Defiant Blackberry boss dismisses Nokia jibe

Research In Motion's boss has dismissed suggestions that its Blackberry devices are no longer a major player

 in the smartphone race.

Jim Balsillie told BBC News that the firm should not be written off.
It follows comments by Nokia's Stephen Elop, who said that the smartphone ecosystem was now a three horse race between Windows, Android and Apple.
"I don't know how you can say that we are not in the race," said Mr Balsillie at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
He said that Blackberry had experienced 70% growth last year and was the number one phone in the UK.
Figures from research firm Gfk show that the phone maker had 28.2% of the UK smartphone market in 2010.
However, the firm trails Google, Nokia and Apple in terms of market share, according to figures from Canalys.
"Are people writing us off? We have had huge growth in the last year. I wouldn't write us off," he said.
He was also keen to shake off RIM's business focussed image.
"80% of our subscribers are consumers."
Blackberry is forging a new link with younger, teenage consumers who are flocking to the handset because of Blackberry messaging.
Analysts have characterised 2011 as a year of transition for Blackberry as it moves away from its traditional business roots.
But for Mr Balsillie the greatest change is the move into larger devices.
"The biggest transition for us is that we are coming out with tablets," he said.
The firm announced its Playbook tablet device in September 2010.
In Barcelona, the firm also said that would be launching a 4G Playbook in the second half of the year. None of its tablets have yet hit shop shelves, but are expected in the coming weeks.
It has been a difficult year for RIM in countries such as Saudi Arabia and India, where governments want to gain greater access to the tight security system used for Blackberry's business users.
Mr Balsillie said the company's policy had not changed, despite significant growth amongst Indian consumers.
"We want to abide by local laws while also supporting our systems," he said.
RIM has always maintained that it cannot interfere with the encryption system set up to protect its business customers' messages.
It remained in talks with the government in India, said a spokesman.

'Historic' day as first non-Latin web addresses go live

Egypt's Ministry of Communications is amongst the first live web addresses

Arab nations are leading a "historic" charge to make the world wide web live up to its name.

Net regulator Icann has switched on a system that allows full web addresses that contain no Latin characters.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to have so-called "country codes" written in Arabic scripts.
The move is the first step to allow web addresses in many scripts including Chinese, Thai and Tamil.
More than 20 countries have requested approval for international domains from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).
It said the new domains were "available for use now" although it admitted there was still some work to do before they worked correctly for everyone. However, it said these were "mostly formalities".
Icann's senior director for internationalised domain names, Tina Dam, told BBC News that this has been "the most significant day" since the launch of the internet, adding that "it's been a very big day for Icann, more so for the three Arabic countries that were the first to be introduced".
Icann president Rod Beckstrom described the change as "historic".
Read right The introduction of the first web names using so-called country code top-level domains (CCTLDs) is the culmination of several years of work by the organisation.
Previously, websites could use some non-Latin letters, but the country codes such as .eg for Egypt had to be written in Latin script.
The three new suffixes will allow web addresses to be completely written in native characters.

Continue reading the main story The first country codes:

• Egypt: مصر
• Saudi Arabia: السعودية
• United Arab Emirates: امارات

Source: Icann

"All three are Arabic script domains, and will enable domain names written fully right-to-left," said Kim Davies of Icann in a blog post.
One of the first websites with a full Arabic address is the Egyptian Ministry of Communications.
Egypt's communication and information technology minister Tarek Kamal told the Associated Press that three Egyptian companies were the first to receive registrar licences for the '.masr' domain, written in Arabic.
Mr Kamal described the development as a "milestone in internet history".
Masr means Egypt in Arabic.
Some countries, such as China and Thailand, had already introduced workarounds that allow computer users to enter web addresses in their own language.
However, these were not internationally approved and do not necessarily work on all computers.
Ms Dam explained that the change was "not about shutting non-Arabic or non-Chinese speakers out of the internet.
"It's about including that large part of our world into the internet today."
She said there had previously been a risk the internet might have started to split.
"The chances are people would start creating their own internets, where it was only in Chinese, Arabic, Thai or whatever," she said.
Icann warned that the internationalised domain names (IDNs), as they are known, would also not work on all PCs immediately.
"You may see a mangled string of letters and numbers, and perhaps some percent signs or a couple of "xn--"s mixed into the address bar," said Mr Davies. "Or it may not work at all."
Previously, Icann has said that people would have to update the software on their computers to view the domains.
"Computers never come with the complete set of fonts that will allow it to show every possible IDN in the world.
"Often this is fixed by downloading additional language packs for the missing languages, or specifically finding and installing fonts that support the wanted languages."
Global access When Icann first announced its plans for non-Latin web names it said it was the "biggest change" to the net "since it was invented 40 years ago".
"Over half the internet users around the world don't use a Latin-based script as their native language," said Mr Beckstrom at the time.
"IDNs are about making the internet more global and accessible for everyone."
Icann said it had received 21 requests for IDNs in 11 different languages, including Chinese, Russian, Tamil and Thai.
Website owners in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will now be able to apply for web addresses using the new country codes.

Web hit by hi-tech crime wave

Hi-tech thieves trawl social network sites for information about victims

Hi-tech criminals are racking up more than 100 attacks a second on the world's computers, a survey suggests.

While most of these attacks cause no trouble, the Symantec report suggests that one attack every 4.5 seconds does affect a PC.
The wave of attacks was driven by a steep rise in malicious software in circulation, said the annual report.
The number of malware (malicious software) samples that Symantec saw in 2009 was 71% higher than in 2008.
Crime family
This meant, said Symantec, that 51% of all the viruses, trojans and other malicious programs it has ever seen were logged during 2009. In total, Symantec identified almost 2.9 million items of malicious code during that 12 month period.
The steep rise in malware was driven largely by the growing popularity of easy to use toolkits that novice cyber criminals are using to turn out their own malware, said Tony Osborne, a technology manager for the public sector at Symantec.
Some of the kits were available for free, said Mr Osborne but others cost a lot of money. One, called Zeus, was available for around $700 (£458) and many had become so successful that their creators now offer telephone support for those who cannot get them to work.
During 2009, Symnatec say more than 90,000 variants of the Zeus kit and it was responsible for the growth of one of the most prolific malware families during the year.
Zeus relies on spam to lure people to websites where victims will be tricked into installing malicious code or which sneaks on to a computer via a known vulnerability.
Often, said the report, this can help criminals set up botnets - networks of hijacked home PCs that can be used to send spam or plundered for lucrative personal data. In 2009, Symantec saw almost seven million distinct PCs that were members of botnets.
There was one very simple reason that novices bought and used the kits, said Mr Osborne.
"It's all about money," he said.
Established gangs were also showing no signs of holding back in their attempts to steal saleable information.
"Why would they?" he said. "It's easy money and it's very hard to catch people."
"It's become a day job for a lot of people," he said.
There was evidence, suggests the report, that professional cyber criminals were tuning their tactics to try and get better results. Many now scour social network pages for details about employees inside companies and craft their spam and other messages to capitalise on the details they can gather.
The continuing growth of hi-tech crime meant that many developing nations were starting to suffer significant numbers of attacks. Brazil and India were becoming hot spots of cyber crime, said Mr Osborne.
This was because, he said, the infrastructure in those nations was rapidly improving as people move to broadband and use the web for more and more of their daily lives.
"Those are the places where education and understanding about security are taking a while to catch up," he said.

Apple reveals new iPhone features

iAd pits Apple against search and advertising giant Google

Apple has shown off some of the 100 new features to be included in the iPhone operating system later this year.

The update includes a mobile advertising platform called iAd that will be used to place adverts in applications made by third parties.
Apple founder Steve Jobs also showcased a long-awaited multi-tasking feature, which will allow users run more than one program at a time.
The feature is already included in many other smartphones.
iAd marks Apple's first foray into a potentially lucrative new market, and pits it directly against Google's search engine advertising model.
Apple will allow external developers to pocket 60% of ad revenue from iAd.
The Apple boss said the iPhone OS 4.0 update will be released first for the iPhone and iPod touch, and then the iPad, later this year.
'Ad-sense'
Apple boss Steve Jobs gave a demonstration of the multi-tasking feature showed the online radio station Pandora running in the background playing music while a user could either read news online or deal with email.

Apples believes advertising inside applications is the future

"We weren't the first to this party but we're going to be the best," he said.
Some of the other features unveiled at the presentation at Apple's headquarters in California include being able to create specific folders to store third party applications downloaded from iTunes, enhanced mail, which will gather e-mail from multiple accounts into one "unified" inbox and iBooks, which is already on the iPad.
Mr Jobs said mobile users spend more time inside applications than searching the internet.
Therefore it made sense to have adverts within the applications - or apps as they are commonly known.
"It's very clear that [Mr] Jobs believes that ads in the context of apps makes more sense than generic mobile search," said Tim Bajarin at consulting company Creative Strategies.
Mobile sales
Apple's move into mobile advertising was widely expected after it bought Quattro Wireless mobile advertising network for almost $300m (£196m) in January.

Multi-tasking is a long awaited feature

Analysts say revenue from mobile advertising will jump dramatically this year.
"It has huge potential to really change mobile commerce," said Van Baker, Vice president of research at Gartner.
"The evidence so far is that very few transactions really happen in this space. Mobile is used to compare prices, find restaurants, movie times and the like but very little in the way of commerce."
Apple bought mobile ad company Quattro after failing to buy the market leader AdMob, which was purchased by Google.
In a slight to the search giant, Mr Jobs said "Google came in and snatched them (AdMob) because they didn't want us to have them".
Google's deal is currently being investigated by US regulators.
iPad demand
During the packed press event, Mr Jobs revealed that to date Apple has sold 50m iPhones. That number rises to 85m when the iPod touch is included.
Mr Jobs also gave an update on the iPad, which went on sale in the US only at the weekend. It is expected in stores in the UK and part of Europe, as well as Canada and Australia at the end of the month.
Apple said it had sold 450,000 iPads as of 8 April. Mr Jobs added that 600,000 electronic books and 3.5m applications had been downloaded for the iPad in the previous five days.
"We're making them as fast as we can," Mr Jobs said. "Evidently we can't make enough of them yet so we are going to have to try harder."

Apple iPad hits shops in America

The first customers to come through the doors of the Apple store were counted down by shop assistants

Apple's latest product, the iPad tablet computer, has gone on sale in America.

The first generation model has wi-fi but not 3G connectivity, and unlike other tablet devices, it is not yet available outside the US.
The New York Apple store in Manhattan opened its doors to a 500-strong crowd at 0900 EST (1400 BST).
Queues for the new iPad were considerably smaller than the crowds which gathered for the launch of the iPhone in 2007, according to reports.
However people had travelled to the US from around the world to purchase a device.
'Huge hit for some'

A relatively small crowd camped overnight in New York

Apple took pre-orders online but some early adopters began queuing outside stores the day before its release.
The company's co-founder Steve Wozniak joined a queue outside an Apple store in California on Friday evening.
He said he had pre-ordered the device, which is retailing in the US at $499 - $829 (£328 - £545). European prices have not yet been announced.
"It's going to be a huge hit among a very small section of the public - Mac lovers and early adopters," said the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.
"The bigger question is whether there is that big a market between the smartphone and the laptop for it to fill," he said.
"Newspapers and magazines are certainly hoping so but the jury's still out."
In Palo Alto, California, tech expert and former Microsoft "technology evangelist" Robert Scoble, who spent the night outside a store with Chatroulette creator Andrey Ternovskiy, said there were only around 30 in the queue.
Greg Packer and Cheline Lundin are reported to have been the first in line in New York and Chicago respectively. Mr Packer began his wait outside Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Apple store on 30 March.
The device appealed to him because it is "like a mini laptop," he said in a YouTube clip.
AFP reported 15 people waiting outside the Apple store in New York on Friday afternoon, including a mother, daughter and grandmother.
Mother Jeanney Mullen said she was planning to buy one for herself and her 11 -year-old daughter Giovanna.
Her own mother had come along to buy a third for Ms Mullen's boss, as store customers were limited to two devices each.
Mixed reviews

iPad or iFad? Apple set for launch

However not everybody shares their enthusiasm.
Journalist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow has attacked the iPad for being too locked-down.
"Buying an iPad for your kids isn't a means of jump-starting the realisation that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it's a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals," he wrote on website Boing Boing.
While Apple has pitched the iPad as a "third" device between a phone and a PC, the tablet does not synchronise easily with the two according to Ian Fogg, an expert analyst at Forrester.
"Apple has left too much in the hands of consumers to transfer and manage manually," he wrote in a blog post.
"Tethered sync is a 20th Century product feature."

Opposition mounts to UK's Digital Economy Bill

The plan to cut off persistent pirates has proved controversial

The government has published a new draft of a controversial clause in the Digital Economy bill, in an effort to ease its progress through parliament.

The Liberal Democrats said they will oppose any plans to rush the Digital Economy bill into law.
The bill faces its second reading in the House of Commons next week.
Critics say the bill is unnecessarily draconian, particularly plans to cut off persistent net pirates and grant powers to block access to some sites.
Clause 18 has proved one of the most controversial aspects of the bill.
Originally it outlined how the government intended to future-proof the legislation by granting it the power to deal with other methods of copyright infringement, including the right to block access to websites, without the need for further legislation.
The new clause steps back from this, granting "limited power to propose regulations in the future".
It would "allow copyright owners to apply for court injunctions requiring service providers to block access to specified internet locations providing access to copyright infringing material".
But, before such injunctions could be carried out, the Secretary of State would have to consult "widely with industry", said a spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
He or she would also need to be satisfied that the new form of copyright theft was having a serious affect on the industry, of equivalent severity to the current trend for file-sharing via peer-to-peer networks, he added.
It is estimated that in 2007, one billion music tracks were shared illegally. More than half of all net traffic in the UK is believed to be content being shared illegally.
'Undemocratic'
It is widely expected that the Digital Economy bill will enter the so-called "wash-up" process.
This sees remaining government legislation speeded up ahead of a general election.
The Liberal Democrats have called for the bill in its present form to be scrapped and re-introduced in the next parliament.
The Open Rights Group, which has orchestrated a campaign against the bill, said any attempt to rush the legislation through would be "undemocratic".
"It is outrageous to circulate the text of a clause days before it is due to be debated," said spokesman Jim Killock.
"There will be no scrutiny and it will be rushed through the day after. This is no way to make serious, wide-ranging laws," he added.
The fate of the bill will rest with MPs.
"A rising number of MPs, including the speaker of the House of Commons himself, are concerned about the lack of scrutiny and the future of the bill is by no means certain," said Mr Killock.
Some 20,000 people have written to their MPs voicing their opposition to the bill.
Hundreds protested outside parliament last week and campaigners are planning a series of advertisements designed to block its progress.
The Stop the Digital Economy Bill campaign is being organised by the Open Rights Group and digital campaigners 38 Degrees.
They have raised £20,000 to run ads in national newspapers and websites on 6 April.
That is the day when Gordon Brown is expected to announce the general election and also the day when the digital economy bill is due to be debated in the House of Commons.

French pirates 'dodge' tough laws

The study suggests pirates are changing their habits

Some forms of piracy are on the rise in France despite the passing of a tough anti-piracy law, suggests a study.

In late 2009, France adopted a "three-strikes law" which means persistent pirates can be thrown offline.
A small-scale study shows that some French people are changing their habits and getting pirated music and movies from sources not covered by the law.
Overall, found the study, illegal behaviour has increased by 3% since the law was passed.
The anti-piracy legislation was passed in October 2009 and means that those suspected of sharing pirated material online, such as movies and music, will be warned to stop or face action.
Persistent pirates who ignore the warnings will be cut off for up to a year if a panel of judges backs a call for disconnection. Alternatively, pirates can be fined or given a prison sentence.
Despite being passed in October, the law is not yet being enforced.
A preliminary study of more than 2,000 net users in Brittany by researchers Sylvain Dejean, Thierry Penard and Raphael Suire from the Marsouin unit at the University of Rennes suggests many people have changed their behaviour following the passing of the law.
The Hadopi law, named after the agency set up to police net connections, only covers piracy committed by file-sharing systems. In response, suggests the study, pirates have turned to streaming services and download sites use of which is not covered by the legislation.
The study showed that use of peer-to-peer (P2P) or file-sharing services fell among those questioned 17.1% to 14.6% since October. By contrast, the use of sites and services not covered by the Hadopi law grew by 27% over the same period.
Download services are relatively straight-forward to police as they tend to use centralised servers but, said the report, it was also seeing greater use of virtual servers and closed forums to swap pirated material.
The survey also pointed out that the vast majority of net users, 70%, do not engage in any piracy at all. However, half of those who said they were regular buyers of digital content also said they pirated material too.

Sensors turn skin into gadget control pad

The sensors can spot many different locations on the arm

Tapping your forearm or hand with a finger could soon be the way you interact with gadgets.

US researchers have found a way to work out where the tap touches and use that to control phones and music players.
Coupled with a tiny projector the system can use the skin as a surface on which to display menu choices, a number pad or a screen.
Early work suggests the system, called Skinput, can be learned with about 20 minutes of training.
"The human body is the ultimate input device," Chris Harrison, Skinput's creator, told BBC News.

Sound solutionh

He came up with the skin-based input system to overcome the problems of interacting with the gadgets we increasingly tote around.
Gadgets cannot shrink much further, said Mr Harrison, and their miniaturisation was being held back by the way people are forced to interact with them.
The size of human fingers dictates, to a great degree, how small portable devices can get. "We are becoming the bottleneck," said Mr Harrison.

A finished device would be far smaller than the bulky prototype

To get around this Mr Harrison, a PhD student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon and colleagues Desney Tan and Dan Morris from Microsoft Research, use sensors on the arm to listen for input.
A tap with a finger on the skin scatters useful acoustic signals throughout the arm, he said. Some waves travel along the skin surface and others propagate through the body. Even better, he said, the physiology of the arm makes it straightforward to work out where the skin was touched.
Differences in bone density, arm mass as well as the "filtering" effects that occur when sound waves travel through soft tissue and joints make many of the locations on the arm distinct.
Software coupled with the sensors can be taught which sound means which location. Different functions, start, stop, louder, softer, can be bound to different locations. The system can even be used to pick up very subtle movements such as a pinch or muscle twitch.
"The wonderful thing about the human body is that we are familiar with it," said Mr Harrison. "Proprioception means that even if I spin you around in circles and tell you to touch your fingertips behind your back, you'll be able to do it."
"That gives people a lot more accuracy then we have ever had with a mouse," he said.
Early trials show that after a short amount of training the sensor/software system can pick up a five-location system with accuracy in excess of 95%.
Accuracy does drop when 10 or more locations are used, said Mr Harrison, but having 10 means being able to dial numbers and use the text prediction system that comes as standard on many mobile phones.
The prototype developed by the research team sees the sensors enclosed in a bulky cuff. However, said Mr Harrison, it would be easy to scale them down and put them in a gadget little bigger than a wrist watch.
Mr Harrison said he envisages the device being used in three distinct ways.
The sensors could be coupled with Bluetooth to control a gadget, such as a mobile phone, in a pocket. It could be used to control a music player strapped to the upper arm.
Finally, he said, the sensors could work with a pico-projector that uses the forearm or hand as a display surface. This could show buttons, a hierarchical menu, a number pad or a small screen. Skinput can even be used to play games such as Tetris by tapping on fingers to rotate blocks.
Mr Harrison would not be drawn on how long it might take Skinput to get from the lab to a commercial product. "But," he said, "in the future your hand could be your iPhone and your handset could be watch-sized on your wrist."

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Skinput turns the forearm and palm into a gadget control surface. Video courtesy of Carnegie Mellon.

China steams ahead on clean energy

Projects like Donghai Bridge wind farm in Shanghai have pushed China ahead

China overtook the US during 2009 to become the leading investor in renewable energy technologies, according to a new analysis.

Researchers with the Pew Charitable Trusts calculate that China invested $34.6bn (£23.2bn) in clean energy over the year, almost double the US figure.
The UK emerges in third place among G20 nations, followed by Spain and Brazil.
The most spectacular growth has come in South Korea, which saw installed capacity rise by 250% in five years.
Globally, investment has more than doubled in the last five years, Pew finds, with the recent economic turmoil generating only a slight dip.

TOP FIVE INVESTORS 2009 China - $34.6bn US - $18.6bn UK - $11.2bn Spain - $10.bn Brazil - $7.4bn

"Even in the midst of a global recession, the clean energy market has experienced impressive growth," said Phyllis Cuttino, director of Pew's campaign on climate change.
"Countries are jockeying for leadership.
"They know that investing in clean energy can renew manufacturing bases, and create export opportunities, jobs and businesses."
The US still holds a marginal lead in the total amount of installed capacity, but will be overtaken by China during the course of this year if existing trends continue.
Diversification nation
China's target of having 30GW of installed renewable capacity in place by 2020 will soon be exceeded through wind alone, and new targets are in the process of being set.
"The government has taken a strategic decision that diversifying its energy supply should be a national priority," commented Steve Sawyer, secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), who was not involved in the Pew report.

FASTEST GROWERS South Korea - 249% China - 79% Australia - 40% France - 31% India - 31% (growth in installed capacity over last five years)

"It is now the world's leading manufacturer of solar photovoltaic cells, and more wind turbines are made in China than anywhere else."
However, China's use of fossil fuels is also expanding fast.
So far, renewables account for a small share of its energy supply, although the overall target is a 15% share of total energy by 2020.
Wind was the dominant sector in most of the high-investing countries, the exceptions being Spain, Germany and Italy where solar technologies commanded a majority share.
US investment fell by 40% during from 2008 to 2009.
"The US's competitive position is at risk in the emerging clean energy economy," said Ms Cuttino.
Spain's investment also dropped due to the recession, following several years of rapid increases driven by the desire to cut greenhouse gas emissions very quickly in order to reach its Kyoto Protocol target.
Pew notes that the UK achieved its third place through "large offshore wind deals, backed by the government", and by being "at the forefront of marine energy investments."
Pew based its analysis on the database maintained by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the international analysis and consultancy group.

Chinese web users boycott Google

Baidu is China's biggest search engine with 60% market share

While some gathered outside Google's head office in Beijing in support of its decision to end censorship, other Chinese citizens have expressed anger.

Comments left on Chinese website sina.com.cn include "Google, out of China" and "Go away, we have Baidu".
Internet and mobile company TOM Online, which is run by Hong Kong's wealthiest man Li Ka-shing, said that it would stop using Google.
The companies have an agreement which will not be renewed, claimed TOM.
A Google spokesperson insisted that the firm would fulfil existing contractual obligations.
"I think Chinese people are offended by Google's action," said BBC journalist Jasmin Gu, who is based in China.
"It has aroused nationalistic fervour. Many people choose to stop using Google and support Chinese search engine Baidu."
Google's decision to move its search facility to servers in Hong Kong, from which it can legally operate an unfiltered service, was branded "totally wrong" by a government official speaking to the country's official news agency Xinhua.
However some people on the mainland are pleased to be getting less restricted search results.
"I welcome the move and support Google because an uncensored search engine is something that I need," blogger Zhou Shuguang (who blogs as Zuola) told news agency AP.
Google has published a chart detailing which of its services are accessible in mainland China.
Latest results for 23 March suggest that YouTube and Blogger were completely blocked.
Google docs and photo tool Picasa were partially blocked but web search and images were running at full capacity, says the report.

Mobile application sales to reach '$17.5bn by 2012'

The success of Apple's App store has spawned an industry of imitators

The global appetite for mobile applications will explode over the next two years, new research suggests.

A study done for Getjar, the world's second biggest app store, said the market will grow to $17.5bn (£12bn) in the next two years.
The study claimed downloads would climb from 7bn last year to 50bn by 2012 - a 92% year-on-year increase.
It found there had been a gold rush with the number of app stores rising from four before 2008 to 48 today.
The study also suggests Apple's domination of the market could be challenged.
"We wanted to find out the real value of the industry because we felt certain segments like the iPhone were being over-hyped and so-called feature phones were being under-hyped," said Getjar founder and chief executive officer Ilja Laurs.
Feature phones are less powerful than smart phones but can still run some third-party software.
Smart rush
While Apple's App Store is regarded as the dominant player, there are many more to choose from including those from BlackBerry, Microsoft, Google, Nokia, and Samsung.

Nokia is just one of the many players with its own app store

Google's Android Marketplace, for instance, has more than 30,000 apps made for smartphones running on its mobile operating system.
Mr Laurs said the figures attributed to the iPhone's value have been unbelievable in some cases.
"The value of the iPhone App store ranges from as low as $700m (£466m) to $2.5bn (£1.66bn). You can see the range is huge," he said.
Mr Laurs said the research found that feature phones should not be ignored in the rush to create apps for smartphones.
"It is almost as if these phones don't exist. We know smartphones are an extremely important phenomenon, but in terms of consumer mindshare and revenue share, feature phones represent 90% of the global market compared to 10% for smartphones and data cards."
Industry shake-out
Researcher Chetan Sharma of Chetan Sharma Consulting said that the charging model which dominates the app ecosystem is changing.
"Advertising and the sale of virtual goods has helped expand choices for developers and we will see all of that ramp up in the next couple of years," he told the BBC.
But most commentators think Apple's paid model will survive for the foreseeable future.

Developers are looking at what opportunities the iPad offers them

"I wouldn't say it is going to die, but the industry is going to evolve in alternative directions ," said Getjar's Mr Laurs.
Apple's iPad, for example, is expected to boost the app market according to statistics from analytics firm Flurry.
It reported that developer activity for the iPhone has risen 185% in advance of the iPad's April arrival. Applications for the iPhone can be ported over to the new device.
"We have definitely seen a shift back to the iPhone with the anticipation of the iPad and a little bit of the disappointment with the Nexus 1 (Google phone)," Simon Khalaf, chief executive of Flurry Analystics told business site MarketWatch.com.
"Definitely there has been a rush of applications. It will invite a new wave of developers and it is a very cool device so people are going to develop for it."

Bloodhound supersonic car's lift problem fixed

The aero solution is a major milestone in Bloodhound's design

Engineers designing the world's fastest car believe they now have a solution to keep the vehicle flat on the ground.

Bloodhound SSC is being built to smash the world land speed record by topping 1,000mph (1,610km/h).
Initial iterations of the car's aerodynamic shape produced dangerous amounts of lift at the vehicle's rear.
But the latest modelling work indicates the team has finally found a stable configuration, allowing the project to push ahead with other design areas.
"At Mach 1.3, we've close to zero lift which is where we wanted to be," said John Piper, Bloodhound's technical director.
"Up until this point, we've had some big issues. We've had lift as high as 12 tonnes, and when you consider the car is six-and-a-half tonnes at its heaviest - that amount of lift is enough to make the car fly," he told BBC News.
"We're very close now to fixing the exterior aero surface, which really opens the floodgates to the rest of the design work to really get going."
Computing power
By playing with the position and shape of key elements of the car's rear end, the design team has now found the best way to manage the shockwave passing around and under the vehicle as it goes supersonic.
The solution is a major milestone in Bloodhound's design.
The effort has been assisted greatly by project sponsor Intel. It brought immense computing power to bear on the lift problem.
Before Intel's intervention, the design team had worked through 11 different "architectures" in 18 months. The latest modelling work run on Intel's network investigated 55 configurations in just eight weeks.
To claim the world land speed record, Bloodhound will have to better the mark of 763mph (1,228km/h) set by the Thrust SuperSonic Car in 1997.
It will be powered by a combination of a hybrid rocket and a jet engine from a Eurofighter-Typhoon.
Three who worked on Thrust are also engaged in the Bloodhound project, including driver Wing Cmdr Andy Green, project director Richard Noble and chief aerodynamicist Ron Ayres.
They plan to mount their assault on the record in late 2011, driving across a dried up lakebed known as Hakskeen Pan, in the Northern Cape of South Africa.

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Chief engineer John Piper shows off the Bloodhound: October 2008

Bloodhound's aero shape is not completely fixed. Further work is still required on the jet intake ducts, the winglets that control lift, the air brakes (deployable structures that slow the car), and the large rear fin. The team also needs to model the air flow into the car.
But settling on the principle exterior surface means the team can now push forward on the main chassis structure and interior packaging of all the components that go into the vehicle.
John Piper intends to produce a master model of the car in late August, early September.
This will be followed by about five to six months of detailed drawing to direct the manufacture of components.
The aim is to have the car built and ready to begin testing in the second half of 2011.
Work is progressing on the wheels which will have to endure tremendous forces as Bloodhound races across the pan.
The 900mm-diameter, 120mm-thick aluminium discs will rotate at 10,300 rpm. The radial acceleration will be equivalent to about 50,000 g at the rims. Under those conditions, the alloy actually begins to stretch.
Lockheed Martin is working on the design. It will shortly run an experiment in which earth from Hakskeen Pan is fired out of an air gun at a sample of aluminium that has been pre-stretched to simulate the loads that will be experienced by the real wheels.
"A piece of dirt at Mach 1.4 is faster than a bullet so we've got to make sure we're not overstretching the material," said John Piper.

Net clash for web police projects

The domain clash could cause confusion for many

Social media activists are up in arms over plans by the UK's police watchdog for a project with the same name as an existing web initiative.

MyPolice.org was set up in mid-2009 to funnel feedback from victims of crime and others to police forces.
But Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) has unveiled plans for a project based around a site called Mypolice.org.uk.
The MyPolice.org founders say they may change their name to avoid confusion.

Force feedback

"This came completely out of the blue," said Lauren Currie, one of the founders of MyPolice.org.
Ms Currie said she and co-founder Sarah Drummond have been working on MyPolice.org since the summer of 2009 and were now getting close to launch.
The idea is to use the website as a central point through which to route messages to police forces about the job they are doing. It will also gather information about local issues and pass them on to UK forces.
"We are about giving feedback and we want that to result in change," said Ms Currie. "That's why it's called MyPolice. We are empowering people to make changes and make their voice heard."
"We have a lot of forces itching to be the pilot," she said adding that people were bound to be puzzled by a the HMIC launching a different service with the same name and very similar website.
Confusion was evident even before the HMIC site formally launched.
"It's causing a huge problem," said Ms Currie. Many supporters had got in touch in reaction to media reports about the launch of MyPolice, she said, only to find out that the reports were about the HMIC project.
One disgruntled supporter of MyPolice.org has set up a parody website called MyHMIC.org to collect comments about the clash. Many others have vented their feelings on micro-blogging service Twitter.
HMIC said its mypolice.org.uk website would be used by members of the public to find out information about how their local force is performing.
In a statement an HMIC spokesman said: "We spoke with the owners of www.mypolice.org, and it is clear that we offer very different online products. Both however aim to improve engagement between the public and their police; and this is to be applauded.
"We remain very happy to work with www.mypolice.org to offer the best possible service to the public."
A spokeswoman for HMIC declined a chance to expand on its statement.
Ms Currie said the two projects have discussed the domain name confusion. The HMIC said it has no plans to change the name of its project nor move it to another site.
Legal action by MyPolice.org has been ruled out, said Ms Currie. "We don't want to go down that route," she told the BBC.
A spokesman for Nominet, which oversees the .uk domain, said Mypolice.org may have a case under its dispute resolution system. Although MyPolice.org does not own the .uk version it may be able to take it over as HMIC's action could be rule as "unfair".
However, he warned, each case was judged on its merits and the dispute resolution might mean HMIC keeps its claim to the .uk domain.

Sony unveils new motion controller PlayStation Move

Sony says the Move is more precise and responsive than other controllers

Sony has unveiled its contender to the market leading Nintendo Wii with its new motion-control video system called PlayStation Move.

Details were revealed during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
The wand-like device uses motion controllers and the PlayStation eye camera to track body movements.
"We'd like to think of this as the next generation of motion gaming," said Sony's marketing boss Peter Dille.
"We are confident that when we look back in five years time, this will be seen as a seminal moment for PlayStation."
While crediting the Wii with doing a "great job in introducing motion gaming to the masses", Mr Dille said the Move has the "potential to take gaming beyond where it is today".

'Second place'

After the announcement, the audience were given a chance to play around with the Move, which resembles Wii's wand with a coloured ball at the top.
Initial reactions were muted.

CNet's Dan Ackerman was less than impressed by the PlayStation Move

"I was disappointed with the amount of real innovation we saw. In terms of ideas, it is very similar to what we have seen with the Wii and if you are Sony, you can't help but want to ape that success," Guy Cocker, UK editor of gaming site GameSpot told BBC News.
The latest figures show that Sony has sold more than 33m of the PlayStation 3, PS3s, versus over 67.5m units for the Wii and more than 39m for Microsoft's Xbox 360.
Dan Ackerman, who is a senior editor with the review site CNet.com, said it is unlikely that the Move will present much of a challenge to Nintendo initially.
"Nintendo has such a lead in this market that both Sony and Microsoft are competing to be the number two choice in the living room.
"PlayStation Move isn't that innovative. It doesn't do anything that differently than the Wii but everyone feels they need to get into this space," said Mr Ackerman.
Microsoft plans to introduce a controller-free system known as Natal. It will let players operate Xbox games using gestures and body motions instead of pressing buttons or waving a device.

Game choices

At the event, Sony unveiled a number of games that users will be able to play using the Move. They include Little Big Planet, Move Party and Sports Champions.
The entertainment giant has around 20 games in development and nearly 40 third-party publishers supporting the device.
The controller will go on sale in the autumn and will cost less than $100 (£47).

US eases Cuba, Iran, Sudan sanctions to allow freer web

Opposition groups in Iran used social networking sites to organise protests

The US treasury department has eased sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Sudan to help further the use of web services and support opposition groups.

US technology firms will now be allowed to export online services such as instant messaging and social networks.
Companies had not offered such services for fear of violating sanctions.
Opposition supporters in Iran used social networking sites and services to organise protests after the country's disputed presidential poll last year.
The US Treasury said exports would be allowed of services related to web browsing, blogging, e-mail, instant messaging, chat, social networking and photo- and movie-sharing.
Low impact?
The move was intended to "ensure that individuals in these countries can exercise their universal right to free speech and information to the greatest extent possible", it said.
"As recent events in Iran have shown, personal internet-based communications like e-mail, instant messaging and social networking are powerful tools," Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said.
The department has allowed the export of services to all three countries, and the export of communications software only to Iran and Sudan, as the export of software to Cuba is governed by the commerce department.
Last year, software giant Microsoft barred users in five countries, including Iran, Cuba and Sudan, from using instant messaging services. People trying to use the service received an error message.
It is not clear whether the governments affected will be able impose their own restrictions on these services.
In Cuba, the numbers of internet users is still very low, so lifting sanctions may not have a major impact, observers say.
Earlier this year, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US would be supporting the development of new tools to enable citizens to circumvent politically-motivated censorship.
Any country which restricted free access to information risked "walling themselves off from the progress of the next century", she added.

ANALYSIS

Kim Ghattas
BBC News, Washington

Internet freedom is fast becoming a principle of US foreign policy. In February, Hillary Clinton said that countries restricting this freedom were violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Treasury Department said the move would make it easier for people in Iran, Sudan and Cuba to use the internet and exercise their most basic rights.

The technology will likely be bought by small technology businesses - if they are able to access it - and some of it could help circumvent government restrictions on the use of programmes like Twitter and even internet-based e-mail accounts.

Iran clamped down on the use of Gmail ahead of planned protests in Iran last month. But while it tries to open up the flow of information for citizens in countries it deems repressive, the US is also pushing to tighten sanctions on Iran's government because of its controversial nuclear programme.

Spanish police arrest masterminds of 'massive' botnet

Few owners of hijacked machines know they have been compromised

Spanish police have revealed that they have arrested three men responsible for one of the world's biggest networks of virus-infected computers.

All are Spanish citizens with no criminal records and limited hacking skills.
It is estimated that the so-called Mariposa botnet was made up of nearly 13 million computers in 190 countries.
It included PCs inside more than half of Fortune 1000 companies and more than 40 major banks, investigators said.
The criminals have so far only been identified by their internet names, netkairo, aged 31, johnyloleante, aged 30 and ostiator, 25.
Other arrests may follow, the investigators believe.
The first member of the gang was arrested in early February, when he inadvertently logged into the network without disguising the address of his computer.
His computer linked investigators to two more suspects who were arrested later in the month.

'Limited skills'

The botnet was being monitored and was rendered inactive in December, following a major investigation conducted by the FBI, the Spanish Guardia Civil and security experts around the world.
The network of computers was designed to steal sensitive information, including usernames, passwords, banking credentials and credit card data, from social media sites and other online e-mail services.
One of the arrested men had 800,000 pieces of personal data on his machine.
Some very high profile businesses were targeted.
"It would be easier for me to provide a list of the Fortune 1000 companies that weren't compromised," said Christopher Davis, chief executive of security firm Defence Intelligence, one of the firms that was invited to join the Mariposa Working Group, which was set up to deal with the botnet in May 2009.
Panda Security was also in the group.
Senior research advisor Pedro Bustamante said the criminals behind the botnet did not have "advanced hacking skills".
"This is very alarming because it proves how sophisticated and effective malware distribution software has become, empowering relatively unskilled cyber criminals to inflict major damage and financial loss," he said.
The gang made money by renting out parts of the botnet to other cyber-criminals as well as selling stolen credentials and using banking and credit card information to make transactions via so-called money mules.
Working with law enforcement agencies is not without its risks for security firms.
After the botnet was closed down, Defence Intelligence was hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack as an apparent act of retaliation.
A DDoS attack occurs when a website is bombarded by requests for pages, often by a botnet, effectively taking it offline.
The attack was powerful enough to knock customers of an unnamed ISP offline for several hours.
The firm remains determined to pursue such cases.
"We will continue to fight the threat of botnets and the criminals behind them. We'll start by dismantling their infrastructure and won't stop until they're standing in front of a judge," said Mr Davis.

China shuts down training website for hackers

China has more internet users than any other country

China has closed down what is believed to be the country's biggest training website for hackers, state media has reported.

They say the site, Black Hawk Safety Net, gave lessons in hacking and sold downloads of malicious software.
The reports say three people suspected of running the site were arrested.
Hacking is a sensitive topic for China, especially since the internet giant Google recently threatened to pull out of the country.
Google said China-based hackers had attacked its operations but the Chinese government denied any involvement.
The hacker training operation openly recruited thousands of members online and provided them with cyber attack lessons and Trojan software, the China Daily and the Wuhan Evening News said.
Trojans, which can allow outside access to a computer when implanted, are used by hackers to illegally control computers.
Black Hawk Safety Net recruited more than 12,000 paying subscribers and collected more than seven million yuan ($1m: £650,000) in membership fees, while another 170,000 people had signed up for free membership, the paper said.
The Hubei government refused to comment on the reports.
It was unclear when the shutdown had taken place but the Black Hawk Safety Net site was unavailable on Monday.
Cyber attacks
In January Google threatened to pull out of China unless the government relented on censorship.
It said it had uncovered a computer attack that tried to plunder its software coding and the e-mail accounts of human rights activists protesting against Chinese policies.
Government officials have defended China's online censorship and said the country is the biggest victim of web attacks.
China has some 350 million internet users - more than any other country - and provides a lucrative search-engine market worth an estimated $1bn last year.
Google holds about a third of the country's search market, with Chinese rival Baidu having more than 60%.
The BBC's Damian Grammaticas in Beijing says that the reports made no link between the hacking site and Google's allegations.
But the case will help authorities show that China is taking action against those who hack into computers, says our correspondent.

Microsoft to patch 17-year-old computer bug

The bug dates from the days of Windows 3.1

A 17-year-old bug in Windows will be patched by Microsoft in its latest security update.

The February update for Windows will close the loophole that dates from the time of the DOS operating system.
First appearing in Windows NT 3.1, the vulnerability has been carried over into almost every version of Windows that has appeared since.
The monthly security update will also tackle a further 25 holes in Windows, five of which are rated as "critical".
Home hijack
The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs.
Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7.
The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it.

STAYING SAFE ONLINE Use security software that can tackle viruses and spyware Use a firewall Apply operating system updates as soon as they become available Be suspicious of unsolicited e-mails bearing attachments Keep your browser up to date

As well as fixing holes in many versions of Windows, the update also tackles bugs in Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2004 for Apple Macintosh machines.
The bumper update is not the largest that Microsoft has ever released. The security update for October 2009 tackled a total of 34 vulnerabilities. Eight of those updates were rated as critical - the highest level.
In January 2010, Microsoft released an "out of band" patch for a serious vulnerability in Internet Explorer that was being exploited online. The vulnerability was also thought to be the one used to attack Google in China.
Following the attack on Google, many other cyber criminals started seeking ways to exploit the loophole.
Also this week, a security researcher has reported the discovery of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer that allows attackers to view the files held on a victim's machine.
Microsoft has issued a security bulletin about the problem and aims to tackle it at a future date. At the moment there is no evidence that this latest find is being actively exploited online.

WikiLeaks whistleblower site in temporary shutdown

Even without paying its staff, WikiLeaks says it needs $200,000 a year

WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website that allows people to publish uncensored information anonymously, has suspended operations owing to financial problems.

Its running costs including staff payments are $600,000 (£377,000), but so far this year it has raised just $130,000 (£81,000).
WikiLeaks has established a reputation for publishing information that traditional media cannot.
The website claims to be non-profit and relies on donations.
A statement on its front page says it is funded by "human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public".

Original documents
WikiLeaks does not accept money from governments or corporations.
A list of names and addresses of people said to belong to the British National Party (BNP) was posted on the site in October 2009.
WikiLeaks also published e-mail exchanges involving US politician Sarah Palin after her account was hacked.
The site claims to have information about corrupt banks, the UN and the Iraq war that it is unable to publish while funds remain low.
While it has won awards for its work from the Economist and Amnesty International, WikiLeaks has also fought more than 100 legal challenges.
"WikiLeaks has established a good name for itself and broken some good stories," Julian Petley, chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, told BBC News.
"One of the reasons why WikiLeaks is so useful is that it's able to put original documents up - unfiltered by comment and editorial."
Investigative journalist Paul Lashmar said he had been "startled" by the effectiveness of WikiLeaks in publishing suppressed information.
However he thought that the funding issue would not be easily resolved.
"(Web) users aren't interested in how the people behind sites make their money," he said.
"The problem for the self-funding model is that sites like WikiLeaks will not find it easy to attract funding through advertising.
"At some point people who care about free speech will realise that free speech has to be funded, otherwise it's not free."

Microsoft patches Internet Explorer hole

Microsoft recommends that people upgrade to IE8

Microsoft has released a fix for a hole in Internet Explorer that was the weak link in a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack on Google.

Microsoft recommends that customers install the update as soon as possible or update to the latest version of the web browser for "improved security".

Microsoft normally issues patches monthly but the high-profile nature of the attacks led it to act more quickly.

The patch - MS10-002 - was released worldwide at 1000 PST (1800 GMT).

"It addresses the vulnerability related to recent attacks against Google and small subset of corporations, as well as several other vulnerabilities," the firm said.

"Once applied, customers are protected against the known attacks that have been widely publicised."

Microsoft has admitted that it has known about the vulnerability since "since early September" 2009 and had planned to patch it in February.

Trojan Horse

Google threatened to withdraw from the Chinese market following attacks on its infrastructure.

The hacks - thought to have originated in China - targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Following Microsoft's revelation that Explorer had been used in the attacks, the French and German governments advised their citizens to switch to a different browser until the hole had been closed.

The UK government downplayed the threat and said there was "no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure".

However, Microsoft has taken the unusual step of patching the hole nearly three weeks ahead of its regular security update.

The new patch is available via the Microsoft Update site and will also be fed out to those who have their machines set to update automatically. All versions of Internet Explorer will receive the update.

Malicious code exploiting the weakness is known to be circulating on the web, said security experts.

If a web user were to visit a compromised site using a vulnerable browser, they could become infected with a "trojan horse", allowing a hacker to take control of the computer and potentially steal sensitive information.

Microsoft said on 18 January that the firm had only seen malicious code that targeted the older version of its browser, IE6 and that there were "very few" infected sites on the web.

But security firms had said they had seen "copycat" sites trying to exploit the vulnerability.

The bad publicity has allowed rivals such as Firefox to gain market share.

According to web analytics company StatCounter Firefox is now a close second to Internet Explorer (IE) in Europe, with 40% of the market compared to Microsoft's 45% share.

In some markets, including Germany and Austria, Firefox has overtaken IE, the firm said.

Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox has just released the latest version (3.6) of the open-source browser.