Nvidia unveils hand-held console

7 January 2013 Last updated at 05:34 ET By Leo Kelion Las Vegas

Nvidia has announced plans to produce its own hand-held video-games console.

Project Shield is Android-based and marries a 5in (12.7cm) touch-screen with joysticks, buttons and other controls, in a clam-shell design.

It is also designed to link to PCs offering access to more powerful games such as those on the Steam library.

The announcement was a surprise, as the US company has previously focused on selling chips and graphics cards to other manufacturers.

Intel, another chip manufacturer, is also reportedly working on its own device - a television set-top box.

Android apps

Nvidia's announcement came at the first major press conference of this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The company's chief executive, Jen-Hsun Huang, did not reveal a release date or price for the device, but he did show off a working prototype and outline its specifications.

The console is bigger than an Xbox controller but smaller than the Wii U's game-pad.

Its screen resolution is 720p, but the machine is capable of playing out games and video in the 4k standard - which offers eight times the detail - on compatible TVs via an HDMI cable.

At its heart is the firm's new quad-core Tegra 4 chip - which Mr Huang described as the fastest mobile processor on the market.

As well as keys representing the standard Android commands, the console also sports a "shield" button that takes users to a curated games store featuring titles selected from the Google Play marketplace. However, it can also be used to run other types of apps - Mr Huang gave music players and Facebook as two examples.

Using wi-fi it can also be paired with a computer containing one of Nvidia's GeForce video cards to run PC games. In this case the desktop computer's processors power the software, offering higher quality graphics than could be rendered by the mobile processor.

Mr Huang boasted that "latency was so short it was as if you are connected to the PC" - playing down potential concerns that this kind of set-up might involve a delay between a user pressing a button on the console and the connected PC registering the command.

A demonstration involving titles from Valve's Steam PC platform appeared to bear this out.

However, to avoid such latency issues, users will only be able to connect the console to a PC on the same home network - although Mr Huang said it was an ambition to allow them to go "beyond the house" with future devices.

'Alienated partners'

Nvidia's move takes advantage of the growing number of games being released for the Android and Windows operating systems without it having to develop its own ecosystem - as is the case with the PlayStation, Wii and Xbox families.

However, it will have to convince consumers that they need a dedicated portable gaming console in addition to their other computing devices.

Earlier this year Sony had to cut sales forecasts for its PlayStation Vita hand-held - analysts linked the news to the growth of gaming on smartphones and tablets.

In addition, one industry watcher suggested Nvidia's move would prove controversial with hardware makers that currently use its chips.

"It is a bit of a reach for Nvidia as it does not typically involve itself much with the end-user," said Josh Walrath from the PC Perspective tech site.

"They normally have partners in between. So by doing such a thing you do have to wonder if they're going to alienate any of their really close partners, and if they have the ability to get consumers to buy into it."

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Island community pleads for internet

3 January 2013 Last updated at 08:40 ET By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

Residents on the remote South Atlantic territory of St Helena have renewed their plea for the UK to back plans to bring broadband to the island.

The British Overseas Territory needs £10m to connect to a submarine cable.

The island's 4,200 residents currently rely on a slow satellite connection, which campaigners say is stunting the island's growth.

The Foreign Office has said a "full economic assessment" was needed before any new link could be funded.

The UK, like several other countries, refused to sign a proposed UN treaty regarding wide-ranging changes to internet governance at a conference in Dubai last month.

It meant a clause requiring states to aid in connecting remote communities will not now be enforced, removing any obligation or commitment for the government to work with communities such as St Helena.

"The UK did not sign the revised International Telecommunication Regulations last week in Dubai, and has no intention of doing so in the future," the Foreign Office said in an email.

"We will therefore not be bound by the provisions contained in the Treaty when it comes into force on 1 January 2015."

'Revolutionise'

Campaign group A Human Right, which is supported by the UN, has called on the Department for International Development to contribute a substantial amount to the engineering costs of connecting the island to the South Atlantic Express, a new superfast fibre optic cable being laid by South African firm eFive.

Dr Rosalind Thomas, eFive's chief executive, agreed last year to alter the cable's path to bring it closer to the island, opening up the prospect of connecting it.

An investment of around £10m, campaigners said, would be enough to latch on to the cable and "revolutionise" the island - with private backers contributing further costs.

Due to the island's location, it is well-placed to support infrastructure relating to satellite operations, including base stations and communication hubs.

The government is already spending £250m on the island to build a new airport in a bid to encourage high-spend tourism to the island which is one of the most remote on earth.

"The plan [for the airport] is to establish high-spending tourism on the island which will be quite a challenge," said Christian von der Ropp, organiser of the campaign.

"If you spend an additional £10m or a bit less getting this cable landed, there would be a huge opportunity for social and economic development.

"This is something that would revolutionise the island, and people's perspectives there. And I believe it would relieve British taxpayers."

Currently, the UK government spends £20m a year on supporting the island.

'Economic and social benefits'

In an email to A Human Right, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said telecommunications on the island was the responsibility of the St Helena Government.

"We are aware of eFive Telecom's plans to lay a fibre-optic cable connecting South Africa and Brazil and the St Helena Government's initial discussions with them about the feasibility and costs of a spur link to St Helena," the Foreign Office said.

Continue reading the main story

• St Helena has a population of 4,000
• Residents are known as Saints
• It measures 47 sq miles and lies 1,200 miles from the African mainland
• An estimated 7,000 St Helenan families are living in the south of England

Source: St Helena Development Association (SHDA)

"If the developers proceed with the project then a full economic assessment would be needed to consider the extent of the economic and social benefits that such a link could bring to St Helena."

Campaigners hope that with better internet access local residents, particularly young people, will be less inclined to leave the island for study and work purposes.

Mike Olffon, owner of the island's radio station Saint FM, told the BBC that getting access was prohibitively expensive.

"Internet here at the moment is tremendously expensive because it's satellite - it's well over £100 a month. We have no choice.

"It is important for the development of the island, if we want to have IT services and internet-related business.

"The population would very much look forward to the government's help to pay the money."

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Google avoids legal action in US

3 January 2013 Last updated at 17:14 ET

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided not to take legal action against Google at the end of a 19-month investigation into the search giant.

It found Google had not biased its search results to favour its products.

Google has agreed to give advertisers access to more information about their campaigns and has agreed not to use other providers' material such as product reviews in its search results.

Google is still awaiting a competition ruling from the European Commission.

Another key concession applies to how Google uses the patents it bought when it acquired Motorola Mobility last year for $12.5bn (£7.9bn).

Google has said it will charge "fair and reasonable" rates to companies that need to use its standard essential patents.

Standard essential patents are ones that are critical to industry standards, for example, the technology that allows devices such as smartphones and tablets to connect to the internet over wi-fi.

It has agreed not to take out injunctions forcing licensees to remove their products from sale if there are disagreements about how much a fair rate should be.

'Disappointing and premature'

Rivals had called for stronger sanctions to be taken against Google.

Fairsearch, an organisation representing several of Google's critics such as Microsoft, said in a statement: "The FTC's decision to close its investigation with only voluntary commitments from Google is disappointing and premature, coming just weeks before the company is expected to make a formal and detailed proposal to resolve the four abuses of dominance identified by the European Commission, first among them biased display of its own properties in search results."

The FTC was asked to investigate whether Google was favouring its own products in search results.

FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz told a press conference that the commission had found no evidence that Google's search engine was biased towards its own services.

"Some may believe the commission should have done more, but for our part we do follow the facts where they lead," he said.

"We do it with appropriate rigour. This brings to an end the investigation. It is good for consumers, it is good for competition and it is the right thing to do."

One of the biggest changes to be implemented by Google will allow advertisers to copy ad campaign data to other search engines, such as Microsoft's Bing.

Google is also promising that it will stop copying content from other websites to use in its summaries, even though the company had insisted the practice was legal under the fair-use provisions of US copyright law.

In response to the settlement, Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said in a blog post: "The US Federal Trade Commission today announced it has closed its investigation into Google after an exhaustive 19-month review that covered millions of pages of documents and involved many hours of testimony.

"The conclusion is clear: Google's services are good for users and good for competition."

Big fine

It does not mean that the search giant is out of the woods on the issue of anti-competitive practices.

Alongside the FTC investigation, Google is still under scrutiny from the European Union.

In December, the EU's Competition Commission gave the search giant a month to address four key areas:

• the manner in which Google displays "its own vertical search services differently" from other, competing products
• how Google "copies content" from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - to include within its own services
• the "exclusivity" Google has to sell advertising around search terms people use
• restrictions on advertisers from moving their online ad campaigns to rival search engines

Google is expected to respond to these concerns shortly.

If found guilty of breaching EU anti-trust rules, Google would face a fine of up to $4bn (£2.5bn).

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China levies LCD price fixing fines

4 January 2013 Last updated at 06:51 ET

Samsung, LG and four Taiwanese firms have been fined £35m by Chinese trade regulators for fixing the prices of LCD screens.

China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said the six firms met regularly from 2001 to 2006 to decide what to charge for displays.

The Chinese fines are the latest levied by governments around the world over the price fixing deal.

In late 2011 the six paid the US $553m (£357m) to settle similar claims.

The price fixing ring came to light as a result of a US Justice Department investigation and has led other governments and trade bodies to punish the six firms. In 2010 the European Commission fined the six firms 649m euros (£527m) for operating the cartel.

Despite making the payments the six firms, which includes Taiwanese firms Chimei Innolux, AU Optronics, Chunghwa Picture Tubes and HannStar Display, deny responsibility for the claims made against them.

The NDRC fine involves the firms repaying all the profits they made in China as a result of price fixing (208m yuan, £21m) as well as an additional penalty payment of 144m yuan (£14m).

"The enterprises involved in the price monopoly acts have harmed the legitimate rights and interests of the domestic color TV enterprises and consumers," said the NDRC in a statement.

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Virgin France declares insolvency

4 January 2013 Last updated at 07:45 ET

Virgin France is to declare itself insolvent, the latest music chain to fail against a backdrop of consumers shifting to buying music online.

The firm - not affiliated with Richard Branson's Virgin Group - has 25 stores in France, including a flagship outlet on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

It has already taken steps to terminate the lease on the Paris store and will hold a meeting with unions on Monday, a spokesman said.

Virgin France employs 1,000 people.

The firm is currently owned by French investment firm Butler Capital. Butler bought 80% of Virgin in 2007 from French media company Lagardere, which had purchased the chain from Mr Branson's Virgin in 2001.

It is not the only music chain suffering.

Most have been struggling for a number of years, having been hit hard by the big growth in music and film downloads - legal and illegal - and by the rise in the sale of chart CDs and DVDs by the big supermarkets.

Virgin's main French rival, the Fnac chain, has also been facing difficulties. At the end of last year, it discontinued its Fnacmusic digital music download service, having failed to gain sufficient market share.

In the UK, music, films and games retailer HMV has warned that it faces an uncertain future in the face of continuing falling sales.

Our Price, Tower Records, Virgin Megastores, Zavvi, MVC, Music Zone, Andy's, Border's and Woolworths are all well-known names that have disappeared from streets in recent years.

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Toyota previews self-driving car

4 January 2013 Last updated at 07:54 ET

Toyota has given a taste of self-drive car safety technology ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next week.

The car maker revealed a video clip of a Lexus fitted with safety features designed to minimise car crashes.

The technology includes on-board radar and video cameras to monitor the road, the surroundings, and the driver.

The car can also communicate with other vehicles, according to a Toyota spokesman.

Driver aid

"We're looking at a car that would eliminate crashes," said the spokesman. "Zero-collisions is our ultimate aim."

The video shows a prototype Lexus LS fitted with what Toyota's described as an "Intelligent Transport Systems" (ITS) technology.

The "advanced active safety research vehicle" prototype uses ITS and existing Toyota technology to monitor whether the driver is awake, to keep the car on the road, and to stop at traffic signals. The technology is designed to be used in conjunction with a driver, but the car can control itself, said the spokesman.

A series of optical beacons on the roadside can detect the positions of pedestrians and obstacles, and relay information to the prototype about whether a traffic light is red or green, as part of ITS. The car can also independently monitor pedestrians' positions.

"Not the Jetsons yet, but our advanced active safety research car is leading the industry into a new automated era," Toyota said in a Tweet on Thursday.

Toyota has also developed technology that lets a car communicate with a driver's smartphone to offer augmented reality features. This would let the car know about places by the road letting it, for example. recommend an upcoming restaurant, said the spokesman.

Toyota is one of several heavy-weight car manufacturers and technology companies researching autonomous vehicles.

Audi is due to demonstrate a self-parking car at CES, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday.

Google was awarded an autonomous car patent in 2011, and secured a Nevada driving licence for its self-drive car in May 2012. In the same month Volvo tested a self-drive convoy on a Spanish motorway.

Self-driving cars could drastically improve road safety, according to Prof Paul Newman, who heads an Oxford University autonomous car project project.

"Computers will be ever vigilant. They don't get distracted," Prof Newman said on Friday.

Car systems can be engineered so that a systems failure will not result in a crash, he added. Prof Newman's Wildcat project aims to use lasers and radar to make a car "sense" its surroundings.

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Poorest pupils lack home internet

4 January 2013 Last updated at 08:16 ET By Judith Burns BBC News education reporter

More than a third of the poorest children do not have the internet at home and a similar number do not have a computer, official figures suggest.

A new breakdown of Office of National Statistics (ONS) data also showed that children from the wealthiest homes all had internet and computer access.

Campaigners say this 'digital divide' can harm poor pupils' education.

Valerie Thompson of the E-Learning Foundation says children without home internet "lose out big time".

She said, at the most basic level, lack of a home internet connection or a computer could mean that children struggled to research homework or complete coursework and were unable to access school websites which allow pupils to submit work digitally and receive feedback from teachers.

Poor access

"These new statistics show the digital divide is still a major issue for this country's young people.

"Poverty is clearly a factor in poor access to digital learning technologies and poor performance at school. The link between the two cannot be ignored."

The latest ONS Family Spending Survey, published last month, analysed the income and expenditure of more than 11,000 households across the UK. The data was collected in 2011.

The charity, E-Learning Foundation, extracted the data on computer ownership and internet access for families with children aged under 18.

Overall, most children (89%) can get on to the internet via a computer at home but according to E-Learning Foundation this figure masks a divide between rich and poor.

The data shows that while 99% of children in the richest 10% of households can access the internet via a computer, this dropped to 57% in the poorest 10% of households with children.

In the poorest households 29% had no computer, 36% had no internet and 43% had no internet connection via a computer.

According to the E-Learning Foundation this translates to a total of 750,000 school age children living in households with no internet, and some 650,000 without a computer.

'Teenagers and Technology'

A book from Oxford University's Department of Education, published this month, highlights the ways in which teenagers without an internet connection feel shut out from their peer group and disadvantaged in their studies.

The authors of Teenagers and Technology also found that parental fears about teenage time-wasting on social network sites were often unfounded with the benefits using digital technologies outweighing perceived risks.

Continue reading the main story

I had to write a story about heaven and I tried to write it in school but it was bell gone and I have a lot of things that I could write and I was angry that I haven't got a computer because I might finish it at home when I've got lots of time to do it. "

End Quote Sharon, 15 'Teenagers and Technology' Routledge

A 15-year-old interviewed for the book commented "It was bell gone and I have a lot things that I could write and I was angry that I haven't got a computer because I might finish it at home when I've got lots of time to do it."

And a 14-year-old boy talked about how much harder it was to complete coursework without a home computer: "People with internet can get higher marks because they can research on the internet."

He added that he felt cut off from friends because of being unable to access social networks: "My friends are probably on it all day every day and they talk about it at school".

Co-author Rebecca Eynon said: "Behind the statistics, our qualitative research shows these disconnected young people are clearly missing out both educationally and socially."

E-Learning's Valerie Thompson said imaginative use of technology by schools could help overcome the educational disadvantages suffered by children on free school meals, a key indicator of poverty.

"Technology can underpin learning by making it more relevant and personalised," she said.

"It can also help children with special educational needs, particularly those who struggle to cope in a normal, classroom, helping them learn and complete work at their own pace.

"Technology can allow a school to deliver an education to a child wherever they are, not just in a classroom."

She called for the social housing providers such as housing associations and local authorities to install wi-fi connections for tenants, and for schools to use the government's pupil premium for disadvantaged pupils to buy laptops for the poorest.

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Google detects website ID exploit

4 January 2013 Last updated at 17:20 ET

Web browser makers have rushed to fix a security lapse that could have allowed cyber thieves to impersonate Google+

The loophole involved an exploit of ID credentials that browsers use to ensure a website is who it claims to be.

By using fake credentials, criminals could have created a website that purported to be part of the Google+ social media network.

The fake ID credentials have been traced back to Turkish security firm TurkTrust which mistakenly issued them.

TurkTrust said there was no evidence the data had been used for dishonest purposes.

Secure code

An investigation by TurkTrust revealed that in August 2011 it twice accidentally issued the wrong type of security credential, a form of identification known as an intermediate certificate.

Instead of issuing low level certificates it mistakenly gave out what amounted to "master keys" which could have allowed a bogus site to pretend it was the legitimate version without triggering a warning.

"An intermediate certificate is essentially a master key that can create certificates for any domain name," explained security analyst Chester Wisniewski from Sophos in a blogpost about the security lapse.

"These certificates could be used to impersonate any website to any browser without the end user being alerted that anything is wrong."

The certificates are important, he said, because secure use of web shops and other services revolve around interaction between the "master keys" and the lower level security credentials.

The lapse was spotted when automatic checks built into Google's Chrome browser noticed someone was using the program with an unauthorised certificate for the "*.google.com" domain.

Had this not been detected the person could have gone onto to impersonate Google+, Gmail and other services run by the US firm.

The danger would have been that they could then have staged a man-in-the middle attack. This would have involved them relaying targeted users' communications to the real Google services and passing on the responses. By doing this they could have eavesdropped on potentially sensitive messages.

Google said it alerted other browser-makers to the threat after its discovery.

Microsoft and Firefox developer Mozilla subsequently issued updates which revoke the two wrongly issued intermediate certificates.

The identity of the person using the unauthorised certificate has not been reported, and their intentions are unknown.

This is not the first time that websites and browser makers have had a problem with security certificates. Fake certificates have been issued before now by several other firms and exposed confidential data including login names and passwords.

"It is really time we move on from this 20-year-old, poorly implemented system," wrote Mr Wisniewski. "It doesn't need to be perfect to beat what we have."

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Google head, official in N Korea

7 January 2013 Last updated at 04:21 ET

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TV crews and photographers were waiting when Bill Richardson and Eric Schmidt landed

Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and Google chairman Eric Schmidt are in North Korea on a visit described as unhelpful by the US government.

Speaking in Beijing before flying to Pyongyang, Mr Richardson said the visit was "a private humanitarian mission".

He said he planned to raise the case of a US citizen detained in North Korea.

The former governor has visited North Korea several times in the past, most recently in December 2010.

On two occasions he helped secure the release of detained US nationals. After his most recent visit he said Pyongyang had agreed to re-open its nuclear facilities to UN inspectors, but this did not transpire.

The detained US national is Korean-American Kenneth Bae, who was arrested in November in circumstances that are not clear. North Korea has in the past released detained Americans after high-profile US visits.

Google, meanwhile, has not commented on Mr Schmidt's trip.

"This is not a Google trip, but I'm sure he's interested in some of the economic issues there, the social media aspect. So this is why we are teamed up on this," Mr Richardson said.

"We'll meet with North Korean political leaders. We'll meet with North Korean economic leaders, military. We'll visit some universities. We don't control the visit. They will let us know what the schedule is when we get there," he said.

Internet use is highly restricted in North Korea, where few people have access to a computer and most users can only access a national intranet rather than the world wide web.

The visit comes less than a month after North Korea put a satellite into orbit using a three-stage rocket - a move condemned by the US as a banned test of long-range missile technology.

"We don't think the timing of this is particularly helpful," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said late last week.

Mr Richardson said the delegation was expecting to be in Pyongyang for two and a half days.

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Google drops China search warning

7 January 2013 Last updated at 11:07 ET

Google has stopped notifying users in China that they may be searching for censored keywords.

A Google feature that warned users about banned or sensitive words was dropped after a protracted battle with Chinese authorities over search.

Google confirmed on Monday that it had turned off the function, citing concerns over user experience.

Campaigners described Google's decision to remove the feature as "self-censorship".

Cat and mouse

The instigation of the feature in May last year sparked a cat and mouse game between the company and the Chinese authorities. Within 24 hours of the launch of the feature, technology known as the "Great Firewall of China" was blocking the function, according to campaign organisation Greatfire.org.

Google responded with countermeasures, but found that some users were being completely blocked from search, a source told the BBC.

Google scrubbed the search suggestion function in early December, and has also removed "help" documentation that explained how to use the feature, Greatfire.org said in a blog post.

Keyword service

Google began to offer suggestions about possible sensitive or banned keywords in China at the end of May last year, after complaints that its service was erratic. Google engineers found that certain queries by users led to error messages or website disconnection.

For example, search on the Chinese character "jiang", which means "river", but is also a common surname, was blocked after erroneous rumours about the death of former president Jiang Zemin.

Google has had a rocky relationship with the Chinese authorities since January 2010, when the company said it may shut down Chinese operations due to a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack. Google said at the time that it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine.

The company began to redirect search queries from mainland China to its Hong Kong website.

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