Justin Bieber named most searched person on internet

Teen singing sensation Justin Bieber was named the most searched person this year on internet search engine Bing on Monday, edging out reality TV star Kim Kardashian and "Friends" actress Jennifer Aniston. 

Justin Bieber 

 

In a survey conducted by the search engine, Bieber fever took over Bing in 2011 as the Canadian singer, 17, moved from last year's No. 6 position to become the most searched name and musician, based on billions of search queries during the year.

Bieber was the only male to feature in the top 10 list, as Kardashian fell from last year's No. 1 position and Aniston moved from last year's No. 9 position to No. 3 this year, with her rising profile attributed to a burgeoning film career and highly-publicised private life.

Actresses Lindsay Lohan and Megan Fox and singers Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus rounded out most searched names.

Despite "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1" taking in $489.3 million at global box offices so far, the vampire flick was beaten by the latest instalment of the "Mission Impossible" franchise as the most searched film of the year, with "Ghost Protocol" due for release in December.

"American Idol" was the most searched TV show and reality TV show this year, while Britain's royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton in April was the most searched celebrity event of the year.

Bing's survey also highlighted the most searched news stories this year, with the "Casey Anthony Trial" topping a list of high-profile events from around the world, including "Osama bin Laden Death," "Michael Jackson trial/Conrad Murray" and "Japan Earthquake/Tsunami."  

Criminals and cyber bullies to be banned from the web

Criminals who commit offences online and cyber bullies will be banned from the internet as part of the Government’s new cyber security strategy, announced today. 

By Christopher Williams, Technology Correspondent

Web firms protest over police plans to cut off websites

Internet firms and campaigners are protesting against government-backed proposals that would allow police to cut off websites without any court oversight, claiming they threaten free speech online. 

 

 

Nominet, the not-for-profit company that runs the .uk domain registry, has been in talks with Scotland Yard and the Serious Organised Crime Agency to create “lightweight” and “time-effective” procedures to suspend web addresses accused of criminal activity.

It has already cut off access to thousands of websites accused of involvement in fraud and counterfeiting on the basis of information provided by investigators via informal channels.

Draft proposals to continue the regime have now prompted protests from internet firms, who have refused to support them unless formal court action is part of the process.

Nominet controls the .uk registry within the Domain Name System, which translates the numerical IP addresses that identify computers online into readable web addresses. If a web address is suspended all links to it are broken and users are also unable to reach it by typing the address into their browser.

Both the ISP Association, which represents broadband providers including BT and Virgin Media, and LINX, a major cooperative of internet traffic carriers, have refused to support Nominet’s draft proposals.

“This is about knowing what the bounds are,” said Malcolm Hutty, head of policy at LINX.
There are fears that Nominet would gradually be told to cut off more websites accused of lesser transgressions, such as copyright infringement. Law enforcement authorities have also resisted calls to publish lists of the websites they target for suspension.


The industry protests are backed by the Open Rights Group, an online rights campaign group, which has also been involved in the discussions and says Nominet’s plan threatens freedom of expression.


“Domain suspensions are pretty drastic, potentially shutting down people's businesses and curtailing their free expression,” said Jim Killock, the group’s director.
“That's why court orders are needed. This is about basic human rights, due process and legal certainty.”


Today Nominet said it would delay action on the draft proposals to try to address the concerns.
“We had hoped to submit a proposed policy to our board in the December time-frame but following some recent public feedback it is clear that there are issues that require further discussion,” a spokesman said.


“Our approach from the outset has been to seek consensus where possible.”
He added that further talks are now planned for January. If agreement cannot be found it is thought police could lobby for new powers to impose web address suspensions to be included in the forthcoming Communications Bill.


A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said: "Nominet are currently developing proposals to change their terms and conditions to deal with domain names connected to criminal activity.


“They are working with a broad range of interested parties and the Government will continue to be part of that process.”

 

Netflix to revive Arrested Development

Netflix, the TV on demand service, has announced that it will bring back cult US comedy Arrested Development. 

 

Netflix has announced that it is to bring back cult comedy Arrested Development

 By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor

 

The online streaming service, which will launch in the UK next year, is bringing back the show for subscribers from 2013. It was originally broadcast on US channel Fox from 2003-2006.

The show about the dysfunctional Californian Bluth family won critical acclaim, six Emmy awards and a Golden Globe, but was cancelled after disappointing ratings over its three seasons.

The cast, starring Jason Bateman and Michael Cera, was already expected to reunite after creator Mitchell Hurwitz said a film was to be made and that several spin-off shows would follow.

The film director Ron Howard narrated the series, and was also its executive producers. He told the BBC in January that there was "a real desire on the creative team's part" to work on new material.

Netflix, which is America’s leading online film and TV subscription service, has announced it will launch in the UK “in early 2012”. The site claims it will offer “unlimited TV shows and films streaming instantly” to TVs and computers, but has not yet released what its launch price will be.


Other companies including Sony have also said that they would like to use their entertainment and devices networks to premiere exclusive content. Amazon has also recently started to directly commission authors. Netflix itself has also commissioned a drama, “House of Cards,” which will appear next year. 

 

Zuckerberg 'to float Facebook next year' says major investor

Mark Zuckerberg will choose to float Facebook next year, says Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and a significant investor in the site, in what could be the biggest consumer technology public offering in history. 

Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and serial technology investor with stakes in Facebook, Zynga and Groupon.

By Emma Barnett, Digital Media Editor

Talking to The Sunday Telegraph, Hoffman, who is one the most successful and high profile serial technology investors with stakes in several other major web companies, such as social games company Zynga, daily deals site Groupon and location service Gowalla - suggests the Facebook founder will opt to go public in the “first half of next year”.

“I suspect that Mark [Zuckerberg] will choose to go public because the company has to put in a lot of financial work in order to make the necessary filings and so he might as well make sure he benefits employees and ultimately the company from the level of work that’s already involved.

“Going public would benefit Facebook in lots of ways - namely having public currency to do acquisitions. So Mark [Zuckerberg] might as well get the benefit as well as the cost. Given that logic - I would suspect that some time in first half of next year, he will engage in the IPO process.”

Facebook is under pressure from the US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to disclose how many private shareholders it has on the secondary market. The limit for a private company is 500.

It has until the end of April next year to either make the necessary filings or IPO. Analysts have predicted that Facebook could set its valuation at $100bn when it floats and break new ground as the biggest consumer technology public offering ever.

Hoffman, who, as the co-founder and now executive chairman of LinkedIn, recently enjoyed a successful float of the business networking company he created in 2003, agreed that Facebook’s IPO could set new records.


“It could be the largest ever consumer technology IPO,” he said. “Facebook has deferred for a long time. The pattern 10 years ago was to go out [float] as soon as you could. The pattern now is to build a lot of inertia in your business and Facebook has done that. This will lead to a high tension IPO with a robust valuation.”


Facebook declined to comment.


Recent billion dollar valuations of several consumer web companies has led to claims that there is a new technology bubble just waiting to burst.


Floated on the New York Stock Exchange on May 19, LinkedIn epitomised the recent technology bubble, with its shares rising more than 109pc to close at $94.25 on the first day of trading, having gone up as much as 171pc at one point earlier in the day.


In less than 24 hours, a company with relatively small profits – it reported profit after tax of $6.59m (£4.04m) for the six months to June – went from being valued at $4.25bn to in excess of $9bn.

Hoffman, who is also now a partner at leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock Partners, refused to say whether he believed that the industry was back in a bubble. “I leave answering that specific question to other people. The precise point of a public market is that the market dictates the current answer to that question. Right now people who claim the technology market is back in a bubble are those who believe investors are underwriting the risk relative to growth.


“I invest in, and will continue to do so, in networks, platforms and marketplaces. The current ones will deepen and new ones will add value -so I am bullish about the growth opportunities in the market right now.”


He also said that the recent trend for secondary private markets to grow up around companies such as Facebook would have to “morph” and change in response to concerns from US regulators.


“The secondary market is a complicating factor in all of these businesses,” Hoffman said. “My guess is that how the secondary markets work today is not how they will work in a couple of years. How they will work is to be determined.


“The challenging thing about them is that private companies usually like to control their shareholders and as these markets have grown to be so big, almost seeming like a quasi real public market, it is more difficult to keep a handle on. Plus there are increasing regulatory issues.”


Hoffman has been in the UK for the last week as part of an initiative he set up several years ago with fellow investor, Sherry Coutu, called ‘Silicon Valley comes to the UK’.
The pair felt that young British people needed inspiration and the confidence to strike out on their own – hence the focus on panel discussions and events at 30 universities across the country during the last week, reaching around 12,000 students. And for the first time, there were entrepreneurial sessions going on at two Cambridge schools.


This year’s 30-strong troupe of Silicon Valley delegates include Andrew McLaughlin, the former chief technology officer for US President Barack Obama, and Megan Smith, the head of acquisitions at Google.


There was also a reception at Downing Street where the 32 student winners of an ‘Appathon’ [a competition last month during which 850 students had 48 hours to come up with the best mobile and web apps using Government data] were announced by David Cameron. These students will now tour Silicon Valley.


Hoffman says he has been impressed by the lack of barriers there are to creating a start up in the UK, but he feels the Government could do more to create programmes and events which encouraged valuable networking amongst technology entrepreneurs.
He thinks that fear of failure is the principal cultural challenge the UK needs to overcome if more people are to become entrepreneurs.


Interestingly, Hoffman also revealed that he is not sure if LinkedIn would have taken off in the same way it did had he founded it in the UK in 2003 instead of the US.


“For all social networks, part of getting them started is having enough people who are willing to experiment with another extension of their personal identity,” he explained.
“So in a LinkedIn sense it’s your professional identity; in a Facebook sense it’s your social identity and Twitter - your media identity.


“What I don’t know is would there have been a slower adoption within those new expressions of identity here had the likes of LinkedIn not been established elsewhere first, because of that classic British fear of embarrassment.”


Looking ahead, Hoffman believes the next wave of the internet, ‘Web 3.0’, moving on from the information and social web, will be one dominated by data.


“Data is the next powerful underlying theme of Web 3.0. This growing amount of data, which is all semantically indexed, will generate the next set of apps by which we will better navigate the world. Those apps will be the next big set of tech players.”

 

25 'worst' web passwords

'Password' has topped a list of the 25 worst web passwords people commonly use to login into sites, leaving them more vulnerable to hackers. 

More than 8.4m Britons have never used web

More than 8.4 million Britons have still never been online despite a sharp fall in non-internet users, according to official figures. 

Is WiFi the only answer?

With data use rocketing, will mobile networks be able to cope? The managing director of The Cloud says wifi is the best way to get the best experience.

 

 

The skyrocketing rise in the number of smartphones in use is leaving millions of people disappointed with the performance of the internet on mobiles. Whether it is downloading the latest app, searching the web or accessing social networks like Twitter or Facebook, clogged mobile networks will remind many of the M25 Christmas traffic. 

Smartphone ownership in the UK now stands at 15 million, having increased by 70 per cent over the past year. This Christmas alone, nearly a third of adults are expected to purchase a smartphone. The UK simply does not have the mobile infrastructure to cope with this rising demand. This leaves millions of us frustrated with our mobile internet experience.

As mobile companies compete over the increasingly lucrative smartphone market, some providers are beginning to offer unlimited mobile internet access across their 3G networks. This is a bold move and one that may win them market share. But given the current state of the 3G mobile internet experience, the move could leave operators unable to manage the increase in demand for data.

The problem is that the amount of data we’re using when we’re accessing the internet via mobile phones is already doubling every three months even before the explosion in smartphone purchases this Christmas. Our online activity is becoming increasingly demanding with larger downloads, the increased popularity of video streaming and the continued momentum of social networking via mobile. All these activities require large amounts of data usage and the 3G networks were not designed for such heavy data demands. Smartphones are up to 30 times more data hungry than traditional mobile phones resulting in a ‘clogging up’ of the 3G networks, similar in theory to a traffic jam on a busy road. As more people join the road, the sheer weight of traffic slows every individual journey down. Ultimately, this data crunch affects all mobile data users leaving us increasingly frustrated. 

This problem is only going to get worse, leaving users disappointed that their mobile internet experience is being limited in this way. Wi-Fi is another option, but many consumers do not realise the difference between 3G and Wi-Fi. Mobile Wi-Fi, just like a wireless internet connection on a laptop, allows users to connect to the internet on the go and is available through hotspots in public spaces. Wi-Fi delivers a more reliable and faster mobile internet experience than is currently available on 3G. Most smartphones are enabled with Wi-Fi so consumers just need to ensure the connection is enabled to make use of these services.

 

Applications such as Fastconnect will automatically log you on to Wi-Fi hotspots wherever they are available, so you don’t have to compete on the 3G networks. They’re ensuring that over the Christmas period, and going forward, Wi-Fi internet users have the quick and reliable mobile experience that they signed up for – and that their phone was designed to deliver.

British workers are internet addicts

*Soz to all ma fellow Technoz, itz been a slow day and week altogether.

A survey has revealed that many will spend on average 10 hours worth of work related internet time while on christmas holidays. 

 

Britain is becoming a nation of work obsessed internet addicts according to a survey carried out by Demon Broadband. 

The survey found that advances made in remote access was encouraging workers to log-on and work from home more regularly. Of those asked in the survey four in ten said they would log on more regularly due to better access to work from home.

61 percent of workers admitted that they would be working at home at some point over christmas. Worryingly many admitted to working similar office hours from home.

Matt Cantwell, the head of Demon Broadband explained that advances made in technology were helping maintain the balance between work and family

”We can see from our research that new technologies, such as smartphones and faster internet connections, are allowing more people to work from home when they need to", and that "while these technologies can mean we’re constantly connected they also give us the much needed flexibility to keep on top of our work without having to disrupt family life by leaving for the office".

However this flexibility does mean that many who would once have previously kept their holidays free from work at home are now using remote access.

The smartphone has also had an impact on the Christmas holidays of British workers. The 'always on, always connected' nature of current generation smartphones mean work emails are almost inescapable, with few having the courage to turn the handset off entirely.

Ernest Doku of comparison site Uswitch.com said: "While many feel that they are being productive in replying to these messages when away from the desk, the reality is that we can neither focus on relaxing or attending to business by compulsively checking mail all of the time. Something as simple as adding an Out of Office signature to your account with a forwarding phone number leaves you reachable, but filters out those less pertinent messages easily."

For some the constant need to check office emails is becoming an addiction. The importance of seperating work from family life is becoming far harder to maintain with a smartphone in the pocket, research has suggested. One mobile expert, Alex Buttle of mobile phone comparison site top10.com explained that workers are becoming obsessed.

"The need to be connected can become an obsession, and checking work e-mails every five minutes while the turkey is being served up, could end up causing a family rift and spoiling Christmas for everyone", he said.

New broadband satellite offers hope to rural areas

Rural areas could get connection of up to 10mbps early next year thanks to Hylas, a new broadband satellite.

 

 

High speed broadband connections could finally extend to remote rural areas thanks to the launch of a new satellite. The “Highly Adaptable Satellite” (Hylas) will launch this evening and offer up to 350,000 connections across Europe when testing is finished in early 2011.

Originally planned for last year, Hylas’s launch, from French Guyana, will be the first of a new generation of satellites that offer users speeds of up to 10mbps for fees that are likely to be around £25 per month. A larger version, Hylas 2, is planned for launch in 2012.

David Williams, chief executive of Avanti, the company that owns British-built satellite, said services will be available through 60 providers across Europe and will offer a similar level of service to that available from most fixed broadband providers. Power can be switched from one area to another, allowing maximum use of the satellites resources around the clock.