Mobile internet usage on the rise

Mobile internet use is growing while the number of people going online via a PC is slowing, analyst firm Nielsen Online has found.

Some 7.3m people accessed the net via their mobile phones, during the second and third quarters of 2008.
This is an increase of 25% compared to a growth of just 3% for the PC-based net audience - now more than 35m.
It also found that the mobile net audience was younger and searched for different things.


While Google remains the most popular site for those logging on via the desktop, on mobile internet BBC News is the most visited site, with nearly a quarter of mobile internet consumers using it.

Other popular sites include BBC Weather and Sky Sports.

"This highlights the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy: people often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this," said Kent Ferguson, asenior analyst with Nielsen Online.

"The fact that weather, sports, news and e-mail sites make up the majority of leading mobile sites shows that mobile internet is mainly about functionality and need at the moment as opposed to the more entertainment and e-commerce-focused makeup of the leading PC-based sites," he added.

China: Roses album is 'venomous'

China has dismissed the new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, as a "venomous attack" on the nation.

An article in the Global Times, published by the ruling communist party, says the album, launched this week, "turns its spear point on China".



The title track of the album, which has not been released in China because of the sensitive material, refers to the banned Falun Gong spiritual group.

The album's official website has also been blocked in China.

Chinese Democracy is the band's first album since their covers collection The Spaghetti Incident?

Ninety per cent of the young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted.
So says Keith Bakker the founder and head of Europe's first and only clinic to treat gaming addicts.
The Smith & Jones Centre in Amsterdam, has treated hundreds of young gamers since the clinic opened in 2006.
But the clinic is changing its treatment as it realises that compulsive gaming is a social rather than a psychological problem.




Using traditional abstinence-based treatment models the clinic has had very high success rate treating people who also show other addictive behaviours such as drug taking and excessive drinking.

But Mr Bakker believes that this kind of cross-addiction affects only 10% of gamers. For the other 90% who may spend four hours a day or more playing games such as World of Warcraft, he no longer thinks addiction counselling is the way to treat these people.

"These kids come in showing some kind of symptoms that are similar to other addictions and chemical dependencies," he says.

"But the more we work with these kids these less I believe we can call this addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem."
In response to this realisation the clinic has changes its treatment programme for gamers to focus more on developing activity-based social and communications skills to help them rejoin society.
Social ties
"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today," Mr Bakker told BBC News. "Eighty per cent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated. Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old fashioned communication."

Boy George 'chained male escort'

Singer Boy George chained a male escort to his bedroom wall and beat him with a metal chain after accusing him of hacking into his laptop, jurors heard.

The former Culture Club star handcuffed Audun Carlsen in his home in Shoreditch, east London, in April last year, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.



The singer, real name George O'Dowd, made contact with Mr Carlsen, 29, on the social networking website Gaydar.
Mr O'Dowd, 46, who is now a DJ, denies unlawfully detaining Mr Carlsen.
During the attack, Mr Carlsen was beckoned into the singer's bedroom only to discover a second unidentified man was waiting for him, the court heard.

"As soon as I saw the other guy they were both jumping on me. They held me down and beat me. I could not move.

Online fraudsters 'steal £3.3bn'

Hi-tech thieves who specialise in card fraud have a credit line in excess of $5bn (£3.35bn), research suggests.

Symantec calculated the figure to quantify the scale of fraud it found during a year-long look at the internet's underground economy.

Credit card numbers were the most popular item on sale and made up 31% of all the goods on offer.

Coming in second were bank details which made up 20% of the items being offered on criminal chat channels.

The $5.3bn figure was reached by multiplying the average amount of fraud perpetrated on a stolen card, $350 (£234), by the many millions Symantec observed being offered for sale.

Similarly, the report said, if hi-tech thieves plundered all the bank accounts it saw being offered for sale they could net up to $1.7bn.


Symantec said it was likely that many of the cards offered for sale were invalid or cancelled and bank accounts closed but it added: "These figures are indicative of the value of the underground economy and the potential worth of the market."

Credit card numbers were proving so popular among hi-tech thieves because they were easy to obtain and use for fraudulent purposes.

Many of the methods favoured by cyber criminals, such as phishing schemes, database attacks and magnetic strip skimmers, are designed to steal credit card information.

The existence of a ready market for any stolen data and the growing use of credit cards also helped maintain their popularity, it said.

"High frequency use and the range of available methods for capturing credit card data would generate more opportunities for theft and compromise and, thus, lead to an increased supply on underground economy servers," said the report.

Jackson expected to arrive in UK

Michael Jackson is expected to arrive in the UK to give evidence at the High Court over claims he breached a music contract with an Arab sheikh.

It is thought fans will gather to support him, but court officials are issuing a limited number of passes.

The King of Bahrain's son, Sheikh Abdulla Bin Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa, is suing Mr Jackson for £4.7m, claiming he reneged on a music contract.

Mr Jackson contests the claim, saying there was no valid agreement.



Sheikh Abdulla says he paid all the singer's living, travel and other expenses until his departure from Bahrain in 2006, and advanced funds to retain legal and financial advisers.

Mr Jackson claims the payments were "gifts".

The Thriller star was invited with his children and entourage to Bahrain, shortly after he was acquitted of child molestation charges in California.

While there, the sheikh lavished money on him.

Sheikh Abdulla also built a recording studio, which he believed would be used to record albums using material he had helped to write.
However Mr Jackson apparently pulled out of the deal in May 2006 after 11 months and has not seen the sheikh since.

On Monday Mr Jackson will come face to face again with the sheikh who said he believed he had formed "a close personal relationship" with the star.

Guns N' Roses album on sale in US

Guns N' Roses have finally launched their highly-anticipated album Chinese Democracy in the US, their first album in 15 years.

The record will go on sale in UK shops from Monday, but it is available to buy on the UK iTunes store now.



The group's album has been on their MySpace page since last week.

Before then most of the tracks had already been heard in various ways, with Shackler's Revenge appearing on video game Rock Band 2's soundtrack.
A blogger, who is alleged to have leaked nine new songs from the album, pleaded not guilty to breaking copyright laws at a Los Angeles court in October.

Kevin Cogill put the tracks on his website Antiquiet, federal authorities say

Emotional Jolie takes no prisoners

The excitement in the room is palpable.

The buzz, which manifests itself as lively chatter, is not one usually associated with experienced and sometimes cynical journalists.

And with the star of the show apparently running late, all eyes turn to the door each time it opens - only to be disappointed by the sight of late colleagues rather than a late Angelina Jolie.

The 33-year-old is in London to promote new film Changeling - the harrowing true story of Christine Collins whose son, Walter, went missing in Los Angeles in 1928.

When the press conference - at the swanky Claridge's hotel - eventually begins, Jolie explains that "the hardest thing" about playing Collins was that the character is relatively passive.



The same press man's follow-up question is met with an icy stare.

"There was a lot of focus on how thin you looked during the shooting of the film and in the film. I just wondered if you're healthier now?" he asks.

"I think that's an odd question," she replies simply.

As the press conference goes on, it can only be a matter of time before someone asks Jolie the killer question - how does she respond to Jennifer Aniston's claims that she romanced Pitt while he was still married to the Friends actress?

Whoever asks it may well get the cold shoulder from an actress who clearly takes no prisoners.

But the chance of taking the prize of a headline-grabbing retort back to editors is surely too good to miss. Isn't it?

No-one dares ask.

Surching BBC News
Entertainment reporter, BBC News

Madonna granted divorce in London

Pop star Madonna and husband Guy Ritchie have been granted a divorce at the High Court in London.

The decree nisi was granted just a month after the couple, who have three children, declared their eight-year marriage was over.



A sworn statement released by the court showed the pop star petitioned for divorce on the grounds of Ritchie's unreasonable behaviour.

Neither Madonna, 50, nor her film-maker husband, 40, were in court on Friday.

In her sworn statement, Madonna said Ritchie's behaviour was continuing.

Madonna also said in the statement that the couple had not been living at the same address for the six months before the date of the petition. The document was signed in Beverly Hills.

Google unveils customised search

Google has unveiled a tool that will allow users to customise and refine their search queries.

The company's SearchWiki lets users re-order, remove or add specific web search results.

This means the next time they perform the same search, the personalised version will pop up.




"I would call this revolutionary. It's a huge step, not a baby step in the world of search," Google's product manager, Cedric Dupont, told the BBC.

"This is part of an obvious movement of the web to become more participatory, so Google search is adapting to this movement," he said.

"The SearchWiki is about giving users more control over their search results and increasing user happiness," Mr Dupont added.

But industry watchers predict one huge problem with the effort.

"Most people are not going to engage with it and think about where the results should be - if it's above this one or below that one," said Greg Sterling, an editor with SearchEngineLand.com.

"This is really for a motivated or elite core of user who really wants to participate in the process."

IBM to build brain-like computers

IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.

Part of a field called "cognitive computing", the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.



As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m (£3.27m) from US defence agency Darpa.

The resulting technology could be used for large-scale data analysis, decision making or even image recognition.

"The mind has an amazing ability to integrate ambiguous information across the senses, and it can effortlessly create the categories of time, space, object, and interrelationship from the sensory data," says Dharmendra Modha, the IBM scientist who is heading the collaboration.

"There are no computers that can even remotely approach the remarkable feats the mind performs," he said.

"The key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain."