Cyber attacks on Facebook pages set up to pay tribute to two murdered Australian children have prompted calls for the social networking site to be more accountable for its users. 

Social Media experts say it is natural that people who use sites such as Facebook or MySpace as a major form of communication should turn to these sites with personal tragedies. These memorial sites often attract thousands of friends and well-wishers, as in the case of the pages set up after the deaths this month of Elliott Fletcher, 12, and Trinity Bates, 8. Students from Brisbane College in the state of Queensland flocked to a memorial site set up after Fletcher was stabbed in a schoolyard fight two weeks ago, but it was defaced with offensive comments and images including child pornography and bestiality. The same happened to a site set up in memory of Bates who was taken from her bed in Bundaberg, Queensland, with her body found in a nearby storm drain on Monday. A teenager accused of her murder was also revealed to be a Facebook friend of her parents. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has appealed to the owners of U.S.-based Facebook to find ways to stop a recurrence of these types of "sickening incidents".

"To have these things happen to Facebook pages set up for the sole purpose of helping these communities pay tribute to young lives lost in the most horrible ways adds to the grief already being experienced," Bligh wrote in a letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg which was released to the media. "I seek your advice about whether Facebook can do anything to prevent a recurrence of these types of sickening incidents." A spokesman for Bligh said the premier had yet to receive a response from Zuckerberg. But Facebook spokeswoman Debbie Frost said the site had rules to check content and reviewers were quick to respond to any reports of hate or threats against an individual, pornography, or violent photos or videos, and would remove the content, and either warn or disable the accounts of those responsible. "Facebook is highly self-regulating, and users can and do report content that they find questionable or offensive," Frost said in a statement. She said in the tragic case of Elliott Fletcher, Facebook responded to reports of vandalism from others users and the police by removing the groups and disabling the accounts of the people responsible but that was about all the action possible. "It is simply not possible to 'prevent' a person with a sinister agenda from undertaking offensive activity anywhere on the Internet where people can post content. Nor is it really possible in real life," Frost added. Detective Superintendent Peter Crawford of Queensland police said people should think twice before setting up such social networking groups. As well as memorial sites, Facebook pages popped up vilifying the man accused of murdering Bates. "I would say anybody thinking about putting these sites up in the future need to realise that they're going to attract these kinds of people," Crawford told radio station Fairfax Radio 4BC. "The reality is once you open these sites up to open access to anyone on the Internet, you are going to attract unsavoury people and clearly that's occurred again."

Transcend has launched its new RDP7 multi-card reader that features an integrated USB hub. With the addition of USB 2.0 ports, this high-speed 3-slot card reader can accommodate up to three USB peripherals in addition to reading most memory card formats available on the market.

The new RDP7 multi-card reader sports a stylish, handy design with clearly labeled slots and a bright LED for indicating card insertion and data transfer. Measuring 88mm X 54mm X 10.6mm, the RDP7 is easy to carry around.

Austin Huang, Regional Head - Sales, SAARC & APAC, Transcend, said, “All Transcend card readers come with a free download of Photo Recovery Tool, and the RDP7 is no exception. This useful software features a quick and easy user interface that shows thumbnail previews of recoverable data. With Transcend's Photo Recovery Tool, lost, deleted or formatted files are just a click away! Currently available in black or white, the RDP7 is the ideal choice for accessing data stored on memory cards as well as USB devices.”

Combining a multi-card reader with a 3-port USB hub, the dual-purpose RDP7 bridges the gap between PCs and memory card-equipped electronic gadgets like mobile phones, digital cameras or MP3 players, and allows users to connect multiple peripherals, such as a USB mouse, flash drive, webcam or printer to their computer. Fully hot-pluggable and USB powered, the RDP7 requires no external power source and features a built-in USB cable that snaps into its chassis for extra portable convenience.

Fully USB 2.0 compliant, the multi-card reader accepts today's most popular memory cards, including SD, SDHC, microSDHC, microSD, TransFlash, MMC, MMCplus, RS-MMC, mmcMobile, MS, MS PRO, MS Duo, MS Pro Duo, MS PRO-HG Duo and M2. With an adapter, the RDP7 can also support MMCmicro, miniSD and miniSDHC cards.

The RDP7 mulit-card reader is priced at Rs. 1,025 and comes with a two year warranty.

ViewSonic has announced the commercial availability of its first ULV notebook – the VNB131 ViewBook Pro.

ViewSonic's 13.3" VNB131 ViewBook Pro notebook offers  the latest ULV SU7300 Intel C2D Processor and Windows 7 Home Premium operating system. At an inch thick, the notebook packs a 320GB hard drive, 2GB internal memory and a removable DVD RW Super Multi ODD into a sleek and modern looking aluminum alloy casing.

In addition to offering a multi-touch keypad for enlarging screen content, scrolling, rotating and selecting items all without a mouse, this notebook features integrated 802.11b/g/n wireless, two USB 2.0 ports, a 7-in-1 card reader, HDMI and VGA connections. The VNB131 has a 6 cell battery for up to eight hours of computing at a time, plus an extra 3 cell battery that can be interchanged with the removable DVD ODD for an additional four hours of battery life – for a total of up to 12 hours.

The ViewSonic VNB131 ViewBook Pro is currently available for an MSRP of $949. Additional ULV notebook and netbook solutions ranging in size and functionality are scheduled to be available in Q2 2010.

Xerox Corp has sued Google Inc and Yahoo Inc, accusing them of infringing the document management company's patents related to Internet search.

In a lawsuit filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, Xerox said Google's Web-based services such as Google Maps, YouTube and AdSense Advertising Software, as well as Web tools including Yahoo Shopping, infringe patents granted as far back as 2001. Xerox seeks compensation for past infringement and asked the court to halt the companies from further using the technology. Xerox's patents cover such technology as a system for generating queries for information related to a document, and methods for integrating information from documents and other data, Xerox said in a court filing. A Yahoo spokeswoman said the company does not believe it is infringing the patents, and that it plans to fight the case. Google Senior Litigation Counsel Catherine Lacavera said in an emailed statement that the claims are entirely without merit and that the company will "defend against them vigorously." 

India, China and other developing countries face "the spectre of hazardous e-waste mountains" unless they step up action to collect and recycle e-waste, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned.

As sales of electronic products in India, China and other developing countries are set to rise sharply in the next 10 years, these "e-waste mountains" would have "serious consequences for the environment and public health", said a report released here during UNEP's governing council meeting.

The report, "Recycling - from E-Waste to Resources", used data from 11 developing countries to estimate current and future e-waste generation - which includes old and dilapidated desk and laptop computers, printers, mobile phones, pagers, digital photo and music devices, refrigerators, toys and television sets.

The report estimates e-waste generation in India now at over 100,000 tonnes a year from refrigerators, 275,000 tonnes from TVs, 56,300 tonnes from personal computers, 4,700 tonnes from printers and 1,700 tonnes from mobile phones

Electronic waste from old computers will jump 500 percent in India, and between 200 and 400 percent in South Africa and China by 2020, the report predicts.

By that same year in India, e-waste from discarded mobile phones will be about 18 times higher than 2007 levels and, in China, seven times higher.

By 2020, e-waste from televisions will be 1.5 to 2 times higher in China and India while in India e-waste from discarded refrigerators will double or triple.

Most e-waste in India is incinerated by backyard recyclers to recover valuable metals like gold -- practices that release steady plumes of far-reaching toxic pollution and yield very low metal recovery rates compared to state-of-the-art industrial facilities.

UNEP Executive Director and UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner said: "India, Brazil, Mexico and others may face rising environmental damage and health problems if e-waste recycling is left to the vagaries of the informal sector."

The report was co-authored by the Swiss EMPA, Umicore and the United Nations University (UNU), part of the global think tank StEP (Solving the E-waste Problem).

The report says:

Illegal Internet pharmacies are thriving in India and they are increasingly becoming a source of pharmaceutical drug buse across the globe, a report released by the United Nations office of Drugs and Crime said Wednesday.

"India has emerged as one of the main sources of drugs sold through illegal Internet pharmacies, where orders placed abroad are dispatched to buyers using couriers and postal services, which have become a common means of smuggling drugs abroad," the annual International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) report released here said.

The international report said that pharma drug abuse n Bhutan and Bangladesh are also gradually picking up.

It said seizures of amphetamine-type stimulants show that trafficking of these substances may be increasing in South Asia and it has also become a location for their manufacture.

"A number of clandestine methamphetamine laboratories have been discovered in India in recent years," the report said.

"We have busted nine major cases of Internet pharmacy in the past few years. We are taking a lot of steps to control the menace but to monitor the Internet is a huge task," Ish Kumar, deputy director general of India's Narcotic Control Bureau, told IANS.

Kumar said they have sensitised several parcel service providers to curb the menace and get hold of the rackets involved in the process. "We are following a system of controlled delivery, which has given us some positive results so far," Kumar added.

"The widespread abuse of pharmaceutical preparations containing narcotic drugs, example Codeine, is an ongoing problem in Bangladesh. Pharmaceutical preparations containing Benzodiazepines are among the most widely abused in Bhutan," the global body said.

Olympus is launching its 'Olympus Zone' in Mumbai and an exclusive store in Delhi.

The highlight of the launch event will be an exhibition of some of the best works of John Isaac, a renowned photographer of international repute, who will also inaugurate the stores.

Olympus has identified India as a key market, and aims to make its products widely available to photography aficionados. The Olympus Zone in Mumbai store is at Dr D.N. Road, Fort, and the New Delhi store is in Palika Bazaar.

Olympus Zones will be offering photography professionals/enthusiasts and the general consumers at large, an opportunity to experience their wide range of cameras under one proof

Yahoo Inc plans to integrate Twitter into its collection of websites, as the company seeks to enhance the appeal of its online properties with popular Social Networking features.

The partnership will allow web surfers to view the short, 140-character messages created by Twitter users, dubbed Tweets, directly within Yahoo sites as well as to publish their own Twitter messages without leaving Yahoo. The move, which Yahoo announced late on Tuesday, comes a couple of months after Yahoo announced a similar deal with Facebook, the world's No.1 social networking site. Earlier this month, Google Inc unveiled a new service dubbed Google Buzz that replicated many of the social networking features that have made services like Twitter and Facebook Internet success stories. Facebook and Twitter - which said on Monday that users of its service generate more than 50 million Tweets every day - pose an increasing threat to established Internet giants like Yahoo and Google whose businesses depend on selling online ads to large audiences. In January, Facebook overtook Yahoo to become the second most visited website in the United States, according to a recent report by web analytics firm Compete. A separate study by comScore showed Yahoo maintaining its No.2 rank with roughly 164 million unique U.S. visitors, while Facebook was the No.4 site with 112 visitors, behind third-ranked Microsoft Corp.

Yahoo said that beginning on Tuesday its Internet search engine results will display up-to-the-second Tweets about various topics, matching the so-called "real time search" capabilities that Google and Microsoft announced in their own respective deals with Twitter last year. Yahoo also plans to display a live stream of Tweets within other online properties including its email service and sites devoted to sports, entertainment and finance later this year. Yahoo executives said that the company was looking at ways to make Twitter messages relevant to each property, such as by customizing the selection of messages that appear alongside an article about a particular sporting event, for example. "We believe that the content and context side of things is very unique," Yahoo Vice President of Communities Jim Stoneham told Reuters in an interview. Yahoo would not comment on any financial terms involved in the deal with Twitter. According to some media reports, Microsoft and Google paid a combined $25 million for the right to include Twitter data in their search results.

Intel Corp said it faced a "sophisticated" hacker attack in January about the same time as the recently publicized Chinese hacker attacks on Google Inc, but noted no clear link between the two events.

Google would not comment on whether Intel was one of the roughly 20 unnamed companies that the world's No. 1 Internet search engine said had been similarly targeted in attacks that originated in China. The attack was just one of what the world's largest chipmakers said were regular attempts on its computer systems, Intel said in a filing under a heading about potential theft or misuse of the company's intellectual property. "The only connection is timing," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said, declining to elaborate.

The company first publicized the attack and pointed out the similarity in timing to the move on Google in an annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Now that Google has publicly admitted to being successfully attacked without much damage to their reputation, analysts said other companies are rethinking their typically tight-lipped approach to security breaches. Recent changes to disclosure laws and increased awareness of cyber-security may also have prompted Intel to come clean, analysts say. But Intel did not say who was behind the attacks, from where in the world they originated, or what information, if any, had been taken. Asked whether Intel had spoken or worked with Google on this issue, Mulloy said: "Our security folks work very closely and collaboratively throughout the industry." "Companies are facing these threats and attacks all the time," Fred Pinkett, vice president of product management for Core Security Technologies, said. In targeting companies like Intel, which have one of the largest intellectual property portfolios in the world, hackers may have been looking for bragging rights. "Very rarely are they really trying to commit industrial espionage, because it's really hard to do that without getting caught," said Todd Feinman, chief executive of Identity Finder. The reason Intel probably publicized the hack attempts was to minimize the company's legal risks, he added. "The advantage is that you're protecting yourself for when it finally does happen and something really bad occurs, because you can say 'we disclosed this information on our 10-K.'"