Burger King's Twitter account appeared to have fallen victim to hackers on Monday as it began sending out pro-McDonald's messages and the occasional rap video.

The company's Twitter feed was decked out with McDonald's promotions, implanting golden arches into the @BurgerKing account's masthead and setting the background graphic to a photo of the rival chain's popular Chicken McNuggets.

The hackers also changed the company's address to "in a hood near you."

Phony tweets included a link to one photo of unsanitary working conditions in an unidentifiable kitchen, and another of man injecting himself with a syringe. Other tweets promoted rap artists and provided links to their respective music videos on YouTube.

Twitter users responded gleefully, with one onlooker writing: "Somebody needs to tell Burgerking that 'whopper123' isn't a secure password."

News Source : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/9878724/Burger-Kings-Twitter-account-hacked.html

Facebook has added a feature in its mobile phone app that allows free calling for US iPhone users.


Users can now make calls to each other via the Facebook Messenger app anywhere they have a wi-fi or a cellular-data connection. The feature could be a boon for heavy talkers as they would avoid carrier call charges. Facebook said it was working on adding the feature to its Messenger app for Android and BlackBerry users. Within the app, all a person needs to do is open a conversation with a partner, tap the "i" icon in the upper right hand corner and select "Free Call". The calls, however, can only be made to another user who has Messenger installed on their iPhone. Users can neither call a Facebook friend who is logged in through the website or call a landline. The latest mobile-to-mobile development was independent of the free video-calling software Skype, which was already integrated into Facebook's website, a spokesman said. The Messenger app is limited to voice calling. The official said Facebook was expected to roll out the feature in its Messenger app for other operating systems and expand it overseas. On Tuesday, Facebook unveiled a smart search engine - called Graph Search - that allows users to make "natural" searches of content shared by their friends.







17 January 2013 Last updated at 11:41
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21059611

Anger over huge phone bills caused by purchases made within mobile applications has grown.

Regulator PhonepayPlus has noted a 300% increase in complaints from consumers faced with an unexpectedly large phone bill. Many apps can be downloaded for free, but users are then encouraged to buy extra items. Other free apps contained malware that tricked users into running up bills, the regulator added. Children's "naivety" on social media was also causing concern among parents, PhonepayPlus said. The regulator said it was working with Facebook to make sure rogue offers and promotions were removed from the site as quickly as possible. In most mobile app stores, it is free games that make their way to the top of the most downloaded charts, so many games makers have opted for the in-app sales business model. Burning holes Many titles, such as the massively popular Angry Birds, give players the chance to progress more quickly in the game by spending small amounts of money. PhonepayPlus said its figures suggested that two in three 11- to 16-year-olds had downloaded their own apps. The regulator warned that parents could see bills of "hundreds or even thousands of pounds" as a result of these in-app purchases. In one of the more extreme cases, it was reported that children had downloaded counterfeit versions of games from Google's Android app store. These games were infected with malware which, whenever opened, billed £15 to the user's phone bill without their knowledge. PhonepayPlus' chief executive Paul Whiteing said parents must be vigilant. "Connected devices will define the age in which today's children live and we are determined to ensure that they can receive the benefits while being protected from the risks," he said. "Smartphones in children's pockets can burn holes in parents' wallets, so we are working with partners across industry and other agencies to prevent this. "This is a real challenge for parents and for us as a regulator, but this plan meets that challenge head on."











16 January 2013 Last updated at 12:11
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21042379

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).












3 January 2013 Last updated at 22:14
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20899032

An ambitious plan to update classic space trading game Elite has hit its funding target.

The game first appeared on the BBC Micro in 1984 but one of the game's original creators wanted to make a modern PC version. David Braben sought £1.25m via crowd-sourcing site Kickstarter to fund the 21st century update. A last minute surge of pledges helped it reach its goal about 48 hours before Friday's funding deadline. Funding squeeze Elite: Dangerous debuted on Kickstarter on 5 November and set itself 60 days to raise £1.25m. In November, Mr Braben said Elite was a game he had wanted to come back to for a "long, long time". Although some early work on the multiplayer title had been done at Mr Braben's game studio Frontier Developments, but needed the cash to turn the code into a finished playable product. If the game did not hit its funding target then development work would stop.

 Getting the cash via Kickstarter was preferable to using an established publisher because it gave Frontier and those who backed it total control over how the final game would turn out, said Mr Braben, The finished game, he said, would keep the central trading, travel and spaceship combat elements of the original but add far better graphics, physics and feature a much larger chunk of the universe for people to play in. Fund tracking site Kicktraq showed that after an initial surge the number of people backing the project tailed off dramatically. On its second day on Kickstarter raised more than £271,000. However, soon after pledge totals rarely got over £10,000. A surge of pledges came forward in the closing few days of Elite's fund-raising drive thanks to an appearance on social news site Reddit by Mr Braben and with the help of comedian Dara O Briain who urged his 1.2 million Twitter followers to back it. "It is really great to have exceeded the goal already," Mr Braben told the BBC. "I was delighted and touched by how many people really want this game to be made, and it was doubly good that it happened on my birthday!" He said the Elite team were now pushing to reach "stretch" goals which would produce a Mac version of the game and add more ships to the game. "It was an ambitious target but that is so that it was set at a realistic level to be able to make the game," he said adding that watching the total pledges get close to the target made for a "tense time".












3 January 2013 Last updated at 11:41
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20897768

Online loans company Wonga has begun offering "buy now, pay later" services directly on retailers' websites.

Until now, loans from Wonga, which have been highly criticised due to an annual interest rate of 4,214%, have been available only through its own site. The company has partnered with furniture firm Cotswold Company to launch its Paylater service. A spokesman for Wonga said it intended to roll out the service to other retailers soon. "Essentially, Paylater is providing an alternative to credit cards," he said. "It takes the cost of your purchase, you pay an upfront fee of 7%, then there are three payments over subsequent months that cover the outstanding costs." It means for an item that costs £100, a buyer will pay an initial fee of £7, followed by three monthly payments of £33.33. 'Legal loan shark' The interest rates on Paylater are considerably lower than on its core business - short-term "pay-day" loans. This side of Wonga's business has been highly criticised, with one MP calling the company a "legal loan shark". Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, also led a campaign to have the firm's advertisements taken off the websites of teams in the Football League. In May, Wonga was criticised by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for using aggressive and misleading debt collection methods.

Speaking on Wonga's latest offering, debt advice charity StepChange told the BBC: "As with any form of credit, StepChange debt charity would urge people to carefully consider whether they absolutely need to use it. "Crucially, consumers should familiarise themselves with exactly how much they may have to pay back in charges, interest and fees, and whether they can afford to make those repayments." US expansion Wonga's move will see it come into direct competition with the likes of Visa, Mastercard and other credit card companies that have taken their services online. The planned expansion comes ahead of speculation that Wonga has its sights set on breaking into the US market as soon as possible. A report in the Times newspaper earlier this month suggested Wonga had made a swoop to buy On Deck Capital, a US specialist online retailer. But a Wonga spokesman dismissed the report as "rumours and speculation". In 2011, Wonga chief executive Errol Damelin signalled his intent to expand the loan service worldwide. "We built a platform that is definitely extendable and over time we will definitely be expanding the reach of the business to bring the service to customers around the world," he said during an interview with financial news service Bloomberg. "The US has very particular regulatory constraints which make it an awkward market at the moment. We continue to look at the space and we will try and find a way to be able to bring the service to US consumers whenever we can."












17 December 2012 Last updated at 12:57
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20754976

Nasa is to test colour-changing lights on the International Space Station (ISS) as part of efforts to help astronauts on board sleep.

The US space agency will initially swap a fluorescent panel with a solid-state lighting module (SSLM) containing LEDs which produces a blue, whitish or red-coloured light depending on the time. It says the move may help combat insomnia which can make depression, sickness and mistakes more likely. The test is due to take place in 2016. News site Space.com reported that the equipment is being made by Boeing and the project has a $11.2m (£6.9m) budget. Body clock Studies on Earth suggest humans and other creatures follow what is known as a circadian rhythm - a 24-hour biological cycle involving cell regeneration, urine production and other functions critical to health. Research indicates that it is regulated by a group of cells in a portion of the brain called the hypothalamus which respond to light information sent by the eye's optic nerve, which in turn controls hormones, body temperature and other functions than influence whether people feel sleepy or wide awake. The aim of the experiment is to simulate a night-day cycle to minimise sleep disruption caused by the loss of its natural equivalent on the station. When the SSLMs are coloured blue the aim is to stimulate melanopsin - a pigment found in cells in the eye's retina which send nerve impulses to parts of the brain thought to make a person feel alert. Blue light is also believed to suppress melatonin - a hormone made by the brain's pineal gland which makes a person feel sleepy when its levels rise in their blood. By switching from blue to red light - via an intermediary white stage - this process should be reversed, encouraging a feeling of sleepiness.

 Nasa has previously warned sleep problems among its crews on other missions were also common. "On some space shuttle missions up to 50% of the crew take sleeping pills, and, over all, nearly half of all medication used in orbit is intended to help astronauts sleep," it said in 2001. "Even so, space travellers average about two hours sleep less each night in space than they do on the ground." Evidence from Earth Derk-Jan Dijk, professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey, said Nasa's test reflects the latest findings closer to home. "It hasn't been until recently that we started to realise that artificial light, as we see it or are exposed to it in the evening, will have an effect on our alertness and subsequent sleep. "It turns out there are receptors in the eye which are tuned toward blue light. Adding blue light to artificial lights visible during the day can actually help us to be alert, but if there is too much blue light in the artificial lights at night that may disrupt sleep. "So, varying the spectral composition of light does make sense from a circadian perspective, and better regulating artificial sleep-wake cycles may indeed benefit astronauts' sleep in space." Nasa adds there could be spin-off benefits for the population at large. "A significant proportion of the global population suffers from chronic sleep loss," said Daniel Shultz at the Kennedy Space Center. "By refining multipurpose lights for astronauts safety, health and well-being in spaceflight, the door is opened for new lighting strategies that can be evolved for use on Earth."










17 December 2012 Last updated at 13:01
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20753888