Amazon pledges $2bn India investment

30 July 2014 Last updated at 08:25

Amazon, one of the world's largest online retailers, has said it will invest a further $2bn (£1.2bn) to boost its operations in India.

The firm said India is on track to become "our fastest country ever" to reach $1bn in gross sales.

Amazon's move comes a day after India's largest e-commerce firm Flipkart raised $1bn in fresh funding, the largest ever for an Indian internet firm.

India's total e-commerce market was worth $13bn in 2013.

But online travel accounted for more than 70% of the transactions.

According to research firm Forrester, online sales of retail goods were worth $1.6bn last year.

However, that number is expected to reach $76bn by 2021 as more people across the country get connected to the internet.

"We see huge potential in the Indian economy and for the growth of e-commerce in India," Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, said in a statement.

"After our first year in business, the response from customers and small and medium-sized businesses in India has far surpassed our expectations."

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China spies 'hacked Canada agency'

29 July 2014 Last updated at 21:02

A top Canadian government research organisation has been struck by Chinese hackers, the government has said.

The computer infrastructure of the National Research Council was breached by a "Chinese state-sponsored actor", the Canadian Treasury Board said.

The board said the "highly-sophisticated" intrusion was confirmed by one of Canada's spy agencies.

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa said dismissed the report as a "groundless allegation".

"China-Canada relations have maintained a good momentum," said embassy spokesperson Yang Yundong. "We are ready to work together with the Canadian side to create a peaceful, secure, open and cooperative cyber space."

In a statement on Tuesday, the Treasury Board said there was "no evidence" hackers had compromised data in other government systems.

But the board said the National Research Council's computers have been isolated from the rest of the government's systems as a precaution.

The Canadian National Research Council is a research and development agency advised by private industry that is tasked with bringing new technologies to the market.

Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird was in Beijing on Tuesday as part of a trade mission.

A spokesman for Mr Baird said he and his Chinese counterpart had a "full and frank exchange of views on the matter".

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Instagram reveals new Bolt photo app

By Amelia Butterly Newsbeat reporter

30 July 2014 Last updated at 08:50

Instagram has revealed its latest development; a Snapchat-style app that allows users to send photos which are deleted after the recipient views them.

Bolt has been given a soft launch and the app is currently available in New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa.

The app has come under criticism from a smaller tech start-up, which also uses the brand name of Bolt.

The co-founder and CEO of the company, Andrew Benton, appealed to Instagram to remember the "little guy".

He said: "We've worked really hard... building the Bolt brand and technology to where it is today. Please don't destroy all that effort.

"I know you haven't forgotten how hard it is to build something from nothing. And not just technology, but a brand and distinct identity for yourself."

His app allows users to take advantage of their data plans to make free calls.

"We don't want a legal battle over this, and we think it's not too late for you to consider an alternate name before launch," Mr Benton said.

"I have a whole list of names we brainstormed last May that I'd be happy to share."

Instagram have yet to comment on Bolt's appeal for a name change.

According to The Verge, an Instagram spokesman said there were plans to make sure the new app was available to more users.

"We're going to other regions soon, but are starting with handful of countries to make sure we can scale the experience," he said.

Last month Facebook, which now owns Instagram, launched its own similar app - Slingshot.

Until an image is unlocked, the recipient only sees a pixelated version

Both social networks allow users to do similar things, including sending photos and video and the option to use a text editor to drop words onto images.

Slingshot has a number of unique features not found in rivals such as Snapchat, which could help it distinguish itself.

It uses an unlocking mechanism, whereby photos received from friends must be unlocked by "slinging" a different photo back to the original sender.

In addition to the unlock requirement, Slingshot features a "select all" function, which allows people to send a picture to all their contacts at the same time.

As well as making its own new apps, Facebook has also been buying up other companies who make social network products.

In 2012 it bought Instagram for $1bn (£589m), however a year later, it was reported that Snapchat rejected a $3bn bid from Facebook.

The maker of Yo, an app that allows users to greet each other with the phrase "yo" but do nothing else, has also launched a photo sharing network this week.

Mirage, a "one tap messaging app", is like many others on the market in that it allows users to share photos and videos that go unrecorded.

It does however allow people to send pictures to friends who do not have the app and claims there is no pressure for them to download it. Instead these people can just view the image on the Mirage website, where it is then deleted.

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UK to allow driverless cars on roads

30 July 2014 Last updated at 11:29

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The BBC's Jon Ironmonger finds out how to 'drive' a driverless car

The UK government has announced that driverless cars will be allowed on public roads from January next year.

It also invited cities to compete to host one of three trials of the tech, which would start at the same time.

In addition, ministers ordered a review of the UK's road regulations to provide appropriate guidelines.

The Department for Transport had originally pledged to let self-driving cars be trialled on public roads by the end of 2013.

Business Secretary Vince Cable revealed the details of the new plan at a research facility belonging to Mira, an automotive engineering firm based in the Midlands.

"Today's announcement will see driverless cars take to our streets in less than six months, putting us at the forefront of this transformational technology and opening up new opportunities for our economy and society," he said.

UK engineers, including a group at the University of Oxford, have been experimenting with driverless cars. But, concerns about legal and insurance issues have so far restricted the machines to private roads.

Other countries have, however, been swifter to provide access to public routes.

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Business Secretary Vince Cable 'felt safe' in driverless car

The US States of California, Nevada and Florida have all approved tests of the vehicles. In California alone, Google's driverless car has done more than 300,000 miles on the open road.

In 2013, Nissan carried out Japan's first public road test of an autonomous vehicle on a highway.

And in Europe, the Swedish city of Gothenburg has given Volvo permission to test 100 driverless cars - although that trial is not scheduled to occur until 2017.

Competition cash

UK cities wanting to host one of the trials have until the start of October to declare their interest.

The tests are then intended to run for between 18 to 36 months.

A £10m fund has been created to cover their costs, with the sum to be divided between the three winners.

Meanwhile, civil servants have been given until the end of this year to publish a review of road regulations.

This will cover the need for self-drive vehicles to comply with safety and traffic laws, and involve changes to the Highway Code, which applies to England, Scotland and Wales.

Two area will be examined by the review: how the rules should apply to vehicles in which the driver can take back control at short notice, and how they should apply to vehicles in which there is no driver.

How do driverless cars work?

The label "driverless vehicle" actually covers a lot of different premises.

Indeed, the cruise control, automatic braking, anti-lane drift and self-parking functions already built into many vehicles offer a certain degree of autonomy.

But the term is generally used to refer to vehicles that take charge of steering, accelerating, indicating and braking during most if not all of a journey between two points, much in the same way aeroplanes can be set to autopilot.

Unlike the skies, however, the roads are much more crowded, and a range of technologies are being developed to tackle the problem.

One of the leading innovations is Lidar (light detection and ranging), a system that measures how lasers bounce off reflective surfaces to capture capture information about millions of small points surrounding the vehicle every second. The technology is already used to create the online maps used by Google and Nokia.

Another complimentary technique is "computer vision" - the use of software to make sense of 360-degree images captured by cameras attached to the vehicle, which can warn of pedestrians, cyclists, roadworks and other objects that might be in the vehicle's path.

Autonomous vehicles can also make use of global-positioning system (GPS) location data from satellites; radar; ultrasonic sensors to detect objects close to the car; and further sensors to accurately measure the vehicle's orientation and the rotation of its wheels, to help it understand its exact location.

The debate now is whether to allow cars, like the prototype unveiled by Google in May, to abandon controls including a steering wheel and pedals and rely on the vehicle's computer.

Or whether, instead, to allow the machine to drive, but insist a passenger be ready to wrest back control at a moment's notice.

International rivals

In May, Google unveiled plans to manufacture 100 self-driving vehicles.

The search-giant exhibited a prototype which has no steering wheel or pedals - just a stop-go button.

Google has also put its autonomous driving technology in cars built by other companies, including Toyota, Audi and Lexus.

Other major manufacturers, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and General Motors, are developing their own models.

Most recently, the Chinese search engine Baidu also declared an interest, saying its research labs were at an "early stage of development" on a driverless car project.

But concerns about the safety of driverless cars have been raised by politicians in the US and elsewhere.

Earlier this month, the FBI warned that driverless cars could be used as lethal weapons, predicting that the vehicles "will have a high impact on transforming what both law enforcement and its adversaries can operationally do with a car".

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Nintendo posts loss despite Mario

30 July 2014 Last updated at 14:14

Nintendo has reported a bigger first-quarter loss than expected, causing its share price to tumble.

The Japanese company posted a 9.9bn yen ($97m; £57m) deficit for the April-to-June months, compared with an 8.6bn yen profit for the same period a year earlier.

Sales were 8% lower, despite the release of a Mario Kart game in May - one of its most popular franchises.

The firm did not alter its prediction of a return to full-year profit.

It sank to a loss in its last financial year.

Nintendo said it expected the release of key titles over the coming months to boost demand before the critical Christmas shopping season.

These include new Super Smash Bros fighting games for its Wii U and 3DS consoles, as well as the action title Hyrule Warriors for the living-room machine and two Pokemon monster-collecting remakes for the handheld device.

Nintendo won praise for the innovative titles it showcased at the recent E3 video games expo in Los Angeles, where it unveiled a new open-world Legends of Zelda title and the paintball arena shooter Splatoon, both due to be released in 2015.

But one analyst suggested the releases would come too late.

"They have a relatively good games pipeline, but the big question is about its hardware," said Ed Barton, a games industry analyst at the Ovum consultancy.

"The Wii U is so far behind now, and the perception of the audience that it's a relatively under-powered console compared to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One is now pretty firmly cemented.

"Given how inaccurate some of Nintendo's forecasts have been going into their results in terms of hardware and software sales in the past, I'm not optimistic."

Nintendo originally forecast it would sell nine million Wii Us in its last financial year. In May it revealed it had sold only about 2.7 million units despite a price cut.

A further 510,000 Wii Us were sold over the most recent quarter.

Declining reserves

Nintendo did not host a conference call following the earnings release, as it normally does, meaning analysts were unable to quiz executives about the progress of previously announced plans to establish a health division and release new devices for emerging markets.

Its president, Satoru Iwata, had previously cancelled appearances at E3 and the firm's annual shareholders' meeting after doctors found a "growth" in his bile duct, requiring him to have surgery.

He wrote a letter late last month saying he had resumed work "by email and by other means" but was not yet ready to return to his regular schedule.

Documents posted online do, however, offer a couple of other insights:

• 2.82 million copies of Mario Kart 8 were sold worldwide during the game's first month on release, making it the firm's only "million-seller" during the quarter. In fact, it accounted for more than 60% of all Wii U games sold over the period
• Nintendo's total assets declined by 6% over the three months, taking them to about $12bn

The news was released after the close of the Japanese markets, but Nintendo stock traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange had fallen about 6% from its opening price by early afternoon.

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OKCupid experiments with 'bad' matches

29 July 2014 Last updated at 15:47

Dating website OKCupid has revealed that it experimented on its users, including putting the "wrong" people together to see if they would connect.

It revealed the tests after the uproar over Facebook manipulating the feeds of its users.

"If you use the internet, you're the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site," it said. "That's how websites work."

OKCupid said one revelation was that "people just look at the picture".

As well as allowing users to upload pictures and set up dating profiles, OKCupid asks users questions and matches them with potential partners based on the answers.

In one experiment, the site took pairs of "bad" matches between two people - about 30% - and told them they were "exceptionally good" for each other, or 90% matches. "Not surprisingly, the users sent more first messages when we said they were compatible," Christian Rudder, one of the founders of OKCupid, said in a blog post on the company's research and insights blog.

Further experiments suggested that "when we tell people they are a good match, they act as if they are. Even when they should be wrong for each other." The company later revealed the correct scores to the participants.

"This shows how easy it is for a company to put at risk the trust that users place in them," Daniel Tozer, a commercial technology partner at the law firm Harbottle and Lewis, told the BBC. "There are data protection issues when you're using users' personal information, especially when it appears OKCupid are actually changing things on the page.

"If you're doing anything extremely unusual with people's data, and I would argue this is the case here, it's always best to seek the consent of your users first."

'Words worth nothing'

In another experiment, OKCupid ran profiles with pictures and no profile text for half of its test subjects, and vice versa for the rest. The results showed that people responded solely to the pictures. For potential daters, Mr Rudder said that "your actual words are worth… almost nothing".

The revelations come as a result of Facebook saying that in late June, it changed some "news feeds to control which emotional expressions the users were exposed to" as part of research in collaboration with two US universities.

The research was conducted on 689,000 Facebook users over a period of one week in 2012.

Many users and observers felt the actions were unethical. In the US, Senator Mark Warner asked the regulator, the Federal Trade Commission, to look into the issue, while a Labour MP in the UK called for an investigation.

OKCupid said that experiments like the ones that it and Facebook ran are part and parcel of creating websites. "It's not like people have been building these things for very long, or you can go look up a blueprint or something," Mr Rudder said. "Most ideas are bad. Even good ideas could be better. Experiments are how you sort all this out."

OKCupid is owned by media conglomerate IAC/InterActive Corp, which owns 50 brands across 40 countries.

These include other major dating sites, like Match.com, as well as news website the Daily Beast and web properties like Dictionary.com.

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Sleep sensor smashes Kickstarter goal

30 July 2014 Last updated at 00:01

A 22-year-old British entrepreneur's new sleep-tracking kit has cracked $1.2m (£708,000) in its first week on Kickstarter's crowdfunding platform.

James Proud launched his product, Sense, on 23 July with a goal of raising $100,000 within 30 days.

But it passed the $1m-mark on Sunday, and has been forecast to raise more than $4m by the period's end.

Sense includes an orb that monitors the bedroom, a clip that attaches to the pillow, and a mobile phone app.

The equipment produces a unique score for the previous night's sleep and aims to wake the owner up at the best point in their sleep cycle.

It is due to be released in November and can be ordered in advance for $129.

Mr Proud said sleep was a natural area to focus on.

"We spend a third of our day doing it," he told the BBC.

"It's the most critical part of the day, as how we perform when we're awake depends on how well we slept."

Sense is one of a growing number of sleep-focused products as "smart" technologies start to filter into homes, offering new ways to track our health.

Apps such as Sleep Cycle, Sleepbot and Sleepmaster are already used by iPhone, Android and Windows Phone users to track their slumber using sensors built into the handsets.

There are also specialist hardware devices such as Aura, from the French firm Withings, and a $8,000 "snore-stopping" bed.

Sleep tech sceptic

Earlier this year, Apple announced its forthcoming Healthkit app, which can gather sleep-related data from third-party devices. The 9to5Mac news site also reported the company had hired Roy Raymann, a Dutch sleep research expert, fuelling speculation the company may be about to release its own sleep-monitoring smart watch.

Its rival Samsung, already offers the Gear 2 smartwatch, which runs sleep-tracking software. And most recently, China's Xiaomi began selling one of the cheapest sleep-monitoring wearables on the market - the $13 MiBand.

But one expert told the BBC such products had limited use beyond "nagging" the user to go to bed earlier.

"If you want to learn whether you sleep on certain nights and not on others, then it should be looked at as a form of harmless entertainment," Prof Jerry Siegel from University of California, Los Angeles' Center for Sleep Research said.

"But the most common sleep problem is insomnia, and there's nothing that you're going to get from one of these devices that is going to be useful in treating insomnia.

"The other problem that is important to identify is sleep apnoea [a condition where the walls of the throat relax and interrupt breathing].

"We know that this will shorten your lifespan and we have several treatments... but none of these devices will help you detect it."

However, the US's National Sleep Foundation was more optimistic about the potential benefits of such innovations in May, when it announced a partnership with the US's Consumer Electronics Association to create new standards for sleep-related tech.

"We know that getting enough sleep and getting quality sleep have amazing health benefits, including improved mood, concentration, memory and productivity, and the ability to maintain a healthy weight," said David Cloud, chief executive of the foundation.

"Given the technology to properly monitor their own sleep quality, consumers can better understand the link between their sleep and their health, and set goals for improvement."

'Critical'

Mr Proud, was born in South London but developed Sense in California.

He took a gap-year break between school and university. "If I went to university, I quickly realised I couldn't code 18 hours a day," he told the BBC.

He ended up moving to California to take a "fellowship" from Peter Thiel, the co-creator of PayPal and one of the first people to put money into Facebook.

The move secured him a $100,000 grant to forgo higher education and instead build his own tech start-up.

The young entrepreneur raised more money and started Hello, the company that makes Sense.

Hello currently employs about 20 people, including engineers and product designers, who are responsible for its distinctive look.

"We wanted to make something that didn't look like technology, but that looked like it should be there regardless," said Mr Proud.

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BBC's Dave Lee tries out a $8,000 "smart bed" in Las Vegas earlier this year

He added that he planned to use the additional cash raised from Kickstarter to fulfil more orders and get the kit into the hands of more people.

Based on the amount of money the campaign has raised so far, the analytics site Kicktraq projects that Sense should raise between £4m and $7m by the end of its funding period.

But Mr Proud said he created the crowdfunding campaign not for cash but rather for feedback.

"The valuable thing about Kickstarter is the community," he said.

"The amount of feedback we've had is amazing, which we wouldn't have had if we had just put it up on our website."

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Peers query 'right to be forgotten'

30 July 2014 Last updated at 01:02

Demands for search engines to remove personal data from the web to respect people's "right to be forgotten" are unreasonable, a group of peers says.

The Lords Home Affairs EU Sub-Committee also said it was wrong to give search engines such as Google the job of deciding what should be removed.

It said the UK must ensure that updated EU regulations protected accurate material in the public domain.

The government said there should not be an "unfettered right" to delete data.

The European Court of Justice ruled in May that links to irrelevant and outdated data should be erased on request from searches , sparking a fierce debate about censorship of material and right to privacy.

'Vague and unhelpful'

Search giant Google has received more than 70,000 requests to block links in response to the ruling, which was based on Article 12 of the EU's directive on the protection of personal data, which was drawn up three years before the company even existed.

In a new report, the cross-party committee warned of the danger of trying to "enforce the impossible", saying the judgement had resulted in material being blocked on the basis of "vague, ambiguous and unhelpful" criteria which did not reflect the current state of information technology.

Its chair Baroness Prashar said neither the directive nor the court's interpretation of it took into account the "incredible advancement in technology" seen in recent years.

While it would always be difficult for regulations and the body of law underpinning them to keep pace with technological changes, she said they must be sensible and responsive to changes in society.

"Anyone anywhere in the world now has information at the touch of a button, and that includes detailed personal information about people in all countries of the globe," she said.

'Data controllers'

Enforcement of the "right to be forgotten" principle, she said, would put an unreasonable burden on small search engines, in terms of dealing with requests to remove information.

She added: "We also believe that it is wrong in principle to leave search engines themselves the task of deciding whether to delete information or not, based on vague, ambiguous and unhelpful criteria.

"We think there is a very strong argument that, in the new regulation, search engines should not be classed as data controllers, and therefore not liable as 'owners' of the information they are linking to.

"We also do not believe that individuals should have a right to have links to accurate and lawfully available information about them removed, simply because they do not like what is said."

The cross-party committee took evidence from the Office of the Information Commissioner, Lib Dem justice minister Simon Hughes and Google itself among other witnesses.

Mr Hughes said a balance must be struck between upholding freedom of expression and the right to privacy,

"We welcome the support of the Lords for our position in negotiating new European data protection legislation," he said.

"I agree that it is neither accurate nor helpful to say that the recent judgment of the European Court of Justice has given a right to be forgotten. We need to be clear that the judgment does not give individuals an unfettered right to have their personal data deleted from search engine results."

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Netflix pays AT&T to ensure quality

30 July 2014 Last updated at 11:10

The streaming video service Netflix has agreed to pay US telecoms giant AT&T to ensure its content is delivered to users smoothly.

AT&T, which reached the agreement in May, said: "We're now beginning to turn up the connections, a process that should be complete in the coming days."

Netflix has already reached similar agreements with Verizon and Comcast.

But the streaming service is opposed to paying the fees to broadband providers, amid a debate over "net neutrality".

Net neutrality is the principle that all data on the internet should be treated equally.

Verizon earlier this year challenged the US telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in court and won, paving the way for US internet service providers (ISPs) to start charging fees to carry bandwidth-hungry data such as movies and TV shows on its networks.

In March, Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings hit out against ISPs such as Verizon for demanding a fee to maintain video quality. But Netflix has agreed to pay them to establish a direct connection to its network to ensure content is delivered to users' homes.

Earlier this month, the FCC was deluged with submissions in a public consultation - receiving more than 780,000 comments - about internet providers' right to charge other firms for "fast-lane" data delivery before the regulator passes new rules on the issue in September.

Netflix has been expanding across Europe and recently said it now had 50 million users in more than 40 countries.

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Smart home kit proves 'easy to hack'

30 July 2014 Last updated at 17:13

A study of some of the most popular app-controlled devices for the home suggests the majority of the products tested were vulnerable to hackers.

HP's Security Research division reviewed 10 pieces of internet-connected kit.

It said the majority did not require a password of sufficient complexity and length and that most did not encrypt the data they transmitted.

One independent security expert said the findings were "shocking".

HP has not named the manufacturers involved, but has identified the 10 types of net-connected products studied:

• A smart TV
• A webcam
• A smart thermostat
• A remote power outlet
• A garden sprinkler control
• A door lock
• A home alarm
• Bathroom scales
• A garage door opener
• A hub for controlling multiple devices

Privacy worries

One of the report author's biggest concerns was that eight of the devices surveyed did not require consumers to use hard-to-hack log-ins.

It said that most allowed passwords as simple as "1234" or "123456", which could then be used to access both the app and a website providing access to the owner's records.

In addition, the team said, the interfaces used by six of the devices' websites had other security flaws that could cause them to be compromised. For example, it said, in some cases hackers could exploit the password reset facility to determine which accounts were valid, allowing them to focus follow-up attacks.

A lack of encryption - the digital scrambling of data to make it unreadable without a special key - was also flagged as a worry.

HP said that seven of the devices failed to encrypt communications sent to the internet and/or a local network.

It added that six of the pieces of kit did not use encryption when downloading software and firmware updates. It said hackers could take advantage of this to intercept, modify and retransmit the code, potentially allowing them to take control of many customers' equipment.

The report also suggested that eight of the devices raised broader privacy concerns.

"With many devices collecting some form of personal information such as name, address, date of birth, health information and even credit card numbers, those concerns are multiplied when you add in cloud services and mobile applications that work alongside the device," it stated.

"And with many devices transmitting this information unencrypted on your home network, users are one network misconfiguration away from exposing this data to the world via wireless networks.

"Do these devices really need to collect this personal information to function properly?"

'Security holes'

HP is not the first firm to highlight problems with smart home devices.

Earlier this month, another security firm revealed that wi-fi-controlled light bulbs sold by an Australian firm, Lifx, could reveal their owner's username and passwords if a hacker used a device that masqueraded as being another bulb.

In January, another report highlighted the case of a smart fridge that had been hacked and used to send out spam emails.

And last year, LG was prompted to issue a fix for its smart TVs after one owner discovered his set was monitoring his watching habits and then transmitting the information over the internet unencrypted.

Ian Brown, professor of information security and privacy at the University of Oxford, said HP's report should act as a wake-up call.

"We're used to hearing about vulnerabilities in computing systems, but those are often legacy products designed before today's greater focus on security," he told the BBC.

"It's slightly shocking to see these brand new internet-of-things devices being created with so many security holes.

"I hope device manufactures realise they have to do much better if they want to avoid damaging consumer trust in the whole sector before it even takes off."

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