Samsung works on mind-control tablet

23 April 2013 Last updated at 12:21 ET

Samsung is experimenting with a mind-controlled tablet that it hopes will shake up the way people interact with devices.

The South Korean firm, along with US researchers, has demonstrated how people can launch an application and make selections on a Galaxy tablet by concentrating on a blinking icon.

Users need to wear a cap studded with EEG-monitoring electrodes.

Such a device would be invaluable to people with mobility issues.

Playing music

Samsung's lead researcher Insoo Kim told news website MIT Technology Review that thought control was a natural transition for interacting with devices.

"Several years ago, a small keypad was the only input modality to control the phone, but nowadays the user can use voice, touch, gesture and eye movement to control and interact with mobile devices.

"Adding more input modalities will provide us with more convenient and richer ways of interacting with mobile devices."

Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone already allows users to control the screen using their eyes. Using "smart pause" the user can pause a video by looking away from the screen while another feature uses eye movements to scroll through content.

Accuracy

The smartphone maker demonstrated a person using the mind-control system to select a music application and play and pause a classical music track.

Continue reading the main story

These experiments give us a feeling for where the technology may take us, to help with things such as locked-in syndrome"

End Quote Kevin Brown IBM senior inventor

Mr Kim said that the speed with which a user can control the tablet averaged about one selection every five seconds with an accuracy of 80% to 95%.

Researchers from Samsung's Emerging Technology Lab worked with Roozbeh Jafari, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas.

Prof Jafari is also working on a way to make EEG headsets more user-friendly. Current caps have wet contact electrodes that require liquid to be placed between the scalp and the sensor.

He plans to develop a dry version that is also less intrusive.

Gauging mood

Technology companies are beginning to look at mind-controlled devices and there are already headsets on the market from firms such as NeuroSky and Emotiv that measure moods and allow users to interact with apps and games.

IBM is also experimenting with mind control headsets. Kevin Brown, a senior inventor at IBM's emerging technology lab, has done a series of experiments with Emotiv headsets.

"Everyone finds it incredibly hard work on focus on controlling devices," he said. One experiment in which he sent an email using mind control took 20 minutes.

"These things are nowhere near usable by the general population but these experiments give us a feeling for where the technology may take us, to help with things such as locked-in syndrome, for instance."

He also envisages a future where mind-control headsets are used to gauge moods - so a focus group may use it to get a sense of how a crowd is responding to a politician, for example.

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Reddit apologises for 'witch hunt'

23 April 2013 Last updated at 08:53 ET

Social news site Reddit has issued a public apology for its coverage of the Boston bombings.

Its Find Boston Bombers thread - known as a subreddit - wrongly named several people as suspects.

The misidentified included 17-year-old Salah Barhoun and missing 22-year-old Sunil Tripathi.

Reddit has admitted that it helped to fuel "online witch hunts". The debacle has fuelled debate about how far such speculation should go in future.

"We all need to look at what happened and make sure that in the future we do everything we can to help and not hinder crisis situations," the apology read.

"Though started with noble intentions, some of the activity on Reddit fuelled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiralled into very negative consequences for innocent parties."

It went on to apologise to the family of Mr Tripathi.

The family had to suspend the Facebook page they had created to find him because of the amount of negative comments they received. Mr Tripathi's name trended on Twitter and numerous news sites.

"We were very worried about Sunil and about each other because of how fast completely unsubstantiated claims were spreading," his sister Sangeeta Tripathi told the BBC World Service.

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"Our entire neighbourhood and our house were surrounded by media trucks. On my personal cellphone I got 72 phone calls between 3am and 4.30 in the morning.

"We just really hope that something like what happened to our family - and it's happened to a few other people in the same media frenzy around Boston - doesn't keep happening and that we are conscious of how powerful some of our platforms are."

The tragedy in Boston created a huge amount of traffic on Reddit, peaking at about 272,000 users, according to Google Analytics.

As well as attempting to solve the mystery of who the suspects were, Redditors - as contributors to the site are known - also organised housing for people stranded in Boston, sent pizza deliveries to police and hospitals, and organised "dog therapy" in local parks for traumatised residents.

The apology concludes: "After this week, which showed the best and worst of Reddit's potential, we hope that Boston will also be where Reddit learns to be sensitive of its own power."

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Robot helper to aid field engineers

23 April 2013 Last updated at 19:15 ET

A robotic sidekick could soon be helping field engineers fix faulty equipment in remote locations.

Developed by IBM, the robotic helper has a projector that can overlay information on equipment to guide remote repair work.

Supervisors and experts back at base can also look and talk through the projector to oversee fault fixing.

In addition they can sketch diagrams, use a laser pointer or run videos to aid employees in the field.

The Mobile Repair and Operations (MRO) prototype has been built to help maintenance workers who are often called on to find and fix equipment on large industrial plants they have never visited before.

The innovation - which pairs a GPS-equipped smartphone with a robot arm - can guide engineers to the right location using augmented reality.

The phone's screen acts as a window on to the augmented world overlaying it with arrows, signs and other cues to help navigate through an industrial plant to the faulty equipment.

If needed, staff in a control centre can see and hear everything the field engineer is seeing and hearing via the camera and microphone mounted on the robot arm.

They can also guide the arm to get a closer look at what is broken or use its in-built projector to give advice.

This could be in the form of video guides that take engineers step-by-step through repairs or via freehand sketches that can can be projected on flat surfaces.

In addition, the arm has an in-built laser pointer that can show exactly where on a machine work should start or where parts should be placed.

In the event of an accident, the system can also be used to help injured staff quickly find the nearest first aid station or guide them to other workers who can offer assistance.

The prototype has been developed by IBM scientists in Winchester in the UK and Haifa in Israel who worked alongside researchers from Sheffield University's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.

If brought to market it will compete against Motorola Solutions' HC1 headset.

The rival technology - which launched last year - allows a maintenance worker's back-up team to send blueprints and other useful information to a small screen held in front of their left eye while transmitting a video feed back to base,

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Apple reports rare fall in profits

23 April 2013 Last updated at 21:11 ET

Computer and smartphone maker Apple has reported its first quarterly drop in profits in a decade, but said it will raise dividends for shareholders.

It made a net profit of $9.5bn (£6.2bn) in the January to March quarter, down from $11.6bn last year.

But the results were better than many had expected, as strong iPhone and iPad sales boosted revenues to $43.6bn.

Concerns over slowing demand for its products amid increased competition have hurt Apple's share price recently.

"Though we've achieved a credible scale and financial success, we acknowledge that our growth rate has slowed and our margins have decreased from the exceptionally high level we experienced in 2012," Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple said.

The company said it sold 37.4 million iPhones and 19.5 million iPads worldwide in the three-month period.

'Very frustrating'

Although Apple continues to remain a dominant player in the tablet computer and smartphone markets, investors have been worried that its market share was being eroded by increasingly popular offerings from rivals such as Samsung.

Continue reading the main story

For months, Apple's share price has been plunging amid worries that the years of innovation and ever growing profits might be about to end.

But this time investors saw just enough in the results to cheer them up a bit.

The rise in iPhone sales in particular provided some evidence that the most lucrative product in Apple's history might go on adding to the company's enormous cash pile.

The CEO, Tim Cook, while stressing that Apple had always met its own estimates, did acknowledge that others had been disappointed recently - and seemed eager to calm investors' fears.

But he also made it clear that the next few months will be a lean period, with teams working hard to introduce new products "this fall and throughout 2014".

Apple's boss is promising that innovation isn't over at his company - but investors' patience will be tested through the summer.

There have also been concerns over the lack of new product launches.

Analysts have suggested the company needs to innovate and develop new products to stay ahead of the competition, rather than relying on updates to existing products.

"The market is tired of the same old thing at Apple,'' said Lauren Balter, an analyst at Oracle Investment Research.

"Investors are looking for innovation. The reality is that people are looking at other products now and they are looking at other cool features from competitors.''

These concerns have seen investors ditch Apple shares over the past few months. It has lost around 40% of its stock market value since hitting an all-time high in September last year.

However, Apple's chief executive tried to assure investors and shareholders that the firm was continuing to take measures to ensure that it maintained its dominance in the market.

"The decline in Apple's stock price over the last couple of quarters has been very frustrating for all of us... but we'll continue to do what we do best,'' he said.

"The most important objective for Apple will always be creating innovative products.

"Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software and services, and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline," he added.

Some analysts said that the lack of a new product did not mean that the firm was not developing one.

Continue reading the main story

"What no investor can see is what is happening between closed doors in research and development,'' said David Tan, assistant professor of strategy at Georgetown University.

"[Research and development] is always very secretive. It always takes a very long time between the inception of an idea and commercialising a product.''

Shares rise

Apple, which before the latest earnings had $137bn in cash, has been under pressure to share some of it with shareholders.

On Tuesday the company said it planned to buy back $60bn in shares, and raise its dividend to shareholders by 15%.

The move encouraged investors and Apple's shares rose 5.5% in after-hours trading on Wall Street.

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Australia hacking 'leader' charged

23 April 2013 Last updated at 23:23 ET

Australian police say they have arrested a "self-proclaimed leader" of the hacking group LulzSec.

The 24-year-old from New South Wales is accused of attacking and defacing a government website earlier this month, a police statement said.

Lulzsec has claimed responsibility for several high profile cyber-attacks, including against Sony Pictures and the CIA.

It emerged as a splinter-group of hacking collective Anonymous in 2011.

In the statement, the Australian Federal Police said that the arrested man was an IT professional who used his position in an IT company to access sensitive information from clients, including government agencies.

He has been charged with two counts of unauthorised modification of data to cause impairment, and one count of unauthorised access to restricted data. He faces a maximum of 12 years in jail.

"Those thinking of engaging in such activities should be warned that hacking, creating or propagating malicious viruses or participating in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are not harmless fun," Cyber Crimes Commander Glen McEwen said.

LulzSec gained international attention when they hacked the Sony website in 2011, taking down the company's PlayStation network for weeks and accessing millions of users' accounts.

It was estimated to have cost the company over $100 million (£65m) and was part of a 50-day rampage which targeted organisations ranging from the FBI to Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency.

The name stood for Lulz Security - in which "Lulz" is derived from the popular internet term "lol", meaning "laugh out loud".

The group's members employed techniques to flood websites with high traffic - known as DDoS attacks - in order to render them unusable.

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PM backs 'clean wi-fi' porn block

24 April 2013 Last updated at 06:02 ET

David Cameron has pledged to promote "good, clean, wi-fi" in public spaces.

It follows a campaign by a number of children's charities to get sites with adult content restricted in public areas with wi-fi internet access.

Mr Cameron told the Telegraph he wanted people to "have confidence in public wi-fi systems so that they are not going to see things they shouldn't".

The Children's Charities Coalition on Internet Safety welcomed the comments and said any deal was "long overdue".

Last year a cross-party parliamentary inquiry into how safe children are online concluded the government and internet service providers needed to do more to protect children from online pornography.

Since then government officials have been in discussion with wi-fi providers about filtering adult content by default on the services they provide directly to the public.

Rapid rise

A Downing Street spokesman said discussions were "ongoing" with companies and no decision had been taken about new rules or a code of conduct.

Continue reading the main story

Public access to the internet is a modern reality and we have to find a way of dealing with this growing problem."

End Quote John Carr Children's Charities Coalition on Internet Safety

He said the dialogue was part of the prime minister's efforts to revitalise town centres and ensure family-friendly wi-fi was available on High Streets.

Speaking during a local elections campaign visit, Mr Cameron said: "We are promoting good, clean, wi-fi in local cafes and elsewhere to make sure that people have confidence in public wi-fi systems so that they are not going to see things they shouldn't."

Parents are able to restrict what their children see on the internet in the home, but campaigners are concerned this means they are more likely to access inappropriate material outside the home using smartphones, laptops and tablets.

Wireless internet access in public places such as restaurants, cafes, hotels and pubs has grown rapidly in recent years.

Figures from The Cloud, the UK's biggest high street wi-fi provider, show that 10.6m people log on to wi-fi in public venues every week.

'Heavy-handed legislation'

The Children's Charities Coalition on Internet Safety, which includes the NSPCC, Barnardo's and the Children's Society, has called for a blanket ban on access to adult sites via public networks.

Its secretary John Carr told the Telegraph: "We welcome any deal which is long overdue.

"Public access to the internet is a modern reality and we have to find a way of dealing with this growing problem."

Conservative MP Claire Perry, who led the parliamentary inquiry into online child protection, said the biggest providers of public wi-fi networks, such as Virgin and BT, have already agreed to offer the option of a block on adult porn.

Many of the bigger retailers, such as Starbucks and Mcdonalds, have taken up the option, she said, and some hotels have decided to put adult content behind paywalls.

She told the BBC: "We are making progress on family-friendly internet access. We have done it without heavy-handed legislation."

Ms Perry said she hoped that blocking adult porn in public spaces would become universal by the end of the year.

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Nokia phone gets Whatsapp button

24 April 2013 Last updated at 07:25 ET

Nokia has released a mobile phone with a dedicated WhatsApp physical button.

The feature triggers the cross-platform messaging app which offers a free alternative to SMS texts.

HTC and Nokia have previously released handsets with Facebook-devoted buttons, but this marks a first for WhatsApp.

Analysts suggested the move would make WhatsApp the text app of choice on the handsets, but suggested it would have limited impact on the wider mobile phone market.

Nokia's Asha 210 runs on the firm's proprietary Series 40 operating system and will be targeted at consumers in emerging markets looking for a cheaper alternative to the Finnish firm's Windows Phone range and other companies' smartphones. The OS supports third-party web apps and software written in the Java programming language.

To achieve a targeted retail price of £47 ($72) Nokia decided that the device's 2.4in (6.1cm) screen would not be touch-enabled.

Users have to use its built-in Qwerty keyboard and navigation button to launch and operate apps, so having a dedicated key gives WhatsApp an edge over alternatives on the handset.

In addition owners of the phone are offered a subscription to the app for the device's lifespan rather than having to pay the normal annual fee.

Nokia refused to reveal the financial terms of the arrangement and said it would monitor customer response before deciding whether to include the feature on any of its other devices.

Room to grow

Silicon Valley-based WhatsApp launched in 2009.

Its chief executive Jan Joum recently told the AllThingsD tech site that his firm had more active users than Twitter which claims more than 200 million people use its service at least once a month.

Mr Joum did not give an equivalent figure of his own. However, he did say that WhatsApp processed about eight billion inbound messages and 12 billion outbound messages a day.

According to a study published by tech consultancy Ovum, WhatsApp is the world's third most popular social messaging service after Facebook Chat and Google Chat.

Reports earlier this month suggested the firm was in talks to be taken over by Google in a $1bn deal - however, they were later denied.

A survey by Ovum suggested that 51% of WhatsApp users reduced the amount of SMS messages sent after downloading the app.

That threat has prompted some telecom operators including Telefonica to launch their own rival services, while others such as India's Reliance Communications have preferred to sign formal partnerships with WhatsApp itself.

Since Nokia's Asha range is predominantly targeted at consumers in Asia, Africa and the Middle East any benefits from the tie-up will come from those territories.

"WhatsApp is doing quite well in emerging markets, but you have local players who are outstripping it simply because they are more culturally specific and can therefore outshine the US firm," said Neha Dharia, an analyst at Ovum.

"The most prominent example is in China with WeChat.

"But the emerging markets still offer huge potential for all the social messaging apps to grow because the amount of mobile internet available is still lower than in mature markets."

However, another industry watcher questioned what impact the move would have.

"Having a dedicated hard key is a nice touch and it might help differentiate Nokia's Asha line," said Roberta Cozza, research director at tech analysis firm Gartner.

"But I don't think it will make a big difference for either of the firms involved because there are already lots of affordable low-end full-screen touch-enabled Android phones out there which can be customised to offer quick WhatsApp and other messaging software."

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BitTorrent Sync challenges Dropbox

24 April 2013 Last updated at 10:13 ET

Developers of the BitTorrent file-sharing process have opened an experimental data-synchronising tool up to the public.

BitTorrent Sync uses peer-to-peer technology to send information between users' PCs.

It eliminates the need to upload data to a third party's computer servers, as is the case with services such as Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive.

But one analyst said businesses were unlikely to be tempted by the idea.

Davies Murphy Group's Chris Green said companies would worry about their lack of control over the new process even though it did not rely on a third-party's data centre to update what might be sensitive files.

But he said it might appeal to some members of the public for private use.

Fast and private

BitTorrent is an eight-year old San Francisco-based company offering a range of free-to-use products designed to make it easy and quick to send large files over the internet.

They work by co-ordinating the process so that devices downloading material also share small pieces of already-accessed data with others in order to share the load.

Although the technology has become associated with media piracy due to its use by some media-sharing sites, BitTorrent itself is a legal company that makes money by licensing its technology and brands to business customers.

It began testing the new tool at the start of the year. The facility is categorised as alpha - signalling it is still being tested and may be unstable - but the firm announced on its blog that it was now ready to invite the public to try it out.

It suggested users might find it quicker and more private than the alternatives.

"Since Sync is based on P2P [peer-to-peer technology] and doesn't require a pit-stop in the cloud, you can transfer files at the maximum speed supported by your network," it said.

"Your information is never stored on a server in the cloud; your data is protected by encrypted keys. Your files belong to you, and stay on the devices of your choice."

To prevent unauthorised access to shared data, the software generates a private key for each synched folder on the original device.

This is made up of at least 32 characters and must be entered into all the other devices to which the information is sent to in order for the files to be accessible.

One of the benefits of synching software is that it allows a user to ensure any changes made to a document on one machine are copied to all their other devices.

In its current state, BitTorrent Sync achieves this by noting the change and then copying the whole updated file to other computers, replacing any earlier version.

This means it may be less efficient in some cases than some of the cloud-based services that can detect which parts of a file have been changed and only copy over those bits of the data.

However, BitTorrent has indicated that it too hopes to introduce "differential sync" later this year.

Safety net

The technology has the potential to disrupt the nascent file-synching industry.

Although Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Apple, SugarSync and others offer a limited amount of free storage on their services, they make money by charging customers who need to transfer and synch large files such as video footage or lots of smaller documents.

However, Mr Green suggested the earlier cloud-based technique could ultimately prove superior.

"One of the reasons why Dropbox and Google Drive use central servers as middle-men between your devices is that the server plays an important role in ensuring the most recent version of the document gets pushed to each device and doesn't overwrite more recent updates.

"When you are working on a straight device-to-device peer-to-peer method like this it's a lot harder to ensure that safety net.

"However, there's obvious appeal for some people who like the idea of not being beholden or reliant on a third-party who may have technical problems or go bust taking all their data with them."

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Virgin bill goes viral on Facebook

24 April 2013 Last updated at 11:44 ET By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

A broadband bill sent to a deceased man, which included a fine for late payment, has been shared more than 53,000 times by Facebook users.

Social media experts say it is a reminder of the importance of responding quickly and publicly to complaints made on social networks.

The man's son-in-law, Jim Boyden, posted a photograph of the bill, along with a message addressed to Virgin Media, on the social media network.

Virgin Media said sorry to the family.

"We obviously apologise for the bill and have spoken to Mr Boyden to bring this account to a close more sensitively," a spokesperson told the BBC.

At time of writing Mr Boyden, who put the bill online on Monday night, had not visibly mentioned the apology on Facebook himself.

"I've just placed a little reminder on their Facebook page. This actually amused me to start off with, but their complete lack of response irks me somewhat," he added as a comment to the original complaint last night.

Virgin Media publicly apologised on the site this afternoon.

While the unfortunate action of bills being sent to those who have recently died is far from new, the viral nature of this complaint should serve as a warning to companies, said one social media expert.

"Corporations are very good at promoting themselves, they recognise that everyone needs a Twitter and a Facebook account, they are aware the networks exist but they don't have the strategies in place to deal with the issues that can arise from those networks," said Dr Lisa Harris, head of the digital marketing masters programme at the University of Southampton.

"If they do make a mistake they should say that they are human using the channels they have created themselves."

"A lot of people as a result of seeing this will now think, 'I had that problem as well' - it can mushroom. Companies need to recognize that people have more power than they used to."

BT Head of Customer Services Warren Buckley told the BBC that 40% of its customer feedback now originates on Twitter.

"Clearly we are dealing with customers who aren't happy, and we are doing that very much in public eye, but lots of customers respect the fact that we are on Twitter at all," he said.

"The key is to be honest."

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Microsoft clinches new Android deal

24 April 2013 Last updated at 12:33 ET

Microsoft has revealed Chinese smartphone maker ZTE has become the latest firm to sign a patent licence deal linked to its use of the Android and Chrome operating systems.

Although both systems are developed by Google, Microsoft claims to own intellectual property rights to some of the software's underlying technologies.

It comes a week after a similar deal was struck with manufacturer Foxconn.

Huawei and Google's own hardware units remain hold-outs.

Microsoft said that 80% of Android smartphones sold in the US and a majority worldwide were now covered under licensing agreements.

The Redmond-based firm added that it had itself paid out more than £2.6bn ($4bn) over the past decade to cover its use of others' inventions.

Licensee list lengthens

According to the Foss patents blog, ZTE marks the 20th device maker known to have signed an Android licence deal with the Windows developer.

Microsoft has previously said the technologies involved included methods to make Android devices surf the web quickly and control the way users interact with documents and ebooks.

Microsoft has already signed royalty agreements with HTC, Samsung, LG, Sharp and Acer.

It added Hon Hai - parent company of device assembler Foxconn - to that list on 16 April in an agreement that covers any client who uses one of the Taiwanese firm's factories.

A deal with Huawei - which makes Ascend-branded Android devices - may also be on the cards: the Shenzhen-based firm revealed it had begun talks with Microsoft in an interview given to the BBC in November 2011.

However, it may be left to the courts to decide whether Google also needs to agree to a deal - or if Microsoft's patent claims are overstated.

Google has accused Microsoft of staging unjustified "anti-competitive patent attacks" against its mobile operating system and said its acquisition of Motorola Mobility in 2012 would help it "protect" the Android ecosystem thanks to it gaining extra patents of its own.

However, the takeover and subsequent decision to build its own laptop - the Chromebook Pixel - expose it to litigation since it now makes devices of its own.

According to Foss Patents, Microsoft is pursuing more than two dozen related patent infringement claims against Google in the US and others in Germany.

Google has also made separate infringement claims of its own against Microsoft.

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