IBM produces first 'brain chips

IBM has developed a microprocessor which it claims comes closer than ever to replicating the human brain.

The system is capable of "rewiring" its connections as it encounters new information, similar to the way biological synapses work.

Researchers believe that that by replicating that feature, the technology could start to learn.

Cognitive computers may eventually be used for understanding human behaviour as well as environmental monitoring.

Dharmendra Modha, IBM's project leader, explained that they were trying to recreate aspects of the mind such as emotion, perception, sensation and cognition by "reverse engineering the brain."

The SyNAPSE system uses two prototype "neurosynaptic computing chips". Both have 256 computational cores, which the scientists described as the electronic equivalent of neurons.

One chip has 262,144 programmable synapses, while the other contains 65,536 learning synapses.

Man machine

In humans and animals, synaptic connections between brain cells physically connect themselves depending on our experience of the world. The process of learning is essentially the forming and strengthening of connections.

A machine cannot solder and de-solder its electrical tracks. However, it can simulate such a system by "turning up the volume" on important input signals, and paying less attention to others.

IBM has not released exact details of how its SyNAPSE processor works, but Dr Richard Cooper, a reader in cognitive science at Birkbeck, University of London said that it likely replicated physical connections using a "virtual machine".

Instead of stronger and weaker links, such a system would simply remember how much "attention" to pay to each signal and alter that depending on new experiences.

"Part of the trick is the learning algorithm - how should you turn those volumes up and down," said Dr Cooper.

"There's a a whole bunch of tasks that can be done just with a relatively simple system like that such as associative memory. When we see a cat we might think of a mouse."

Some future-gazers in the cognitive computing world have speculated that the technology will reach a tipping point where machine consciousness is possible.

IBM's work on the SyNAPSE project continues and the company, along with its academic partners, has just been awarded $21m (£12.7m) by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Computer-Hacking Group Targets Apple in Latest Attack

San Francisco:A group of computer hackers on Sunday posted a document it claimed contains usernames and passwords for an Apple Inc. server, the latest in a string of brazen attacks that have compromised government and corporate websites around the world.

"AntiSec," a hacking campaign that includes hackers from both the online vigilante group Anonymous and hackers from the now-defunct Lulz Security, posted a document containing a link to a supposed Apple server along with a list of 26 administrative usernames and passwords. AntiSec is Internet shorthand for "anti-security."

The hackers said in a statement posted to Twitter that they had accessed Apple's systems due to a security flaw used in software used by the Cupertino, Calif.-based gadget maker and other companies. "But don't worry," the hackers said, "we are busy elsewhere."

A spokesman for Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The posted information comes as part of a two-month campaign of digital heists targeting corporations including Sony Corp. and AT&T Inc., as well as government agencies such as the U.S. Senate, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

Google+ challenges Facebook in new battle

Online search giant Google has launched a new social networking website in a bid to take on Facebook, which now has more than 500m users, says a report by the BBC.

The website, Google+, allows users to share photos, messages and comments and also integrates Google's maps and images into the service. It also aims to help users organize contacts within groups.

While Google claims the new service boasted of a number of new functions, some observers say it has simply added a video chat function before reproducing features of Facebook, according to the report.

Google has made several attempts to compete with Facebook in recent years. But its previous efforts ended in failure, with both Google Wave and Google Buzz proving unpopular with users.

The current version of Google+ has only been released to a limited number of users, according to the report, but Google said it hopes to make the social network soon available to the millions of users that access its services each day.

In April, Google reached an out-of-court settlement with a US policy group over its Google Buzz service. The legal action claimed Google deceived users and violated its own privacy policy by automatically enrolling all Gmail users in its Buzz social network without seeking prior permission.

Pakistan blocks Facebook and YouTube over blasphemous material

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube in a bid to contain blasphemous material, officials said on Thursday.

The blockade came hours after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to stop access to social network Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad (Peace be upon him) in gross violation of fundamental human rights pertaining to one’s religion.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, the CEO of Nayatel, an Internet service provider, said PTA issued an order late on Wednesday seeking an "immediate" blockade of YouTube.

"It was a serious instruction as they wanted us to do it quickly and let them know after that," he said while talking to a UK-based news agency.

YouTube was also blocked in the Muslim country in 2007 for about a year for what it called un-Islamic videos.

A PTA official, who declined to be identified, said the action was taken after the authority determined that some sacrilegious caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were transferred from Facebook to YouTube.

Representation of any prophet is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous in Islam, let alone the caricature or cartoon of these divine personages.

Siraj said the blocking of the two websites would cut up to 25 percent of total Internet traffic in Pakistan.

"It'll have an impact on the overall Internet traffic as they eat up 20 to 25 percent of the country's total 65 giga-bytes traffic," he said.

Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark's embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

First non-Latin Internet domain names activated

Saudi, Egypt, UAE to get Arabic internet domain names

CAIRO:  Three Mideast countries have become the first to get Internet addresses entirely in non-Latin characters.

Domain names in Arabic for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were added to the Internet's master directories on Wednesday, following final approval last month by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. It's the first major change to the Internet domain name system since its creation in the 1980s.

Registrations for websites to use those names are to begin soon. On Thursday, Egypt granted three companies approval to register names using the country's new Arabic suffix.

Until now, websites had to end their addresses with ".com" or another string using Latin characters. That meant businesses and government agencies still had to use Latin characters on billboards and advertisements, even if they were targeting populations with no familiarity with English or other languages that use the Latin script.

Non-Latin characters were sometimes permitted for the portions of the Internet address before the suffix. But Arabic websites generally haven't had that option because Arabic characters are written right to left, conflicting with Latin suffixes written left to right.

"Introducing Arabic domain names is a milestone in Internet history," Egyptian Communication and Information Technology Minister Tarek Kamel said in a statement.

"This great step will open up new horizons for e-services in Egypt" as well as boosting the number of online users and enabling Internet service providers to enter new markets by "eliminating language barriers."

Google Sees Mobile as Key to Extend Search Might in 2010

Google's logged 87.8 billion searches in December 2009, or 66.8 percent of the more than 131 billion searches conducted worldwide. Google hopes to grow its search and ad dominance by focusing on a convergence of mobile search, advertising and applications, including location-based technologies with a heavy dose of social networking. Smartphones as Google's Nexus One, paired with mobile search, applications and advertising seem like a fine way for Google to extend its search dominance from the desktop to the PC. Google will pit its mobile technologies those of Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple in 2010.

Google's strategy to "double down" on its core search business helped the company clean up as the top search property with 87.8 billion searches in December 2009, or 66.8 percent of the more than 131 billion searches conducted worldwide.

That's good for a 58 percent increase in search query volume over the past year, according to figures released Jan. 22 by researcher comScore. These world-leading totals helped Google rake in a fourth-quarter 2009 profit of $1.97 billion and sales of $4.95 billion.

Google hopes to improve on these numbers through focusing on a convergence of mobile search, advertising and applications, including location-based technologies with a heavy dose of social networking.

Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management at Google, attributed Google's successful Q4 to the company's doubling down on its efforts in search, AdWords search advertising and display advertising.

"Search did particularly well in 2009 and I think that may be the best example of what we feel we can do when we double down and focus," Rosenberg said on the company's Q4 earnings call Jan. 21. He cited Google's 550 search quality enhancements; a bigger and faster index; universal search expansion; and Google's new music search service.

However, Google's crowning search achievement arrived Dec. 7 in the form of real-time. Google indexes tweets from Twitter and public status updates from Facebook, as well as info from MySpace, news publications and blogs only seconds after the content is published online.

Rosenberg noted that two minutes after a force 4.1 earthquake struck California two weeks ago, Google's real-time search algorithms surfaced local Twitter tweets and news reports. The idea is that retrieving this type of content will keep users coming to Google.

It's difficult to gauge the financial impact of these real-time results, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt said on the call real-time search was "very successful."  Next

U.S. plans to issue official protest to China over attack on Google

WASHINGTON:  The United States will issue an official protest to the Chinese government over a major espionage attack targeting Google's computer systems and rights activists' e-mail accounts that the search-engine giant said originated in China.

"We will be issuing a formal demarche to the Chinese government in Beijing on this issue in the coming days, probably early next week," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Friday.

The diplomatic message will "express our concern for this incident" and seek an explanation, he said. The move may signal a shift for an administration that has been reluctant, according to China experts, to press sensitive issues such as human rights, lest it offend a country whose cooperation it seeks in other areas.

On Tuesday, in a rare disclosure by a major firm, Google announced that its "corporate infrastructure" had been hacked and its intellectual property stolen. It said that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists in China, Europe and the United States were also penetrated and noted that other large companies were targeted, as well. Industry sources said 34 firms, including Google, were affected.

Google also said it will no longer filter Internet searches on its Chinese search engine, Google.cn. Although it did not directly accuse China, the Silicon Valley technology titan threatened to pull out of the country if the government does not allow it to operate uncensored. Chinese officials said that their laws ban hacking and that China's Internet is open, although they also defended a policy of keeping certain types of information off the Web in China.

The State Department's planned action coincides with a speech on Internet freedom that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is to deliver Thursday. She is expected to allude to the incident. "When she talks about this issue, China will be one of the countries she points to," an administration official said.

"You couldn't have picked a worse company to hack if you wanted to not irritate the Americans," said James A. Lewis, a cyber and national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They're their favorite child," he said of Google. The firm's chief executive advises President Obama on technology, and its Web applications are seen as the sort of innovation that will drive the new economy.

Officials said the administration has raised concerns about cybersecurity and Internet freedom with China before. But by formally protesting to the Chinese, the United States is elevating the issues to a new level, policy experts said. Richard N. Rosecrance, director of the Project on U.S.-China Relations at Harvard University, said, "I think this is the bottoming out of an extremely favorable policy toward China that might now begin to shift in another direction."

One analyst said Friday that he is not sure the attacks point to the Chinese government. Rob Knake, a cybersecurity expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, said his analysis of results from a technology firm investigating the attacks suggests that they "were not state-sponsored or the work of an elite, sophisticated group such as the Chinese military."

Nonetheless, said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, "Google has not only forced China's hand, they have forced the U.S.'s hand" on human rights.

"What Google has done," she said, "is make it easier for the administration to come out swinging on this issue."

Yahoo! expands Web-connected TV push

LAS VEGAS:  Yahoo! announced partnerships with television and other device manufacturers as the Internet company joins others seeking to jump from the computer to the TV screen.

"Consumers are in love with their televisions, watching more TV, and demanding Internet connectivity to further enhance their viewing experience," said Arlo Rose, senior director of Yahoo! Connected TV.

Yahoo! said the online programs known as "widgets" for the increasing number of Web-capable televisions would be embedded in more models and include video on demand, social networks, games and online shopping.

One year after announcing partnerships with Samsung, LG Electronics, Sony and Vizio, Yahoo! used the annual Consumer Electronics Show here to announce tie-ups with China's Hisense, ViewSonic, MIPS Technologies and Sigma Designs.

Yahoo! also announced it was releasing a widget development kit to allow developers to create their own TV widgets.

Vizio's upcoming HDTVs will incorporate Yahoo! widgets as will Web-connected TVs from Hisense and ViewSonic's VMP80 media player.

Yahoo! said the VMP80 media player will allow HDTV owners to view movies, TV shows, Web videos, and photos and go shopping and play games with TV widgets.

"Consumers can enjoy the greatest Internet content while simultaneously viewing their favorite programming," said ViewSonic Americas vice president Jeff Volpe.

MIPS will include the Yahoo! widget platform on digital TV and set-top box applications while Sigma Designs said it will offer Yahoo! widgets on Blu-ray players and other devices.

Pro-Iranian hackers hit Twitter and opposition websites

A group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army has hacked Twitter and an Iranian opposition website, replacing it with an anti-American message.

Traffic to the social networking website was redirected for nearly two hours on Thursday night.

The opposition website mowjcamp.org remained disrupted on Friday.

The opposition in Iran have used the websites to publicise protests and accuse the government of rigging elections in June.

"This site has been hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army," the message read.

The message, written in confused English, said the hackers had turned the tables on the US, who they criticise for sanctions on Iran.

"USA think they controlling and managing internet by their access, but they don't, we control and manage internet by our power," the message continued.

It ended on a seemingly polite note, telling visitors to "take care", and the hackers added a winking emoticon.

The hackers left an e-mail address, but could not be reached for comment.

Inner workings

Reporting on the hack, technology website techcruch.com recommended that Twitter users who have the same password for other websites like Facebook or their email should change them.

Twitter posted a blog on their website saying the micro-blogging service had been restored an hour and a quarter after the hack was first noticed.

The post said the hackers had gained access to the inner workings of the site and redirected visitors to their own website.

The website Mowjcamp.org is run by supporters of the reformist candidates who challenged Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June's elections.

Both Twitter and Mowjcamp.org became a focal point for protesters during mass opposition rallies on the streets of Tehran, and the hundreds of arrests that followed.

Protesting Iranians posted pictures of the rallies, and the reaction of the Iranian riot police and pro-government militia, on the sites.

Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have said elections in June were rigged against them.

Twitter the most used word in 2009

LONDON: Twitter has had quite a year. Not only has it attracted worldwide attention and millions of new users, "Twitter" has been named the top word in the English language for 2009.

According to the Global Language Monitor, which examines language usage across the world, "Twitter" beat out "Obama," "H1N1," "stimulus," and "vampire" to take the crown. Interestingly, "2.0" came in at sixth place.

"In a year dominated by world-shaking political events, a pandemic, the aftereffects of a financial tsunami, and the death of a revered pop icon, the word 'Twitter' stands above all the other words," Paul JJ Payack, president of Global Language Monitor, said Sunday in a statement. "Twitter represents a new form of social interaction, where all communication is reduced to 140 characters. Being limited to strict formats did wonders for the sonnet and haiku. One wonders where this highly impractical word-limit will lead as the future unfolds."

To compile its data, the Global Language Monitor uses its proprietary algorithm, called the Predictive Quantities Indicator. According to the company, the algorithm "tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet." It also monitors blogs and social media. Word frequency, contextual usage, and "appearance in global media outlets" contribute to a word's popularity.

"Big Bang" experiment advancing fast

GENEVA (Reuters) - After a year's delay, scientists at the world's biggest accelerator have restarted an experiment to recreate "Big Bang" conditions that had sparked suggestions the earth would be sucked in by millions of black holes.

Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have established circulating particle beams in both directions in the underground Large Hadron Collider, a step that is already beyond where the experiment stalled during a first attempt in September 2008, CERN spokesman James Gillies said.

The high-profile experiment, through which tiny particles are smashed in a bid to learn more about the birth of the universe, failed just nine days after it was launched due to a technical problem that took longer than expected to fix.

"We are further advanced now than where we were after five days of experiment last year," said CERN's Director for Accelerators Steve Myers, saying the extra year had allowed researchers to upgrade instrumentations and computer software.

Myers added that researchers had increased the sensitivity of the protections at the 10 billion Swiss franc ($9.82 billion) collider under the French-Swiss border.

"If anything happens, we would not have the same amount of damage we had last year," he said.

CERN, a 55-year-old organization that counts 10,000 scientists and technicians worldwide working on its research projects, has vigorously rebuffed any suggestion the ground-breaking experiment would cause the world to end.

CERN's Director General Rolf Heuer said getting the experiment re-started had been an "herculean effort."

"We've still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we're well on the way," he said.

If things continue to progress at this speed, scientists may be able to accelerate particles at the highest energy level ever tested before Christmas, although high-energy collisions that may shed light on the secrets of the universe would only happen in the new year, Myers said.

The experiment will be fully under way when the particle beams will be smashed at high energy levels. This will most likely happen in January.

The next important step in the experiment will be low-energy collisions, expected in about a week from now, CERN said.

Google previews Chrome open source operating system

Internet search giant Google has lifted the lid on its operating system, known as Chrome OS.

The free and open source system is initially aimed at low-cost netbooks and does away with many of the features of a traditional program.

All applications are designed to run in a web browser and all the user's data is stored on Google's servers.

Engineers from the firm said the first computers running the system would be available before the end of 2010.

"We are trying to offer a choice for users," said Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management, during an event at the firm's headquarters in California.

"This model of computing is fundamentally different."

The event follows the recent launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 and Apple's operating system upgrade, Snow Leopard.

Speed test

Google first announced its intention to build an operating system in July this year.

The firm has designed the system around its Chrome browser. The program was released 14 months ago and already has 40m regular users, the firm said.

"It's very familiar and intuitive to users - most people know how to use the browser," said Mr Pichai.

All programs or applications - such as word processing and e-mail - run in different tabs in the browser.

"There are no conventional desktop applications," said Mr Pichai. "That means you don't have to install or update software.

"It's just a browser; a browser with a few modifications."

Mr Pichai said the system was based around speed, simplicity and security.

He showed it booting up in seven seconds.

"We're working very, very, very hard to make that time shorter," he said. "We want Google Chrome OS to be blazingly fast."

He said they wanted it to be like a television, where a computer could be switched on and instantly running and connected to the web.

Google has been able to boost the speed of the system by designing it for specific hardware. The firm said that it would only run on computers using "solid state drives" instead of traditional hard drives.

In addition, the firm has been talking to hardware manufacturers to specify which components to include on finished machines.

This means that the company could "optimise" the code to run as quickly as possible, said Mr Pichai.

Memory games

He used the demonstration to show the machine doing many common tasks such as playing games and music, as well as reading books and writing text.

Any documents and files created on the computer were automatically synced and saved on Google's servers, said Matthew Papakipos, an engineer working on the system.

As a result, he added, anybody who lost their computer would be able to buy a new machine and easily recover all their data.

"In a matter of seconds, all the data syncs back to the machine."

Although the firm envisages most tasks will be done online, it will also offer the capability to use some programs when there is no connection.

It already offers a similar feature for programs such as Gmail and Google Docs using its Gears program.

Initially, the firm envisages people will use the operating system on a second, portable machine.

Memory intensive tasks, such as video editing, would require a more powerful machine.

Open offer

The demonstration could dramatically change the market for operating systems, especially for Microsoft, the biggest player with about 90% share of the market.

When it was first announced, Rob Enderle, industry watcher and president of the Enderle Group, described it as "the first real attempt by anyone to go after Microsoft".

The fact that it is free could encourage many users to try the system.

Currently, Mr Pichai said the company did not have a business plan but admitted that encouraging people to use the web and Google services "benefits us as a company".

Google derives most of its revenue from selling advertising around search and its other online products.

Most consumers will have to wait until 2010 to get their hands on a device running the system.

However, the firm used the event to release an early version of the code for developers.

"You can get Chrome OS up and running today," said Mr Pichai.

They said they had chosen to release the code and the designs for the system because it was based on other open source projects including the Linux operating system and the Ubuntu distribution of it.

Open source systems allow people to tinker and use the underlying code to build and customize applications. It is normal to publish any modifications to allow other people to take advantage of the changes.

"We're looking forward to feedback from the open source community," said Mr Pinchai.

China joins supercomputer elite

China has become one of a handful of nations to own one of the top five supercomputers in the world.

China:  Its Tianhe-1 computer, housed at the National Super Computer Center in Tianjin was ranked fifth on the biannual Top 500 supercomputer list.

The machine packs more than 70,000 chips and can compute 563 trillion calculations per second (teraflops).

It is used for petroleum exploration and engineering tasks such as simulating aircraft designs.

However, the fastest machine is the US-owned Jaguar supercomputer, which now boasts a speed of 1.759 petaflops.

One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 trillion calculations per second.

The Cray computer has more than 220,000 chips and is owned by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. It is used to conduct research in climate science, materials science and nuclear energy amongst other areas.
It has taken the top slot from another US machine, nicknamed Roadrunner.

The IBM computer is owned by the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and was the first machine to push through the petaflop barrier.

It is currently able to run at 1.042 petaflops and uses the powerful "cell" chip designed for the PlayStation 3.

It is used to monitor the US nuclear stockpile, as well as conduct research into astronomy, genomics and climate change.

The Top 500 list is dominated by machines in the US, which is home to 277 of ranked systems. It has eight of the top 10 machines.

Europe has 153 systems on the list, including the world's fourth most powerful machine. The IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) in Germany is the fastest machine outside the US and is able to run at more than 800 teraflops.

The UK has the largest number of European machines on the list, with 44 systems.

Arabic Web domain opens

Egypt:  Egyptian communications minister Tarek Kamet yesterday announced the introduction of the first Arabic domain, meant to ease Internet access to millions of Arabic speakers around the world.

Registration was to begin for the .misr country code top-level domain, Kamey told the fourth meeting of the Internet Governance Forum.

The announcement follows a decision by the United States-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to end the exclusive use of Latin characters for website addresses, allowing Internet users to write an entire website address in Chinese, Arabic, Russian and several other scripts.

Japan to operate solar energy station in outer space

TOKYO: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has big plans, as it wants to conquer outer space to generate solar energy by 2030.

The idea is to collect solar power in space and beam it down to earth, in the form of lasers or microwaves. The so-called Space Solar Power System project is led by big corporations such as Mitsubishi, NEC, Fujitsu und Sharp.

As a first step, JAXA wants to deploy photovoltaic elements in outer space where they will be assembled in the form of dishes several square kilometers in size. Solar energy in space is about five times stronger than on earth, and the solar energy will be transformed into power in space.

The dishes are supposed to zap the lasers and microwaves to gigantic parabolic antennae located on earth, probably in remote areas such as dam reservoirs, for example. JAXA wants to begin conducting feasibility tests with a 100-kW demo system before eventually boosting that number to 1 Gigawatt.

NASA readies space shuttle Atlantis for Monday launch

WASHINGTON: The US space agency was readying for the launch Monday of the space shuttle Atlantis and its crew of seven astronauts to deliver equipment that will maintain the nearly completed International Space Station.

Lift-off is set for 1928 GMT from the Kennedy Space Centre near Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA said Saturday.

"Atlantis is ready to go, in really great shape," said shuttle launch manager Mike Moses at a press conference broadcast on NASA television.

"Here at Kennedy Space Center weather should be very good," said Meteorologist Kathy Winters, adding that there was just a ten percent chance of weather prohibiting the launch.

Captained by Marine Corps colonel Charlie Hobaugh, the all-male crew arrived Thursday at Kennedy Space Center from Houston, Texas, where the astronauts are based.

The shuttle mission is set to include three spacewalks aimed at storing space hardware on the exterior of the orbiting outpost.

The 11-day space outing will be the fifth and last shuttle mission for 2009.

There are just five more shuttle launches scheduled before the planned September 2010 retirement of the fleet.

BBC iPlayer launches Wii channel

The BBC iPlayer is relaunching on the Nintendo Wii in the form of a dedicated Wii channel on 18 November.

Only consoles with a broadband connection in the UK will be able to run the channel.

To get the service, Wii owners will be able to download it for from the console's online shop.

The BBC iPlayer has been on the Wii since April 2008 but many console owners reported problems with the original interface.

The iPlayer is also available on Sony's PlayStation 3 console.

The BBC is not the only broadcaster to experience difficulties with bringing its catch-up service to games consoles.

Sky launched the Sky Player on the Xbox 360 in October but Microsoft temporarily suspended the service almost straightaway due to "unprecedented levels of simultaneous demand".

Erik Huggers, direct of Future Media and Technology at the BBC, said that the evolved Wii service was an improvement on the old BBC iPlayer system, describing it as a "faster, high quality and improved viewing experience".

According to research company Chart Track GfK there are almost six million Wii consoles in British homes.

The catch-up radio and television service is also launching in trial, or beta, form on the Freesat TV platform later in November.

British broadcaster Channel 4 has concentrated on making its on-demand service 4OD more accessible on the internet.

In October it announced that it would be showing entire programmes free of charge on YouTube.

Updated: Details on Microsoft's New Search Partnership With Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha's API sees big pickup, may just change how we look at a search engine

We've been following Wolfram  for since its introduction as this search engine promises to open search to dramatically new realms, such as math and the sciences. Located in Champaign, Illinois, Wolfram Research produces Wolfram Alpha. Founded by Stephen Wolfram, Ph.D, the company's past works have included Mathematica and Wolfram Workbench, utilities commonly employed by college students and researchers.

Wolfram Alpha returns answers to complex questions like plots of mathematical functions, geometric shapes, nutritional information, and more. Previously, these results had been offered solely through Wolfram's search engine site. There had been some recent chatter that Wolfram was working on APIs for other search engine firms to use, but the results remained unrevealed -- until now.

Microsoft and Wolfram Research just announced that Microsoft's Bing search engine will bring the Wolfram API onboard to provide richer search results. Wolfram's blog describes, "Wolfram

Alpha provides immediate, unbiased, and individualized information, making it distinctly different from what has traditionally been found through web search. By using Wolfram

Alpha, Bing recognizes the complementary benefits of bringing computational knowledge to the forefront of the search experience... By using our API, Bing will be able to seamlessly access the tens of thousands of algorithms and trillions of pieces of data from Wolfram

Alpha, and directly incorporate the computations in its search results."

The Wolfram team relates a humorous story of Stephen Wolfram presenting the engine to Microsoft's senior executives. Stephen Wolfram typed in the query "2^2^2^2^2" and a number popped up. Semi-retired founder and former CEO Bill Gates inquired, "What, is that right?"

Mr. Wolfram replied, "We do mathematics!

And that they did, finding that the result is indeed correct. The Wolfram team writes, "Microsoft continues to pepper us with questions to this day, reflecting its continued enthusiasm in Wolfram

Alpha."

The deal is not an exclusive one, however, so those hoping to see Google+Wolfram aren't out of luck just yet. We caught up with Wolfram's publicist, John Ekizian. While he told us he couldn't discuss financial details of the deal with Microsoft, he was more than happy to clarify the question of exclusivity. He states, " We have talked to everybody in the business about using our API, and then we'll have more announcements about whose using. But no, there's no exclusivity with Microsoft."

He says Microsoft was the first to jump on the deal, though. Asking him about the direction he sees the company's search endeavors going in, he plugged both the API (and partners), Wolfram's own site, and the company's iPhone app, stating, "I think its a little bit of everything. Its a great complement to search. Therefore its the perfect API. But also, we've had a lot of traction on the actual website and our iPhone app has been doing incredibly well. We've been on the top grossing apps and on the hot apps and we've only been out about three or four weeks with the iPhone app."

For now, you can go to Bing and test out the feature for yourself. Microsoft suggests using it to search for health information, such as body-mass index (BMI), nutrition information, to plot math equations, or to look up geometric information like "pyramid".......update

We spoke early this afternoon with Wolfram's Schoeller Porter who leads Wolfram's developer relations program and works more closely with the technical aspects of the API.

We began by asking some questions about how Wolfram collects all of its data. Mr. Porter explained that some data is internal, other from reputable sources (government data, etc.). However, with all information, before it can be entered into the search engine it must undergo "curation" -- named after museum preservation. Describes Mr. Porter, "It's a process to help ensure that we're providing quality data to our customers."

Next we inquired about whether Wolfram had plans for a Android OS (Google) or Blackberry (RIM) version of its popular iPhone app. Mr. Porter said that the various platforms are indeed being looked at and that the main limitation was screen size. The iPhone app sends queries to the API, which Mr. Porter describes as a "restful API" and gets information back to display. Mr. Porter said that the iPhone was first targeted due to its "large and vibrant market."

One interesting thing Mr. Porter mentioned was that Microsoft was Wolfram's customer (and not the other way around). This may cast a bit of light on the business arrangement between the pair, which is being kept closely guarded.

We closed with discussing the future of Wolfram Alpha, which seems bright. Mr Porter states, "Wolfram Alpha will continue to grow in scope of information and depth."

Bing vs. Google: Feature Wars

If you haven't noticed, Bing and Google are engaged in a tit-for-tat over which search engine has the best features.

On Wednesday, Bing unveiled new and improved tools like Wolfram Alpha integration, Facebook Previews and full-page weather reports. Then Google hit back on Thursday with enhanced movie listings and even safer SafeSearch. Before that Bing unveiled an overhauled maps interface, the next day Google announced Street View was now available in all fifty states. Last month during the Web 2.0 Summit, the two search engines sent out competing press releases bragging about Twitter integration, and on and on it goes.

Google may be the dominant search engine, but Bing is doing its best to push its way up the popularity charts.

With so much attention focused on adding new stuff, you've got to wonder what the future has in store for search and whether this feature war is getting out of hand....more

No regrets from Aussie IPhone virus creator

SYDNEY: The Australian programmer who claims to have created the world's first Apple iPhone virus as a prank said does not regret writing it.

First IPhone Worm Spreads Rick Astley Wallpaper

The worm, 'Ikee' changes iPhone owners' wallpaper and replaces it with a photo of '80s pop star Rick Astley and the message "ikee is never going to give you up".

Twenty-one-year-old Wollongong resident Ashley Towns, said he created the virus out of curiosity and boredom.

"I had just formatted my iPhone and it told me to set the password in bold, big letters and I wondered how many people have actually done that," Towns said.

"So I ran a scan on my 3G network and there was 26 phones running the service that's vulnerable, and out of that 26, 25 hadn't changed their passwords."

Towns said he loves the iPhone so there was no vendetta against Apple, just disbelief that many users had failed to change their passwords when requested to do so.

"It's the simplest thing to change your password, it's not hard and if you're going to install something like SSH...I could have gone through and read people's messages and emails -- all their barter was up for grabs," Towns said.

Although Ikee does not appear malicious, it has the potential to be modified and perform tasks such as stealing sensitive information from iPhone users. The worm can affect jailbroken iPhones running a Unix utility called SSH (Secure Shell) with the iPhone's default password, "alpine," still in use.

Once in place, the worm appears to attempt to find other iPhones on the mobile phone network that are similarly vulnerable, and installs itself again.

Towns admitted he was targeting phones on both Telstra and Vodafone, as well as Optus, however he soon discovered that Telstra and Vodafone are behind NAC firewalls, making their SSH inaccessible.

However, he said the worm can spread between phones on the same Wi-Fi network.

Despite admitting the virus was a form of vandalism, Towns said he stands by his decision to release the worm.

"All the worm does is change your background to Rick Astley, so it's not malicious, it's not going to harm anyone's phone other than people having to look at Rick Astley until they remove it," Towns said.

Although so far confined to Australia, Towns said the virus has the potential to spread globally and claimed to have read reports the virus turned up in China

Australian iPhone users have reported their experience with the worm, flooding Internet forum Whirlpool with posts about their experience.