Estonia fines man for 'cyber war'

The attacks were in response to the relocation of a war memorial

A 20-year-old ethnic Russian man is the first person to be convicted for taking part in a "cyber war" against Estonia.

Dmitri Galushkevich was fined 17,500 kroons (£830) for an attack which blocked the website of the Reform Party of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip.

The assault, between 25 April and 4 May 2007, was one of a series by hackers on Estonian institutions and businesses.

At the time, Estonia accused the Russian government of orchestrating the attacks. Moscow denied any involvement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the BBC in May 2007 that the allegations were "completely untrue".

Minority attacks

The attacks took place against a backdrop of riots by ethnic Russian Estonians prompted by the removal of a Soviet war memorial from the centre of Tallinn.

The website of Estonia's ruling party was hacked (image: lenta.ru)

During the unrest, one person was killed and more than 150 injured.

Moving the so-called Bronze Soldier was seen as an affront to the memory of Russian soldiers who died during World War II.

Prosecutors said Mr Galushkevich, a student, had claimed the attack was an act of protest against Mr Ansip, who became a hate figure for Estonia's Russian minority.

Ethnic Russians make up about a quarter of Estonia's population of 1.3 million.

Other websites that were crippled by the denial-of-service attacks, which knock websites offline by swamping servers with requests, included those of the state government, political parties and leading newspapers.

Some sites also redirected users to images of Soviet soldiers and quotations from Martin Luther King about resisting "evil".

'No record'

Most of the hackers were believed to be based in Russia - the Estonian government said at the time that Kremlin computers were used to carry out a number of the attacks.

The tiny Baltic State enlisted the help of Nato to help defend their networks in what was described as a "cyber war".

But David Emm, senior technical consultant at Moscow-based antivirus software company Kaspersky Lab, told the BBC website that he believed the most likely culprits were "younger types who, in other days, would have been writing and spreading viruses".

Mr Galushkevich is the first individual to be fined in connection with the attacks.

"The young man admitted his guilt," Gerrit Maesalu, spokesman for the regional prosecutor's office in north-east Estonia, told AFP.

"In deciding the verdict, the court took into account the fact that he had no criminal record," he said.

Several other investigations into the events are under way, but no-one else has yet been brought to trial.

Honour for Colossus code-cracker

Bletchley's code-breaking effort shortened the war by many months

An amateur cryptographer who beat the British World War II computer Colossus in a code-cracking challenge has been honoured for his skills.

Joachim Schueth solved a German cipher in just 46 seconds, more than three hours quicker than the 60 year old PC.

He received a prize from the National Museum of Computing, which included a valve from the Colossus machine.

Mr Schueth deciphered the code using a laptop and a program he wrote specifically for the challenge.

Joachim Schueth (L) and Tony Sale (R)

"It was unfair because I was using a modern PC, while Colossus was created more than 60 years ago," he said. "It really is astonishing and humbling that the world's first programmable, digital computer was created in the 1940s."

The Cipher Challenge took place in November 2007 at Bletchley Park, the home of early UK computing efforts, and marked the end of a project to rebuild Colossus.

Tony Sale, who has spent the last 14 years rebuilding the machine said: "Joachim really showed how things have advanced from the days of Colossus."

"As well as recapturing the excitement that the Bletchley Park code breakers must have felt, the Cipher Challenge has more importantly highlighted the magnitude of their achievement, their tenacity and their ingenuity."

Secret workings

Mr Schueth competed against other code breakers and a Colossus Mark II machine last November.

The target messages were encoded with a Lorenz S42 machine - as used by the German high command - and were transmitted by a team of radio enthusiasts in Paderborn, Germany.

The re-built Colossus

Colossus, the size of a bus and widely recognised as being one of the first recognisably modern computers, took three hours and fifteen minutes to unravel the code.

Mr Schueth and his machine took just 46 seconds.

"My laptop digested ciphertext at a speed of 1.2 million characters per second - 240 times faster than Colossus," he said.

"If you scale the CPU frequency by that factor, you get an equivalent clock of 5.8 MHz for Colossus. That is a remarkable speed for a computer built in 1944.

"Even 40 years later many computers did not reach that speed."

There were 10 Colossus machines built in the 1940s.

They were key in shortening the war by revealing troop movements to the UK armed forces.

All of the machines they were broken up after the war in a bid to keep their workings secret.

It is currently on display at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire.

Microsoft buys UK mapping service

Microsoft makes acquisitions to strengthen its internet business

Microsoft has bought online mapping company Multimap to expand its web business, the US firm said.

Multimap, which was established in 1996, is among the UK's top 10 visited websites, receiving more than 10 million users each month.

Microsoft hopes that the acquisition "will play a significant role in the future growth of our search business".

Web search giant Google, Microsoft's arch-rival, provides its own online mapping service, Google Maps.

'Huge opportunity'

Microsoft's internet empire also includes services such as Virtual Earth, Live Search and Windows Live.

Earlier this year Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake in social networking site Facebook for $240m (£117m) and US online advertising firm aQuantive for $6bn.

It has not revealed how much it is paying for Multimap.

Sharon Baylay, general manager of the Online Services Group at Microsoft, said that the deal with Multimap presented "a huge opportunity to expand our platform business beyond the UK and globally".

Multimap has offices in America, Australia, South Africa and Turkey, as well as in London, and has a presence in 48 countries.

Carphone misleading over iPhone

Staff at the UK's biggest mobile phone retailer, Carphone Warehouse, have been caught misleading customers about Apple's popular iPhone handset.

Undercover researchers from BBC One's Watchdog found staff made false claims about what would happen if a phone was stolen and hadn't been insured.

This was in the hope customers would take out the store's own insurance.

The firm said there could be "some element of confusion among an isolated number of sales consultants".

But Carphone Warehouse added it did not believe that the "small number of complaints" were "a fair reflection of the experience of thousands of iPhone customers who have received insurance advice in our stores".

The findings come just a year after Carphone Warehouse was fined £245,000 by the Financial Services Authority for breaking the rules on selling insurance.

Commission

Viewers complained to Watchdog that they'd been told if they lost their iPhone, they'd have to buy an entirely new 18 month contract - at a minimum cost of £630.

But that is not true. Customers would have to buy a new handset but the contract itself would continue.

In three out of five stores visited by Watchdog, researchers were told the same.

And at one store, they were also told insurance offered by O2 - the only other UK mobile retailer authorised to sell the iPhone - would not offer as much cover as much, which again was untrue.

Staff at the stores receive commission on all insurance and phones they sell.

3 launches new Skype mobile phone

Mobile phone provider 3 has launched a new handset that will allow users to make free calls over the internet via telephony service Skype.

Users will also be able to use Skype's instant messaging service, 3 said.

But while people using Skype on their computers are able to make cheap global calls to any phone number, this will not be possible via the new 3 handset.

Skype has about 246 million registered users worldwide and is one of the firms reshaping the global phone industry.

Mobile potential

To date, mobile phone companies have been unwilling to let users freely access Skype via their handsets for fear that it would hurt their business.

While it is possible to access Skype from a number of handsets, this has involved downloading third-party software, something that has put off the majority of users.

The Skype-phone will be the first instance of a phone operator launching a mass market device that is designed to allow free calling over the internet from a mobile, 3 said.

"It takes an innovative operator... to challenge traditional thinking and offer the kind of product other operators are still shying away from," said Skype's acting chief executive, Michael van Swaaij.

"It's is now truly mobile. Skype has now taken a giant step forward in the mobile arena.

And chief executive of 3 UK, Kevin Russell, said the firm wanted to make mobile internet more accessible.

"Services need to be simple to access and affordable," he said.

"Mobile has the potential to massively increase access to internet calling."

Global reach

The service, launching on 2 November, will be accessed by a button on the handset.

As well as the UK, the 3 Skype-phone will be launched in countries including Australia, Denmark, Italy and Hong Kong.

Pay as you go customers will have to top up their account with at least £10 each month to qualify for the free Skype-to-Skype calls, 3 said.

Apple ready to set Leopard free

Leopard, the latest update of the Apple Mac operating system OS X, goes on sale worldwide from 1800 GMT.

The release ends months of waiting for Mac fans, after Apple pushed back the launch to finish development on its much-hyped iPhone.

Early reviews for Leopard have been positive with veteran technology writer Walt Mossberg calling it "evolutionary, not revolutionary".

Apple is hoping to build on recent strong sales of its Mac computers.

In the last three months, Apple sold 2.2 million Macs, up 400,000 on its previous best quarter.

The company is touting Leopard as a Vista-beater, pointing to new features not found in the new operating system (OS) from Microsoft that drives many PCs.

LEOPARD'S NEW SPOTS Time Machine - automatic file back-up Stacks - related files and folders grouped automatically Spaces -keep separate desktops for different uses Quick Look - Examines the contents of a file without having to open the related program Coverflow Finder - flick through files and folders like album art in iTunes Boot Camp - run Windows on a Mac

Apple says there are 300 new features in Leopard, but some of them are minor tweaks to the previous OS, called Tiger, rather than fully-fledged tools or enhancements.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mossberg said: "I believe it builds on Apple's quality advantage over Windows.

"In my view, Leopard is better and faster than Vista, with a set of new features that make Macs even easier to use."

'Few disappointments'

In the New York Times, technology columnist David Pogue wrote: "Happy surprises, and very few disappointments, lie around every corner."

At the MacLiveExpo, being held in London, there was a mixed response from attendees on whether they would be rushing out to buy Leopard on day one.

Many of the delegates said they would wait for the operating system to "bed down" before they bought it.

"I never buy any operating system when it first comes out. I normally wait until it has been out for six months or a year," said David Ramage, a Mac user from Luton.

Vista has been quite a disappointment for many people and Leopard could be the reason many people make the switch to Macs Nik Rawlinson, editor of MacUser magazine

He added: "Tiger does what I need it to do right now. I've not seen anything in Leopard to make me want to buy it immediately."

For developers, a new operating system means having to work to ensure their programs run smoothly on the new platform.

Ben Rudolph, director of communications at SWSoft, makers of Parallels, said Leopard was a big step forward for Apple and "would continue to drive sales of Macs".

Parallels lets users run the Mac operating system alongside Windows and Linux on one machine.

Mr Rudolph said Parallels would run smoothly under Leopard, barring any last minute changes to the code released by Apple.

"If that happens, we'll release a free, automatic update to account for them very soon after Leopard's launch," he said.

Of the new features in Leopard, Mr Rudolph said he was looking forward to being able to take advantage of his Mac's 64-bit architecture.

The new OS takes full advantage of the latest generation of chips inside Apple machines, while running applications on older processors also.

"I'm also looking forward to new user-experience features like Stacks, which should help me organise my incredibly messy desktop, and Spaces, which lets me cycle between different desktops."

Nik Rawlinson, editor of MacUser magazine, said many users would get Leopard in its first few weeks on sale.

"When Tiger was launched it earned Apple $120m very quickly and all the expectations are that sales will be double that."

He added: "Vista has been quite a disappointment for many people and Leopard could be the reason many people make the switch to Macs."

He said he felt Leopard had enough new features to distinguish itself from Microsoft's Vista.

"A lot of things that were previously only add-ons in the Mac world, such as the Apple TV interface, are now integrated into the OS.

"That is competing directly with Media Center on Windows PCs. Apple has seen that Microsoft has moved forward in some areas and is responding."

Disk technology takes Nobel Prize

French scientist Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg of Germany have won the 2007 Nobel Prize for physics.

They discovered the phenomenon of "giant magnetoresistance", in which weak magnetic changes give rise to big differences in electrical resistance.

The knowledge has allowed industry to develop sensitive reading tools to pull data off hard drives in computers, iPods and other digital devices.

It has made it possible to radically miniaturise hard disks in recent years.

Matin Durrani, editor of Physics World, a journal published by the UK's Institute of Physics, said the award had gone to "something very practically based and rooted in research relevant to industry".

"It shows that physics has a real relevance not just to understanding natural phenomena but to real products in everyday life," he added.

'Ubiquitous' technology

Professor Ben Murdin of the University of Surrey, UK, said giant magnetoresistance, or GMR, was the science behind a ubiquitous technological device. "Without it you would not be able to store more than one song on your iPod!" he explained.

"A computer hard-disk reader that uses a GMR sensor is equivalent to a jet flying at a speed of 30,000 kmph, at a height of just one metre above the ground, and yet being able to see and catalogue every single blade of grass it passes over."

GMR involves structures consisting of very thin layers of different magnetic materials.

For this reason it can also be considered "one of the first real applications of the promising field of nanotechnology", the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

"Applications of this phenomenon have revolutionised techniques for retrieving data from hard disks," the prize citation said. "The discovery also plays a major role in various magnetic sensors as well as for the development of a new generation of electronics."

Bigger, cheaper

A hard disk stores information, such as music, in the form of microscopic areas that are magnetised in different directions.

The technology has allowed hard disk sensors to read and write much more data Prof Jim Al-Khalili, University of Surrey

The information is retrieved by a read-out head that scans the disk and registers the magnetic changes.

The smaller and more compact the hard disk, the smaller and weaker the individual magnetic areas.

More sensitive read-out heads are therefore needed when more information is crammed on to a hard disk.

"It's no good having computer hard-drives that can store gigabytes of information if we can't access it," said Professor Jim Al-Khalili of the University of Surrey, UK.

"The technology that has appeared thanks to the discovery of GMR in the late 1980s has allowed hard-disk sensors to read and write much more data, allowing for bigger memory, cheaper and more reliable computers."

Last year, US scientists John C Mather and George F Smoot won for their work examining the infancy of the Universe.

They were honoured for their studies into cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), the "oldest light" in the Universe.

Wi-fi update helps eye doctors

Thousands of residents of remote villages in southern India have easy access to eye care thanks to a specially designed, low-cost and long-distance wi-fi network.

The network allows specialists at Aravind Eye Hospital at Theni, in the state of Tamil Nadu, to interview and examine patients in nine remote clinics via high-quality video conference.

The new technology has been developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and at Intel Corporation in collaboration with the Indian hospital.

One of the scientists' first priorities was to develop inexpensive and robust wireless networking technology which would stand up to the demands of developing regions.

The team could have used Wimax technology for long-range wireless networking but it is expensive to implement, explained Eric Brewer, a Berkeley professor of computer science and director of the Intel Research Berkeley lab.

Instead the Berkeley scientists adapted existing wi-fi technology. The key challenge is that wi-fi is designed for short, and not long distance communication.

'Better antennas'

"It turns out that you can get the radio signal to go further just using better antennas," says Professor Brewer. "However, in doing so, you have to pick a particular direction for the signal. This long-distance wi-fi is a fixed point to point wireless technology, like microwave links.

This could revolutionise the delivery of health care services and greatly improve the quality life in the rural developing world Professor Eric Brewer, Berkeley

Berkeley's team has built wireless fixed links between the vision centres and the hospital. "Ours is a solution tuned to the needs of developing areas; NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations) don't have the resources to implement the more expensive long-distance systems such as Wimax, " says Sonesh Surena, one of Brewer's PhD students working in the project.

The innovation for the India wi-fi system was to provide high bandwidth, for high quality video imaging, over long distances.

The researchers redesigned the software, so that some of the unneeded information typically sent over a wi-fi connection was discarded.

By combining their modified software with directional antennas and routers to send, receive and relay signals, the research team so far has been able to obtain network speeds of up to six megabits per second (Mpbs) at distances up to 40 miles.

Impressive results

But the team has obtained even more impressive results: "In our current world record, we achieved almost 6 megabits/second over a distance of 384 kilometres using only one link," he adds. These tests were carried out in a project in Venezuela last summer.

Vision centres in the region are now conducting real-time eye exams with doctors in Theni, over a direct connection 150 times as fast as the old dial-up modem, which used to cost $200 a year.

The long-distance wireless link, installed at a cost of $1,800, is practically free to operate.

"With our old system we only had audio, and a little of video," says Dr Namperumalsamy, chairman of Aravind Eye Care System.

He adds: "After the scientists from Berkeley came over, we have a powerful bandwidth and we can have video conferences, we can send e-mails and documents.

"Ultimately we can reach more patients at a affordable cost so that we can serve more people."

For P Ramaswamy, an 64 year-old patient, the vision centre that was built half a kilometre away from his home has made a great difference in his life.

He now can avoid a day's travel and have his eye test done locally.

'Skillful work'

"Someone told me that you can talk to the doctor in Theni through the system and that it is very convenient. I prefer coming here," he says.

At the moment, there are nine centres linked to the hospitals at Theni, which serve more than 50,000 residents in the area. And roughly 2,500 patients per month are using the video conference to meet with a doctor.

Each vision centre is run by three paramedical technicians, so that "eye doctors can do skilful work in the hospital such as surgery", says Dr Namperumalsamy.

The current network is expected to expand in the state to include five hospitals within the Aravind Eye System Care that will be linked to 50 clinics.

They are expected to serve half a million patients each year in rural South India - most of whom have no access to eye care today.

These vision centres will positively impact the health of the Indian economy, according to a recent study by the Aravind Eye Care System. It showed that 85% of the men and 58% of the women who had lost their jobs due to sight impairment were reintegrated into the workforce following treatment.

For now, the focus is on India, but the experimental wireless networking infrastructure developed by Intel and UC Berkeley researchers could make it possible to deliver eye care services in other rural areas in the developing world.

"Wherever there's a demand for eye care or other medical services, you can easily and inexpensively install one of our networks," says Professor Brewer. "This could revolutionise the delivery of health care services and greatly improve the quality life in the rural developing world."

Sony offers cut-price PlayStation

A cut price PlayStation 3 (PS3) with a smaller hard drive and no backwards compatibility with previous consoles goes on sale later this month.

The £299 PS3 has a 40-gigabyte hard disk and will be released in Europe, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand.

Sony has also slashed the price of the 60GB model from £425 to £349, as it hopes to ignite sales.

Ray Maguire, head of PlayStation UK, said he expected the PS3 user base to double by Christmas.

Mr Maguire said the release of the 40GB PS3 was a "strategic decision" and not the result of lower-than-expected sales of the PlayStation 3.

"We have done market research, looked at fans' forums and the feedback from consumers is that they are anxious to get into PlayStation 3 but it is too expensive," he told BBC News.

Sony was the market leader in the previous two generations of console releases. However, Nintendo is now in pole position closely followed by Microsoft's Xbox 360.

We want to get the console to the next level; we have re-engineered the machine to bring the price down Ray Maguire, Sony

More than 5.5 million PlayStation 3 consoles have been shipped worldwide, compared with more than 10 million each of the Wii and Xbox 360.

He said he expected some existing PS3 owners to feel frustrated at the price cut for the 60GB model coming just six months after the machine was first launched.

The new PS3 will be unable to play PlayStation 1 and 2 games, has a reduced number of USB ports, from four to two connections, and no slots for memory cards. It goes on sale from 10 October.

"The cost of peripherals for adding USB connections and memory stick options is low," said Mr Maguire explaining the alterations.

He added: "Backwards compatibility was reasonably expensive for us to implement and taking it out enabled us to reduce the price."

The entry-level PS3 is now the same price as an Xbox 360 Elite, which has a 120GB hard drive.

Extra expense

However, the PS3 has built-in wi-fi connectivity and a high definition Blu-ray DVD player.

An add-on HD-DVD drive and wi-fi peripheral are available to Xbox 360 owners at extra expense.

The Nintendo Wii costs £179 but does not have high definition graphics or DVD playback, and relies instead on an innovative motion-sensitive control system.

There is no confirmation on the launch of the 40GB PS3 in North America and Japan, which have their own divergent models and price points.

Mr Maguire said: "The people who want to get into new technology early are prepared to pay a premium.

"We want to get the console to the next level; we have re-engineered the machine to bring the price down."

He added: "We have invested a lot of money in reaching this price point."

Sony is still losing money on each console sold, said Mr Maguire, but would lose less money on the 40GB machine.

"We are in an investment phase," he said.

Sony was criticised last year when it unveiled its £425 price point for the PlayStation 3 with many analysts saying the firm would struggle to win over gamers.

"It has taken us that long to get the cost down, it's as simple as that," said Mr Maguire.

Games violence study is launched

The government is asking for evidence for a new study of the effect of violent computer games on children.

Psychologist Tanya Byron will head the study, which will also examine how to protect children from online material.

The review is due to be launched by Dr Byron - together with Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Culture Secretary James Purnell - at a school in east London.

The games industry's association Elspa said it would co-operate - but it was too often blamed for society's ills.

Paul Jackson, of Elspa (the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers' Association), said the body had already met with Dr Byron and would work with the government on the review.

We are very responsible and keen to ensure that our products are only played by those who they are designed for Paul Jackson, Elspa

But he said the industry was "too often blamed for everything from obesity to youth violence".

He said: "It is just not true and it's not appropriate."

He added: "We feel quite positively about this review. It's clear the review is about making sure parents are properly informed about what their youngsters are playing and what they are accessing on the internet."

'Singled out'

David Braben, of Frontier games, asked why games were being singled out.

"A review might be useful but it should not just look at one media, especially when media are intersecting," he said.

He added: "Historically there has always been in government a Luddite sentiment - whatever the new industry is tends to take the blame of the latest ailment of society.

"We do tend to be the people who get the blame first at the moment. And that is a tragedy - because this industry is one of the most interesting media."

Philip Oliver, chief executive of Blitz games, said more education was needed for parents.

"They aren't paying attention to the certificates. That is partly because they don't understand them and have a distorted image of games - that either they are harmless or totally evil."

The review is launched a day after the British Board of Film Classification refused a certificate for Manhunt 2 for a second time.

Mr Oliver said the decision was proof "the system is working".

According to Elspa, only 2% of games released in the UK receive an 18 certificate and the average age of a gamer is 28.

'Higher standards'

Mr Jackson said: "We are a very important British industry. We are very responsible and keen to ensure that our products are only played by those who they are designed for."

Margaret Robertson, a video games consultant and former editor of Edge magazine, said the industry felt it was doing as much as it could.

"The games industry is holding itself to higher standards than the film industry. This is a solved problem.

"Allowing that, everyone is united in not wanting material for older gamers to get into the hands of children."

She added: "This report may start finding some wider ways to do that."

Battle to beat fake Ebay e-mails

Fake Ebay and Paypal e-mails which are used to con users out of money are being targeted by a secure mail system.

The online auction site and web pay service are working with Yahoo to use the firm's anti-phishing technology.

The firms are supporting the emerging standard known as domain keys, which block fake e-mails by validating the sender with a digital signature.

Spammers hide their identity by using a false, or spoofed, address in the millions of messages they send out.

The technology, called the DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), will be available to millions of Yahoo Mail users worldwide in the coming weeks.

"It is a big step forward for consumers in defence against the bad guys," John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail, told Reuters news agency.

Targeted companies

According to security analysts Trend Micro, eBay and its popular payment service Paypal are the two most targeted companies for phishing e-mails in the last months.

E-mail analysts MessageLabs reports that one in every 173 e-mails sent around the world each day contains some form of phishing attacks.

Two years ago if you asked companies whether they were using e-mail authentication, most people wouldn't have cared Chenxi Wang, Forrester

"Our message to both businesses and consumers is: beware of unexpected or strange-looking e-mails regardless of their sender and never open attachments or links contained in these email messages", said David Sancho, of TrendLabs at Trend Micro.

A recent YouGov poll, conducted on behalf of USwitch.com, reported that 35% of 2,500 people surveyed in the UK said they received more than 10 spam e-mails every day.

Yahoo's system is designed to automatically detect potential phishing attacks without relying on the consumer to intervene.

Encrypted signatures

"If the consumer doesn't receive an e-mail in their inbox then it is very hard for the phisher to victimise them," Michael Barrett, PayPal's chief information security officer.

DKIM uses encrypted digital signatures to prove a message's origin.

Although 90 to 99% of e-mail comes from senders known to the recipient, establishing the identity of a sender remains a key consideration in the protection against spam.

Spammers get away with sending spoofed e-mails because mail servers only check if a domain mentioned in these spoofed addresses - such as @madeupmailname.com - is known to be used by spammers.

DKIM lets honest e-mail senders prove they sent a message by encrypting a two-part signature, or key, in a selected part of the mail.

The e-mail provider, such as Yahoo, puts an encrypted private key into the e-mail when it is sent.

It is linked to a public key held by the internet's domain name system - the phonebook of the internet.

The mail server which receives the e-mail checks to ensure that the private and public keys match, proving that the message has come from a genuine sender.

'Coming around'

But in order for the technology to work, both the sender and recipient need their mail services to be signed up to DKIM.

The technology was developed by Yahoo and is backed by AOL, Google, IBM, Sendmail an Verisign.

A second standard, called Sender Policy Network (SPF), is backed by Microsoft, Amazon and eBay, which supports both forms of protection.

Digitally signed e-mails are expected to become the norm in the coming years.

Chenxi Wang, a security analyst with Forrester Research, told Reuters: "Two years ago if you asked companies whether they were using e-mail authentication, most people wouldn't have cared.

"The industry is slowly coming around," Mr Wang said.

"EBay and PayPal are some of the first to actively block unauthenticated e-mails."

World’s first osmotic power plant planned

OSLO: Norway plans to build the world’s first osmotic power plant, a renewable energy source that makes use of the pressure built up between sea water and fresh water, Norwegian energy group Statkraft said on Wednesday. Osmotic power is based on the natural process of osmosis.

In an osmotic power plant, sea water and fresh water are separated by a membrane. The sea water draws the fresh water through the membrane, thereby increasing the pressure on the sea water side. The increased pressure is used to produce power with a turbine, Statkraft said.

“Osmotic power is a very promising technology,” the head of Statkraft, Baard Mikkelsen, said in a statement.

“It is clean and (greenhouse gas) emission-free, and could become competitive within a few years.” According to Statkraft, the technology could produce some 1,600 terawatt hours (TWh) worldwide.

The prototype of the osmotic power plant is being built in Hurum in southeastern Norway and could produce between two and four kilowatt hours (KWh).

New Zunes to take on Apple's iPod

Microsoft has launched three new models of its Zune digital media player in an effort to compete with Apple's iPod.

The players - which come in 4GB, 8GB and 80GB models - have wi-fi so users can automatically download music, photos, and video from their computer.

Microsoft is also launching a social networking site dubbed Zune Social to allow users to display and share music.

Last year Microsoft sold 1.2 million Zunes compared to 100 million iPods shifted since its launch in 2001.

The new players go on sale in the US in mid-November. There are no details yet as to when they will be released in Europe.

They will be priced at $149 (£73), for the 4GB player, $199 (£97) for the 8GB player and $249 (£122) for the 80GB player.

It comes with a familiar circular touch-sensitive navigation button.

New songs

Analysts are not convinced that the new-look Zunes will allow Microsoft to close the gap on Apple any time soon.

"This device with the all-too-familiar dial wheel compares reasonably favourably with last generation iPod players," said Mark Mulligan, analyst with Jupiter Research.

"Microsoft needs to come at Apple from an unexpected angle but at the moment it is Apple with its new iPod touch and nanos that is shaking up the market," he said.

According to data from the NPD Group, Apple controls over 80% of the digital media player market with SanDisk in second place with 5.8% and Microsoft in third, with 4.4%.

Microsoft said at the launch of the new Zunes that it expected the devices to take three to four years to bed in and become a legitimate rival to Apple.

"Twenty years ago we bet the company on an integrated productivity suite of word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, and we changed the way people work," Bill Gates said at the launch.

"Today we're making big bets on games, music, video and connecting these entertainment experiences to help change the way people play," he added.

The company also said that it would add more than one million MP3 songs free of digital rights management onto Marketplace, its digital music store which currently sells music videos and offers video podcasts free.

There were no more details about what music would be available.

Data row hits mobile mast website

The future of a website which details all the mobile phone masts in the UK is in doubt following a row over divulging "commercially sensitive" information.

The Sitefinder website is maintained by media regulator Ofcom, following a request from the government in 2000.

But mobile firms stopped giving data to the site last year after Ofcom was told it must publish grid references of all the masts in a searchable database.

It is appealing against the Information Commissioner and Tribunal order.

Sitefinder also shows which type of mobile phone signal is being used, the name of the operator, the frequency of the signal and the height of the mast.

Ofcom was ordered by the Information Commissioner to publish all of that information, including the grid reference of each mast in the country, in a single database file.

Radio network

It followed more than two years of requests from Ian Henton, of Health Protection Scotland, for the data under the Freedom of Information Act.

The request was made under the "general right of access to information held by public authorities" as enshrined by the act.

Ofcom had argued that supplying such specific information could leave the emergency services radio network open to abuse.

It also pointed out that the data was owned by the mobile firms and was supplied voluntarily.

Ofcom explained that if the raw data were available it would provide mobile phone competitors with a "springboard" from which to discover the design of each operator's 2G or 3G radio networks.

But the Information Commissioner disagreed and said the data had to be released.

As a result, mobile phone firms have stopped supplying all data to Ofcom.

A spokeswoman for the Mobile Operators Association said putting all the requested data into the public domain would "entail serious competitive and commercial issues for each of the operators".

She added: "The operators fully support Sitefinder continuing to be publicly searchable by postcode, streetname, or locality."

She said the operators were in discussion with Ofcom and the government on the future provision of data to Sitefinder.

'Remain optimistic'

In a statement the regulator said it was concerned that Sitefinder "would cease to be a valuable tool for the public" unless the mobile firms could be persuaded to continue handing over data.

Ofcom is now appealing the Information Commissioner's decision in the High Court.

It said it was optimistic of persuading the operators to resume supplying information.

"We remain committed to providing the Sitefinder service to citizens and consumers," said the regulator.

Mr Henton was not immediately available for comment.

Search giants offer new features

Yahoo and Microsoft have announced upgrades to their search engines in efforts to gain ground on rival Google.

Yahoo's makeover will include features that allow users to refine searches as well as offering links to photos, music and video on the results page.

Microsoft's new-improved Live Search represents a "quantum jump in search results" according to the company.

Google remains the most popular net search engine, accounting for over half of web searches.

According to data from comScore Media Metrix, Google had a 56.5% share of the US search market, compared to Yahoo wtih 23.3% and Microsoft with 11.3%. In the UK, Google's dominance is even greater with around 75% market share.

Its dominance has forced rivals to relaunch, add new features and improve the relevance of its searches in an effort to compete.

Microsoft's improved Live Search - which will be available globally by the end of October - will offer a series of new featues, including a quadrupling of its index of searchable web pages as well as improving the way it delivers answers to specific questions.

It will draw on its three-dimensional mapping service for location-relevant searches as well as offering video, charts and pictures for relevant results.

Yahoo's upgrades include offering ways to phrase a search request as a user types into the query box. It will also use information from its calendar service, Upcoming.org, to highlight local events when relevant to requests.

Search rival Ask.com relaunched with a dramatically different interface in June, offering search suggestions and thumbnail pictures of listed sites.

There has been a rise in so-called metasearch engines which trawl through a variety of other search engines to find results.

Ultra-thin TV to hit the market

An ultra-thin television brighter and crisper than current generation screens will go on sale from Sony in December.

The TV uses organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) to produce the image, resulting in a screen only 3mm thick.

OLED screens are more energy efficient than LCD panels as they do not need a backlight to boost brightness.

But it is difficult and expensive to make large screens using the technology. Sony's first OLED TV costs £850 and has an 11in display.

OLED screens are brighter than LCD panels and also have better contrast ratio - resulting in sharper pictures.

The diodes emit a brilliant white light when attached to an electricity supply and are also being developed for use as replacements to traditional light bulbs.

Colour display

Different organic materials produce different colours and are combined to produce a colour display.

Sony has hailed the new television as a signal of its returning strength as a technology innovator.

"Some people have said attractive products are slow to come at Sony despite its technological strength," said Sony president Ryoji Chubachi at a news conference at its Tokyo headquarters.

I do believe this is a type of technology with very high potential Katsumi Ihara, Sony

He added: "I want this world's first OLED TV to be the symbol of the revival of Sony's technological prowess.

"I want this to be the flag under which we charge forward to turn the fortunes around."

Other firms are also working on OLED screens - Samsung has shown off a 40-inch TV using the technology - but Sony is the first to market.

"I don't think OLED TVs will replace LCD TVs overnight. But I do believe this is a type of technology with very high potential, something that will come after LCD TVs," said Sony executive deputy president Katsumi Ihara.

The new TV goes on sale in Japan on 1 December. There are no plans for a global launch as yet.

The OLED TV has a lifespan of about 30,000 hours of viewing - half that of Sony's LCD televisions.

Adobe challenges word on the web

Adobe has joined a growing list of firms offering web-based alternatives to conventional office programs.

The software developer has acquired the online word processor Buzzword, which allows users to create and share text documents on the web.

Similar programs are already offered as elements of other free office software suites from Google, ajax13 and Zoho.

Microsoft has also announced a new web feature for its Office suite which lets people access documents online.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace is currently being offered as free test, or "beta", software.

"Office Live Workspace will provide anywhere-access to Office documents, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint files," said Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's Business division.

"In other words, these documents will go wherever people go when they're away from their usual desktop."

People using the new feature will be able to post documents directly to an online workspace where friends or colleagues can be invited to collaborate on a document.

Web purchase

The new services from both companies are part of a wider trend to offer applications on demand and online. In addition, many companies also offer their standard applications for free.

"Companies are looking at this as a real paradigm change," said Michael Silver of analyst firm Gartner.

The market for these applications was still small, he said, particularly compared to the dominance of Microsoft Office on computer desktops. However, he said, that would start to change.

"Companies need to position themselves today to be leaders in the area as it develops."

Google has already established itself as one of the major players offering free programs that allow users to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online.

While mainly aimed at individuals, Google also offers a business, or "enterprise", version that comes with technical support to help people use it.

Google has developed its software suite by acquiring companies such as the internet start-up Writely, which developed its word processing application.

Adobe appear to be following a similar path, having acquired Buzzword by buying its developer, Virtual Ubiquity.

The firm has offered the word processor as a limited trial since May 2007.

"We were inspired by the way today's youth spend their lives working and playing together online, and how this is influencing the way we all think about collaboration," said Rick Treitman, CEO of the firm.

Offline worlds

Although there is a move towards increasingly hosting applications online, many people still demand an ability to work with documents when there is no web connection.

In May this year, Google announced its Gears tool that allows users access to online data and applications inside a web browser even when the PC is offline.

Using Gears, online data that is usually held on web servers is stored on an individual's computer, and then synchronised when the user logs back on to the web.

The developers of the free online office package Zoho use Gears to allow users to work offline.

Adobe has said that a similar service will be available for Buzzword at a later date.

It also plans to integrate a new file-sharing feature called Adobe Share with the online word processor.

Share allows people to store up to 1GB of documents online or embed them in any web page, from which anyone can download and print a PDF.

The service is currently being offered as part of a trial.

Palm in red as iPhone grabs sales

The US handheld computer maker Palm has reported a three-month loss as the launch of Apple's iPhone hit sales of its own smartphones.

It made a net loss of $841,000 (£412,000) between June and August, compared with a profit of $16.5m in the same three months of 2006.

Palm warned on 19 September that it was likely to report a loss.

Analysts blamed it on increased competition from Apple and other manufacturers of high-end phones.

It is the first set of results since Palm sold one quarter of its shares to the private equity house Elevation Partners.

"As we move toward completing the recapitalization transaction with Elevation Partners, we are excited to strengthen our ability to accelerate Palm's growth in the future," said Palm's chief executive Ed Colligan.

Apple launched its iPhone in the US on 29 June.

Palm's Treo systems may also have been losing out to the Blackberry devices made by Research in Motion.

Palm recently withdrew its Foleo keyboard and monitor devices for its Treo smartphones.

But it has launched its Centro device, which is a lightweight, cheaper device, designed to compete with manufacturers such as Samsung.

Apple iPhone warning proves true

An Apple software update is disabling iPhones that have been unlocked by owners who wanted to choose which mobile network to use.

Earlier this week Apple said a planned update would leave the device "permanently inoperable".

Thousands of iPhone owners hacked their expensive gadget in order to unlock it for use with other mobile carriers and to run a host of unsupported programs.

There are also reports of the update causing issues with unaltered iPhones.

On Monday Apple issued a statement in which it said many of the unauthorised iPhone unlocking programs caused "irreparable damage" to the device's software.

The company said this would "likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed".

That warning has now proved correct as many owners are reporting their phones no longer work following installation of the update.

Apple requires iPhone owners to take out a lengthy contract with AT&T in the United States but there are a number of programs on the net that unlock the device for use with other networks.

Some owners are reporting on technology blogs and Apple's own forums that the update is deleting contacts information, as well as photos and music, on iPhones that have not been modified in any way.

Skype founders quit as executives

The founders of Skype, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, have resigned as executives of the web-based phone firm.

EBay has announced that it will cut up to $1.2bn (£590m) off the potential price it agreed to pay for Skype.

In September 2005 eBay agreed to pay $2.6bn for Skype and make further payments of up to $1.7bn based on Skype meeting various targets.

EBay will reduce the value of Skype on its books by $900m, a tacit recognition that it overpaid for the company.

"I think this is a testament that the Skype franchise is not worth as much as eBay originally thought," said Youssef Squali of the brokerage Jeffries & Co.

Skype generated only $90m in revenue in the three months to the end of June.

Other projects

Ebay said it might pay Skype shareholders another $195m, but only if it sells 50% or more of Skype before then end of March 2008.

Mr Zennstrom, who was chief executive of Skype, will become non-executive chairman and is expected to spend more time on other projects.

After the Skype sale, he and Mr Friis founded an online video company called Joost.com.

Joost, which had previously only been available by invitation, made its software freely available on Monday.