Amazon rekindles Twitter in China

2 November 2010 Last updated at 16:27 GMT Kindles have been selling on the grey market in China Amazon's Kindle devices are selling in China because the e-reader allows users to log on to banned sites such as Twitter and Facebook, reports say.

The device bypasses the infamous Great Firewall, making it popular on the so-called grey market according to the South China Morning Post.

Officially the Kindle is not available in mainland China.

But a quick search of Chinese auction site Taobao reveals hundreds of them on offer.

Facebook dream

The device sells for between 1200 (£112) and 3500 (£327) yuan.

Chinese bloggers told the paper they were surprised to get access to sites banned by the Chinese authorities.

"I still can't believe it. I casually tried getting to Twitter and what a surprise, I got there,"

"And then I quickly tried Facebook, and it perfectly presented itself. Am I dreaming? No, I pinched myself and it hurt," one blogger said.

Kindle software is primarily designed to allow users access to e-books and other digital media but also allows for web browsing.

Professor Lawrence Yeung Kwan of the University of Hong Kong's Electrical and Electronic Engineering department told BBC News that he was aware of people on the mainland using the Kindle to log on to banned sites.

He thinks that Amazon is likely to have a 3G partner in China.

"The Kindle software routes traffic directly to Amazon's servers," he said.

But it would not be a difficult job to stop it.

"If this doesn't have encryption the authorities just need to turn on the firewall to stop it but if there is encryption the government would have to talk to the carriers and order them to stop forwarding traffic without access to the encryption keys," he said.

He thinks use of Kindles to bypass the firewall is unlikely to be widespread.

"The Chinese government could easily block it and maybe the reason they haven't is because the device currently isn't available in China officially and there are no Chinese language books so people aren't that interested," he said.

There are ways for Chinese citizens to dodge the censors although none are automatic, in the way the Kindle is.

Some use free, open source, peer-to-peer software such as Tor to evade the censors although some estimates suggest only a minority of people use such technology.

But more people are realising that content is censored and looking at ways to bypass it.

"Ordinary people have found ways to scale the firewall and it is almost impossible to stop," said Professor Yeung Kwan.

Amazon did not offer comment on the story.

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Cow app wins African competition

8 October 2010 Last updated at 09:40 GMT The competition had entrants from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania An application which tracks the fertility of cows has won the first ever Apps 4 Africa competition to find new talent as smartphones become increasingly popular in Africa.

Offering a prize fund of $5,000, the competition asked developers in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania to come up with a mobile application that is widely accessible, easy to use and simple.

Continue reading the main story

I want to thank you for lending your innovate spirit and creativity to the enterprise of building a better future for your communities.”

End Quote Hillary Clinton US Secretary of State The competition, funded by the United States government, hoped to unite the brightest African developers with people who could benefit most from innovate mobile technology.

Launched back in July in Nairobi, the competition attracted 20 entrants - each offering a unique approach to improving life in the region.

Moo-bile innovation

The winner, announced this week, was iCow - an application that helps cow farmers maximise breeding potential by tracking the fertility cycle of their animals.

"It's a voice-based application, meaning they don't have to have a special smart-phone," explained Charles Kithika, the app's creator.

"[They] just need an ordinary phone and then dial in a toll-free number."

Mr Kithika said the rise in popularity of mobile apps in Africa is partly down to M-PESA, software which facilitates the transfer of money.

Runner-up in the competition was Kleptocracy Fighters, an app which helps users combat instances of government corruption.

Features include the ability to upload audio, video and text to the web quickly - acting as evidence of bribery or other wrong-doing.

Continue reading the main story Digital Planet is the weekly technology programme broadcast from the BBC World ServiceIt is broadcast on Tuesday at 1232GMT and repeated at 1632GMT, 2032GMT and on Wednesday at 0032GMTAll the competition entrants were praised by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said that the apps "solved real problems".

"The ideas generated from this competition will help doctors monitor the growth and nutrition of young patients, will help expand trade by translating prices and quantities into local languages, will hold public officials accountable by reporting election violations and tracking public expenditures.

"I want to thank you for lending your innovative spirit and creativity to the enterprise of building a better future for your communities."

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Firms face fines for bogus bills

2 November 2010 Last updated at 11:12 GMT The firm has been told to "clean up its act" by Ofcom Two telecom firms, TalkTalk and Tiscali, have been threatened with fines for billing customers for services that had been cancelled.

The regulator Ofcom has received more than 1,000 complaints this year and says more customers may be affected.

The customers had typically complained about aggressive demands for the payment of bills they did not owe.

TalkTalk blamed a new billing system introduced after it bought Tiscali in June last year.

This is gradually bringing together a million former Tiscali customers on seven different billing systems and integrating them with TalkTalk's own customer database.

The regulator warned that "many thousands more" may have been wrongly charged.

But TalkTalk said no more errors of this sort were likely to be made, as the billing system had now been fixed to stop it generating any more spurious bills for customers who had left.

"TalkTalk Group has co-operated fully with Ofcom's investigation and we apologise for the inconvenience caused to this limited group of former customers," the company said.

Continue reading the main story

Our investigation into TalkTalk and Tiscali UK found that they had billed customers for cancelled services”

End Quote Claudio Pollack Ofcom 'Unacceptable' Ofcom has told TalkTalk to stop trying to collect any non-existent debts, including the use of debt collectors and threats of legal action.

People must be refunded if, since 1 January 2010, they have paid bills that should not have been levied.

And credit ratings agencies must be told to repair any damaged credit histories.

If the company fails to comply by 2 December it may be fined as much as 10% of its annual turnover.

"Ofcom is determined to stand up for consumers and take action against companies that break the rules," said Ofcom's director of consumer affairs, Claudio Pollack.

"Our investigation into TalkTalk and Tiscali UK found that they had billed customers for cancelled services; this is unacceptable which is why we have ordered them to clean up their act or face the consequences."

Slow to act

Mr Pollack said the problems were still going on and TalkTalk had been slow to do anything about them.

"It's been five months now since we drew TalkTalk's attention to this, it's been three months since we opened an investigation," he told the BBC.

"There are still complaints about customers receiving bills for services that were not delivered and there are even complaints about customers who have been referred to debt collection agencies," he added.

Robert Hammond at Consumer Focus said: "It is shocking that it has taken the intervention of the regulator for Talk Talk and Tiscali UK to play fair with their customers."

Ernest Doku at the price comparison website Uswitch said: "Anyone affected by this issue should first try to resolve it with their provider, but if they are not getting anywhere should go directly to one of the accredited dispute resolution bodies such as Otelo or CISAS."

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US midterms 2010: download the election results data

US midterms election results. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images

As midterm election results go, this was pretty dramatic as Barack Obama suffered one of the worst Democratic defeats in recent history.

The political momentum has swung to the rightwing Tea Party movement, which energised the Republican base and notched up a string of high-profile victories.

In midterm election races across America, Republicans pummelled their opponents, capturing the House of Representatives and a fistful of Senate seats. The Democrats, however, held control of the Senate – but with only a slim majority after losing six seats. The party won key races in West Virginia and Nevada, where the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, also pulled off a surprise victory against the Tea Party darling Sharron Angle in in one of the most bitterly fought contests of the campaign.

We've been updating our interactive map all night. And here is the data.

Download this data Columns where content =1 or 0 mean 1 for yes, 0 for no Download this data Columns where content =1 or 0 mean 1 for yes, 0 for no

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BBC Micro gets a new lease of life

25 August 2010 Last updated at 08:02 GMT By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News Ellie Gibson joined Ousedale School students learning how to program BBC Micros at the National Museum for Computing in Bletchley

In our regular series about makers, hackers and amateur technologists, BBC News meets the people giving the classic BBC Micro a new lease of life.

Computer history is cruel. It is a story of the old constantly being pushed aside for the newer, the faster, the smaller, the shinier.

Those old machines are rarely allowed a graceful retirement. Cast aside, they end their days in the dark ,fit only to be homes for spiders in lofts and cupboards.

But one lucky flock of BBC Micros is getting another lease of life by helping to educate students in the art of rigorous programming.

The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley Park has started letting a few lucky A-level students loose on the machines to hone their programming skills.

"The computing A-level is about how computers work and if you ask anyone how it works they will not be able to tell you," said Doug Abrams, an ICT teacher from Ousedale School in Newport Pagnell, who was one of the first to use the machines in lessons.

The BBC Micro has an unforgiving interface

For Mr Abrams the old machines have two cardinal virtues; their sluggishness and the direct connection they have with the user.

In one of the first lessons held at TNMOC the lucky Ousedale students programmed a venerable PDP-8 machine by flicking the switches set on its front panel to set the binary values in its memory. And an interface does not get more direct than that.

"Modern computers go too fast," said Mr Abrams. "You can see the instructions happening for real with these machines. They need to have that understanding for the A-level."

Cranking code

The second time the students got to use the BBC Micros they were given three hours to create a simple 8-bit game. Tech Know was there to record what happened.

Prior to the lesson Mr Abrams had produced 100 lines of code that created a rough version of the game pitting a battleship against a bomber. The students' task was to refine the game by introducing a scoring system, improving its looks and introducing new elements such as a hunter-killer submarine.

Two students tackled the bugs and refinements, two the graphics and sounds and the remaining student got to work typing the program onto other machines so testing could get going.

The five soon discovered that just because a program was simple did not mean the underlying code was straight-forward. To make matters more testing, the BBC Micro offers a very unforgiving programming environment.

Micro Live focussed on computing issues with the BBC Micro, Spectrum, Olivetti and other machines. This episode is from 17th October 1986.

For much of their A-level, the students had been using Visual Basic - a breeze by comparison.

"Because there's no copy and paste, if you do something wrong it takes time to go back and fix it," said Joe Gritton. "You cannot take out sections and move them around."

Be the machine

Perry Gemmell lamented the lack of friendly interface on the BBC Micro, which presents users with a screen full of text.

"It's easier to find bugs in Visual Basic," he said. "It helps you as you go along."

Visual Basic suggests words while a coder types, highlights syntax errors and makes bug hunts easier by jumping straight to the problematic code - even when the error is one of logic rather than letters.

By contrast, the BBC Micro is a study in imperious indifference. Get something wrong and the program will crash and perhaps throw up an error message. Worse are the cases when it works but not in the way expected leaving the programmer to scratch their head and try to work out why.

The machines also enforced a parsimonious programming style. A memory of only 32K is a shoebox in comparison to the Lordly halls of memory available on the average 21st-Century desktop.

Continue reading the main story Designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy ProjectUsed alongside TV series The Computer ProgrammeFirst released in 1981; discontinued in 1994Cost £235 at launchFirst version had just 16 KB of RAMMore than 1.5m soldThe simple program that the students were working on threw up some real problems.

Mr Gritton and partner Callum Adams were given the task of adding a submarine. But, they realised, the introduction of the torpedo-firing sub would spell the end of the game, as the ship had no way to avoid it.

Changing one element in the simple game kicked off the need to solve lots of separate problems - it was a real exercise in creative coding. The students had their eyes on the screen and their hands in the bits.

"We're learning a lot," said Callum Adams. "It makes you realise how difficult it is making real video games."

The day of study had begun with what must be the ultimate hands-on technology experience: Mr Abrams got the students to be a computer.

They each took on the role of a different part of the machine - CPU, accumulator, RAM and program counter - and simulated the passage of instructions through the hardware.

The five shuffled data around, wrote it to memory, carried out computations and inserted them into the right places in the store.

It was a noisy, confusing and funny simulation and, once everyone knew what they were doing, managed to reach a maximum clock speed of about one instruction per minute.

And even the BBC Micro, for all its age, can beat that.

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TalkAndroid InfoByte: Episode 12 – 11/8/10

TalkAndroid InfoByte – 11/8/10

Welcome to the new TalkAndroid InfoByte, our weekly Monday Podcast that gets you caught up on the week’s news.

You can either stream it to your browser (above), or you can download it here. We should note that, if you click the stream link above (play button next to the link) from your mobile browser, it should open up in your Android media player.

The RSS feed for the podcast is available here.

Did you enjoy this post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed! or visit the Android Forum!

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RockMelt: Social browsing done right?

Two years in the making, and with a staff of some 30 people, the latest "social browser" today makes its way onto the web.

Dubbed the "Facebook browser", RockMelt is making a big splash. The new browser integrates familiar social features – chiefly Facebook – and naturally plans to reinvent how people use the internet.

But haven't we been here before?

Built atop Google Chromium, RockMelt looks to boom where others – namely, Flock – have failed to take off.

As an interface, RockMelt trumps Flock, which moved from Firefox to Chrome four months ago. With a handful of small-scale embellishments, RockMelt moreorless stays true to Chrome.

RockMelt moves into private beta: Chrome with strings attached? Image: RockMelt

But the Facebook integration, with a left-hand panel of "top friends", would no doubt prove aggravating as updates – comments, wall posts, and the like – are piped through to the browser, appearing as an orangey-yellow blob whenever new content is available. Likewise on the right-hand side panel with RSS feeds, from where you can drag-and-drop content to share with Facebook friends.

The search box – why does it need a search box? – also loads results in a drop-down menu, saving approximately 0.3 seconds from the average search. It's not to everyone's taste. Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber notes: "They solved the problem of Chrome having a nice, simple, minimalist interface."

RockMelt is perhaps better-placed to drive forward social browsing where others have faltered. Its lead investor, Andreessen Horowitz, is jointly run by Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape Communications. Its co-founder, Tim Howes, also figured in The Great Browser Battle of Netscape-Microsoft. They've seen browsers come and go.

While we wait for our beta request to be approved, have you jumped onto RockMelt yet? Tell us in the comments below. If, that is, your attention remains undisturbed for long enough.

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