Index for articles

17/09/15- 1 and 2- Twitter 'to unveil founder Jack Dorsey as new chief executive and Music streaming just became a billion-dollar industry

24/09/15 -3 and 4-Newsflush! Digital video’s bog-standard content and BBC to launch new streaming service in America

 1/10/15- 5 and 6- Emojis and quizzes led the way at Social Media Week 2015 and How to make the perfect tweet

8/10/15-  7 and 8-Google AMP battles ad-blocking, Apple and Facebook by cutting load times and It’s time the media treated Muslims fairly

15/10/15- 9 and 10-USA Today's Facebook-inspired use of emojis gets thumbs down and Apple faces damages bill after jury finds iPhone and iPad chip violates processor patent

22/10/15- 11 and 12- Google launches €150m fund for publishers' digital news projects and Amazon claims New York Times didn't check facts for work culture expose

28/10/15- 13 and 14-Sony to pay staff $8m over 'The Interview' hack and Mobile ad spend hits new high as consumers remain glued to smartphones

04/11/15 - 15 and 16- Twitter is replacing favourites with likes – but does anyone heart it? and Sun used as front to scam thousands of pounds, says newspaper

09/11/15- 17 and 18- Daily Star sales rise after price cut – but the Sun holds steady and Facebook reveals 1.5bn people use the site every month                 

18/11/15- 19 and 20- BBC to cut entertainment and comedy but plans new Saturday night shows and Sky launches new set-top box

27/11/15- 21 and 22- BBC3 TV channel to be switched off by February, BBC Trust confirms and The Sun did not spin its headline

03/12/15- 23 and 24-Alibaba buys China's version of YouTube for $4.8bn and Rebekah Brooks praised by David Dinsmore over News UK's changes

11/12/15- 25 and 26-The Independent’s blog site hit by ransomware attack and Brits to get access to BBC iPlayer and Sky Go on holiday as EU changes copyright rules

26/12/2015-27 and 28 YouTube tipped to strike licensing deals for TV shows and films andSun website traffic rises by a quarter – but it is eclipsed by the Mirror

29 and 30-WhatsApp blocked in Brazil for 48 hours by court and Twitter warns users they may have been hacked by 'state-sponsored actors'

31 and 32- Twitter shares hit new low on rumored shift to 10,000-character tweets and Evgeny Lebedev sounds out interest in cut-price national the i

33 and 34-Has social media ruined the web? and New York Times chooses Jim Rutenberg to take over David Carr column

35 and 36-The sun politics and News Corp denies rumors company wants to buy Twitter

37 and 38- Daily Mail website's ad revenues surge as paper announces price hike andTwitter shares jump over 10pc on talk of Marc Andreessen and Silver Lake takeover

39 and 40-Yahoo admits it could sell off its core internet business and News Corp announces cost-cutting at Australian and British newspapers

41 and 42-Yahoo admits it could sell off its core internet business and Time Inc buys what is left of MySpace for its user data

43 and 44- Independent aims to keep stars and boost quality in digital shift and Mobile giant Three to block online advertising

45 and 46-Google Amp will make reading the news faster, but can it keep the web open? andhe Daily Telegraph is its readers. Long may they thrive

47 and 48-TV advertising exceeds £5bn for first time and universal and news corp to merge

49 and 50- Adblocking: what are your reasons for blocking ads online? and Are mobiles changing how we shop?

51 and 52- The Sun editor-in-chief: We will become a holiday operator and betting company as well as a newspaper and Net neutrality: BBC urges Ofcom to protect iPlayer

53 and 54-Google pulls adblocking app for Samsung phones and BBC: 'No hiding place' for corporation under new regulation plan, says author of plan to scrap Trust

55 and 56- iPhone 7: Next Apple phone could feature Smart Connector from the iPad Pro, leak suggests and Snapchat update: App adds ability to have emoji follow people around inside the app

57 and 58-Facebook F8: Messenger to get new robot powers and virtual reality to roll out at company’s developer conference andiOS 9 date bug: iPhones could be forced to break by connecting to any Wi-Fi network

59 and 60-Apple transparency report: over 1,000 government requests for user data and is Apple's next product an electric car?

61 and 62-Facebook and Instagram down: Sites not working as thousands report being unable to get onto site and Microsoft kills off Xbox 360 after more than a decade

63 and 64-Google is a ‘partially dangerous’ website, Google says and The Sun to face legal action over claims of phone hacking after High Court judge gives go-ahead

65 and 66-YouTube gets 6-second ads that users can’t skip, in attempt to sell things to impatient mobile users andYouTube is bringing short, unskippable ads that are meant to force young people to watch through them.Called “Bumper ads”, Google says that the six-second videos are a direct response to the fact that more and more people are watching on mobile phones.


67 and 68-Smartphone demand falls for first time in history and Google tests black links in searches

69 and 70- Reading on computer screens changes how your brain works, scientists say and Chinese stake in iPhone chip designer Imagination Technologies raises talk of takeover battle with Apple

2 articles

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/05/09/reading-on-computer-screens-changes-how-your-brain-works-scienti/

Reading on computer screens changes how your brain works, scientists say




Reading on computer screens and smartphones has made people unable to fully understand what they are reading as our brains retreat into focusing on small details rather than meanings, a study claims.
Researchers found that those who filled in forms, read short stories or studied using computer screens tended to grasp the basic facts of what they were reading, but often failed to process the “high-level” or abstract ideas behind the materials.

• The authors suggested that the possibility of distractions offered by computers had caused people to resort to the less mentally-challenging activity of grasping concrete details when reading, even in the test conditions when these distractions were not available.
• “The ever-increasing demands of multitasking, divided attention, and information overload that individuals encounter in their use of digital technologies may cause them to ‘retreat’ to the less cognitively-demanding lower end of the concrete-abstract continuum,” they wrote.
• In a comprehension test about a short story, those who had read it in print fared far better in questions about the story’s inferences and broader narrative, while those who had read the digital document retained more information about minor details.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/05/09/chinese-stake-in-iphone-chipmaker-imagination-technologies-raise/


Chinese stake in iPhone chip designer Imagination Technologies raises talk of takeover battle with Apple




A Chinese government-backed technology firm has taken a stake in British chip company Imagination Technologies, raising the prospect of a battle with Apple for the company that designs a crucial element of the iPhone.
Stock exchange rules forced Imagination to disclose on Monday that Tsinghua Unigroup, a technology conglomerate which aims to become one of the world’s biggest chip companies, had taken a 3pc stake in the Hertfordshire-based company.
Shares jumped as much as 15pc as analysts speculated that it could be an early sign of a takeover by Tsinghua or Apple, which uses Imagination’s graphics chip designs in the iPhone.

• Apple has held repeated talks with Imagination although it said in March it was not currently negotiating with the company, while Tsinghua has been given a $47bn (£33bn) warchest to become one of the world’s biggest chipmakers alongside Intel, Qualcomm and Samsung as China aims for supremacy in the industry.
  “The idea that the Chinese state’s acquisition of intellectual property is a strategic priority, and that Imagination could be a target, has been floated before, but considered slightly left-field. The announcement brings this idea to the forefront,” said Investec’s Roger Phillips.
• The prospect of a sale has, however, brightened as Imagination undergoes a major restructuring amid repeated losses. Sir Hossein Yassaie, its chief executive of 18 years, left the company in February amid shareholder disquiet, and the company is set to sell off parts of its business including the digital radio division.

2 articles

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/28/smartphone-demand-falls-for-first-time-in-history/

Smartphone demand falls for first time in history

the global smartphone market has shrunk for the first time ever, as consumers spending slows and the sector becomes over-saturated.Smartphone shipments to vendors and customers fell 3 per cent year-on-year from 345 million units in the first three months of 2015, to 334.6 million handsets during the same period this year, according to research from Strategy Analytics.

• It is the first time smartphone shipments have ever shrunk year-on-year, which analysts have attributed to market saturation, weak international currency, worries over economies and consumers upgrading their handsets less frequently.
• Sales of the iPhone, which accounts for two thirds of Apple's revenue, fell from 61 million units sold between January - March last year to 51 million handsets during the first three months of 2016, a decline of 10 million units.
• Lesser-known Chinese brand Oppo leap-frogged Xiaomi to take fourth place, with 4.6 per cent of the market to Xiaomi's 4.4 per cent. Other brands, including HTC, LG, Sony and BlackBerry, accounted for 43.6 per cent of the global smartphone market share in the first financial quarter of 2016.

Phones are becoming more of  a less of demand recnetly as no one wnats to have a phone or they have a differnt type which are less popular.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/09/google-tests-black-links-searches


Google tests black links in searches





Google searches could soon look very different: the company is testing a new version of its results page featuring black links, in the place of the familiar blue.
Users began reporting the visual change on Sunday, suggesting that Google is embarking on one of its famous “A/B tests”. The company regularly makes a small change for a subset of users, examining how they respond before deciding whether or not to roll it out to the wider userbase.

• Paying attention to the little things has paid off for Google in the past. Famously, when it decided to introduce adverts on Gmail, it ran a test to pick between 40 different shades of blue.
• Switching the links from blue to black is a far larger change. So if Google does upgrade it from test to feature, you can be sure there’s a lot of money to be made in doing so.
• In 2014, Google UK’s managing director, Dan Cobley, said what happened next: “We saw which shades of blue people liked the most, demonstrated by how much they clicked on them. As a result we learned that a slightly purpler shade of blue was more conducive to clicking than a slightly greener shade of blue, and gee whizz, we made a decision.

It good that google are changing a little bit as its soemthinf that they need to change as google has been around for  long time they need a change and need to make sure that there is a different way of consumers recoginisng them.

2 articles

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/youtube-gets-6-second-ads-that-users-can-t-skip-in-attempt-to-sell-things-to-impatient-mobile-users-a7001736.html

YouTube gets 6-second ads that users can’t skip, in attempt to sell things to impatient mobile users

YouTube is bringing short, unskippable ads that are meant to force young people to watch through them.Called “Bumper ads”, Google says that the six-second videos are a direct response to the fact that more and more people are watching on mobile phones.

• The new ads are intended to help companies show ads to people watching on mobile phones, according to Google. Half of people aged 18-49 tend to watch videos on their smartphone even if they’re at home and the ads are specifically targeted for those habits, Google said.
• Companies will be able to start buying the ads from May, but some have already shown on YouTube during testing.
• YouTube already rarely offers much longer unskippable ads, for which companies must pay considerably more. Those can last over a minute, but are very rare and appear to mostly show for people who are using adblockers.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/26/twitter-earnings-wall-street-revenue-active-monthly-users

Twitter misses expectation on revenue but adds millions more users

Twitter stock fell more than 12% in after-hours trading after the company reported revenue of $595m on Tuesday, missing expectations. Twitter was expected to report $607.8m in revenue. Meanwhile, its earnings, which were expected to be 10 cents a share, exceeded expectations at 15 cents a share.

• The first quarter saw Twitter’s number of active users rise to 310 million, 2 million more than expected by Wall Street. Any growth would have been an improvement over last quarter, when Twitter reported that it was actually losing members. In February, the company reported that its user base had dropped to 305 million, down from 307 million users from the previous quarter.
• The growth in users is good news for the company. If Twitter figures out how to grow its user base, “its advertiser base will grow dramatically”, Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, said in a research note released on Monday.
• Even the news of Twitter’s user growth was not good enough to stop its stocks from falling more than 12% in after-hours trading

2 articles

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-is-a-partially-dangerous-website-google-says-a6992596.html

Google is a ‘partially dangerous’ website, Google says

Google is a “partially dangerous” website and people should be careful when using it, Google has warned.The site’s main search engine could try and steal the personal information of its users or install malware on their computers, according to Google’s unusually frank assessment of itself.The warning comes as part of Google’s own online transparency report, which lists reports on how private and safe websites are – and calls out those that are potentially dangerous.

• That includes Google itself, which is said to contain pages that have “deceptive content”. It also says that some pages on the domain install malware, steal personal information from their users and redirect users to other suspect websites.
• Users sometimes post bad content on websites that are normally safe,” a warning that shows on every potentially dangerous website reads. “Safe Browsing will update the safety status once the webmaster has cleaned up the bad content.”
• Google advises affected websites to head to its “Webmasters Help for Hacked Sites” page. That details the ways that Google can clean itself up, at which point it can ask for its status to be reviewed – by itself.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-sun-to-face-legal-action-over-claims-of-phone-hacking-after-high-court-judge-gives-go-ahead-a7004736.html

The Sun to face legal action over claims of phone hacking after High Court judge gives go-ahead

The Sun newspaper is to face legal action brought by the victims of phone hacking, after a High Court judge ruled the claims can go ahead.It sees the paper brought into civil litigation over the hacking of people's private voicemail messages for the first time.

• News Group Newspapers - now News UK - has already settled more than 1,000 claims relating to the practice which saw the News of the World shut down.
• Up to 50 new claims are soon to be issued in the case, many of which will now include allegations of hacking at The Sun.
• Others now suing NGN include EastEnders actors Christopher Parker and Brooke Kinsella, Coronation Street actor Kym Marsh, designer Pearl Lowe and her musician husband Danny Goffey and Leslie Heseltine, who is better known as actor and comedian Les Dennis

2 articles

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-instagram-down-not-working-unable-not-working-loading-a6994346.html

Facebook and Instagram down: Sites not working as thousands report being unable to get onto site

Facebook is down, with thousands of people already reporting that they can't get onto the social network. Instagram, which is owned by the social network, also appears to be suffering problems. It isn't clear what has caused the problems and whether they are connected.

• The site Down Detector reported that thousands of people were having problems logging onto Facebook, using all of its platforms. It listed the problem as a "total blackout", affecting the whole network rather than its website or apps specifically.
• The site appeared to indicate that the problem was specifically affecting those users in the UK. Almost all reports came from the country, with most of the rest of the world apparently unaffected.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/21/microsoft-kills-off-xbox-360-after-more-than-a-decade/

Microsoft kills off Xbox 360 after more than a decade

Microsoft is to cease production of the Xbox 360, 11 years after the console first went on sale.The company's head of Xbox Phil Spencer said that while the console meant a lot to its staff, "the realities of manufacturing a product over a decade old are starting to creep up on us."

• The console first went on sale in November 2005, and was redesigned twice with 2010's Xbox 360 Slim and the Xbox 360 Elite in 2013.  Microsoft last shared official sales figures in 2013, when it announced the console had been purchased 78.2 million times. Its successor the Xbox One went on sale the same year, and has sold around 19 million units to date.
• The company has been locked in a losing battle with Sony's PlayStation 4 for years, which has sold around 35.9 Sony is reported to be working on a more powerful version of the PS4  which could be intended to bolster its virtual reality games content with the release of its play station.
• The move is a first in the competitive gaming world - a step towards greater collaboration, given that many first-time console buyers choose the platform their friends use in order to play against them.

2 articles

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/apple-transparency-report-government-requests-phone-data-privacy

Apple transparency report: over 1,000 government requests for user data

US authorities asked for user data from Apple accounts 1,015 times during the second half of 2015, according to figures the iPhone maker released Tuesday.The requests pertain to information on services such as iMessages, emails, photos and device backups.

The number of requests is up from 971 during the first half of last year and 788 during the last six months of 2014. 

• While the number of requests has gone up, the number of users affected by such requests has fluctuated and in late 2015 was about the same as it was a year earlier.
• Apple’s transparency report also suggests that investigators are adapting to a world where consumers, and criminal suspects, spend less time on landline telephones, which could be tapped with the help of a phone company. Apple received significantly fewer law enforcement requests during the second half of 2013, totaling 638.
• In the back half of 2015, the US government made 1,250 to 1,499 national security requests of Apple affecting 1,000 to 1,249 accounts. That’s up from 750 to 999 requests affecting 250 to 499 accounts during the first half of last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/21/is-apple-next-product-an-electric-car-telsa

Is Apple's next product an electric car?

Apple’s not-so-secret project to build an electric car is heating up, according to media reports, with the company poaching an expert from rivals Tesla. It has also opened an R&D office in Germany, home to some of the world’s most important luxury car manufacturers.

• While Porritt, who quit Tesla in September 2015, is one of many former Tesla engineers employed in Cupertino, he’s one of the only senior managers to have made the jump. The timing of his departure coincides with comments made by Elon Musk in October 2015, when he referred to Apple as a “Tesla Graveyard”.
• At Tesla, Porritt worked on all three of the company’s major cars – the models S, 3 and X – and before then his career spanned Land Rover, where he worked for a decade and Aston Martin, where he spent 16 years as chief engineer.
• The paper also reports that the company is aiming for a street date in 2019 or 2020, but that the initial version of the car will not be the self-driving wonder that many have been hoping for. According to Faz, that will come later but when it hits the market it won’t even be partially automated.