Justin Bieber's website has been fined $1m (£0.6m)

The operator that set up fan websites for several pop stars has agreed to pay $1m (£0.6m) to settle charges that it collected personal data about children.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had alleged that Artist Arena collected e-mails, birth dates, and names of about 100,000 children under 13-years-old, without parental consent.
The operator ran sites for Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Rihanna. For more click here

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Japan mini-satellite to flash code from space

 

A palm-sized Japanese satellite in orbit around Earth will flash a Morse code message that will be visible around the world from next month, the mission commander said on Friday.

Researchers hope the satellite, measuring 10 centimetres (four inches) cubed and launched from the International Space Station on Friday, will become the first orbiter to transmit an LED message across the night sky.

The message was originally intended to be seen just in Japan, but people around the world have asked for the satellite to communicate when it overflies them, said Takushi Tanaka, professor at The Fukuoka Institute of Technology.

"Requests came from far more people than I expected -- a man in Silicon Valley wanted to see it while another man wanted us to flash it over Central Park in New York," Tanaka told AFP by telephone.

He said he has also received requests from residents of cities in Italy, Germany, Brazil, Britain and Hungary.

"There is no practical aim to this, but it is a fun experiment that everybody can join," he said.

Observers, ideally with binoculars, will be able to see flashes of light -- green in the northern hemisphere, where people will see the "front" of the satellite, and red in the southern hemisphere, where the "back" will be visible.

Morse code uses a series of dots and dashes to represent letters of the alphabet and is commonly understood across the world as a way of transmitting pieces of text.

"A man in Slovakia who has laser beam said he would flash back if he sees the message from space. He wants the satellite to take pictures of his beam and send them to Earth," Tanaka said.

The professor said his team would try their best to accommodate requests but warned being able to see the Morse code message would be largely dependent on the weather.

The message it will send is "Hi this is Niwaka Japan". Niwaka is the satellite's nickname and reflects a play on words in the local dialect of southwestern Japan.

Besides transmitting its LED message, the camera-equipped satellite will also take images of Earth and send them to a base station in an experiment on high-speed data transmissions.

The solar-powered device was released from the International Space Station 390 kilometres (242 miles) above Earth and is now in a regular orbit.

Specific timings and locations will be announced later on the institute's website -- http://www.fit.ac.jp/kenkyu/fitsat1/ -- in Japanese and English.

© 2012 AFP

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Facebook to start charging you $7 for every of your post

Facebook has begun testing a new feature that would allow users to increase the visibility of their posts for a fee, in what appears to be a new bid to add more profitability to the social network.

"As part of a test starting today, people in the US can promote personal posts to their friends on Facebook," the company said in a statement Wednesday.

"Sometimes a particular friend might not notice your post, especially if a lot of their friends have been posting recently and your story isn't near the top of their feed," it said.

"When you promote a post -- whether it's wedding photos, a garage sale, or big news -- you bump it higher in news feed so your friends and subscribers are more likely to notice it."

The option will be made available to users with fewer than 5,000 friends and subscribers, Facebook said.

Facebook did not specify the price of the new service, but TechCrunch.com said it would start at $7 per post, making it a potentially major source of profit for the social network, which counts 955 million members.

The testing began in New Zealand in May and has gradually spread to other countries.

A dismal stock market debut in May raised questions about Facebook's profitability, and since then the company has said it is considering new revenue-generating schemes, including charging for some services.

Last month the company revamped its "Offers" service to require payments, starting at $5 per ad, for the deals offered through Facebook -- making companies pay for what had been free advertising until now.

Facebook has also added a feature that lets users send real-life cupcakes, coffee, stuffed animals or other gifts to friends in the social network.

The "Gifts" program is being rolled out gradually, starting in the United States, and Facebook stands to get a fee for brokering purchases.

The world's largest social network has seen its stock price sag since its market debut at $38 per share. Shares closed at $21.83 Wednesday.

© 2012 AFP

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Facebook has reached one billion Users

Yes, it's finally happened: Facebook has exceeded one billion users.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that his social media site had reached the major milestone.

"This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month," he said. "Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life."
Facebook Inc (FB) stock edged up 1.6% in premarket trading.
Topping the 1 billion mark means that Facebook now reaches one out of every 7 people on the planet.
The ubiquitous social media giant that was famously created in a Harvard dorm room hasn't had much trouble attracting new members. While its growth in North America and Europe has leveled off, Facebook continues sucking in new users throughout Asia and the developing world. It has a presence in more than 200 sovereign territories, according to stats tracked by All Facebook, which draws on data Facebook provides to advertisers, and an empire that stretches from a mere 20 users in Vatican City to more than 166 million in the United States.
It took Facebook six years to hit the 500 million user mark and barely two to double it. Facebook's total membership grew nearly 30% over the past year, but in hot regions like Brazil, its membership doubled. (Sorry, Orkut.)
From a money-making standpoint, not all of those users are created equal.
Less than 20% of Facebook's users live in the U.S. and Canada, but those users account for 48% of the $992 million in advertising revenue that Facebook took in last quarter. Facebook makes an average of $3.20 each quarter in revenue off its North American users, versus just 55 cents from those in Asia.
Increasing those figures is one of Facebook's top corporate priorities. Investors remain leery of Facebook, whose shares have fallen more than 40% since the company's rocky public debut in May.
The company is also scrambling to increase its foothold in the mobile world, the next big battleground for social networks. By the end of this year, there will be more mobile devices on Earth than people, according to forecasts from Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500).
Half of Facebook's users access the site at least once a month through mobile devices, and a whopping 102 million users -- more than 10% of the site's membership -- only use Facebook's mobile site.
Building a better mobile experience is one of Facebook's top priorities, Zuckerberg said in a recent interview: "That's the future."
Research firm eMarketer recently predicted that Facebook's annual mobile ad revenue will hit $629 million by 2014, putting it second only to Google (GOOG, Fortune 500). But for 2012, eMarketer estimates Facebook's mobile sales at a scant $73 million -- a pittance among the $5 billion in revenue that analysts expect Facebook to rack up this year.
Facebook's financial filings emphasize the importance of expanding its membership ranks.
"The size of our user base and our users' level of engagement are critical to our success," the company said in its IPO filing. "Our financial performance has been and will continue to be significantly determined by our success in adding, retaining, and engaging active users."
So where will Facebook's next 1 billion users come from? There's one major market the company hasn't tapped yet: China. Blocked by government censors from reaching Facebook, China's 1.3 billion citizens have turned to their own homegrown social networks, including Renren, Sina, and Tencent.
It's a challenge Facebook will have to take on at some point. "We continue to evaluate entering China," the company said in its latest quarterly.
Its executives have dropped even more direct hints. Zuckerberg studies Chinese and his wife, Priscilla Chan, has relatives in the country. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg suggested in an interview last year with Charlie Rose that the company's ambition will eventually take it into even the most challenging markets.
In Sandberg's own words: "If your mission is to connect the entire world ... you can't connect the whole world and not China."

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FIFA soccer videogame has sold over 4.5million

US videogame titan Electronic Arts on Wednesday announced that "FIFA Soccer 13" scored a sports title launch record by selling more than 4.5 million copies in the five days after its release.

The newest edition of the annual EA Sports franchise had the hottest videogame debut overall this year and was a top-seller in at least 40 countries, according to the Northern California-based company.

The realistic soccer videogame proved especially popular in Britain, where more than 1.23 million copies were bought in the 48 hours after its release on September 25, EA reported. For more details click here

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US lifts ban on sales of Samsung tablet 10.1

A federal judge has lifted a ban on sales of Samsung Electronics Corp.'s Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled Monday the South Korean technology giant is now free to start selling the product in American stores.

The judge had previously banned U.S. sales of the tablet pending the resolution of a sweeping patent trial between Apple Inc. and Samsung over vital technology used in smartphones and tablet computers.

A jury in September ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1 billion after finding many of Samsung's products illegally used technology developed by Apple for its iPhones and iPads. But the jury found that Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 wasn't one of the offending products.

The judge scheduled a December hearing to consider Samsung's demand for a new trial.

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Is the Drones the future Tech Combat Toys

 
A decade ago, the United States had a virtual monopoly on drones.

Not anymore. According to data compiled by the New America Foundation, more than 70 countries now own some type of drone, though just a small number of those nations possess armed drone aircraft.

The explosion in drone technology promises to change the way nations conduct war and threatens to begin a new arms race as governments scramble to counterbalance their adversaries.

Late last month, China announced that it would use surveillance drones to monitor a group of uninhabited islands in the South China Sea that are controlled by Japan but claimed by China and Taiwan.

In August 2010, Iran unveiled what it claimed was its first armed drone. And on Tuesday, the country's military chief, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, disclosed details of a new long-range drone that he said can fly 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), which puts Tel Aviv easily in range.But without an international framework governing the use of drone attacks, the United States is setting a dangerous precedent for other nations with its aggressive and secretive drone programs in Pakistan and Yemen, which are aimed at suspected members of al Qaeda and their allies.

Just as the U.S. government justifies its drone strikes with the argument that it is at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates, one could imagine that India in the not too distant future might launch such attacks against suspected terrorists in Kashmir, or China might strike Uighur separatists in western China, or Iran might attack Baluchi nationalists along its border with Pakistan.

This moment may almost be here. China took the United States by surprise in November 2010 at the Zhuhai Air Show, where it unveiled 25 drone models, some of which were outfitted with the capability to fire missiles.

It remains unclear just how many of China's drones are operational and how many of them are still in development, but China is intent on catching up with the United States' rapidly expanding drone arsenal.

When President George W. Bush declared a "War on Terror" 11 years ago, the Pentagon had fewer than 50 drones.

Now, it has around 7,500.

As Bush embarked on that war, the United States had never used armed drones in combat. The first U.S. armed drone attack, which appears to be the first such strike ever, took place in mid-November 2001 and killed the military commander of al Qaeda, Mohammed Atef, in Afghanistan.

Since then, the CIA has used drones equipped with bombs and missiles hundreds of times to target suspected militants in Pakistan and Yemen.

Only the United States, United Kingdom and Israel are known to have launched drone strikes against their adversaries, although other members of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, such as Australia, have "borrowed" drones from Israel for use in the war there.

Drone technology is proliferating rapidly. A 2011 study estimated that there were around 680 active drone development programs run by governments, companies and research institutes around the world, compared with just 195 in 2005.

In 2010, U.S.-based General Atomics received export licenses to sell unarmed versions of the Predator drone to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. And in March, the U.S. government agreed to arm Italy's six Reaper drones but rejected a request from Turkey to purchase armed Predator drones.

An official in Turkey's Defense Ministry said in July that Turkey planned to arm its own domestically produced drone, the Anka.

Israel is the world's largest exporter of drones and drone technology, and the state-owned Israeli Aerospace Industries has sold to countries as varied as Nigeria, Russia and Mexico.

Building drones, particularly armed drones, takes sophisticated technology and specific weaponry, but governments are increasingly willing to invest the necessary time and money to either buy or develop them, as armed drones are increasingly seen as an integral part of modern warfare.

Sweden, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and France are working on a joint project through state-owned aeronautical companies and are in the final stages of developing an advanced armed drone prototype called the Dassault nEURon, from which the France plans to derive armed drones for its air force.

And Pakistani authorities have long tried to persuade the United States to give them armed Predator drones, while India owns an armed Israeli drone designed to detect and destroy enemy radar, though it does not yet have drones capable of striking other targets.

The Teal Group, a defense consulting firm in Virginia, estimated in June that the global market for the research, development and procurement of armed drones will just about double in the next decade, from $6.6 billion to $11.4 billion.

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