Kickstarter-backed film bags Oscar

25 February 2013 Last updated at 08:34 ET By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

The true story of a 15-year-old homeless girl has become the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar.

Inocente was made with the help of $52,527 (£35,000) raised by 294 backers in June last year.

The documentary was awarded with the prize for best documentary short at the ceremony.

Two other crowd-funded films, Kings Point and Buzkashi Boys, were also nominated but came away empty-handed.

Speaking to Mashable, Inocente's co-director Seth Fine said of crowd-funding: "It really helped galvanise a community."

"It helped fund a bunch of the film and kept us going through post-production. It's a great outlet for films, especially for documentaries."

Continue reading the main story

Often they are about topics that are shunned by the normal funders because they might be too risky"

End Quote Elliot Grove Founder, Raindance Film Festival

The win has been seen as further proof that crowd-funding has established itself as an important revenue stream for independent film-makers looking to abandon traditional routes to the screen.

Other sites such as Indiegogo and Wefund.com also back films.

"Crowd-funding has become a very important part of any film-maker's finance strategy," said Elliot Grove, founder of the Raindance Film Festival and British Independent Film Awards.

'Feeling pretty good'

He told the BBC about 30% of the 250 films on show at Raindance last year had been crowd-funded - a "huge increase" on the previous year.

Among them was How Do You Write A Joe Schermann Song, which won the film-of-the-festival award.

"It means that you cut out the middleman," Mr Grove told the BBC. "You go straight to the money and go straight to the audience.

"The crowd-funders will have a personal stake in this - if you put 50 or 100 bucks on an Oscar-winning film, you'll be feeling pretty good about yourself today."

In previous years, other Kickstarter-backed films have been nominated, including Incident in New Baghdad, Sun Come Up, and The Barber of Birmingham.

The films have been met with considerable critical acclaim. According to website Rotten Tomatoes - which creates an aggregate score based on hundreds of film review sites - three of the 20 best-reviewed films of 2012 were Kickstarter-funded.

Backing a cause

Mr Grove said he believed that while crowd-funding allowed film-makers to circumvent traditional studios and publishers, it had not meant a drop in quality.

"The lower barrier to entry is not so much to do with crowd-funding, but to do with digital film-making.

"If anything crowd-funding means the films are better because they have to convince the audience, their funders, that what they're making is worth making."

A blog post by Kickstarter earlier this year revealed that since launching in 2009, the site has raised $85m (£56m) for independent films, funding more than 8,000 individual projects.

The majority of this money has gone towards documentary films. Mr Grove credits this to the appeal of backing not only a film, but a cause.

"Often they are about topics that are shunned by the normal funders because they might be too risky or politically incorrect - which makes what we as viewers get to see so much more interesting."

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App maker angry over Facebook block

25 February 2013 Last updated at 11:16 ET By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

The developers of an application called Vintage Camera say Facebook has unjustly banned users from uploading their photos to the social network.

The app, which works on Apple devices, provides various effects to make pictures look dated.

French studio Presselite, which developed the app, says it has more than eight million users worldwide.

Facebook told the developers the decision had been made following negative feedback from account holders.

After Presselight appealed against the ban, Facebook sent the company an email saying: "We've checked out the circumstances of your app's restriction, and we found that your app received strong negative feedback from users and their friends.

"Unfortunately, we will not be able to restore your app's functionality."

But Presselite co-founder Antoine Morcos said that, according to administration data provided by Facebook itself, there had been about one negative report per 1,000 images shared via the app, which he believed had been due to "inappropriate use".

"We don't understand how Facebook could block the access to millions of users of the Vintage Camera application who want to share their photos on Facebook, only because of a few negative feedback reports," Mr Morcos wrote in a press statement.

"As you all know, Facebook has acquired the Instagram photo-sharing application, and we hope this acquisition is not influencing this kind of access limitation for other photo applications."

After being contacted by the BBC, Facebook said that Presselite had received warnings about the app before it was blocked.

"While we provide an open platform, every application on Platform is required to meet our policies. We take both automated and manual steps to detect violations and ensure compliance," the firm said.

"Pending on the violation, we give developers an opportunity to come into compliance via a warning system. In the case of this application, the application was not in compliance with our platform policies and had received three warnings prior to our systems taking action on the application."

The app has a four-star average rating on the Apple store, although some users have written in reviews it does not always work and others complain it is too similar to Instagram,

In 2010, Presselite accused London-based developer Q Mapps of infringing its copyright, after both firms released an app called Paris Metro for Apple devices.

Presselite asked Apple to remove the Q Mapps app from its store but was found to have had its trademark application rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

At the time, developer Malcolm Barclay described the allegations as "utterly baseless and false".

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Smartphone fired into space for test

25 February 2013 Last updated at 12:55 ET

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Artist's rendition of the satellite in orbit showing how the phone is fitted inside

A smartphone has been blasted into orbit from India by a team of researchers from the University of Surrey.

They hope to use a purpose-built app to test the theory, immortalised in the film Alien, that "in space no-one can hear you scream".

The phone will play out several of the screams submitted by people online.

The test will monitor the durability of standard commercial components in space.

It will also test two new innovative propulsion systems.

The first - named Warp Drive (Water Alcohol Resisto-jet Propulsion De-orbit Re-entry Velocity Experiment) - uses the ejection of a water-alcohol mixture to provide thrust.

The second technology is pulsed plasma thrusters. These use an electric current to heat and evaporate a material, producing a charged gas that can then be accelerated in one direction in a magnetic field to push the satellite in the other direction.

'Fantastic achievement'

The mission will see the so-called "smartphone-sat" - a world first - orbit the Earth for six months.

Weighing 4.3 kg (9.5lbs) and measuring 10cm by 30cm (4in by 12in), the satellite has been developed by the University of Surrey's Space Centre (SSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL).

"This mission is a fantastic achievement and a great tribute to the hard work of the engineers involved," said Sir Martin Sweeting, director of SSC, and also executive chairman of SSTL.

At first, the Strand-1 satellite will be controlled by a standard onboard computer, but in phase two of the mission, a Google Nexus phone will take the reins - equipped with a number of special apps.

One of them, iTesa, is to record the magnitude of the magnetic field around the phone during orbit.

The 360 app will take pictures using the phone's built-in five megapixel camera, and will act as a method of establishing the satellite's position.

Images captured by the app will be posted on Facebook.

Twitter tracking

The Scream in Space app, developed by Cambridge University Space Flight, makes use of several screams that were submitted by visitors to the project's website.

At various points, the app will play videos of the screams and monitor if the phone's onboard speaker picks up the noise.

The screams set for intergalactic broadcast include this ear-busting effort from Year 6 at Chudleigh CE Community Primacy School and this very dramatic "nooooooo!" from Richard Barrington.

The line "in space no-one can hear you scream" was the tagline for the hugely popular 1979 science-fiction thriller Alien, starring Sigourney Weaver.

In theory, because space is a vacuum there are no molecules, so sound cannot travel as vibrations are not carried.

Strand-1's progress can be tracked on Twitter, where at the time of writing it had just passed over Kenya.

Amateur radio enthusiasts are also encouraged to track the satellite, details of which can be found on the Surrey Satellite Technology website.

The team does not expect to get the smartphone back.

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Barnes & Noble founder moots buy-out

25 February 2013 Last updated at 16:53 ET Continue reading the main story

Leonard Riggio, founder of the Barnes & Noble bookstore chain, has said he plans to offer to buy back its retail operations, but not its Nook e-reader.

Mr Riggio, who owns almost 30% of the company, notified US regulators that he would seek to purchase the loss-making firm's stores and online business.

The news sent Barnes & Noble's share price 11.5% higher in Monday trading.

Like book retailers worldwide, the firm has struggled to compete with cheap online vendors and downloads.

Main rival Borders was liquidated in 2011, after it succumbed to the pressure from digital competitors.

Barnes & Noble has sought to stay ahead of the game with its Nook product, which seeks to compete for readership with Amazon's Kindle and with tablet computers.

The e-reader attracted significant investments from Microsoft and UK media group Pearson last year, leaving Barnes & Noble with a 78% share in the product, which Mr Riggio does not propose to buyback.

There was talk early last year of spinning off the Nook, along with its successful digital college business, into a separate joint venture.

However, the firm's sales of both Nook products and of traditional books have both struggled.

Barnes & Noble reported a $39m loss for the last six months, and said sales through its stores and online platform over the critical Christmas period fell 11% from a year earlier.

The firm plans to shut a third of its stores by the end of the year.

Mr Riggio's offer follows similar moves by Michael Dell of Dell computers and Richard Schultze of electrical retailer Best Buy to buy out the struggling firms they founded.

Barnes & Noble was originally a New York bookstore, which Mr Riggio bought out the branding rights to in the 1970s, before building out a successful US-wide chain.

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'Robosparrow' created from dead bird

25 February 2013 Last updated at 19:02 ET By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

A dead bird animated by off-the-shelf robotics helped US biologists study behaviour in the swamp sparrow species.

Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina worked with engineering students and a taxidermist to operate the wings of a deceased swamp sparrow.

They programmed simple Picaxe computer chips, and built a tiny linear motor to fit inside the cavity of the bird they named Robosparrow.

They were studying male aggressive behaviour among the species.

The experiment, carried out over a period of two months, confirmed to the researchers that wing-flapping is a sign of male aggression, said Dr Rindy Anderson who led the study.

Getting the robotics right took around nine months, she told the BBC.

"We had to be able to use computer software to control the motor, to programme it to move the wings at particular intervals," she said.

"It's not a random movement. Ultimately what was really difficult was getting everything so small."

Wing-waving

With a budget of just $1500 (£990), Dr Anderson said the initial plan was to modify an existing motor from a remote-controlled aeroplane or car but they were all too large to fit inside the 18 gram bird, the size of an average house sparrow.

"Our engineer built a linear motor from first principles, and then re-miniaturised it until we got something to fit."

Once the motor was in place and the robot chip was programmed, the mounted bird was put in the wild along with a discreet sound system playing swamp sparrow calls to attract others.

The wing-waving robot lasted for two months but was regularly attacked, said Dr Anderson.

"We had no back up - every day was a wish and a prayer that he survived the sixty trials," she added.

"Eventually the head fell off and the wing stopped moving."

Male aggression

The living male birds were equally aggressive to Robosparrow whether its wing movements were activated or not, the researchers found.

"It confirmed our hypothesis that the wing-waving behaviour is functioning male aggressive communication," said Dr Anderson.

"It was a lot of work - the engineering students had never done it before, the taxidermist we used had never done it before.

"We really just scratched the surface of what this behaviour is."

Dr Anderson's research has been published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

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Mobile aims to control city life

26 February 2013 Last updated at 04:15 ET

It is day two of Barcelona's Mobile World Congress. Visit this page throughout the day to catch up on all the news, views and videos from the BBC's team on the ground there.

Read all the action from Sunday and Monday here.

Click editor Richard Taylor has been finding out about a new technology called WebRTC (real time communication) which could rival software such as Skype by offering users the chance to make video calls from within the web browser.

Firefox and Google are implementing it in their browsers and the technology is creating a buzz at the show. Find out more in Richard's Tout video.

OpenSignal, a firm which provides mobile coverage maps for 200 countries around the world has won a search to find the UK's most innovative mobile company. Its app crowdsources mobile signals and wi-fi access points.

Five finalists pitched to a panel of judges and the UK's minister for culture, communications and creative industries Ed Vaizey announced the winner at Mobile World Congress.

Other shortlisted firms included Skin Analytics which uses pictures of skin moles to help with the early detection of skin cancer, and Paddle which allows people to make payments online or via their mobile phone without having to remember passwords or key in delivery addresses.

The Smart UK project was backed by UK Trade and Investment, a government department set up to help UK companies succeed in the global economy.

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Rorry Cellan-Jones looks around the Connected City at Mobile World Congress

This year the organisers of Mobile World Congress have built a mocked-up city, complete with apartments, a hotel, restaurant and shops.

It is designed to show off how mobile is infiltrating all aspects of our life.

Rory Cellan-Jones has taken a walk around and seen some of the smart technology on offer, including voice-activated in-car apps, bikes that can monitor health, and smart home apps where temperatures and even pet feeding can be controlled via a tablet.

Mobile World Congress is a place where deals are often brokered and this year is no exception.

US credit card firm Visa has announced a global tie-up with Samsung that will make it easier to use its smartphones to pay for items.

Analysts suggest that the deal could help boost the use of smartphone wallets, long talked-about but yet to explode.

Meanwhile, reflecting the desire of car-makers to get more involved in mobile, Ford has struck a deal with music streaming service Spotify to run the service on on its in-car app platform.

The app has drivers firmly in mind with features such as a Road Trip feature which allowed users to add tracks by speaking.

And in a nod to the growing importance of the Maker Movement, Nokia has partnered with MakerBot, a 3D desktop printer, to allow users to print their own smartphone covers.

Nokia's 3D printing development kit offers a 3D template and case specs for printing covers for its Lumia 820 and 520 handsets.

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Sony boss talks about the future of the firm

Rory Cellan-Jones has been chatting to Sony boss Kazuo Hirai about his plans to turn around the struggling firm.

You can read more of Rory's thoughts - and his take on Nokia too - on his latest blog.

No technology show would be complete without a cute robot and Dougal Shaw has been meeting one with some very contrasting functions.

The Skype-enabled telepresence robot, designed to work with most major tablets, is called MantaroBot and is made by TeleMe.

The robot acts as both a teacher for children and a security guard.

It comes with educational software but really comes into its own as a burglar deterrent.

If a burglar opens a window, the robot will sound off an alarm. It will also send a text alert to the owner's mobile phone and record all the burglar's movements.

Watch his Tout video here.

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Valve boss awarded Bafta fellowship

26 February 2013 Last updated at 06:00 ET

Valve boss Gabe Newell is being made a fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for his outstanding contribution to video games.

The fellowship would be officially bestowed during the Bafta video game awards on 5 March, the academy added.

Valve had helped to foster a vibrant game-playing community, creating influential titles such as Half Life, Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2, it said.

Mr Newell said it was an "honour" for himself and everyone at Valve.

He also praised UK players of Valve games, the country's press that had supported the company and the work of UK "modders" such as Garry Newman.

Bafta video games committee chairman Harvey Elliott said Mr Newell's contribution to the games industry was "unique".

Rather than just make games, said Mr Elliott, Valve also let players become creators by giving them access to tools that let them modify or "mod" the studio's creations.

Valve runs the online Steam gaming service through which many players buy and manage their games.

The company is also working on a Steam "box" - a set-top device that will let people play games on a big-screen TV in their living room.

Other Bafta fellows from the video games industry include Peter Molyneux, Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright.

In 2012, Markuss Persson, also known as Notch, who created Minecraft, was honoured with a special award in recognition of the success of the block-building game.

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HP sells Palm WebOS assets to LG

26 February 2013 Last updated at 06:49 ET

Electronics giant HP is selling off the code, staff and technology involved in its WebOS software to Korean firm LG.

HP acquired the WebOS operating system when it bought veteran gadget maker Palm in 2011 for $1.2bn (£789m).

Financial details of the deal have not been disclosed but HP is not thought to have recouped much of the money it paid for Palm.

LG said the WebOS code would be used to power its next-generation smart TV technology.

The WebOS was created to run smartphones, tablets and other devices developed by Palm that, in its early days, pioneered the handheld gadget industry. However, Palm's influence has diminished as Apple, Google's Android and RIM's Blackberry have come to dominate the smartphone and tablet markets.

In the deal, LG gets WebOS source code, engineers working on it, documentation and the websites that promote it. HP is holding on to patents underlying WebOS as well as technology that helps it connect to web-based services.

HP did launch products running WebOS, such as the TouchPad tablet, but poor sales led it to seek other ways to boost interest in the software. One way it chose was to open up the code to any developer to work on. LG was one of the first firms to take up this chance and the acquisition grew out of this relationship.

Using WebOS in TV sets made "sense" for LG, said Ovum analyst Tony Cripps, adding that it could herald a return to the software's smartphone roots.

WebOS's use of core web technology left it well placed for the next generation of mobile apps that were likely to be based around the same code, he said.

The acquisition was probably driven by LG's recognition that it needed to make gadgets of all types easier to use, added Mr Cripps.

"Device manufacturers are recognising the need to differentiate through software-based innovation in user experience," he said.

The deal with LG was announced as HP took the wraps off its first Android-powered tablet, called the HP Slate 7, at the 2013 Mobile World Congress currently under way in Barcelona.

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Apple offers kid apps fee settlement

26 February 2013 Last updated at 07:24 ET

Apple has proposed paying compensation to US parents whose children made in-app purchases without their permission.

The iPod-maker had been sued over allegations it had failed to "adequately" publicise that child-targeted games in its App Store included the facility.

A judge will consider the proposal on 1 March.

Apple acknowledged it would need to tell more than 23 million iTunes account holders they might qualify.

Affected users would receive an email offering at least $5 (£3.20) in credit if they confirmed a minor had charged their account without permission, and that they had not already had the fee deleted after making a complaint.

15-minute window

The legal action dates back to April 2011 and allegations made by a California-based man that his youngest daughter had racked up a series of charges without his knowledge.

Garen Meguerian said his nine-year-old's actions had cost him approximately $200 after she bought toxin, gems and other "game currencies" within apps including Zombie Cafe, Treasury Story and City Story,

His lawyer later noted that some titles in Apple's store allowed children to buy more than $100 worth of items in a single click without entering a password. Apple took a cut of each in-app sale.

The case was later combined with other parents making similar claims.

By this point Apple had updated its mobile operating system to tackle the issue.

Prior to iOS 4.3 if a user entered their password to make a purchase their device would allow unlimited further sales without authentication for a 15-minute period.

After the software release all in-app transactions required a password.

But although Apple offered refunds on a case-by-case basis, it did not publicise an official compensation policy.

Time limit

Apple's proposed settlement was first reported by news site Law360.

Apple's proposal suggests affected parties can:

• Email in their details to qualify for a $5 iTunes credit
• Request the $5 in cash if they no longer have an iTunes account
• Provide full details of each in-app purchase to be reimbursed in full in credit or cash, for totals of at least $30

Apple indicates it will give claimants 180 days to submit their requests and will also award Mr Meguerian and four other named plaintiffs an additional $1,500 service award.

The plaintiffs have accepted the proposal and it is now set to be signed off by a judge in San Jose's courthouse on Friday.

Apple declined to comment when asked whether it might consider offering a similar deal to users outside the US.

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Facebook scrubs shooting 'tributes'

26 February 2013 Last updated at 09:36 ET

Facebook has removed some pages dedicated to last year's Sandy Hook primary school shooting, following complaints.

Dozens of "tributes" were added to the social network following the December attack in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20 children and six adults died.

The family of one of the victims had raised concern some pages were being used to spread conspiracy theories.

Politicians had also complained that some posters appeared to be scammers.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Senator Chris Murphy and Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty sent a letter to Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg at the end of last week calling for action, after a local newspaper publicised the story.

A statement from Facebook said: "We have created a new, streamlined, customised process with dedicated staff to allow concerns specific to the Sandy Hook tragedy to be addressed directly and immediately, while also recognising that people across the country want to express grief for a terrible national tragedy."

Conspiracy theories

Greenwich Time reported last week that the mother of Victoria Soto - a teacher killed while trying to protect her students - had said she had previously failed to convince Facebook to delete some of the pages.

She had said that her daughter would have hated some of the unauthorised pages set up in her name.

"I understand some people have good intentions [and] some people say she is a public figure, but, to me, she is my daughter that was put in this awful position [and] she would never want to be a public figure and she would not want people making pages in her name," Donna Soto was quoted as saying.

The mother maintains her own Facebook page dedicated to the memory of her daughter.

Kaitlin Roig, a teacher at the school, who survived the attack, also noted that some posts had claimed the shootings had been staged, with one conspiracy theorist suggesting Ms Roig bore a strong resemblance to a known "crisis actress".

In the letter sent by the politicians to Facebook, they noted more than 100 tribute pages had been set up in Victoria Soto's name or likeness alone.

"Many give the appearance they were created by loved ones in the names of the victims," they wrote.

"Unfortunately, many of these pages have become vehicles for harassment, intimidation and possibly financial fraud.

"Pages providing platforms for people to violate the privacy of families as they grieve, or seek financial gain through soliciting donations under false pretences, or generating Facebook 'likes' for marketing purposes, should not be given quarter in the Facebook community."

The politicians noted the site's own terms and conditions banned users from setting up personal accounts in someone else's name and from posting comments that "intimidate or harass".

'Vigilant' checks

A search of the social network by the BBC revealed that dozens of Community, Public Figure and Organisation pages dedicated to Ms Soto still remain online.

However, Facebook confirmed it had "refined" its procedures to help it address complaints related to the shooting.

"On Sunday, Facebook briefed Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, about our efforts to protect the families," a spokesman said.

"We continue to work closely with his office, the families, and the foundation representing the victims of Sandy Hook to ensure that we respond as quickly as possible to concerns.

"For the past few months, our rapid response team has acted swiftly to remove inappropriate materials flagged by the foundation and the families. We will continue to be vigilant."

According to Greenwich Time the news has been welcomed by Donna Soto.

"I am pleased that Facebook has agreed to do the right thing," she said.

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