John Lister

The Pandora Internet radio service will stop broadcasting to British listeners after the 15 January thanks to a dispute over royalty payments. The site plays music based on the listener's favourite artists or tracks. It analyses songs for musical ... styles, pace, tone and instrument to find similarities between tracks. Users can give a thumbs up or thumbs down to each song they hear (similar to the way TiVo works), decisions that directly affect what new songs will be played in future. The idea is to create a radio station customized for the individual listener. In the United States, licensing ... (view more)

Mozilla has apologised for an ad campaign which claimed users of their Firefox browser were less likely to have cancer than those using Internet Explorer. The campaign involved setting up a dedicated 'Firefox Users Against Boredom' site (which is ... now inaccessible to the public). It was designed as a viral campaign; rather than the company paying for advertising, the idea was that Internet users would find the site entertaining and tell friends about it. The site included a list of statistics comparing users of both browsers, including claims that Firefox users were more likely to watch ... (view more)

Facebook has removed two bogus profiles of Benazir Bhutto's son after a British newspaper 'reported' on personal information supposedly revealed on the site. The false details were reported by the Daily Telegraph in Britain, Australia's ABC News, ... and the Agence France Press. According to reports, the profiles revealed that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, expected to succeed his mother as leader of Pakistan's main opposition party, admitted to being hung-over and associating with a lesbian couple, both of which would violate Islamic beliefs. (Source: pinknews.co.uk ) However, Facebook has since ... (view more)

Tests at the University of Washington have shown it's possible to reroute brain signals to move paralysed limbs. The results could eventually lead to treatment for spinal injury victims. The study works on the idea that, although spinal injuries ... damage the connections which carry nerve signals, victims usually retain both the muscles in the affected limb and the use of the motor cortex, the part of the brain which controls movement. Unlike some parts of the brain, which work on a 'use it or lose it' basis, studies have shown people can retain full control over the motor cortex even after ... (view more)

The Queen has opened her own channel on YouTube. The British monarch will use the site to broadcast her annual Christmas Day message, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on television this year. Last year's message was, for the first time, ... available as a podcast. A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said, "The Queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people. She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries." Ironically, this year' ... (view more)

A serious flaw in the way people use Adobe's Flash software could leave tens of thousands of websites vulnerable to hackers. The problem lies in Shockwave Flash files (SWFs), which appear on websites and allow the site author to include short movies ... or animated graphics. (Source: half-serious.com ) The way the software currently works means it's possible for hackers to insert their own code into these files. For example, they could program the file to send them copies of personal information that the user types while visiting a site. At the moment, there are no patches available. The problem ... (view more)

The 'Think Secret' website, which published insider scoops about Apple products, is to close down as part of a legal settlement. The deal means the site's owners will not have to expose their confidential sources. It marks the end of a lawsuit ... launched by Apple in January 2005 after the site leaked details of the Mac Mini computer two weeks before its official announcement. The case surrounded laws designed to protect journalistic sources. Apple sued the site's boss, Nick Ciarelli, claiming he had unlawfully revealed trade secrets. The Cupertino-based tech company also demanded Ciarelli's ... (view more)

Hundreds of thousands of users on Google's social networking site have had their computers infected by a 'worm' virus. One source reports 400,000 computers fell victim, while another puts the figure at over 700,000. The attack took place in the ... Portuguese language, likely because the Orkut site is particularly popular in Brazil. The virus took advantage of a loophole in the site's scrapbook feature to post a JavaScript code on users' personal pages. JavaScript is a type of computer code commonly used to make websites interactive. The code then sent copies of itself to a user and his or her ... (view more)

Online retailers in Britain could be missing out on more than $5 billion worth of business because customers are concerned about security. The report's authors found that one in five people questioned do not shop online because they believe rogue ... web traders will not deliver goods, or are trying to commit fraud. The survey was carried out by GetSafeOnline.org, a site funded by the British government, Microsoft, eBay and the HSBC bank. GetSafeOnline.org's managing director Tony Neate said, "Being aware of the warning signs, and taking a few simple precautions, is all that's needed to shop with ... (view more)

The rise of online video sites could cause major problems for the Internet as a whole, according to researchers. The amount of traffic on the web is increasing much quicker than its capacity. Brett Swanson of the Discover Institute says this is most ... likely to affect the 'edges' of the Internet, the final mile or so of cabling between telephone exchanges and peoples homes. He has coined the phrase 'exaflood', which refers to an exabyte, or one thousand million gigabytes of date. Until recently, an exabyte had simply been a mathematical concept, but Cisco estimates total Internet traffic will ... (view more)