'China's Twitter' eyes US share sale

14 March 2014 Last updated at 22:59

China's largest Twitter-like service Weibo has unveiled plans to sell shares on the US stock market.

Weibo, owned by Chinese internet giant Sina, is looking to raise $500m (£300m) via the share sale.

However, the firm did not give details of the number of shares it plans to sell or the price range.

According to papers filed with the US regulators, it had 129.1 million monthly active users in December and generated revenues of $188m in 2013.

"A microcosm of Chinese society, Weibo has attracted a wide range of users, including ordinary people, celebrities and other public figures, as well as organisations such as media outlets, businesses, government agencies and charities," the firm said in its filing.

Booming market

Continue reading the main story

We expect our advertising and marketing revenues to increase in the foreseeable future"

End Quote Weibo

China's internet market has grown to become the world's biggest with more than 500 million users.

With major global social networking firms such as Facebook and Twitter blocked in the country, domestic companies have benefitted the most from this growth.

The popularity of services such as Weibo has also been driven in part by the fact that they gave users a platform to share unfiltered information.

As more people have got on the social media bandwagon, revenues at firms operating these services have also risen.

Weibo said its revenues nearly tripled in 2013 from a year earlier, as more companies advertised on the platform in an attempt to attract perspective customers.

The firm said it expects the trend to continue.

"We expect our advertising and marketing revenues to increase in the foreseeable future as we continue to introduce new advertising and marketing solutions and attract more customers," it said.

Slowdown concerns

However, the growing popularity of social media platforms has also attracted the attention of authorities who have moved swiftly to silence voices online.

A law has been introduced to allow the Chinese government to jail microbloggers and dozens were arrested last year. That has seen many users ditch the platforms in favour of mobile messaging services.

A report published last month indicated that the number of Weibo users declined steeply in 2013.

The China Internet Network Information Center said in its annual report that almost 28 million people abandoned Weibo last year.

The fall marked the site's first drop in usage amid a government crackdown on so-called 'rumour mongers' online.

That has triggered some concerns over whether firms such as Weibo will be able to sustain the rapid pace of growth seen in recent years.

The firm itself has highlighted the area as a potential risk.

"If people do not perceive content and other products and services on our platform to be interesting and useful, we may not be able to attract users or increase the frequency of their engagement," it said.

"A number of user-oriented websites that achieved early popularity have since seen their user bases or levels of engagement decline, in some cases precipitously."

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US to give up net oversight powers

17 March 2014 Last updated at 11:51

The US government has declared it wants to stop being in charge of how the internet is run.

The US Commerce Department has announced its "intent" to hand control over to the wider net community.

It has asked net overseer Icann to work out how to shift control from the US government to an alternative body.

It said it wants the successor controlling body to be made up of both private companies and government representatives.

'Critical' time

The way the internet came about meant the US retained ultimate control over how the network was operated. The process of stepping back from that began in 1998 with the creation of Icann (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

Under contract from the US government, Icann oversees the net's addressing system that underlies everything people do online.

Now it wants to go further and let Icann run that addressing system without any US interference.

In a statement setting out its plan, assistant secretary of commerce Lawrence Strickling said the handover must "support and enhance the multistakeholder model" for the governing of the net as well as maintain its openness.

Dr Stephen Crocker, chairman of Icann's board, said the day the net would be free of US oversight had been "long envisioned".

"We have all long known the destination," he said in a statement. "Now it is up to our global stakeholder community to determine the best route to get us there."

He said Icann had issued invitations to governments, companies, net organisations and civil groups to help it work out how the transfer of power should be accomplished. Icann said the new body should be in place by September 2015 when its current contract with the US government expires.

Calls for the US to have less of a role in the running of the net have intensified in recent months as whistle-blower Edward Snowden has leaked information about the extent of surveillance by America's National Security Agency.

In February, Neelie Kroes, the European Union commissioner who oversees telecommunications policy, said US oversight had to end.

In a more recent statement, she welcomed the US decision to hand over control and said: "The next two years will be critical in redrawing the map of internet governance - all those with an interest in preserving a trusted, free and open internet must act now."

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Europe backs single phone charger

14 March 2014 Last updated at 11:26

The maddening scramble to find the right charger for your smartphone could be coming to an end.

European politicians have backed a regulation that will force smartphone makers to use just one type of charger.

On Thursday MEPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of the regulation, which will see a common charger used for smartphones by 2017.

The regulation was drawn up to help consumers and to cut down on the amount of electronic waste.

"This serves the interests both of consumers and the environment," said MEP Barbara Weiler in a statement. "It will put an end to charger clutter and 51,000 tonnes of electronic waste annually."

The regulation is still only a draft law and must be approved by Europe's council of ministers. However, that body has already given its informal backing to the law, suggesting it will win final approval.

European member states will have until 2016 to translate the regulation into national laws and manufacturers will then have 12 months to switch to the new design. The process of getting manufacturers to agree on a common design began in 2009.

The design of charger being favoured uses a Micro USB connector - a format used on many handsets and other devices already.

Apple has yet to respond to the proposals as it is one of the few manufacturers that produces gadgets with proprietary power ports. However, it was one of the original signatories of the agreement Europe reached with manufacturers to produce the chargers.

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Moscow blocks four anti-Putin sites

14 March 2014 Last updated at 12:36

Moscow has blocked access to four websites run by opponents and critics of President Vladimir Putin.

The blog of opponent Alexei Navalny, two news sites and one run by Garry Kasparov were blocked on the orders of Russia's prosecutor general's office.

In a statement, it said the blocks were imposed because of the sites' role in helping stage recent illegal protests.

Critics said the blocks were just the latest in a series of moves by Russia's government to stifle dissent.

The blocks come as Russia's central bank reported that hackers had targeted its main website. The site, and that of the Kremlin, were briefly unavailable with authorities saying "technical reasons" were making them hard to reach.

Control order

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny is currently under house arrest for two months - a punishment imposed for violating the terms of a five-year suspended sentence given after he was tried on charges of embezzlement. The terms of his house arrest demand that he does not receive visitors or use the net.

Anna Veduta, a spokeswoman for Alexei Navalny, said in a tweet that the block was a "political decision taken as part of the cleansing of the media space".

The block also extends to the Russian news sites Ej.ru and grani.ru as well as the kasparov.ru website.

Alexander Ryklin, editor of the Ej.ru website, said the imposition of the block was "monstrous" and a "direct violation of all the principles of freedom of speech".

"These sites contain incitement to illegal activity and participation in public events held in violation of the established order," said a statement from Russia's state communications monitoring agency Roskomnadzor.

The imposition of the blocks became possible on 1 February after a law drawn up in late 2013 to police sites involved in illegal protests took effect.

It is not clear how successful the blocks will be as followers of Mr Navalny have widely published details of how to reach the sites and avoid official censorship.

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BT investigated over email data

14 March 2014 Last updated at 13:26 By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

BT is being investigated by the UK's data authority after a whistleblower claimed the company "exposed user credentials en masse".

BT is currently moving its customers' email accounts from a Yahoo-powered system to its own bespoke set-up.

As revealed by The Register, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is looking into BT's data practices during this process.

BT told the BBC the complaint "relates to an issue identified and fixed".

The whistleblower is believed to have been a former employee of Critical Path, the company tasked with building BT's new system for email. Critical Path was acquired last year by Openwave, a California-based messaging specialist.

On behalf of BT, the company must gradually switch over seven million customers from Yahoo to BT. The whistleblower said the method Critical Path was using was insecure.

A spokesman for BT said: "BT takes the security of all products very seriously.

"And in the process of developing new services with partners, we rigorously audit and test for security, and fix any identified issues before going into live service."

The BBC understands the vulnerabilities were discovered while the new email system was in its testing phase last year, and that the telecoms firm was confident no personal data had been compromised.

Mistake

Nevertheless, BT confirmed the ICO had contacted them, on Thursday, to begin enquiries following the whistleblower's remarks.

In confidential documents obtained by The Register, and confirmed by the BBC to be genuine, the ICO said: "On the basis of the information [the whistleblower] provided, we consider it unlikely that BT has complied with the requirements of the [Data Protection Act].

"This is because the evidence [the whistleblower] ... provided to us indicates that BT customer email accounts were being compromised by spammers/scammers on a daily basis and that BT was aware of this."

However, later in the same document, the ICO expressed concern that BT was allowing insecure logging-in using HTTP, rather than the encrypted protocol HTTPS.

BT told the BBC this assessment was a mistake.

"BT Mail is HTTPS, not HTTP, and we would not use HTTP with live customers."

The issue of spamming and scamming, BT said, was being confused with issues affecting Yahoo customers, and was not limited to BT.

"Yahoo has told us that they have identified unauthorised access to some BT Yahoo email accounts," the spokesman said.

"We're continuing to provide assistance and information to Yahoo to investigate the issue."

An ICO spokesman said the document published by The Register was not intended for publication - and that the comments should be treated as "preliminary", rather than the authority's final conclusions on the matter.

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC

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Steering wheel can 'detect anger'

14 March 2014 Last updated at 19:03 By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

A concept to embed facial recognition cameras into steering wheels to detect angry or upset drivers is being worked on by researchers.

A team in Switzerland said irritated drivers could be more aggressive and less attentive, and therefore assessing emotional state could improve safety.

Tests of the system showed promising levels of accuracy, the team said.

But one group representing the interests of drivers was not impressed.

The researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne said their system "learned" to identify two emotions - anger and disgust - on the face of its test subjects.

Another use for the technology was said to be to detect driver fatigue by monitoring the percentage of eyelid closure.

The camera was tested in both an office environment, and in a car provided by Peugeot Citroën.

Facial expression recognition technology is already widely used, particularly in the video games industry.

'Row with their wife'

But in this scenario, the technology is a long way from being ready for use.

The team said it faced a challenge in making sure the emotion detection was reliable given that humans reactions and facial expressions can vary greatly.

And Hugh Bladon, from the Association of British Drivers, was against the concept full stop.

"I don't like the idea at all," he said.

"I'm all for something which stops someone who's drunk or on drugs getting in and driving.

"But to try and test someone's emotional state... if they've had a row with their wife or they've had a bad report about something... that's too far.

"It's an intrusion."

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC

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Robot breaks Rubik's Cube record

15 March 2014 Last updated at 17:06

A robot has broken the world record for the fastest solving of a Rubik's Cube.

Cubestormer 3, designed by David Gilday and Mike Dobson, recorded a time of 3.253 seconds at Birmingham's NEC.

The previous record of 5.27 seconds was set by the same design team three years ago.

Craig Glenday, editor in chief of Guinness World Records, was at the NEC to verify the claim as well as two other records set by Mr Gilday at the Big Bang Science and engineering fair.

The robot uses a mobile phone to take pictures of the Rubik's Cube and then works out the quickest way to solve it, using four robotic hands.

'Bit of fun'

The robot is powered by an ARM processor. Mr Gilday, a principal engineer at ARM, and Mr Dobson took 18 months to design and build the robot in their spare time.

Mr Gilday said the attempt was "a bit of fun".

"Our real focus is to demonstrate what can be achieved with readily available technology to inspire young minds into taking a greater interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics," he said.

"We knew Cubestormer 3 had the potential to beat the existing record but with the robot performing physical operations quicker than the human eye can see there's always an element of risk.

"Our big challenge now is working out if it's possible to make it go even faster."

Mr Gilday also set new new records during the Big Bang fair for the fastest completion of 4x4x4 and 9x9x9 cubes, which are considerably more complicated than the classic 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube.

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Alibaba reveals US flotation plan

17 March 2014 Last updated at 04:58

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has announced plans for a flotation in the US, saying the move will make it "a more global company".

The move had been widely predicted by analysts, who expect it to be the biggest share offering by a tech firm since Facebook's flotation in 2012.

They predict that the listing will raise up to $15bn (£9bn).

However, Alibaba did not reveal when the initial public offering (IPO) would take place or on which exchange.

"Alibaba Group has decided to commence the process of an initial public offering in the United States," the firm's statement said.

"This will make us a more global company and enhance the company's transparency, as well as allow the company to continue to pursue our long-term vision and ideals."

The move is expected to benefit Yahoo, which owns a significant stake in Alibaba and could see the value of its investment rise considerably.

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WATCH: The world's biggest online retailing firm Alibaba reveals US flotation plan, as Juliana Liu explains

Move overseas

Speculation about a New York listing for Alibaba began last September, when the company abandoned plans for a stock offering in Hong Kong after talks with regulators broke down.

Alibaba's management structure, which allows senior executives to retain control of the board of directors, fell foul of Hong Kong's listing rules.

Hong Kong Stock Exchange chief executive Charles Li said in a statement: "We respect the company's decision and wish it well."

He added, in an apparent reference to Alibaba's insistence on maintaining its management structure: "We are proud of our tradition of respect for the rule of law and adherence to principles."

The Alibaba group is already the world's largest online retailer, with more than 500 million customers and more than 800 million product listings.

However, it is so far little known outside China.

The news comes two days after another Chinese tech giant, Twitter-like service Weibo, announced plans for a $500m US listing.

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Vodafone agrees to buy Spain's Ono

17 March 2014 Last updated at 11:14

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CMC Markets' senior analyst Michael Hewson: "If Vodafone is to survive... it really needs to take on fixed line infrastructure"

Vodafone has agreed to buy Spanish cable operator Ono for 7.2bn euros ($10bn; £6bn), in deal aimed at expanding its interests in Europe.

Ono, which is private equity-owned, offers cable TV and internet services and has 1.9 million customers in Spain.

Vodafone boss Vittorio Colao said the deal was "an attractive value creation opportunity".

The deal comes just six months after Vodafone bought a controlling stake in German cable operator Kabel.

Vodafone has said it plans to spend up to £25bn of the £84bn it generated from the sale of its stake in Verizon Wireless on investment in its core European networks.

Before the Vodafone deal, Ono's private equity owners had been planning to float the company on the Madrid stock exchange.

Jose Maria Castellano Rios, chairman of Ono's board of directors, said the enlarged business would help to "drive innovation in the Spanish telecommunications industry".

Peregrine & Black analyst Markus Huber said the deal would put Vodafone in a better position to compete with rivals such as Telefonica and Orange.

"It follows the strategy they are already pursuing in Germany and in Europe in general, which is to expand their overall offer to their clients by adding cable service to their wireless services," he added.

Mike McCudden, head of derivatives at online broker Interactive Investor, agreed the purchase was a "shrewd strategic move" for Vodafone, noting that the deal would provide it with the fixed-line operation it currently lacked in Spain.

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Nakamoto hires lawyers over Bitcoin

17 March 2014 Last updated at 13:06

Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto, the man named by Newsweek as the creator of virtual currency Bitcoin, has taken on a lawyer to "clear his name", the 64-year-old said in a statement.

US magazine Newsweek ran an article on 6 March making the claim, and still stands by its story.

But via his lawyers, Mr Nakamoto said: "I did not create, invent or otherwise work on Bitcoin."

He said that "financial distress" meant he did not have an internet connection.

"I am writing this statement to clear my name," Mr Nakamoto wrote.

"The first time I heard the term 'bitcoin' was from my son in mid-February 2014.

"After being contacted by a reporter, my son called me and used the word, which I had never before heard.

"Shortly thereafter, the reporter confronted me at my home. I called the police. I never consented to speak with the reporter. In an ensuing discussion with a reporter from the Associated Press, I called the technology 'bitcom'. I was still unfamiliar with the term."

'Confusion and stress'

Neither Newsweek nor Leah Goodman, the reporter who wrote the original story, have commented on the latest statement.

In the days following the publication of the story, Newsweek put out an additional note saying it stood behind Ms Goodman and the reporting contained in the article.

"Ms Goodman's research was conducted under the same high editorial and ethical standards that have guided Newsweek for more than 80 years," the magazine said.

"Newsweek stands strongly behind Ms Goodman and her article."

The magazine called for Mr Nakamoto's privacy to be respected - an issue he had hit out at the magazine about, and has reiterated with his latest comment.

"Newsweek's false report has been the source of a great deal of confusion and stress for myself, my 93-year-old mother, my siblings, and their families," he said.

"I offer my sincerest thanks to those people in the United States and around the world who have offered me their support. I have retained legal counsel. This will be our last public statement on this matter.

"I ask that you now respect our privacy."

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