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By Jude Sheerin
BBC News
After 90 years, one of Canada's oldest magazines, The Beaver, is changing its name.
Its publishers say it was only natural that a Canadian history journal should have been named in honour of the industrious dam-building creature which is the country's national emblem.
But in recent times the magazine's attempts to reach a new online audience kept falling foul of spam filters - particularly in schools - because beaver is also a slang term for female genitalia.
The publishers of the magazine - now to be known as Canada's History - also noticed that most of the 30,000 or so visitors to their website per month stayed for less than 10 seconds.
More here
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
News:Masdar: Abu Dhabi's carbon-neutral city
By Tom Heap
Presenter, Radio 4's Costing The Earth
The world's first zero-carbon city is being built in Abu Dhabi and is designed to be not only free of cars and skyscrapers but also powered by the sun.
The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is the last place you would expect to learn lessons on low-carbon living, but the emerging eco-city of Masdar could teach the world.
At first glance, the parched landscape of Abu Dhabi looks like the craziest place to build any city, let alone a sustainable one.
The inhospitable terrain suggests that the only way to survive here is with the maximum of technological support, a bit like living on the moon.
The genius of Masdar - if it works - will be combining 21st Century engineering with traditional desert architecture to deliver zero-carbon comfort. And it is being built now. Masdar
Presenter, Radio 4's Costing The Earth
The world's first zero-carbon city is being built in Abu Dhabi and is designed to be not only free of cars and skyscrapers but also powered by the sun.
The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is the last place you would expect to learn lessons on low-carbon living, but the emerging eco-city of Masdar could teach the world.
At first glance, the parched landscape of Abu Dhabi looks like the craziest place to build any city, let alone a sustainable one.
The inhospitable terrain suggests that the only way to survive here is with the maximum of technological support, a bit like living on the moon.
The genius of Masdar - if it works - will be combining 21st Century engineering with traditional desert architecture to deliver zero-carbon comfort. And it is being built now. Masdar
Friday, March 26, 2010
News:Sensors turn skin into gadget control pad
Mark Ward
Technology correspondent, BBC News
Tapping your forearm or hand with a finger could soon be the way you interact with gadgets.
US researchers have found a way to work out where the tap touches and use that to control phones and music players.
Coupled with a tiny projector the system can use the skin as a surface on which to display menu choices, a number pad or a screen.
Early work suggests the system, called Skinput, can be learned with about 20 minutes of training.
"The human body is the ultimate input device," Chris Harrison, Skinput's creator, told BBC News.
Skinput
Technology correspondent, BBC News
Tapping your forearm or hand with a finger could soon be the way you interact with gadgets.
US researchers have found a way to work out where the tap touches and use that to control phones and music players.
Coupled with a tiny projector the system can use the skin as a surface on which to display menu choices, a number pad or a screen.
Early work suggests the system, called Skinput, can be learned with about 20 minutes of training.
"The human body is the ultimate input device," Chris Harrison, Skinput's creator, told BBC News.
Skinput
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Article:The rise of the app entrepreneur
By Mark Gregory
Technology correspondent, BBC News
The soaring popularity of smart phones has created a new type of entrepreneur - the "app developer".
Whether it is finding ladies toilets on the London underground, identifying bird songs, forecasting snow conditions at ski resorts or just buying stuff online, somebody, somewhere has come up with a clever little computer programme that lets you do the task from your handset.
More here
Technology correspondent, BBC News
The soaring popularity of smart phones has created a new type of entrepreneur - the "app developer".
Whether it is finding ladies toilets on the London underground, identifying bird songs, forecasting snow conditions at ski resorts or just buying stuff online, somebody, somewhere has come up with a clever little computer programme that lets you do the task from your handset.
More here
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
News:O2 condemns lawyers targeting alleged file-sharers
By Jane Wakefield
Technology reporter, BBC News
Mobile firm O2 has stepped into the row over thousands of controversial letters that are being sent to alleged illegal file-sharers in the UK.
It condemned the attempts "by rights holders and their lawyers to bully or threaten our customers".
The row centres around UK law firm ACS:Law and its client DigiProtect, a anti-piracy firm which represents a series of content owners.
More here: Targeting alleged file sharers
Technology reporter, BBC News
Mobile firm O2 has stepped into the row over thousands of controversial letters that are being sent to alleged illegal file-sharers in the UK.
It condemned the attempts "by rights holders and their lawyers to bully or threaten our customers".
The row centres around UK law firm ACS:Law and its client DigiProtect, a anti-piracy firm which represents a series of content owners.
More here: Targeting alleged file sharers
Monday, March 15, 2010
News:Dotcom web address celebrates silver anniversary
By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
The internet celebrates a landmark event on the 15 March - the 25th birthday of the day the first dotcom name was registered.
In March 1985, Symbolics computers of Cambridge, Massachusetts entered the history books with an internet address ending in dotcom.
That same year another five companies jumped on a very slow bandwagon.
It took until 1997, well into the internet boom, before the one millionth dotcom was registered.
Dotcom aniversary
Dotcom web address celebrates silver anniversary
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The internet billionaire rich list
The internet has created some of the world's youngest billionaires, possibly in the shortest possible time scale, ever.
The richest are Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the pair who set up Google in the late 1990s. They went from PhD students to (paper) billionaires in about five years.
The youngest is 25-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, founder of social networking site Facebook, who has returned to the billionaire list in 2010 after dropping out in 2009 amid the economic downturn.
As part of SuperPower - a season of programmes exploring the power of the internet - BBC News lists the top 26 richest internet entrepreneurs according to the latest Forbes ranking, released this week.
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