When is a stunt not a stunt? Perhaps when you set up a website, take thousands of orders, process the majority, and then sell the site for $85,000 Mat Carpenter fooled us all. The 22-year-old Australian SEO expert and online marketer managed to convince the world's media that he had set up ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com, a website which would package up glitter in an envelop and ship it to your enem..
Native video growing rapidly, mobile advertising is still very big, and there's no release date for Oculus Rift yet Remember the days when Facebook was criticised for failing to make enough money from mobile advertising? The social network's latest financial results emphasised how far in the past those days are. Here's what we learned from the results, and the ensuing earnings call with financia..
Apple Watch to debut in April, iPhone sales have doubled in China, one billionth iOS device sold in November and more Apple enjoyed an impressive last three months in 2014, reporting record revenues of $74.6bn and a net profit of $18bn - the largest quarterly profit ever for any company, energy firms included We already know about Apple's record iPhone sales - 74.5m units - during the quarter, b..
Notorious piracy site taken offline by Swedish police raid hints rise from the ashes with phoenix Pirate Bay's revival seems certain after the torrent site has started to display a logo of phoenix with a timer counting down to 1 February The timer was unveiled last week along with a revived but non-functioning site. Now the phoenix, a symbol of rebirth used by the Pirate Bay in previous relaunch..
Facebook, Tinder, Instagram and others were unavailable for 40 minutes after an apparent outage at Facebook's HQ cascaded to other networks Multiple major social networks went down on Tuesday morning, including Facebook, Tinder, Instagram, AOL Instant Messenger, and Hipchat. The cause of the suspension, which began around 6:20am GMT and ended about 50 minutes later, was an apparent outage at Fac..
Users of pre-Lollipop versions of Android advised to download Chrome or Firefox web browsers from the Google Play store One of Google's Android security experts has explained why the company has stopped providing patches for some exploits in early versions of the software, and advised users of those versions to switch to the Chrome or Firefox web browsers on their devices. News that Google had s..
Google took almost three years to disclose to the open information group WikiLeaks that it had handed over emails and other digital data belonging to three of its staffers to the US government, under a secret search warrant issued by a federal judge. WikiLeaks has written to Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, to protest that the seach giant only revealed that warrants last month, having ..
New MegaChat promises secure, encrypted and 'private video chatting through a browser Kim Dotcom's encrypted file sharing service has added free end-to-end encrypted voice and video chat through the browser. MegaChat, which promises to keep video chats secure and private, has been developed by the Mega "Conspiracy Team" and is being described as a "Skype killer" by Dotcom "We are releasing #Mega..
Chief engineer of small software firm in Greensboro North Carolina woke up to find his company was receiving 13,000 requests a second What happens if a significant proportion of all the web traffic in China gets directed to one server? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is "that server dies a rapid death" Craig Hockenberry, the senior software engineer for developers Iconfactory, in the small un..
The distinction between cosmetic surgery and other types of surgery such as reconstructive surgery is that cosmetic surgery involves techniques intended for the 'enhancement' of appearance. Cosmetic surgery involves both surgical and medical techniques and it is specially concerned with maintaining normal appearance, restoring it, or enhancing it beyond the average level toward some aesthetical ..
Youth curfews are widely used in the USA to keep children off the street at night; a state of curfew makes it illegal to be out of doors between certain publicised times. In the USA over 300 individual towns have passed local curfew laws that vary in detail, but are all aimed at reducing juvenile crime and gang activity. The exceptions permitted vary between states and between cities but are gen..
New system destructively scans objects transmits them through encrypted communications across any distance and rebuilds it the other side Star Trek' transport sold the idea of teleportation to the masses, but now German scientists have invented a real-life working system that 'teleports' objects from one location to another using 3D printers. Teleportation has been the holy grail of transport fo..
All-cash deal will make Three the largest mobile phone operator in the UK as network consolidation continues across Europe in mobile and beyond The owener of the mobile network Three has confirmed it is in exclusive negotiations to acquire O2 UK from Spanish telco Telefonica The deal for 10.25 pounds in cash, including an initial amount of 9.25 bn pounds followed by a deferred 1bn pounds, blocks..
Brad Smith tells Dominic Rushe US demand for access to customer's emails on server in Dublin strikes at heart of balance between safety and privacy Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, says people will only use technology they can trust and that the only way forward is either through stronger technology or better laws Imagine this scenario. German police investigating a press leak descend on..
Social network will ensure fewer people see posts reported as false by users, but it's sticking to its policy of being a platform, not a publicher No, Bill Gates isn't giving away $5,000 if you share his Facebook photo. No, the Talking Angela app isn't a front for online paedophiles. And no, an entire small town in Texas has not been put into Ebola quarantine These are just three examples of hoa..