After a year in which it lost its grip on the business smartphone market, Blackberry seeks to bounce back with the BB10.
The company’s European MD Stephen Bates was pushed hard by BBC Radio 5 live Breakfast on what went wrong for the company Research in Motion.
Earlier Mr Bates had faced a similar grilling from BBC’s Breakfast Steph McGovern
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Road safety campaign group Brake is calling for convicted drink drivers to have breath-test immobilisers fitted in their cars when they are allowed to drive again.
The breathalysers are connected to the car’s ignition and will not start the car unless the driver gives a negative test.
The manufacturer Alcolock says some bus and lorry fleets already have the gadgets fitted and suggests that parents of young drivers should consider installing it too.
BBC Radio 5 live Breakfast‘s Stephen Chittenden tried it out.
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The huge increases in computing power that have been occurring over the last six decades are constantly being absorbed in new and different ways.
One of the latest phrases to drop into public circulation – a phrase that reflects a new way of using computers – is “big data”.
The Today programme’s science correspondent, Tom Fielden, explained: “There are two key elements to big data. The first is volume, the truly massive amount of data from multiple sources that a new generation of computer programmes can handle.
“The second is a step change in the sophistication of processing programs that can crunch all this data and tease out the subtle patterns.”
With regard to privacy concerns, Dr Shirley-Ann Jackson, an adviser to President Obama on big data, said: “I think any technological development sits on a knife edge.
“Corporations are already beginning to use data about their customers to be able to target what they sell in a better way. I don’t view that as being malicious, I just think it’s a new way of doing business. Corporations have always wanted to understand their customers.
“There are many concerns about privacy considerations, people, corporations, entities knowing so much about where we go and what we do.”
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Article source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9786000/9786861.stm#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Pope Benedict XVI has started tweeting in Latin from his @pontifex account.
The messages are part of the Vatican’s effort to support a revival in the ancient language.
Speaking to the Today programme, the BBC’s David Willey in Rome said: “The Catholic Church is into social media in a big way. They’ve set up a new department to deal not just with tweeting but with bloggers, and they have the Pope on YouTube.
“They’re very sophisticated about this, they think social media is a great way of spreading the gospel message.”
Peter Jones, co-founder of Friends of the Classics charity and author of the Ancient and Modern column in The Spectator, explained that the Latin for tweet would be “pagina publica breviloquentis”, meaning “the public page for someone speaking briefly”.
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A friend of web activist Aaron Swartz, who has committed suicide at the age of 27, has been talking about his life and legacy.
Speaking to the BBC’s Newshour, activist Heather Brooke said Aaron Swartz was on a “guerrilla crusade” to encourage freedom of information.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21002718#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa