The teenager, named as Abraham K Biggs from Florida, took an overdose in his bedroom and filmed his death on the live video streaming website Justin.tv. He had already left a suicide note on an online bodybuilding forum, and told users in another internet chatroom that he planned to kill himself. Up to 185 people were viewing Mr Biggs's live feed on the video streaming website at the time of his death. They alerted the emergency services in Broward County, Florida after seeing the teenager lying motionless on his bed for several hours. The webcam was only switched off after police and paramedics burst into the teenager's bedroom and found him dead. Police in Broward County confirmed that they were investigating a suspected suicide. Mr Biggs was a keen bodybuilder, and had apparently threatened to commit suicide on several previous occasions. In one internet posting, he wrote how many drugs he was going to take, but the forum's moderators didn't take his threats seriously. He left a suicide note on another website, expressing his frustration and disappointment: "I am an a@#hole. I have let everyone down and I feel as though I will never change or never improve. I am in love with a girl and I know that I am not good enough for her. ( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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Things are looking up for AMD. We're out in Austin, Texas this week for a preview of the upcoming 45nm Phenom II processor. While we're not allowed to divulge full details of the new chip, we can reveal it has massive overclocking headroom. AMD demoed its new quad-core processor yesterday, due out in early January, with a range of cooling solutions. Air, water, phase change and even liquid nitrogen were on the menu. Courtesy of air cooling, the Phenom II is good for around 4GHz – that's approximately 800MHz more than AMD's existing 65nm Phenom CPU. Up the ante to phase-change tech and you're looking at 5GHz. But the really spectacular stuff was reserved for the liquid nitrogen demo. Again, AMD has asked us not to reveal the precise speed the chip reached, but we can say it was well in excess of 5GHz. OK, keeping an insulated flask of liquid nitrogen constantly topped up is hardly a practical day-to-day computing solution. But the speeds achieved speak volumes about the fundamental strength of the new 45nm architecture. Phenom II really flies. ( www.techradar.com )

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The Mozzerella Foundation has revealed that if Google backs out of its arrangements in favour of its own browser, the Open Sauce outfit will be toast. In its financial statement for 2007, the foundation said that while revenues for the organisation behind the open-source Firefox browser were up 12 percent to $75 million, the company was making most of its cash from search-related royalties from Google. This made 88 percent of the total, or $66 million while another $2 million or so came from other search engines. What must be alarming for the bean counters is that Google's overall percentage of Mozilla’s revenues is even bigger than it was in 2006, when it accounted for 85 percent. ( www.theinquirer.net )

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Like a glamorous starlet heading a across the pond to make it big in among the glittering lights of Tinsel Town, Nokia has decided to open a laboratory in Hollywood. But will it be staffed with the finest Scandinavian engineers known to man? Of course not, it will be "recruiting from and collaborating with the Hollywood entertainment, media and art communities". Basically, this is an attempt from the Finns to try and convert the 'Facebook culture' onto the mobile platform, with the company claiming to have "strong emphasis on entertainment and associated experiences, research topics will include mixed reality, content creation and user interface experiences".

( www.techradar.com )

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Barack Obama has received an apology from one of the biggest telecoms operators in the US, after some of its employees were found to have gained unauthorised access to his mobile phone records. Network operator Verizon Wireless said some of its staff had gained access to an inactive mobile phone account held by Mr Obama, and that all of those employees involved had been suspended on full pay pending an investigation. Mr Obama's spokesperson stressed that the security of voicemail messages and emails were not breached in the incident. "We were notified on Thursday that employees had accessed the records of an old cell phone no longer in use," said the spokesperson. "No voice or emails were listened to or read." Verizon Wireless apologised to the president-elect and promised that staff who were found to have inappropriately accessed the account would be punished accordingly.

( www.telegraph.co.uk )

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Opera, has released a report stating the mobile Web is on the rise, to the extent it may even be edging out the wired Web. Opera’s latest report focused on Southeast Asia, where the firm says it has seen stunning page-view and usage growth, gathering data from people who have downloaded Opera Mini. In first place for mobile browsing usage in Southeast Asia is Indonesia – which, incidentally, also ranks second overall in the world. In 2008 alone, Indonesia reportedly saw 330 per cent user growth and 827 per cent page view growth in mobile browsing. Malaysia was also a winner, apparently leading the region in usage growth, jumping up over 460 per cent this year to snatch the second spot in the region. The Philippines also seems to be making massive strides towards mobile browsing, with Opera claiming to see a 1,120 per cent jump in page views this year. ( www.theinquirer.net )

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MyHeritage, the genealogy social networking site, is making affordable "cheek scraper" DNA test kits available to its 27 million plus registered users. MyHeritage has partnered with FamilyTreeDNA to offer the cheap DNA tests, which it claims will help to identify living relatives with common ancestors. MyHeritage is used to track family trees and research missing or unknown relatives. ( www.techradar.com )

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