Just a week after plans leaked about Nokia's imminent move into mobile network operations, comes word that it is to stop selling handsets to other carriers. Fortunately for worldwide fans of the Finns, the move applies only to Japan, where Nokia has long been an insignificant supplier of handsets. ( www.techradar.com )

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If it isn't already obvious from the megapixel measuring contest phone makers indulge themselves in that phone imaging is the next big battleground, then this announcement from Renesas will make that doubly clear. The Japanese chip specialist has one-upped all the competition by going not for more pixels per picture, but for a processor package that will allow cameraphones to shoot proper high-definition video. ( www.techradar.com )

Anyone who doubts the power of the social web need only take a look at the activity on Twitter last night, the micro-blogging service that has more than six million members worldwide. Mere moments after the first shots were fired, Twitter users in India, and especially in Mumbai, were providing instant eyewitness accounts of the unfolding drama. Messages, known as “tweets”, were being posted to the site at a rate of around 70 tweets every five seconds when the news of the tragedy first broke, according to some estimates. “Hospital update. Shots still being fired. Also, Metro cinema next door,” twittered Mumbaiattack.

"Mumbai terrorists are asking hotel reception for room #s of American citizens and holding them hostage on the floor", twittered Dupreee. Many Twitter users sent tweets pleading for blood donors to make their way to the JJ Hospital in Mumbai, as stocks were in danger of running low in the wake of the atrocity. Others spread the word about helplines and contact numbers for those worried about loved ones caught up in the attacks. Many more simply used the microblogging platform to let friends and family know that they were safe. A group of bloggers based in Mumbai used their Metroblog, which usually dealt with the everyday minute of life in this bustlings city, as a news wire service, bringing its readers, and the wider world, news of the incident as it unfolded.

On Wikipedia, a new page about the terror attacks was set up within minutes of the news breaking, with a team of citizen editors adding a staggering amount of detail, often in real time, to provide background information about the attacks. Someone even created a Google Map showing the location of buildings and landmarks at the centre of the incident, with links to news stories and eyewitness accounts. But perhaps the most amazing and harrowing first-hand account of the Mumbai attacks came from Vinukumar Ranganathan who grabbed his camera and headed out onto the streets of the city, taking a series of photos showing mangled cars, bloodstained roads and fleeing crowds. He has uploaded more than 112 photos to Flickr.

( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the US Department of Defense has suffered a severe and widespread cyber-attack this week - and the Russians might be behind it. The problem came to light last week, when external flash drives - often used by officers in the field to store important data - were banned for use by the military anywhere in the world. The LA Times says that invasive malware has been circulating in non-governmental computers for months but has recently affected networks within US Central Command (overseeing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq), including at least one classified network. ( www.techradar.com )

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There's nothing like a bit of pre-Christmas rumour mongering to get camera aficionados hot under the collar. And that's exactly what Nikon has created with its until-now secretive D3x. While there's been much rumour and speculation that the camera will hit shelves before the year is out, Nikon hasn't quite gone as far as giving release dates, but the company has finally confirmed that the camera is indeed real. To prove it, Nikon has printed details about it in its own magazine, Nikon Pro. News that the magazine had run a feature about the new camera leaked on to DP Reviews forum, where one reader kindly posted picture proof of the article.

( www.techradar.com )

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Nokia has decided to show the world just how it makes sure each handset it sells isn't going to be broken by our clumsy actions. Nokia Labs has a set of extreme tests to make sure things like sitting on, dropping or twisting our phones won't make them break easily. The first sees an N79 being exposed to a pin with the pressure of a fifteen stone man sitting on the device, just in case people decide to relentlessly crush their phones with their rear ends on a hard chair.

( www.techradar.com )

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It found that web pages load faster in Google Chrome than in other, competing web browsers, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla's Firefox 3, Opera and Apple's Safari. ExtremeTech conducted a battery of tests in each of the web browsers to compare speed and performance, including analysing how well the browsers handled Flash, JavaScript and coding compatibility. According to ExtremeTech's research, the BBC web page took just nine seconds to load on Google Chrome, compared to 16 seconds in Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7, while YouTube loaded in five seconds in Google Chrome, six seconds in Firefox 3, and seven seconds in Internet Explorer 7, Opera and Safari. "Based on our arbitrary score assignments, Google Chrome is the speed king," said the ExtremeTech article. "Google uses its own knowledge of search and browsing habits to optimise Chrome, but Chrome is still in early development. "It's also clear from our testing that Microsoft really needs to get [the next Internet Explorer browser] IE 8 out the door -- Internet Explorer 7 not only has compatibility issues, but is substantially slower in many ways." ( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints over an Apple iPhone 3G advert which talked of 'really fast' data retrieval. The advert pushed the 3G network capability of the latest iPhone with visuals of the phone's speed in things like accessing the internet or downloading emails. The advert contained the lines: "So what's so great about 3G? It's what helps you get the news, really fast. Find your way, really fast. And download pretty much anything, really fast. The new iPhone 3G. The internet, you guessed it, really fast." Despite a line stating: "Network performance will vary by location" the ASA received complaints from 17 people. ( www.techradar.com )

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Apple has been hit with a lawsuit by a company claiming that a key elements of the iPhone Safari browser infringes their copyright. Elliot Gottfurcht and two of his co-inventors from EMG Technology LLC have claimed that the technology used to navigate and display some websites designed for small phone screens infringes on a patent obtained last month. The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court in Tyler, Texas, although the company is based in Los Angeles.

( www.techradar.com )

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A judge in San Jose, California, made the ruling against Adam Guerbuez, of Montreal, and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital. He ordered Guerbuez to pay $436.2 million dollars in statutory damages and another $436.2 million dollars in aggravated statutory damages for violating the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act. It is the largest award made to date under the 2003 act, which outlaws "false or misleading" information in the subject or header sections of marketing emails. Facebook welcomed the ruling. Max Kelly, the site's director of security, called it an "important victory for our users - and against spam and those who create it" which demonstrated how Facebook was "fighting hard" to crack down on "spam and other online nuisances". ( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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The Sharp LC-52XS1E is not your average TV. And it's not a product that those of us living in the real world are ever realistically going to be able to afford. That's because it could well be the best television ever made. And the price for this quality? An overwhelming £8,999. The 65-inch model will cost closer to £12,000. The XS1E series isn't available in the shops yet – but Sharp has been kind enough to ship over from Japan the worlds' first test sample to our colleagues at Home Cinema Choice magazine to test. We'll be publishing our full LC-52XS1E review next month, but from what we've seen so far, this TV is very special indeed. ( www.techradar.com )

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"If I show you the PC I use as my primary machine, I think you'll be surprised," Steven Sinofsky told us just before this year's Professional Developers Conference. The next day the Senior Vice President of the Windows team showed off the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 running Windows 7, and the next week at the Windows Hardware Engineering conference he had an Atom-based Asus EEE netbook with 1GB of RAM in his hands. At the same event Microsoft showed a Dell Inspiron Mini 9, an MSI Wind, an Asus Bamboo and even the VIA-based HP Mini-Note 2133 all running Windows 7 with full Aero and no missing features. Don't expect system requirements until next year, but Windows 7 will give you "a good user experience" on a 1.6GHz Atom processor with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of disk space, according to Windows Lead Program Manager Leon Braginski. ( www.techradar.com )

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It was the first ever live YouTube roadshow, an event described as a "celebration of the vibrant communities that exist on the site, including bedroom vloggers, budding creatives, underground athletes and world-famous musicians". Tens of thousands of YouTube fans watched the celebration live online. A host of performers took to the stage, including singer Katy Perry, whose song "I Kissed a Girl" garnered thousands of hits on YouTube before topping the charts in more than 20 countries worldwide. Tom Dickson, the lab-coat-wearing scientist from the Will It Blend? videos blitzed a broom handle on stage, while Juan Mann, pioneer of the "free hugs" movement, which became a sensation on YouTube, wandered through the audience handing out free embraces. Black-Eyes Peas frontman Will.i.am gave a live performance of "It's a New Day", the song released as a follow-up to the YouTube smash "Yes We Can", which endorsed Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Also on stage at the show was William Sledd, a former sales assistant at Gap who found notoriety on YouTube for his videos that offered a caustic take on modern fashion. He was joined by Beardyman, a human "beatbox". One of YouTube's co-founders, Chad Hurley, appeared at the event, along with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google, the company that bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006.

( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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While a few of us UK dwellers were perhaps crawling out of bed and braving the cold last Friday for the début of the BlackBerry Storm, in the US the police had to be called to stop a riot. In Manhattan, more than 200 people queued from the wee small hours to make sure that they got their hands on the latest 'iPhone-beater', and many were left disappointed.

( www.techradar.com )

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The application, called NMobile, costs £2.99 and uses the phone's built-in GPS and mapping software to create a map of fixed and mobile speed detectors. The application drops virtual pins onto the map to pinpoint speed checks, and sounds an alert to warn users when they are approaching an area thought to contain speed checks. The software relies on its users to improve the depth and accuracy of its data, by allowing iPhone owners to add the location of new cameras, or update the location of suspected speed detectors already plotted on the map. These are checked by NMobile against public records and news reports before being reflected on the map. NMobile is the latest in a number of similar applications for mobile devices. Another program, Trapster, also works on the iPhone, as well as BlackBerrys, Nokias, and smartphones running the Windows Mobile operating system. Shannon Atkinson, founder of NMobile, said the company would be adding additional features in the coming weeks, including live traffic updates and accident and breakdown reports. He also said that law enforcement agencies had been "positive" about the application. ( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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Reports from Japan this weekend suggest that Nokia is about to take a leap into the unknown by starting its own mobile phone service there, offering both handsets and the monthly plans behind them. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, the Finnish company will commence a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service using infrastructure leased from market-leader NTT DoCoMo in February next year. ( www.techradar.com )

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Lorenzo Amato was rushed to hospital by his father, who feared he was suffering a stroke or brain trauma as the teenager would not respond to his surroundings. At first doctors at Lecce hospital, Southern Italy, thought Lorenzo Amato was suffering from a severe brain disorder. The teenager couldn't speak and didn't seem to understand anything going on around him. Doctors diagnosed the condition after discovering that Amato had just finished a marathon session on his new PlayStation. Local politician Antonio Buccoliero, who spoke to the doctors, said: "They eventually managed to take care of him once they understood that this was a strange kind of mental detachment connected to his PlayStation." The youngster later ordered his father to throw away the computer games system. "If I even think about it I want to throw up," he said. Concerns have been raised over the growing number of youngsters who are becoming addicted to video games after the release of a new World of Warcraft video game, earlier this month.

( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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