Infozone Breaking World News

A pensioner in Georgia is facing up to three years in prison after causing a disruption to internet services in Armenia. The 75 year old woman has admitted damaging fibre-optic cables that link Georgia to Armenia while she was scavenging for copper.

A spokesman told the AFP news agency, “Taking into account her advancing years, she has been released pending the end of the investigation and subsequent trial.”

The internet was down for several hours on the 28th March and was eventually restored in the early hours of the 29th.

Amazon has revealed its new online music streaming service called cloud player, which users can upload their songs and play them from a range of different devices. Cloud Player has already been released in the States and gives Amazon account holders 5GB of storage space for free, although more storage can be purchased for just over $1 per GB.

Songs uploaded onto the cloud player can be accessed through Palm, Blackberry and Android devices, but there is no support for Apple devices.

Bill Car, Amazon’s vice president for music and movies said, “Our customers have told us they don’t want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices.”

Apple and Google are expected to release their own cloud music services over the coming months, so time will tell on how popular Amazon’s cloud player will become.

We have all heard of conditions like tennis elbow and athletes foot that can cause a lot of discomfort to sufferers, but there is a new condition that can affect people who use mobile devices for work called ‘Blackberry Thumb’.

Blackberry Thumb is a type of repetitive strain injury caused by the overuse of mobile phones to send emails and other messages and is becoming so common that one law firms expect an increase of compensation claims from employees who suffer from the condition.

Karen Jackson from Roberts Jackson solicitors said, “If no one knows about the risks involved, they won’t sue, but more and more people are becoming aware of health hazards in the workplace.” Adding that, “A lot of people displaying symptoms associated with repetitive strain injury do not realise they are work-related, but the number with symptoms is increasing.”

Roberts Jackson solicitors is now hiring new staff in anticipation of the rise in ‘Blackberry Thumb’ claims.

An official warning has been issued by the US Air Force to its troops that using social networking sites such as Facebook or Foursquare could reveal their locations to enemy troops. The warning said that troops could inadvertently cause ‘devastating operations security and privacy implications’ as many social networking sites allow the users location to be pinpointed on a map.

The US has nearly 50,000 troops in Iraq and 95,000 troops in Afghanistan; the US Army is also set to send a similar warning to its troops on the front line.

A Freedom of Information report has announced that BBC staff has lost or had stolen £240,019 of laptops and mobile phones between April 2008 and March 2010. Over the two year period BBC staff reported 146 laptops, 65 mobile phones and 17 Blackberry’s lost or stolen.

The BBC said that they take any thefts seriously and computer security company Absolute Software warned staff to be more careful. David Everitt from the security firm said, “It is shocking that any organisation could lose so much equipment, but the BBC is just one of many we’ve seen recently, proving it’s all too common.” Adding that, “In this case, however, this technology is paid for by the licence payer and employees should be far more careful about how they handle it.”

The BBC aren’t the worst offenders though, as early last month a study by Lewis Communications stated that government departments had reported over £700,000 worth of technology lost or stolen over the same time period; this included 518 laptops, 104 mobile phones, 131 Blackberry’s and 932 electronic storage devices.

Microsoft has announced that it has banned nearly 600,000 people from its Xbox Live service for modifying their consoles to play pirated games. Microsoft stated that modifying an Xbox 360 console to play pirated games violates the services ‘terms and conditions’ and will lead to players being banned.

The statement said, “All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live”.

Adding that, “The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive from manufacturers, retailers, and the third parties that support them.”

It is hoped that this move will be a deterrent against video game piracy, which costs the video games industry an estimated £750 million a year.

Microsoft has not revealed how it determined which gamers to ban, but said that all of the consoles affected had been verified as breaking the term and conditions of the service.

In a move that has surprised a few people, BT has announced that its BT Yahoo! web search will now be provided by Google. Although nothing will change for BT Broadband users, the co-branded Yahoo! and BT initiative which provides Yahoo services to BT users will now be powered by Google.

In a statement from BT it said, “We are delighted that we are continuing to work with Yahoo! through to 2011. As part of this new agreement BT Yahoo!’s web search will be provided by Google. We made this decision based on the fact Google is the most popular search engine in the UK. The combination of Google’s search engine with Yahoo!’s leading content and email services offers customers the ultimate broadband experience.”

Probably the most surprising part is that BT did not opt to use Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, as Yahoo and Microsoft have just agreed a search ad deal in the US.

Meanwhile, Google will be pleased as they are now the largest search provider in the UK, having captured the majority of the big internet service providers.