Formula E to use wireless charging

9 September 2013 Last updated at 06:10 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

Smartphone chipmaker Qualcomm has signed a sponsorship deal with the forthcoming Formula E championship.

The FIA international motorsports body plans to launch the electric-car competition next year as an alternative to Formula 1.

Qualcomm will provide wireless-charging and augmented-reality technology to help the teams taking part and the public watching the races.

It has also pledged an undisclosed sum of money as part of the five-year deal.

Both organisations said the intention of the championship was to both provide entertainment and to spur on electric-vehicle technologies.

One analyst said the events could help improve the public's perception of electric cars, but added there would need to be other developments if the tech was to go mainstream.

The FIA itself acknowledged change would not come overnight.

"We will make people more inclined to buy an electric car, but this will take time - five or 10 years," Formula E's chief executive Alejandro Agag told the BBC.

Wire-free recharges

Among the products Qualcomm plans to offer is its wireless vehicle-charging tech, Halo.

The facility - which is being developed by the company's London-based lab - creates an electromagnetic field using a copper pad buried in the ground. This can be picked up by a coil built into a vehicle, which converts it into electricity to power-up a battery.

British Formula E team Drayson Racing Technologies has already tested a customised version of Halo as a way of charging its vehicles when they are stationary.

However, the intention is to use the tech to recharge only the competition's safety vehicle during the first year of the championship before extending it to the competitors' cars in either year two or three.

In time, Qualcomm said, several pads could be built into the city centre roads used by the races to provide "dynamic charging" - the ability for the cars to top up their power on the go, helping them complete the race in quicker time.

South Korea has already pioneered something similar, using a locally developed variant of mobile recharging tech called OLEV to power buses on a set route.

However, such schemes are costly and the FIA said it recognised the competition would need to prove popular if it was to raise the sums necessary to pay for the installation of the many pads required.

Live updates

Qualcomm also intends to help design the telemetrics system used by the race - the automated process that monitors the vehicles taking part.

"Tyre pressure, engine, fuel, brake fluid, speed, torque - all sorts of things will be monitored on a miniscule nanosecond by nanosecond basis," explained Anand Chandrasekher, Qualcomm's chief marketing officer.

"Those streams of data will be sent real-time to a central area where the teams will be able to get access to that information and use it with their own proprietary software to say, 'OK, what guidance should we provide the driver as to what he or she should be doing in real time?'"

He added the information would also be able to be accessed by the public through the planned roll-out of its Vuforia software.

The app promises to offer an "augmented reality" view of the race, allowing spectators to carry on watching the car of their choice even if buildings or other objects obstruct their view by holding up their smartphone or tablet to make the vehicle visible.

Mr Chandrasekher said the public would be able to bring up the same real-time performance data as the racers' support teams, using the progam.

'Psychological impact'

Formula E is scheduled to commence in September 2014 in London, with races to follow in nine other cities including Beijing and Los Angeles.

Ten teams, each with two drivers, will compete against each other over the course of an hour.

Mr Agag said he believed the events would appeal to a younger audience than that typically attracted to Formula 1, and he hoped many of the fans would end up becoming electric car owners.

"We think Formula E can be a platform where companies can showcase and develop and improve technologies for electric road cars," he said.

"We will demonstrate that batteries will offer more performance and go longer. At the beginning [the drivers] will swap cars, but this will stop as the batteries improve, and people will see the cars go faster.

"This, we hope, will have a psychological impact and make people more inclined to buy an electric car."

One independent automobile expert agreed the competition could prove influential.

"There's a perception issue with electric vehicles - people worry about how far they will go and the cost of the batteries," said Prof David Bailey, from Coventry Business School.

"This could show people how well they work.

"But a lot of other things need to happen including changes in government policy if there's to be the necessary investment in wireless charging and other infrastructure beyond the racetracks."

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Nintendo faces 'path to irrelevance'

6 September 2013 Last updated at 19:18 ET By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

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Atari founder Nolan Bushnell says Nintendo could be on a "path to irrelevance"

Nintendo, whose latest console has sold poorly, could be on a "path to irrelevance", the founder of legendary games company Atari has said.

In an interview with the BBC, Nolan Bushnell said the Japanese firm was left in a "very difficult position".

Games analysts have drawn parallels between Atari's doomed Jaguar console in 1993 and the struggling Wii U.

Mr Bushnell said Atari had been "abused by corporate charlatans" after a "glorious beginning".

The 70-year-old had been speaking at Campus Party, an event held at London's O2 Arena in which thousands of developers, staying in tents, worked together on various collaborative technology projects.

Founding father

Mr Bushnell, who gave a keynote speech at the event, now runs an educational software company called Brainrush.

"It's about taking game technology, mashing it up with brain science, and creating some pretty powerful software towards learning," he said.

"We have some really powerful engines right now that are knocking it out of the park. You'll hear a lot about it in the next few years."

Mr Bushnell is famed in the computer games industry and beyond for being a "founding father" of video games. But equally as famous as his early success was Atari's dramatic fall, something he warned may face Nintendo.

"I don't think handheld game-only devices make sense anymore," he told the BBC. "Not when you have an iPod or an Android microtablet.

"When it comes to the console market, I think the market is truncating.

"Nintendo always had a soft spot for young people - they sort of did the 12-and-under pretty well, and the other guys did the 12-and-over.

"And now I think the other [consoles] are good enough on those things, and the rush to upgrade from the 12-and-under is not nearly as important."

'Motion sickness'

Atari's Jaguar console was released in 1993, but was effectively discontinued three years later. The console's release date was seen as its critical flaw - while more powerful than existing consoles at the time from Sega and Nintendo, it was soon eclipsed by newer consoles from Sega and Sony.

Similarly, the Wii U, released ahead of Christmas last year, has had slow sales - and is soon about to come up against more powerful machines in the shape of Microsoft's Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

The Wii U's poor sales have led to it no longer being stocked by some key retailers, such as Asda, while several games publishing companies have either stopped making titles for the platform, or made it a low priority.

In modern gaming, Mr Bushnell said he is most excited by the possibilities of the Oculus Rift - a virtual reality headset that has been backed by several influential figures in the games industry.

"The problem with virtual reality has always been motion sickness," he said.

"If they're able to really get the reality and the image right, with low latency, I think they'll get it.

"With most motion sickness you can build up immunity - and I believe that will represent a brand new, really powerful gaming system."

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC

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Twitter program 'maps nation's mood'

7 September 2013 Last updated at 07:38 ET

British scientists have developed a computer program they say can map the mood of the nation using Twitter.

Named Emotive, it works by accessing the emotional content of postings on the social networking site.

The team, from Loughborough University, say it can scan up to 2,000 tweets a second and rate them for expressions of one of eight human emotions.

They claim Emotive could help calm civil unrest and identify early threats to public safety.

More than 500 million people across the world use Twitter, and more than 340 million tweets are posted daily.

The team, from the university's new Centre for Information Management, say the system can extract a direct expression of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, shame and confusion from each tweet.

The academics said that using the Emotive software to geographically evaluate any mass mood could help police to track potential criminal behaviour or threats to public safety.

It may be able to guide national policy on the best way to react to major incidents, they added.

'Sadness and disgust'

Prof Tom Jackson, who led the research team, said that public postings through social media gave a very accurate real-time record of how and what people were feeling.

Continue reading the main story

For any incident we can view how reactions grow and diminish over time"

End Quote Dr Ann O'Brien Loughborough University

"Following the murder of solider Lee Rigby in Woolwich there was an outpouring of sadness and disgust through Twitter," he said.

"Across the country people expressed their emotions at this unprovoked attack, with some using the incident to incite racial hatred against Muslims.

"Two days after his murder his family appealed for calm, stating that their son would not have wanted his name to be used as an excuse to carry out attacks against others.

"This appeal had an almost immediate effect, leading to an outpour of positive sentiment."

Prof Jackson added: "Twitter is a very concise platform through which users express how they feel about a particular event, be that a criminal act, a new government policy or even a change in the weather.

"Through the computer program we have created we can collate these expressions of feelings in real time, map them geographically and track how they develop."

Dr Ann O'Brien, who was part of the team that created the study for emotions used by the programme, said it could chart the strength of feeling expressed in both ordinary language and in slang.

"For any incident we can view how reactions grow and diminish over time," she said.

The system is currently only being used to analyse tweets in the UK, but the researchers said it could easily be scaled up to monitor tweets globally.

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US and UK 'spy on smartphones'

8 September 2013 Last updated at 14:58 ET

The US National Security Agency (NSA) is reported have cracked the security codes which protect data on iPhones, Blackberries and Android devices.

German news weekly Der Spiegel says documents suggest the NSA and the British GCHQ made joint efforts to gather intelligence.

Teams looked at each phone to crack its privacy codes, Der Spiegel said.

Saturday saw thousands of demonstrators in Berlin demand that the NSA stop monitoring internet users.

Codes unlocked

The documents Spiegel has seen do not show whether or not there has been mass surveillance of phone use.

Once the intelligence teams had unlocked the codes, agencies could read a user's contacts and lists of who had been called.

The BBC's Steve Evans in Berlin says the reports do seem to indicate that the British and American security agencies have the ability to read private communications beyond what might have previously been thought possible - or desirable by those who fear the intrusion of the state.

The magazine did not explain how it had obtained the documents.

But one of the authors of the article, Laura Poitras, is an American filmmaker with close contacts to the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

'Champagne'

According to the documents seen by Der Spiegel, the Canadian manufacturer of Blackberry phones began using a new method to compress the data in May 2009.

Intelligence agents were unable to access some information on BlackBerry phones for about a year afterwards, the Associated Press news agency said.

Der Spiegel's article said that GCHQ then cracked the problem, too - and analysts celebrated their achievement with the word "Champagne".

A stream of recent revelations about international data surveillance has ignited a heated debate in Germany about the country's co-operation with the United States in intelligence matters.

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Nissan launches driver's smartwatch

8 September 2013 Last updated at 22:05 ET By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

A smartwatch that monitors the performance of a vehicle as well as the driver has been launched by car manufacturer Nissan.

Like many other smartwatches, the Nissan Nismo measures the user's heart rate, temperature and other biometrics.

But it also allows users to keep an eye on their car's performance - including average speeds and fuel consumption.

Experts say that the watch could be an important step towards greater connectivity in cars.

"Connectivity is the new battleground for car manufacturers," said Chas Hallett, editor-in-chief of What Car?

"In-car internet is coming and now with consumer electronics focusing on watch-based connections, Nissan is getting ahead of the game and joining the two together very cleverly."

The Nismo watch can be connected to the car's on-board computer system to allow users to monitor vehicle telematics and performance data. Users can also receive tailored messages from Nissan via the gadget.

It was unveiled ahead of the Frankfurt Motor Show, which runs until 22 September.

Concentration levels

"Wearable technology is fast becoming the next big thing and we want to take advantage of this innovative technology," said Gareth Dunsmore, marketing communications general manager at Nissan, Europe.

A glut of smartwatches has hit the market recently, including Samsung's Galaxy Gear and Sony's Smartwatch 2.

Car-connected watches could be even more useful than those offered by consumer electronic firms, thinks Mr Hallett.

"Imagine if you could heat up your car on a cold day before you got into it or shut the roof of your convertible when it started raining and it was parked outside," he said.

The Nissan Leaf electric car already allows users to interact with it via their mobile phone, said Mr Dunsmore, and such functionality should be available in the firm's next-generation watches.

The current gadget is one of the first products to come out of its Nismo laboratory, which captures live biometric and telematics data from Nissan racing cars and their drivers.

The lab plans to use electrocardiograms (ECG) and electroencephalograms (EEG) in the future to capture a range of heart and brainwave data.

The eventual aim would be to create wearable technology for drivers that can spot fatigue, monitor drivers' levels of concentration and emotions and record hydration levels.

The Nismo, which comes in three colours and has a battery life of around a week, can be controlled by two buttons on the screen.

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Sony unveils 'casual' PS Vita revamp

9 September 2013 Last updated at 05:57 ET

Sony has unveiled a new version of its PS Vita handheld gaming console.

Revealed at the Tokyo Game Show, Sony said the PCH 2000 series consoles were aimed at casual gamers.

The gadget is 20% thinner and 15% lighter than earlier models, is available in six different colours and has a battery life of about six hours.

The device goes on sale on 10 October in Japan. Sony has given no date for when it will be available in other countries.

The PS Vita 2000 has 1GB of memory and will be able to use the bigger 64GB memory cards Sony is making for it. All versions of the revamped gadget will communicate via wi-fi only.

The launch comes soon after Sony cut the US and European price of the original PS Vita in a bid to boost sales. The price of the handheld was cut in Japan in February. Sales of handheld games consoles have slumped as people play more and more games on their smartphones.

In addition, Sony also showed off a tiny set-top box called the PS Vita TV. The device can connect to a television so owners can play their Vita games on a bigger screen. It can also be used to stream games being played on a PlayStation 4 console to another TV.

The Vita TV console can also pipe streamed media services such as Hulu to a display.

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TSB website crashes on launch day

9 September 2013 Last updated at 06:23 ET

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TSB customer on the split from Lloyds: "It's been pretty seamless... I'm not that fussed who takes control of it."

The new TSB bank has been launched with a promise to "fuel local economies", but the website hit problems on the first morning.

Lloyds Banking Group said there have been "intermittent" website problems across almost all its brands, including the new standalone TSB.

Five million customers are seeing their accounts automatically transferred from Lloyds to TSB.

Customers' bank account numbers and sort codes will remain the same.

TSB's mobile banking will not start until later in the week.

Bank cards will continue to work, with the name of the new bank included as new cards are issued in due course.

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The BBC visits a new TSB branch and asks whether the bank would attract new customers

Share sale

Some 631 branches of Lloyds Banking Group, including all of the Cheltenham and Gloucester branches and all Lloyds branches in Scotland, have been switched to the standalone TSB.

The new bank will be sold off next year, as part of a process ordered by the European Commission, to provide greater competition.

The sale was a condition of the government's bail-out of Lloyds, which is 39%-owned by the taxpayer.

Lloyds is currently the UK's dominant personal bank account provider, and will run the TSB as a separate unit until it is sold as a public company in its own right via the issue of shares next year.

TSB's leadership said that the ethos of the bank will mirror the original Trustee Savings Bank with 200 years of history.

Continue reading the main story

Reviving the TSB brand name

• The new bank will be called TSB and operate independently
• The name is drawn from the movement of savings banks that began in 1810
• The first was set up for working people in Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire. When it began, no withdrawals could be made without the approval of the trustees
• The savings bank movement grew, with deposits hitting £1bn for the first time in 1951
• The TSB Group was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1986
• It merged with Lloyds in 1995

Source: Lloyds Banking Group

"We bring the new TSB Bank back to over 600 communities across the UK to fuel their local economies - and nothing else," said Paul Pester, TSB's chief executive.

"We have today launched a bank which has been born fully formed."

The TSB name is reappearing after TSB merged with Lloyds 18 years ago.

As well as the branches, TSB will have four call centres and employ 8,500 staff, making it the eighth largest High Street bank. In a BBC News interview last week, Lloyds Banking Group's chief executive, Antonio Horta-Osorio, promised that the transition for customers will be "seamless".

However, a number of customers took to social media to complain about internet banking issues on the first morning.

A TSB spokeswoman said some customers were unable to log on successfully, although the problem should now be resolved. Branches, telephone banking and cash machine facilities were not affected in any way.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

The savings bank movement flourished throughout the UK with a large number of local organisations until they were brought together in the 1970s"

End Quote Reevel Alderson BBC Scotland

Lloyds said the internet banking problems were unrelated to the switchover.

Dominant

The UK's banking industry is dominated by five big names, which control 83% of retail (personal) bank accounts.

As well as Lloyds, the other banks which lead the field are RBS, Barclays, HSBC and Santander.

They have been variously caught up in a catalogue of scandals, including fixing the key Libor interest rate and mis-selling payment protection insurance (PPI).

Later this month, new rules designed to make it easier for people to switch accounts will come into force.

There has been disagreement among commentators over whether the appearance of TSB will boost competition.

Shore Capital's banking analyst Gary Greenwood said: "TSB will be painted as a new challenger brand on the High Street but I doubt that its pricing is going to be very differentiated to competitors.

"Current accounts tend to be very sticky and customers only tend to move if they have a really, really bad experience."

Mark Garnier, a Conservative member of the cross-party parliamentary committee on banks, also voiced doubt: "TSB is certainly not the answer. We want entrepreneurs to come into the marketplace and start opening banks."

However, Kevin Mountford, head of banking at price comparison website Moneysupermarket, said: "The launch of TSB bank can only be good news for consumers as it creates greater competition on the High Street."

Lloyds had been close to selling the business to the Co-operative Bank. That fell through in April after concerns emerged over the Co-op's financial strength.

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Yahoo legal action over data report

9 September 2013 Last updated at 11:53 ET

Yahoo has begun legal action demanding it be allowed to disclose details of US national security agencies' requests to access the personal data of its users.

The move comes a few days after Yahoo published its first transparency report, detailing the overall number of global government requests for data.

US law prohibits organisations from providing a breakdown of these figures.

Yahoo said withholding such information from the public "breeds mistrust and suspicion" about the US government.

The web company followed Google and Microsoft in releasing its first transparency report last week, detailing requests for users' data by 17 countries in which it has a legal entity.

The publication followed increased pressure by privacy groups for technology companies to disclose details of their collaboration with law enforcement agencies.

Yahoo had previously taken legal action to require the US government to publish documents over the next few months, which it said would show the company had objected to the establishment of Prism, a surveillance programme uncovered by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Under the US government's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), companies are not allowed to publicly disclose details of requests via programs like Prism, unless the data is released in an aggregated fashion, mixed together with less sensitive information.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

The United States should lead the world when it comes to transparency"

End Quote Ron Bell General Counsel, Yahoo

"The United States should lead the world when it comes to transparency, accountability, and respect of civil liberties and human rights," wrote Yahoo lawyer Ron Bell in a blog about the latest case.

"We filed the [law]suit today because we are not authorised at present to break out the number of requests, if any, that we receive for user data under specific national security statutes."

He added: "We believe that the US government's important responsibility to protect public safety can be carried out without precluding internet companies from sharing the number of national security requests they may receive."

US requests

Yahoo's transparency report revealed that 12,444 disclosure requests were made by the US between January and June of this year - by far the highest of all the countries detailed.

Only 2% of requests in the US were rejected. Although in a further 801 requests with which Yahoo complied, the company had found no data on the users in question.

The report, which Yahoo said would now be updated every six months, also said 1,709 disclosure requests had been made in the UK, although 27% of those had been rejected.

Google last published a transparency report in December 2012, which showed 8,438 applications from government officers and courts in the US over the last six months of 2012. It had 1,458 requests from UK officials in the same period.

Continue reading the main story

China frees man jailed for Yahoo email

Yahoo has welcomed the news that a man jailed in 2005 after the company disclosed an email in which he criticised Chinese authorities has been released.

Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist and poet, discussed classified details of the government's media restrictions on reporting the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in an email to a New York website.

He was sentenced to 10 years behind bars, but has been released 15 months before the end of his sentence.

At the time, Yahoo said it was just complying with local laws. Shi's family sued Yahoo and settled out of court in 2007.

The move comes a few weeks after Yahoo closed down its email services in China, and began withdrawing some of its other services from the market.

Ron Bell blogged about the release of the report and emphasised the measures the company's legal department took to reject data requests whenever possible.

The highest number of rejected disclosure requests was in Germany, where Yahoo refused to disclose the details of 816 users. Singapore had the greatest percentage of refusals, with 41% of all requests denied.

The report does not include requests for data on users of Tumblr, a microblogging site recently acquired by Yahoo, although the company says details will be made available at a later date.

Highest number of data requests
	Government data requests	Number of rejected requests
United States	12,444	241
Germany	4,295	816
Italy	2,637	584
Taiwan	1,942	46
France	1,855	324

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