Twitter under pressure in Turkey

27 June 2013 Last updated at 06:34 ET

The Turkish government has asked Twitter to set up an office inside the country so company representatives can be reached more easily.

Both Twitter and Facebook were used to spread information during recent anti-government protests.

Several dozen tweeters were arrested following the protests, according to local media reports.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has previously described Twitter as a "scourge".

On Thursday, Transport and Communications Minister Binali Yildrim said: "When information is requested, we want to see someone in Turkey who can provide this.

"There needs to be an interlocutor we can put our grievance to and who can correct an error if there is one."

Twitter declined to respond to the government request on Wednesday, but a person familiar with the company said it had no current plans to open an office in that country.

No requests

Neither Twitter nor Facebook currently have an office in the country, although Facebook has staff in London who deal specifically with Turkey.

Both are popular in the country and were widely used by citizens seeking information about the protests at a time when mainstream Turkish media provided little or no coverage of the events.

On Wednesday Mr Yildrim said: "Facebook has been working in coordination with the Turkish authorities for a long time... We don't have any problem with them."

It led to speculation that the social network had provided the authorities with data on protesters, something the firm was quick to deny.

It said that it had not been asked by the Turkish government to provide any users' data following the protests.

It has closed down some pages related to activism in Turkey, but only, it said, because they had had "fake profiles".

"More generally, we reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child," it said in a statement.

Social networks and other technology firms are attempting to rebuild trust with users following allegations that large amounts of data was handed to the US National Security Agency under a surveillance program known as Prism.

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Edsac rebuild hits key milestone

27 June 2013 Last updated at 06:55 ET

A project to recreate a pioneering UK 1940s computer has hit a significant milestone as the first working parts of the restored machine are demonstrated.

Key elements of the restored Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (Edsac) were unveiled on Wednesday.

They were shown off at a Bletchley Park event marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Edsac's designer, Sir Maurice Wilkes, who died in 2010.

The Edsac recreation project began in 2011 and should be completed by 2015.

Edsac, widely accepted to be the world's first practical general purpose computer, first ran in May 1949.

It was created to do computational work for scientists at the University of Cambridge

Its design was copied for the Leo, the world's first computer to be used in business.

Recreation of the original machine has been tough as relatively few of the Edsac design documents from the 1940s have survived.

Early work on the project has gone into scrutinising pictures of the original to work out which bits go where and what they might do.

This has been a mammoth task as Edsac is built of 3,000 valves spread across 140 separate shelves.

Once complete, the machine will occupy a 20-sq-m (215-sq-ft) space.

The parts demonstrated at Bletchley include one element that handles basic mathematical operations as well as internal clocks that help to keep data co-ordinated as it passes through the machine and in and out of memory.

Attending the event was Sir Maurice's son, Anthony.

"My father was a man of great intellect with a strong practical streak," he said. "From an early age my two sisters and I were conscious of computers - in a way we were one of the first computer-age families."

Once finished, the machine will be installed in a gallery at the UK's National Museum of Computing which is part of the Bletchley Park heritage site.

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Europe net 'slower than advertised'

27 June 2013 Last updated at 09:18 ET

Customers across Europe are getting broadband speeds 25% slower on average than that advertised by their service providers, a European Commission report says.

The study suggests the average speed in Europe is 19.7Mbps.

Service providers routinely advertise speeds "up to" a certain amount, which most consumers will not get.

The EU wants to get all households on speeds of at least 30Mbps by the end of 2013 and half on 100Mbps by 2020.

Copper lines

The study analysed broadband speeds from nearly 10,000 households around Europe. It ran 75 million tests, generating three billion pieces of data.

Cable broadband services came the closest to advertised speeds, at 91.4%, while fibre users got 84.4% of advertised speeds.

Beefed-up ADSL services fared the worse - getting just 63.3% of advertised speeds.

This is because they are run on copper phone lines that offer slower speeds the further people live from the exchange.

The UK government has announced it wants to get fast broadband to 95% of the population by 2017 and will use wireless and 4G to extend this to 99% by 2018.

"Fast broadband is no longer a luxury and is now just as essential as a reliable electricity supply for UK consumers," said Dominic Baliszewski, from website broadbandchoices.

"We shall see exactly how realistic these targets are. With Ofcom putting current super-fast availability at 65% of the population, there is still a long way to go."

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Courtrooms to get digital overhaul

27 June 2013 Last updated at 20:40 ET By Clive Coleman Legal correspondent, BBC News

Courtrooms in England and Wales will be fully digital by 2016, the government says, ending what it described as "an outdated reliance on paper".

It is part of a wide-ranging £160m plan to improve the speed and efficiency of the criminal justice system.

Measures will include secure wi-fi in courts so lawyers and judges can access all necessary documents.

Justice Minister Damian Green said the plan would turn the courts system into a "modern public service".

The announcement follows a pilot at a so-called concept court at Birmingham Magistrates' Court. It has been running since March and dealt with some 80 cases ranging from shoplifting to offences of violence.

The criminal justice system has often been criticised for its delays, and it is a sign of the government's concern that, in an age of austerity, it is investing £160m to digitise courtooms.

It wants information to be shared electronically, securely and efficiently across agencies in the criminal justice system.

Continue reading the main story

If the system crashes, you are not just talking about losing a document or a file, you could have a complete meltdown of the system within a court"

End Quote Greg Foxsmith Criminal advocate

A file not being in court should no longer lead to an adjournment.

Mr Green said: "Every year the courts and Crown Prosecution Service use roughly 160 million sheets of paper.

Security warning

"Stacked up this would be the same as 15 Mount Snowdons - literally mountains of paper. If we are to win in the global race this must change. It is time we move the court system into the 21st Century.

"This investment will help us get rid of our outdated paper-based system, and turn our criminal justice system into a digital and modern public service."

The action plan - called Transforming the Criminal Justice System - aims to build on the existing use of technology.

For some time CPS lawyers have worked from tablet devices and documents have been sent to defence lawyers via secure email. The action plan takes this on and includes:

• Encouraging the police to use mobile devices, with access to real-time intelligence and local information, to start building case files from the street
• Police evidence via video-link to become the norm not the exception
• Legislating to enable the majority of high-volume, low-level "regulatory" cases, such as TV licence evasion and many traffic offences, to be dealt with away from traditional magistrates' courtrooms, which means freeing up the courts to deal with more serious cases
• Supporting the extension of the Track My Crime system to other police areas. This initiative was launched by Avon and Somerset Constabulary and gives victims the opportunity to check the progress of their case online, including the name of the police officer with responsibility. It allows the police to send updates to victims on their case

While many lawyers welcome the government's investment, some have expressed fears about security and what might happen if the system crashed.

Greg Foxsmith, a criminal advocate, said: "If the system crashes, you are not just talking about losing a document or a file, you could have a complete meltdown of the system within a court.

"And if security is not watertight, highly sensitive and confidential information could be accessed. The history of government procurement of IT systems is not a happy one."

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Instagram video hits Twitter's Vine

28 June 2013 Last updated at 07:29 ET

Instagram's new video-sharing tool has had a big effect on Twitter's Vine service, analysis shows.

The number of links to Vine videos on social networks fell by nearly half a million the day after video was added to Instagram's photo app on 20 June.

But an extra 300,000 Instagram links were shared, according to data analytics tool Topsy.

A week later, there were 50% more Instagram than Vine links being shared on the net, Topsy figures show.

On 27 June, data indicates, there were 1,562,022 mentions of Instagram and 935,109 mentions of Vine.

Topsy says its figures include retweets and links but not spam.

"Instagram hasn't actually seen a huge uptick in Twitter sharing since its video launch," wrote Matt McGee, editor of Marketing Land.

"The number of shares over the past few days is similar to early and mid-June. But Vine sharing is way down in the last week."

Twitter launched its video-sharing platform in January 2013. Users are able to upload and share six-second long clips which play in a loop.

Videos shared via Facebook-owned Instagram can be up to 15 seconds long and filters can be added to change the colouring.

Twitter declined to comment.

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'Twisted light' shown off in fibre

28 June 2013 Last updated at 07:49 ET By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News

A novel way of boosting data rates in optical communication using "twisted light" has been shown to work in optical fibres.

The light is effectively corkscrew-shaped, and more data can be encoded in differently twisted beams.

The concept had been shown off over "free space" but it remained unclear if it would work in fibres.

Now a team reporting in Science has demonstrated data rates of 1.6 terabits per second over 1km of optical fibre.

This is still short of the "over-the-air" rate of 2.5 Tb/s demonstrated by members of the same team in 2012. But it is a powerful proof of principle for adapting the technique to use with fibres in, for example, data centres.

The idea behind twisted light is based on the fact that photons, the most basic units of light, carry two kinds of momentum - a kind of energy in their movement.

"Spin angular momentum" is better known as polarisation. Photons "wiggle" along a particular direction, and different polarisations can be separated out by, for example, polarising sunglasses or 3D glasses.

But they also carry what is called orbital angular momentum. This is best explained in analogy to the Earth-Sun system: our planet spinning around its axis manifests spin angular momentum, while the orbital angular momentum is seen in our revolution around the Sun.

"Twisted light" approaches use this orbital angular momentum, essentially encoding more data in varying degrees of twist.

The technique has drawn controversy when applied to radio-frequency waves, but its application at frequencies used in telecommunications has been going from strength to strength.

The problem is that these twisted beams get scrambled in standard fibres and lose their capacity to carry data. What was needed is a new design - that of report co-author Siddharth Ramachandran of Boston University, US.

In 2011, Dr Ramachandran collaborated with fibre company OFS Fitel to produce a kind of fibres-within-fibres design, adding different chemicals to each concentric ring that changed the speed of light in each concentric fibre.

These novel fibres effectively provide different paths for different beam twists.

To put the fibres to work, Dr Ramachandran joined forces with Alan Willner, of the University of Southern California, who led the team behind the 2012 "over-the-air" demonstration.

The team demonstrated rates of 400Gb/s using a single colour of light with four levels of twist, and 1.6Tb using 10 colours, each with two levels of twist.

"It was a nice collaboration between a fibre expert and a systems communications group, to demonstrate that not only is orbital angular momentum able to propagate, but that the data contained within it would be of high quality," said Prof Willner.

Just how widespread the technique could become, however, remains to be seen - given that it has to be done on novel fibres very different from the billion kilometres of fibre already underground and under the sea globally.

"There may be certain areas where there are more or less closed systems where you need more bandwidth," Prof Willner told BBC News.

"If you have a Google data centre, say, where you need terabits between servers, you envision that might be where newer types of fibres might find a place."

The team is currently working to increase the number of colours and levels of twist that they can reliably produce and detect, increasing further the promise of increased data rates.

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UK man gets $20k Facebook payout

28 June 2013 Last updated at 08:24 ET By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

Facebook has rewarded a British man with $20,000 (£13,000) after he found a bug which could have been exploited to hack into users' accounts.

Jack Whitton, a security researcher, discovered a flaw in the social network's text messaging system.

Facebook thanked Mr Whitton, 22, who is part of the site's "responsible disclosure" hall of fame.

The company, like many on the web, encourages experts to report bugs to them rather than cybercriminals.

To make it worth their while, rewards are offered of varying amounts depending on the severity of the flaw.

Such programmes are known as "bug bounties", with similar schemes being run at the likes of Microsoft, Paypal and Google.

"Facebook's White Hat programme is designed to catch and eradicate bugs before they cause problems," Facebook told the BBC.

"Once again, the system worked and we thank Jack for his contribution."

The bug, which has now been fixed, allowed Mr Whitton to spoof Facebook's text message verification system into sending a password reset code for an account that was not his.

Using this, he could go to Facebook, reset a target user's password, and access the account.

Continue reading the main story

It could have been worth an awful lot more money"

End Quote Graham Cluley Security expert

'PR disaster'

Mr Whitton is what is known in security communities as a "white hat" hacker - someone who can discover security holes and faults in software, but chooses not to use them for criminal gain.

On the other side of people like Mr Whitton are black hat hackers - the bad guys - who will sell their skills and services to cybercriminal gangs and organisations.

The Facebook bug would have been of great interest to cybercriminals, noted Graham Cluley, a security expert.

"It could have been worth an awful lot more money," he told the BBC.

"Imagine if he were a black hat hacker, one of the bad guys, if he were to offer his services to criminals saying any account they wanted breaking in to, he could do it."

He said Facebook should be "extremely grateful" that Mr Whitton opted to report it to them.

"It could have been a PR disaster," he told the BBC.

"This security flaw is terrible. It should never have existed. It's a gaping hole, thank goodness it's closed now. We are really relying on the goodwill of researchers."

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC

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Facebook acts to avoid ad boycott

28 June 2013 Last updated at 13:38 ET By Rory Cellan-Jones Technology correspondent

Facebook has announced a major revamp of its advertising systems in an attempt to deal with concerns about offensive content.

There will now be new restrictions on where adverts appear on the site.

Marks and Spencer and BSkyB were among companies to suspend advertising after complaints that adverts had been placed on pages with offensive material.

The social network is now planning to remove any advertising from many of its pages.

Facebook's move follows complaints about a Sky advert promoting an M&S voucher.

The advert was placed on a Facebook page called "cute and gay boys". The page featured photographs of teenage boys.

In a blogpost on Friday, Facebook said: "We recognize we need to do more to prevent situations where ads are displayed alongside controversial Pages and Groups. So we are taking action."

'Gold standard'

The company said that from Monday it will implement a new process to determine which pages or groups should feature adverts alongside the content.

There will be no adverts on pages that feature any violent, graphic or sexual content, even if such content is not in violation of the company's rules.

According to one source, Facebook will create a "gold standard" of around 10,000 pages that are deemed suitable for adverts, and then inspect other pages to see if they can be added to the list. All adverts will be removed from other pages.

A spokesman said this would be a labour-intensive process but we take this" very seriously."

BskyB said it looked forward to discussing the new measures and would keep the situation under review.

M&S had asked BSkyB to remove the advert, and it suspended some of its own advertising campaigns on Facebook.

BSkyB suspended all of its advertising on the social network, where it has been a major customer.

Misogynist content

Both companies had said they were keen to use Facebook again, but needed to be sure that their advertising would not appear next to offensive content, or material that might reflect poorly on their brands.

Speaking before Facebook announced its policy change, a spokesman for BSkyB told the BBC: "We have asked Facebook to devise safeguards to ensure our content does not appear alongside inappropriate material in the future.

"We will review the situation in due course."

Sources at Marks and Spencer said Facebook had been taking the issue very seriously at the highest level.

In an additional statement, an M&S spokeswoman said the company did not "tolerate any inappropriate use or positioning of its brand and has very clear policies that govern where and how our brand is used".

She added: "We take any suggestion that these policies are not being adhered to very seriously and always investigate them thoroughly."

Earlier this month, Facebook was forced to act against misogynist content on its site after protests from women's groups led some advertisers to suspend campaigns.

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Blackberry shares dive after loss

28 June 2013 Last updated at 16:56 ET

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The BBC's Michelle Fleury says investors are clearly not impressed by RIM's efforts to revive its fortunes

Shares in smartphone maker Blackberry have dived after it reported an $84m (£55m) loss for the three months to 1 June.

The figure was better than the $518m loss for the same period last year, but much worse than analysts' forecasts.

The company, based in Ontario, Canada, also said it would post an operating loss for the next quarter running to September.

Blackberry shares closed down 28% in New York.

Shipments of new smartphones increased, but Blackberry, which used to be called Research In Motion, did not release how many new handsets running the BB10 operating system were sold in the quarter.

Continue reading the main story

Chief executive Thorstein Heins said the company was continuing to focus on the global roll-out of BB10 and was confident it would be a hit with customers.

"We are still in the early stages of this launch, but already, the Blackberry 10 platform and Blackberry Enterprise Service 10 are proving themselves to customers to be very secure, flexible and dynamic mobile computing solutions," he said in a statement.

He added that the group would be increasing investments to support the roll-out of new products and services over the next three quarters.

'Doesn't bode well'

Revenue rose to $3.1bn in the quarter from $2.8bn a year earlier.

Analysts had been particularly keen to see the numbers for the new Z10 handset, as it was the first full quarter that the model had been on sale in the United States.

Blackberry launched two all-new smartphones this year, the touchscreen Z10 device, followed by the Q10, with a mini keyboard favoured by many Blackberry users.

Blackberry said that it had shipped 6.8 million phones overall in its first quarter versus 7.8 million in the same three-month period last year.

"It doesn't bode well for the initial Blackberry 10 launch, particularly the Z10. But even the outlook for a second-quarter loss doesn't bode well for the Q10 either," said Brian Colello, an analyst with Morningstar.

Blackberry has been battling stiff competition in the smartphone sector, and has struggled to compete with the likes of Apple and Samsung.

Daniel Ernst from Hudson Square Research said the company fell between two camps.

"They're not the high-end provider any more, they're not Apple. They're not the low-end provider, they're not Nokia. So they are in the middle and they do relatively low volumes," he said.

"It's difficult to make great margins on that kind of volume, so I would say the outlook is quite negative."

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Fans braced for Google Reader demise

28 June 2013 Last updated at 20:12 ET By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

Millions of users of Google's Reader service are preparing for its closure, with many still angered at the search giant's decision.

Google announced in March that it would shut down the RSS reader, blaming a decline in use.

The company admitted that Reader had a "loyal following", and gave instructions for exporting feeds.

Other web companies are now clamouring to gain "Google Reader orphans" when the service finally closes on Monday.

RSS readers are tools which allow users to quickly see updates from their favourite websites.

Using RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, users can see when content is updated without having to visit each site individually.

Much like an email inbox, RSS readers indicate the number of unread updates for a user to read.

Google Reader is among the most popular tools for viewing RSS feeds.

In a blog post, Google software engineer Alan Green said: "Usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we're pouring all of our energy into fewer products.

Continue reading the main story

Google Reader certainly is not the first service to get the chop from the California company. In fact, Google regularly trims its product portfolio. Here are some stand out examples of what did not make the cut:

• Google Wave (2009-2012) - Launched with much fanfare, this project management application failed to get people enthused, mainly because no-one knew what to use it for.
• Google Video (2005-2012) - Intended as some kind of YouTube competitor, Google Video's mediocre performance quickly made it clear that it would be far easier for Google to just buy YouTube - which it promptly did in 2006.
• Google Buzz (2010-2011) - A precursor to social network Google+, Google Buzz was clunkily integrated with Google Mail. It was hammered by users - and authorities - for not taking privacy seriously enough.
• Google Labs (2002-2011) - In a surprising move that shocked many developers, Google closed its Labs service, which had acted as a testing ground for new ideas Google staff members had been working on.

"We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience."

After the announcement was made, Google offered instructions for how users can export their RSS feeds into an alternative service.

'Grave mistake'

The decision to close the service has riled large numbers of people, many of whom have said alternative services do not offer the same level of functionality.

PC Magazine called the decision "a grave mistake by Google and it sends the wrong message". US magazine Slate posted a virtual graveyard of closed Google products, and invited readers to leave their virtual condolences.

Others, however, said social media sites like Twitter and Facebook were fast changing the way people discover updates from their favourite sites, and therefore RSS readers were becoming increasingly old-fashioned and unnecessary.

Nevertheless, Google Reader's closure potentially paves way for rival services to scoop up millions of new users almost overnight.

Digg, the social recommendation news site, said it had been planning to build its own reader for some time, but it ramped up efforts upon news of Google Reader's closure.

"As daily (hourly) users of Google Reader, we're convinced that it's a product worth saving," wrote Digg's Andrew McLaughlin.

"We hope to identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader's features (including its API), but also advance them to fit the internet of 2013."

Another service tipped to gain a lot of users is Feedly, which has said that it gained more than three million news users in the two weeks following Google's announcement regarding Reader.

The company wrote: "A lot of undecided Google Reader users are looking for a home."

There has also been rumours that Facebook is planning to launch its own reader - but it is not being touted as a Google Reader replacement.

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