Volvo unveils cyclist alert system

6 March 2013 Last updated at 11:20 ET

Volvo has announced it is releasing a cyclist detection facility which should prevent fatal accidents.

The auto firm says vehicles fitted with the system will be able to detect threats including a cyclist suddenly swerving out into a car's path.

It said that if a collision risk was detected an alarm would sound and the car's brakes would be fully deployed.

However, safety campaigners say the tech is no replacement for caution behind the wheel.

The Chinese-owned company introduced the feature at the Geneva Motor Show.

No upgrades

The technology is an enhanced version of Volvo's pedestrian detection system which it launched in 2010.

Like the earlier release the innovation uses a radar in the car's grille and a camera located between its windscreen and back view mirror to detect collision threats.

The code which acts as the brains for the equipment has been rewritten to add the new feature, and its added complexity has meant a more powerful processor is now needed.

As a consequence Volvo cars fitted with prior versions of the product cannot simply install a software upgrade.

The firm added that the new system also needed to be installed while cars were being built in the factory - meaning it would have to be ordered up front - and it would be limited to seven out of 11 models in the company's current line-up.

Motorists wanting the feature face an added bill of at least £1,850 to buy it as a part of a package of added features.

Horse alerts

A Volvo Car UK spokesman told the BBC that the firm's engineers were now working on a fresh version as part of its 2020 programme which would also detect animals.

They have already spent an evening at a safari park where they laid out dried food to attract the creatures which they filmed to study their various behaviours.

"The aim is to avoid collisions with horses and deer for example," said Chris Mullord. "But there's no firm release date yet."

This is not the firm's only effort to protect people outside its vehicles from accidents. In May it will release its first car fitted with an airbag beneath its bonnet which will inflate if sensors in the front bumper detect they have come into contact with a cyclist or pedestrian.

The airbag covers approximately a third of the windscreen and is designed to minimise injury to the victim's head.

According to the UK's Department for Transport, 6,040 pedestrians, 3,270 cyclists and 5,440 motorcyclists were killed or seriously injured on the UK's roads between October 2011 and September 2012.

It said the figures for each category had increased by between 4-8% over the previous year.

British Cycling - the UK's governing body for cycling - said it appreciated Volvo's efforts, but added that they only addressed part of the problem.

"While we obviously welcome any safety measures that can be built into vehicles, people shouldn't be relying on technology to keep them and other road users safe," said a spokeswoman.

"What would make much more of a difference is making cyclist awareness a mandatory part of the driving test. British Cycling will continue to campaign for this as well as the establishment of a prominent, national cyclist awareness campaign similar to that we've seen for motorcyclists."

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Frozen phones give up data secrets

7 March 2013 Last updated at 05:59 ET

Freezing an Android phone can help reveal its confidential contents, German security researchers have found.

The team froze phones for an hour as a way to get around the encryption system that protects the data on a phone by scrambling it.

Google introduced the data scrambling system with the version of Android known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

The attack allowed the researchers to get at contact lists, browsing histories and photos.

Cold start

Android's data scrambling system was good for end users but a "nightmare" for law enforcement and forensics workers, the team at Erlangen's Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) wrote in a blogpost about their work.

To get around this, researchers Tilo Muller, Michael Spreitzenbarth and Felix Freiling from FAU put Android phones in a freezer for an hour until the device had cooled to below -10C.

The trio discovered that quickly connecting and disconnecting the battery of a frozen phone forced the handset into a vulnerable mode. This loophole let them start it up with some custom-built software rather than its onboard Android operating system. The researchers dubbed their custom code Frost - Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones.

The Frost software helped them copy data on a phone that could then be analysed on a separate computer.

A chilled phone also helped their hacking project. Data fades from memory much more slowly when chips are cold which allowed them to grab the encryption keys and speed up unscrambling the contents of a phone.

PhD student Tilo Muller told the BBC that the attack generally gave them access to data that had been put in memory as users browsed websites, sent messages or shared pictures.

The researchers tested their attack against a Samsung Galaxy Nexus handset as it was one of the first to use Android's disk encryption system. However, they said, other phones were just as likely to be vulnerable to the attack. The team are planning further tests on other Android handsets.

While the "cold boot" attack had been tried on desktop PCs and laptops, Mr Muller said the trio were the first to try it on phones.

"We thought it would work because smartphones are really small PCs," he said. "but we were quite excited that the trick with the freezer worked so well."

The German research group is now working on defences against the attack that ensures encryption keys are never put in vulnerable memory chips. Instead they are only used in the memory directly attached to a phone's processor.

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Quick success for Planescape reboot

7 March 2013 Last updated at 08:14 ET

A project to make a "spiritual sequel" to classic video game Planescape: Torment has taken six hours to hit its funding goal on Kickstarter.

Torment: Tides of Numenera launched on 6 March seeking $900,000 (£600,000) to make a follow-up to the original game.

The project reached its initial cash target soon after launch and now more than $1.6m (£1m) has been pledged to the game, on the crowd-funding website.

The game is scheduled to be released in December 2014.

Released in 1999 by Black Isle Studios , Planescape: Torment was a single-player video game that, since its debut, has been lauded as a classic of story-led gaming.

It lets players take on the role of a character called The Nameless One who journeys through the strange city of Sigil, gradually re-discovering who he is.

The game was not a financial success but has won many fans since as word about its complexity and characters has spread.

Some of the designers of Planescape game have signed on to help create Tides of Numenera, as have other developers and artists involved with the original.

It also has the blessing of Chris Avellone, lead designer of Planescape: Torment.

In the description on Kickstarter, the team behind Numenera said the game would be set in a different world but would aim to emulate the "deep, thematically satisfying story" of the first game.

It would be less about combat and more about interaction with characters in the game.

Writing on the Rock, Paper, Shotgun games news site Alec Meer said it was always likely that the game would be funded given the amount of "backlogged adoration" for Planescape.

However, he was surprised it hit its funding target so swiftly despite there being no in-game footage available nor any direct involvement of original designer Chris Avellone.

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Samsung loses Apple case in UK

7 March 2013 Last updated at 10:20 ET

South Korean phone-maker Samsung has lost another patent fight against rival Apple, in the UK High Court.

Samsung had said technology used in Apple products to allow phones to send and receive data over 3G networks infringed three of its patents.

The case comes a week after Galaxy smartphone manufacturer failed to secure an iPhone ban in Japan.

Samsung has pursued a number of claims against Apple in courts worldwide, but has won only a minority of the cases.

It said in a statement it was disappointed by the court's decision and would consider whether to file an appeal.

"For decades, we have heavily invested in pioneering the development of technological innovations in the mobile industry, which have been constantly reflected in our products," a spokeswoman said.

Apple declined to comment.

Legal battles between the two companies began in 2011, when Apple first sued Samsung in the US for alleged intellectual property infringements.

Other court cases have taken place in France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, South Korea and Japan.

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Facebook gives itself a facelift

7 March 2013 Last updated at 13:56 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

Facebook has revamped its design, making its website look more like its Android and iOS mobile apps.

The refresh also introduces topic-specific alternatives to its news feed.

One consequence of the change is that adverts can take up more screen space, making them harder to ignore.

However, the project's lead engineer denied ads were the redesign's focus. He also played down suggestions that the move was intended to make people spend more time on the site.

Chris Struhar instead suggested his focus had been on stripping back the amount of information being shown on the news feed to make each post more "engaging".

Continue reading the main story

Facebook is selling the new version of newsfeed under the catchline "Goodbye clutter", insisting that it is about making the user experience better rather than boosting its advertising revenue. But if it works for users, it will make the social network more valuable for advertisers too."

End Quote

Rory's verdict on Facebook's 'tabloid' look

"One of the consistent themes we heard in feedback from people was that it felt cluttered and that there was lot happening on the page," he told the BBC ahead of the official announcement.

"We wanted to clean up the page, declutter it, make it simpler, more modern and easier for people to use.

"I often compare this to a 1960s television with wood panelling, knobs around it and a tiny postage stamp-sized screen - and what we're trying to do is take that same TV and translate it into a 40in HD experience."

The firm has begun rolling out the new format but it will be months before all users are affected. However, those wanting to be among the first to be switched over can sign up to offering a waiting list feature.

Facebook reported in January that 1.06 billion people were using its service at least once a month.

It also revealed that its profit for the last three months of 2012 was 79% down on the same period the previous year despite a rise in sales because of increased spending on research and development.

Pop-out bar

There are three key changes being made to the social network:

• The website switches from a three-column format to two-columns letting the main news feed take up more space. This allows all posts - whether they are friends' updates or adverts - to take up a bigger proportion of the web browser with more prominence given to images and video rather than text describing a link.
• A pop-out black bar is added to the left-hand side of the page. This contains app bookmarks, links to specific friends, the chat and calendar tools, and the live updates ticker.
• In addition to the standard news feed, users can select other alternative feeds. These include one which shows all the updates posted by friends rather than just the ones selected by Facebook's algorithms; one dedicated to organisations and people the user "follows"; a page featuring only posted photos; and a music-themed feed containing updates from artists the user likes, concert announcements and details of songs their friends are listening to through services including Spotify and Rdio.

It is also noteworthy that the firm has now dropped its "facebook" logo which spelt out its full name, and replaced it with an "f" icon. This change had already been experienced by the selected group of users given early access to its Graph Search facility.

Another tweak involves auto-generating maps to accompany posts about specific locations. This may encourage more members to use the mobile app's GPS-powered check-in function which competes with Foursquare.

Continue reading the main story

Investors and marketers will be keen to find out whether the alterations make users more likely to read and interact with paid content.

The social network already knows that engagement with ads in its main news feed is greater than with those that appear on the right-hand side of its web browser. This column of adverts is absent from its mobile apps altogether.

Enlarging the news feed now allows a sponsored post to become by far the biggest element on the screen, taking up roughly a third of the page when viewed on a 13in (33cm) laptop display.

Another business-friendly change is that if a user "likes" an organisation a horizontal banner photo is added to posts reporting the news in addition to the brand's logo, making the update more eye-catching.

Mr Struhar acknowledged that sponsored posts from "liked" brands had become bigger, but added that it was not his intention to make users more likely to click them.

"This redesign doesn't change anything about how people interact with ads on Facebook," he said.

"We aren't changing where adverts show up or what ads you see. We're just trying to take all the content that you do see and make that bigger and more immersive and more engaging."

He added that further amendments might be made once users had had a chance to provide feedback.

Hin-Yan Wong, head of strategy at Connect Advertising & Marketing, said he expected users would eventually learn to get used the new look - and come to accept the bigger presence of advertisers.

"I think the design, which is a lot less cluttered, actually cleans up the whole thing quite a lot," he told the BBC.

"It's really a case of making sure you have high quality [advertising] content.

"Facebook will have to make that work because they have to make money. I suspect in the weeks to come they will unveil additional flexibility for advertisers.

"Hopefully that will bring a lot of new opportunities."

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Mobile gaming rise set to continue

By Jim Taylor
Newsbeat reporter Angry Birds Space and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 have both been huge hits

The rise in smartphone and tablet gaming will continue in 2013, according to figures seen by Newsbeat.

Industry analysts IHS Screen Digest think nearly £300 million will be spent on mobile games in the UK this year, up from just £100m three years ago.

It is still significantly less than the £743m expected to be spent on console games but the gap is narrowing.

Nine out of 10 apps are free to download but 'freemium' games, offering in-app purchases, are now more common.

'Mobile future'

Newsbeat visited the world's biggest mobile phone show, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, to see how mobile gaming is developing.

Continue reading the main story

You're looking at a generation of children who will grow up not knowing what it was like, not to have a touch screen

John Kopp Game Insight

Firms were keen to show off how their phones and tablets could connect to modern televisions.

That could mean playing a game on your phone, with the graphics and sound beamed wirelessly to your TV.

John Kopp was at the show for gaming firm Game Insight and says the industry has "exploded".

However, he doesn't think the console is dead quite yet.

"I hope not," he said. "But at the same time I can absolutely see [mobile] is the future.

"You're looking at an entire generation of children who will grow up not knowing what it was like, not to have a touch screen."

The success of mobile gaming is already having an impact on consoles.

The control pad for Nintendo's Wii U console has a video screen which works on its own and Sony says gamers will be able to use their phones and tablets as a "second screen" with PlayStation 4.

Newsbeat spoke to gamers in Brixton in South London.

Jasmine Fergus, 21, and Ben Smalley, 22

Jasmine is more of a mobile gamer but doesn't mind a bit of Call of Duty.

Ben's phone isn't up to playing games and the Fifa addict is happier on his console anyway.

"I just don't see the point. I don't think I'd ever play a game on my mobile. You want to be around a console with all your mates don't you?"

But he agrees people are buying fewer games nowadays.

"Pretty much everyone I know, the only games they buy are CoD and Fifa."

Annis el Marzak and Alex Peddar, both 25

Annis and Alex both used to work in video game stores but aren't surprised by the rise in mobile gaming.

"It's accessible and it's there in front of you, and it only costs 69p", said Alex.

"Plus you've already got the phone, which you didn't have to pay for because it's on contract."

They're expecting Apple to make a move into home gaming soon, building on the success of the App store but say they'll probably still buy a PS4.

Kim Johnson and Skye Bryan, both 17

Kim says consoles can't compete with mobiles on price.

She said: "You can get apps for free and games are too expensive nowadays.

"I use my brother's console. He's still buying games but not as many as before."

Skye says she gets frustrated by 'freemium' games. "They try to persuade you at every level to buy the full version," she said.

"But then you're thinking, £1, £2, should I or shouldn't I? Because you might delete it one day."

Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter

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Motorola Mobility to cut more jobs

8 March 2013 Last updated at 03:45 ET

Google's Motorola Mobility Unit has said it is cutting 1,200 jobs, or more than 10% of its workforce.

It follows a 4,000 jobs cut last August as Google aims to turn around the loss-making business it acquired last year for $12.5bn (£8.3bn).

The layoffs are expected to affect the United States, China and India, according to a company email.

The Motorola unit was bought for its Android-operating mobile devices and access to more than 17,000 patents.

"These cuts are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer," Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick told the Reuters news agency.

"It's obviously very hard for the employees concerned, and we are committed to helping them through this difficult transition," she added.

An internal email published by the Wall Street Journal said: "Our costs are too high, we're operating in markets where we're not competitive and we're losing money."

Motorola, which once dominated the mobile phone market, has fallen behind its competitors, including Apple and Samsung.

Motorola Mobility was created in 2011 when Motorola Inc split the company into a mobile devices unit and a government and public safety division known as Motorola Solutions.

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Amazon suspends sales of SimCity

8 March 2013 Last updated at 05:46 ET

Ongoing problems with the latest version of SimCity led Amazon to briefly stop selling the game.

The web retailer stopped sales late on 7 March as players reported continued problems with the city building title.

The latest version of SimCity was launched on 5 March and, like many current games, demand players stay online as they play.

EA has also taken steps to fix login delays by turning off some features to lighten the load on game servers.

Prior to this latest release, SimCity was a stand-alone game, but EA has added the online element to infuse the title with more realism.

Now player cities exist as part of online regions and share some characteristics of those virtual environments such as pollution, crime and essential resources.

The online requirement is also seen as an attempt to curb piracy of the title as a web connection is required even if a player shuns the chance to connect their cities to others.

However, the requirement for all players of the game to be connected has led some to wait 30 minutes or more to play. The server problems have led to sluggish response times, crashes and other bugs.

Amazon's sales suspension of the downloadable PC version of the game only lasted a few hours, but it has put a warning note on the product page about the "issues" with the game. These have contributed to the one-star score purchasers have given SimCity on Amazon.

In official discussion forums and on its Twitter feed EA has apologised for the trouble players have had.

In one of its latest messages, an EA spokeswoman said it had added server capacity and rolled out a quick fix to SimCity servers to speed up game play and get more people into the game.

To lighten the load on its back-end servers, EA turned off some features including leader boards and achievements. It has also removed the option to run the game at its fastest setting, known as "cheetah speed". Instead, all cities will now run at the lower "llama speed".

In a message posted to the official EA discussion forums, SimCity's senior producer Kip Katsarelis said the launch week had been "challenging" for the company.

'Growing pains'

However, he added, there was a positive side to the delays.

"What we saw was that players were having such a good time they didn't want to leave the game, which kept our servers packed and made it difficult for new players to join," he wrote.

Games journalist Nathan Grayson, writing on the Rock Paper Shotgun website, praised EA for keeping players informed through Facebook, Twitter and discussion forums about the problems. However, he wondered why games firms were still so unprepared for the launch day deluge of players.

Games makers may laud the always online requirement as the future, he said, but so far no studio had got it right or used that permanent link to do more with a game.

"I haven't seen a single one of these things stick their initial landings or catapult a pre-existing series to new heights," he said. "I have quite a bit of trouble declaring these things 'growing pains' when I barely see any, you know, growth."

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Web 'brain' for robots goes live

8 March 2013 Last updated at 06:55 ET

Robots confused about what they encounter in the world of humans can now get help online.

European scientists have turned on the first part of a web-based database of information to help them cope.

Called Rapyuta, the online "brain" describes objects robots have met and can also carry out complicated computation on behalf of a robot.

Rapyuta's creators hope it will make robots cheaper as they will not need all their processing power on-board.

The Rapyuta database is part of the European Robo Earth project that began in 2011 with the hope of standardising the way robots perceive the human world.

Instead of every robot building up its own idiosyncratic catalogue of how to deal with the objects and situations it encounters, Rapyuta would be the place they ask for help when confronted with a novel situation, place or thing.

In addition, the web-based service is able to do complicated computation on behalf of a robot - for example if it needs to work out how to navigate a room, fold an item of clothing or understand human speech.

The system could be particularly useful for drones, self-driving cars or other mobile robots who have to do a lot of number crunching just to get round, said Mohanarajah Gajamohan, technical head of the project at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

Cloud control

"On-board computation reduces mobility and increases cost." said Dr Heico Sandee, Robo Earth program manager at the Dutch University of Technology in Eindhoven in a statement. As wireless data speeds increase more and more robotic thinking could be offloaded to the web, he said.

Without access to such a database, roboticists fear machines will be restricted to working in very tightly controlled environments such as production lines and never live easily alongside humans.

The project, which involves researchers at five separate European research labs, has produced the database as well as software that robots can run to connect to and quiz Rapyuta.

The name Rapyuta is taken from the Japanese film by Hayao Miyazaki Castle in the Sky - in the film it is the place where all the robots live.

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Million dollar appeal for Ultima sequel

8 March 2013 Last updated at 12:46 ET

One million dollars are being sought on Kickstarter for a sequel to the long-running Ultima series of video games.

The cash is being sought by legendary British developer Richard Garriott who created the original titles which helped define the fantasy gaming genre.

Ultima gave rise to Ultima Online which was one of the first significantly popular massively multiplayer games.

The PC game, called Shroud of the Avatar, is scheduled to be ready to play in October 2014.

Mr Garriott is expected to make a formal announcement about the game and the funding push at the SXSW arts and media festival currently under way in Austin, Texas,

In an introductory video on the Kickstarter webpage Mr Garriott, often known by his in-game alias Lord British, said the current crop of fantasy video games had become too formulaic and scripted.

Instead, he said, Shroud of the Avatar would be a much more open experience in which players were free to follow their own path. It would be more about playing a useful role in an online world than just racking up kills and loot to make a character more powerful, he said.

Space trip

It would also take some elements from Ultima Online such as player housing and a detailed crafting system.

Work had already begun on the game, said Mr Garriott, but those backing it via the crowd-funding site would also get a say in how it would be built.

Alec Meer, a writer at games news site Rock Paper Shotgun, expressed surprise that Mr Garriott had to appeal for funds via Kickstarter given that in 2009 he spent millions of dollars to take a trip into space.

"It's just a shame to see so many already wealthy industry old-hands making hay with all these old-fashioned role-playing games when so many dramatically more inventive and ambitious ideas from smaller studios are failing to reach their targets," he added.

Shroud of the Avatar is being created by a company called Portalarium that Mr Garriott set up after the failure of an online game called Tabula Rasa that he helped to develop.

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