apple's insistence in 2007 that iPhone users should have unlimited data plans yanked the entire mobile business forward about 10 years, and briefly showed us how everything should be working by 2012. No surprise that in recent months the mobile networks, unable to invest fast enough, have been rowing back on the "unlimited data" commitment, taking us back to 2007.

The next big sites won't be social networks. Of course they'll have social networking built into them; they'll come with an understanding of their importance, just as Facebook and Twitter know that search (an idea Google refined) and breaking news (Yahoo's remaining specialist metier) are de rigueur. Nor will they be existing sites retrofitted to do social networking, despite the efforts of Digg and Spotify.

So what will they be? No idea, I'm afraid. If I knew that, would I be here writing? Hell, no I'd be off making elevator pitches and vacuuming up venture capital. Which brings us to business models. Facebook makes its money not just by sucking up ad impressions from the rest of the internet, using its remarkably detailed targeting ability; it also gets a cut from virtual transactions using its own virtual currency. LinkedIn, similarly, can precisely target its executive base. Twitter is different again, selling its user-generated content for big money to Google and Microsoft's Bing, as well as experimenting with direct payment for its EarlyBird sales system and "promoted tweets".

The point being that "ad-supported" isn't the only game for startup revenue. The big sites of the future won't necessarily be about ads as a way to make money, and they won't be about social networks. Now, hunker down and wait. Or get out there and build it.

If you want your free 'bumper' for iPhone 4, you'll need an app - but time limits on applications have led some to ponder whether a redesign is in the works

Want a free case - aka "bumper" - for that iPhone 4? There's an app for that. No, really: Apple has launched the program via an iPhone app (iTunes Store link) about which it says "If you are experiencing reception issues with your iPhone 4, you are eligible to receive an iPhone 4 Bumper or other selected third-party case from Apple at no charge."

Download it and you can apply. Of course, though anyone can try to (and perhaps succeed) download it, "Only iPhone 4 owners are eligible for this program" because the app will check the phone's IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number and serial number. If you bought before today (23 July), your request must be in by 22 August; other requests must be in within 30 days of purchase.

And, notes Apple, "all iPhone purchases must be made by September 30, 2010, to qualify for this program".

It's that final date - plus the news announced by Apple today, at exactly the same time as the free bumper app, that the white iPhone 4 has been delayed yet again which has some people sniffing the air and calling "hardware revision".

The white iPhone 4, after all, is (to the untrained eye) no different from the black one, except that it's, er, white. Yet Apple hasn't released any yet, which is perplexing, given that it has been making white-hued products for absolutely ages (remember the iPod?).

Apple's statement in full reads: "White models of Apple's new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected."

Which has led some people to think that this means that inside its SECRET UNDERGROUND LABORATORY, Apple is preparing a revision of the iPhone 4 with the antenna that has caused so much woe inside the case, or at least covered up.

Personally? I think that the reason why we haven't seen white iPhone 4s is because it actually is difficult to make them. Don't forget that the main casing isn't metal or plastic; it's actually ceramic (or "aluminosilicate"). Quite possibly it actually is harder to make iPhones using that material in white.

But that doesn't answer - and Apple hasn't answered - why the free cases program only goes until September (which happens to be the end of its next financial quarter).

The chances that Apple is working on a new revision to the iPhone 4 design that puts something around the antenna? Hard to evaluate. Two things to consider:

1) Apple absolutely can do this if it wants to. It's had a few months to redesign this, and perhaps even to test it.

2) Steve Jobs reportedly loved having the antenna exposed on the outside, which might mean that the best you would get would be some sort of transparent casing or layer.

So our guidance: chances of a redesign in early October are a bit less than half, because of the Steve Jobs factor. He'd hate the idea of a design which means an acknowledgement of bad design. Plus, as John Gruber pointed out, Apple probably rather likes the idea of getting a chunk of the iPhone case business - and hates giving them away. So it might just be that by the time October rolls around, Apple's response to anyone demanding a free iPhone 4 case would be "you know, if you haven't heard about all this 'antennagate' stuff, you should have."

Microsoft announces 22% rise in three months to June
Profits near $6bn, underlining recovery in technology sector
Results beat record from rival Apple

Microsoft added to the growing sense of recovery in the technology sector last night by reporting record quarterly revenues, driven by strong sales. The software giant pipped Apple, one of its greatest rivals, with a 22% jump in revenues to $16bn ( 10.5bn) in the three months to the end of June. Operating profits jumped 49% to $5.9bn during the quarter.

The figures beat Wall Street estimates, and sent Microsoft's shares up nearly 3% in after-hours trading. But they also showed that the company is still heavily reliant on its Windows operating system and Office suite, despite years of huge investment in online services and computer gaming.

Revenues at Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division soared by 44% to $4.5bn, with operating income up 59% to $3bn. Its business division increased revenue by 15% with operating income up 21% at $3.3bn. Analysts said the results showed that businesses have begun investing in new computers again, following the economic downturn. In contrast, losses rose at Microsoft's online services arm, which includes its MSN web portal and the Bing search engine. Revenues rose by 13% to $565m but operating losses were up 19% to $696m.

Kevin Turner, chief operating officer, acknowledged that Windows 7 and Office 10 had driven Microsoft's performance, but insisted the company was developing other strong products. Kinect is a motion-sensitive control system for the Xbox 360 that is meant to replicate the success of Nintendo's Wii system.

Microsoft reported that it has now sold 175m Windows 7 licences, while Bing has increased its share of the search market for the last 13 months.

On Tuesday, Apple cheered investors with its best-ever quarter, reporting revenues of $15.7bn. Chipmaker Intel also posted strong results on Wednesday, in a sign that PC sales were more robust than expected. Amazon, though, disappointed Wall Street after reporting a 45% rise in earnings less than analysts had expected and its shares fell 14%. Amazon also warned that its operating income would probably miss expectations this quarter.

Experiments like 'Please Rob Me' indicate that what people reveal via location-sharing apps could potentially be harmful to them - and survey finds concerns among users

More than half of people with geolocation-capable mobile devices worry about "loss of privacy" from using their location-sharing features, a survey has found - even though location-sharing apps such as FourSquare and Gowalla have millions of users checking in every day.

Among UK respondents, 52% said they were "very or extremely concerned" about loss of privacy from using location-sharing applications - even though the same proportion said that they geotag photos, indicating where they were taken, when uploading them to the internet.

The survey, commissioned by security company Webroot, interviewed 1,500 owners of devices with geolocation capabilities, including 624 people in the UK.

Yet other data shows that there are more than 1m lonely hearts now looking for location-based love via an iPhone application, and touching two million users checking-in with Foursquare, sharing whereabouts is the social currency du jour.

But that can be risky, as a trio of developers showed earlier this year, grabbing the headlines when they launched Please Rob Me, a live stream of people sharing their location on Twitter, the site playing on the fact these people were out of their homes. After doing what it set out to do - bring attention to the risk associated with location sharing - the stream was turned off.

Yet FourSquare and Gowalla have continued their upward trajectory of users, investors and commercial partners, such as Dominos Pizza, the Huffington Post, MTV and the Wall Street Journal.

But according to David Bennett, director for Webroot in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, "It's not about securing the hardware anymore, it's about securing the person as mobile internet-connected devices become widespread." He reiterates the challenges associated with attitudes towards publishing personal information online: "If you look over the last year, it takes about a year for people to be educated about putting stuff on Facebook - I think it'll take that same amount of time for geolocation applications."

This, Bennett says, gets to the nub of the concern: "A lot of people don't necessarily know what they do or what the implications are of these services. Of the half that thought there was a problem, how many people know that the pictures they're taking can be geotagged? Say if you move into a new house, and you say 'Here's a picture of my house', you then take a picture of you and your family on holiday - this is where cybercrime really expands. What's to stop a certain segment of the marketplace burgling your house? That's the challenge as we go forward."

"I think it's the new version of the telephone directory," Bennett says of the presence of food chains on Foursquare. "Can you be sure the company you're interacting with is really the company? That's one of the biggest challenges. when you rang them up you knew it was them - if it's online how can you be sure? But that's the way the business marketplace is going to go - the next generation of bringing people to the doorstep."

And to the doorstep goods and services will come. Skout is a location-based "social dating application" that connects singletons within metres or miles of your exact location. Last week Skout welcomed both profitability and its one millionth user. But news like this is anathema to the cause of "securing the person". Bennett continues the refrain: "When you're online it's so easy to pretend to be someone you're not. Everyone's hidden behind the keyboard if you start going into some of these dating areas.

"There are certain parts of our information that should always be private. It comes down to people understanding what they're doing."

The research

Webroot commissioned a survey of 1,645 social network users (including 624 UK-based) who own geolocation-ready mobile devices on June 7 and June 8 2010.
- 39% (around 600 of the sample) of mobile device users use location-tracking applications on their mobile phone
73% of those use a "geo-tracking application" to do so
Of this 73%, more than a quarter used location-based services to share their whereabouts with "strangers" and 14% use them to meet new people
55% of respondents said they worry over loss of privacy incurred from using geolocation data
One in 11 respondents have used geolocation applications to meet a stranger, either digitally or in person. This is predominantly within the 18-29 age group
64% have accepted a friend request from a stranger
41% are "aware or extremely concerned" about letting "potential burglars know when they are not at home"
In the UK, 46% of women are "highly concerned" about "letting a stalker know where they are," compared to 27% of men
52% of UK respondents tag their whereabouts in a photograph online
In the past year, 30% of UK respondents have shared their geographical location with "people other than their friends"

Amazon US says it has sold 143 digital books for every 100 hardbacks in the last three months

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday 22 July 2010

The author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is Stieg, not Steig, Larsson.

It is an announcement that will provoke horror among those who can think of nothing better than spending an afternoon rummaging around a musty old bookshop. In what could be a watershed for the publishing industry, Amazon said sales of digital books have outstripped US sales of hardbacks on its website for the first time.

Amazon claims to have sold 143 digital books for its e-reader, the Kindle, for every 100 hardback books over the past three months. The pace of change is also accelerating. Amazon said that in the most recent four weeks, the rate reached 180 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks sold. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, said sales of the Kindle and ebooks had reached a "tipping point", with five authors including Steig Larsson, the writer of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and Stephenie Meyer, who penned the Twilight series, each selling more than 500,000 digital books. Earlier this month, Hachette said that James Patterson had sold 1.1m ebooks to date.

Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of the Bookseller, said the figures from Amazon were "eye-catching", but added a note of scepticism. He said that while ebooks had outnumbered hardbacks in volume, they were likely to be some distance behind in value. Some of the bestsellers listed on the Kindle top 10 list today were retailing for as little as $1.16 (75p). Free downloads of books no longer in copyright were excluded from the figures.

It does not appear that the growth of ebooks is damaging sales of physical books. According to the Association of American Publishers, hardback sales are still growing in the US, up 22% this year.

The association says that ebook sales in the US account for 6% of the consumer book market. One publisher in London said the US is "two or three years ahead of us. But there is no reason to suppose we won't see the same thing happening here."

Kate Pool, deputy general secretary of the Royal Society of Authors, said most authors would be "delighted" to sell large numbers of digital books. "If you speak to most authors, they couldn't bear to get rid of their old bookshelves, but if their readers want to read on an e-reader, then great. They are in it to earn a living after all."

The market is still relatively small in Britain. Digital sales were around 150m last year, says the Publishers' Association, over 80% in the academic-professional sector, with only 5m in consumer sales.

The Kindle has been available in the UK since October, although customers still need to visit the US site and get the device delivered from America.

The books catalogue is also available only through the American site and the titles priced in dollars. A spokesman said there are 390,000 titles available for UK readers to download. The company will not release figures on the number of Kindles sold. "We are nowhere near the same level as the US," Denny added. "I have never seen anyone using a Kindle in Britain. The iPad is more interesting."

Amazon cut the price of its device in June in response to the launch of Apple's iPad, which many believe could provide a substantial threat to the Kindle's market. Waterstones has sold ebooks from its website for the Sony Reader since September 2008 and will sell its one-millionth title this year, a spokesman said.

Pool said she had yet to invest in an ebook reader. "I have played around with one, but I haven't read a full book on one. It is not that I am a Luddite, more of a scrooge, which I think is the same for many people. I am waiting for the price to come down, for the amount of content available to go up and I want to be sure I am not buying the wrong thing. I don't want to be left with a Betamax when everyone else is watching VHS."

Parliament not doing enough to investigate privacy invasion by internet companies, Rob Halfon tells debate

A "very dangerous shift" towards a "privatised version of Big Brother" is on the horizon if UK authorities don't wake up to the invasion of privacy by internet companies, an influential Tory MP has warned.

In a debate about Google and privacy hosted by the pressure group Big Brother Watch, Rob Halfon, who is the Conservative MP for Harlow, said he believed there are many cases of privacy invasion by internet companies yet to be uncovered, and that parliamentarians need to be much more alive to the issue.

Google is facing criminal investigations around the world including in the UK for its interception of personal data about home wireless networks, taken from the company's StreetView mapping cars. The search giant admitted to accidentally intercepting extracts of personal data in May.

"The problem with Google and other big internet companies is that, despite having produced great technological advances, they have forgotten that people are individuals too," Halfon told Tuesday's debate. "We're getting into a situation where just as we're starting to get rid of the previous government's surveillance society we're now replacing it with another one: dare I say it, a privatised kind of surveillance society."

Halfon pointed to allegations of companies "trawling Facebook looking for customers saying negative things that's something worthy of the secret police. If this happened in Soviet Russia you could quite understand it."

While pointing out that he's not against private companies, the MP said more needs to be done to protect the individual: "I suspect there's a lot of privacy encroachment going on which is yet to be uncovered and that these are just a couple of stories we've just seen in the media. The reason I believe there should be an inquiry into the role of the internet and its relationship to individual liberty is because there is so much going on under the surface, tracking what we do on the internet, tracking what we say on the internet, all for commercial purposes.

"There's danger that no one will have any privacy whatsoever. And this time the threat is not from the state, it's actually private companies who have acquired the right to photograph what goes on in people's gardens. That is a very dangerous shift because we will be living, dare I say it, in a privatised version of Big Brother. That's the scenario slowly creeping up upon us."

The Metropolitan Police launched a criminal investigation into Google last month on the request of Privacy International, which alleges that the search company carried out "criminal interception of wireless communications content," constituting an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the Wireless Telegraphy Act. Last month, Halfon put forward an early day motion formally requesting a House of Commons debate on "the new threat of a surveillance society".

So far, 24 MPs have signed Halfon's Commons motion, with the most prominent of them being the former shadow home secretary David Davis.

In May this year, the UK's information commissioner said he did not want to "declare war" on Google over its breach of the Data Protection Act by collecting data about home wireless networks - despite Germany, Spain, France and Italy all launching investigations under the same European legislation.

The commissioner's reaction was criticised by both Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, and Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch, Deane saying: "If an investigation is warranted to the criminal standard I'm not saying anyone's guilty of anything so far how can you possibly say our information commissioner should not have been looking into what was going on in this company?

"That's why I think our information commissioner has been asleep on the job, on that point. His international fellows have really put him to shame. We've got to make sure not only the people responsible for the technology are awake but also the watchdogs are awake."

Davies went further, saying the commissioner's office is "both spineless and gutless", adding: "That, unfortunately, has been the legacy of the office for a long time."

Sarah Hunter, Google's head of UK public policy, attended the event but was restricted in what she could say by ongoing legal proceedings. Hunter did say Google had taken on board privacy concerns that have arisen in the past six months and that concerns expressed at the debate would be relayed back to colleagues, adding: "The answer to a lot of these concerns is finding ways to give people control over their own personal data that's got to be at the heart of solving this conundrum.

"I think Google, or any of the responsible internet companies, understand the concerns that are expressed - how could we not be? I don't think it's true to say Google top brass don't get this. I think the last six months have been a real I think everyone's noted it, shall we say. I think we are very mindful of the challenges that the internet poses as a whole.

"At the heart of solving those challenges, we think, is giving people control over their data - giving people the capacity to both take their information away from the services, and to give people the real sense of what their information is being used for, because I don't think the internet as a platform works on an everyone-opting-in-on-every-service basis."

Celebrity nutritionist Gillian McKeith is embroiled in an online identity crisis as her spat with Bad Science writer Ben Goldacre hots up

Oh Gillian.

Gillian, Gillian, Gillian.

An almighty brouhaha has arisen over on Twitter. And it appears we could yet be at the calm before the storm. Here's the story (for the history see here):

Gillian McKeith, of You Are What You Eat fame, appears to have taken umbridge umbrage at a relatively innocuous tweet from Rachel E Moody:

McKeith, currently promoting ahem a new book, was incensed or at least the person operating what has previously been described as her official Twitter feed was. Scienceblogs caught the reaction before the angry missives were taken down:

Note the word "lies" in reference to Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. Enter Mr Goldacre, who tweeted: "hi @gillianmckeith, i'm writing a piece about you libelling me in the context of #libelreform, can you pls contact ben@badscience.net thnks". UPDATE: Goldacre later said he regards McKeith's comment as "a very serious and undefendable defamation".

And that's when the whole situation turned plain weird. Evolving miraculously into third-person mode just days after a first-person verification the McKeith feed sought to take apart those questioning her qualifications.

But it wasn't long before the collection of McKeith tweets were taken down, replaced with an odd volte face: "Do you actually believe this is real twitter site for the GM?" Er, yes? In large part because it was linked from your official website:

As it stands, McKeith is trending alongside Raoul Moat and Thierry Henry. As with everything on the internet, trending topics can't be deleted so how do you solve a PR problem like McKeith?

Sometimes, a slightly updated version of an old car is no bad thing

Multipurpose vehicles are like buses in more ways than their spatial dimensions. You wait all year for one to come along, then two arrive back to back in the space of a week. Last week it was the Peugeot 5008, which I liked and which proved highly convenient with a party of five 10-year olds.

This week it's the Ford S-Max Titanium or, to give it its official title, the New S-Max Titanium. The original S-Max was a big critical and commercial success, and was voted European Car of the Year in 2007. But that was so three years ago.

For if necessity is the mother of invention, familiarity is the father of innovation. As good as the S-Max may have been, we'd all grown bored by it, faintly sick of the sight of that MPV-looking MPV. What was required was a fresh approach.

And lo, here is the New S-Max, with an imperceptibly altered bonnet shape and subtly changed grille, some chrome around the side windows, and other developments not necessarily visible to the human eye. So it's a whole new ball game, a completely different way of seeing, thinking, driving and, indeed, living. Or possibly a slightly updated version of exactly the same car.

As it's the S-Max, however, that's no bad thing, because it was a fine car to begin with. It's up there with Ford's other big-hitters. Just as the Focus is a great hatchback and the Mondeo an excellent saloon, so the S-Max was, and is, a very fine MPV.

Owing to the car's FoldFlatSystem, you can easily slip the second and third rows of seats into the floor, creating enough storage space to transport a beached whale or your other smaller, more economical car. Alternatively, you can keep the seats up and pack in a sports team, a book group or a collection of civil enforcement officers (sic), who seem to like congregating in minibus-style environments when they're not, for example, persecuting those who've forgotten to display their resident parking permits (so I'm told).

The other possibility, and the one I elected to take, along with most MPV owners, was to drive around on my own, trailing a vast theatre of emptiness. With its new Power Shift automatic gear system, it's a smooth, comfortable, safe, responsive drive, everything you would want out of a large family car/removal van. There's also a full-length panoramic roof and a decent trim level of fixtures and furnishings. And I've got a soft spot for the U-shaped handbrake.

But I must confess, after a fortnight of driving successive MPVs, I was eager to return to the lilliputian world of a four-seater or, even better, a two-seater. Something with less purpose and more justification.

Ford S-Max Titanium 2.0 Duratorq TDCi

Price 24,995
Top speed 126mph
Acceleration 0-60mph in 9.8 seconds
Average consumption 47.1mpg
CO2 emissions 159g/km
Eco rating 6/10
Bound for Underuse
In a word Airy

Statistics from Facebook tell us which countries it has made the greatest inroads into - and which it hasn't. Presented as a map for you
Get the data

You want to know which countries Facebook has made the greatest inroads into? Happy to help.

With data from Nick Burcher, plus some data about the world population (thanks, Wikipedia), plus a little bit of SQL, plus OpenHeatMap, we've got an interactive map you can play with to see where Facebook is all-conquering - specifically, which countries it has the largest (and sometimes smallest) number of the population signed up for, in hitting its 500 million user mark.

So here's the map. (Note: can be slow to load.)

And below is the data, as a handy table - country, Facebook users, population, and percentage penetration.

If you have more data about countries that aren't on this list then please add them in the comments.

Download the data

DATA: download the full spreadsheet, including ISO country codes

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