The Telegraph's most viewed story poses the question: do tyrants fear America anymore? The piece by Nile Gardiner, a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator, accuses the Obama administration of having a "timid" foreign policy.

"Just a few years ago the United States was genuinely feared on the world stage, and dictatorial regimes, strategic adversaries and state sponsors of terror trod carefully in the face of the world's most powerful nation. Now Washington appears weak, rudderless and frequently confused in its approach."

Riding high at Slate is a piece about the King's Speech, published last week but seeing resurgence in interest following the Oscars on Sunday. The film, says writer Christopher Hitchens, is "riddled with gross falsifications of history". Hitchens, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the accuracy of the film, picks apart the allegiances and friendships in the film, particularly those of Winston Churchill, which he says are presented incorrectly.

The career of actor Charlie Sheen could be harmed by a series of "bizarre" interviews, reports the Guardian. The actor produced "samples of his blood and urine for a drugs test" during one interview on NBC. Other interviews, which covered topics including "his past indulgence with drugs and porn stars" proved too much for his publicist, who announced that he would resign, the paper says.

Facebook is about to embark on the latest of its "controversy-fraught efforts to encourage users to be more liberal in sharing their data", says the Huffington Post. The social network is "moving ahead" with plans to give external developers access to its users' mobile phone numbers and home addresses, despite the firm already doing one u-turn on the decision in January.

New Scientist publishes an interview with Nobel Prize winning biologist Christian de Duve who argues that natural selection means that humans are now riddled with "noxious traits" that could eventually kill us off. The answer, he says, could involve population control and giving more power to women.

A plastic that doesn't burn even under extreme temperatures and that acts protects from nuclear blasts and radiation may never see the light of day, says the Times. The material known as Starlite was invented by former hairdresser Maurice Ward, who had "no formal training, no academic background, no special equipment, no funding and no help other than from his wife Helen and daughters Jane and Caroline". Despite debuting on BBC show Tomorrow's World two decades ago and winning plaudits from Nasa and the Ministry of Defence, Mr Ward's invention has never been bought or produced commercially. So what happened?

And finally, the Daily Mail publishes a picture that it claims could be the elusive graffiti artist Banksy. The photographs, showing him wearing "a pulled-down green cap, a brown T-shirt and grey Adidas tracksuit bottoms" were taken in Santa Monica. The paper says the artist's work has been springing up around LA in the run up to the Oscars, where his film Exit Through The Gift Shop was nominated for best documentary.

On Tech Brief today: pay to play, and the BBC News website reimagined.

• Last week, security researchers shared with the BBC their thinking about the Stuxnet worm, a complex piece of malicious code which may have been aimed at Iranian industrial facilities. The worm was known to use some clever tricks. But now Gregg Keizer at ComputerWorld reports that it may be more difficult to get rid of an infection than previously thought. He quotes a Symantec researcher who has found the worm can re-infect machines that have already been cleaned of the malware.

"'You could imagine the scenario where someone had cleaned the computer of Stuxnet, but before they did that, they backed up the project," he said. "When the project was later restored [to the now-clean] PC, it would be re-infected.'"

• High profile Tech blog TechCrunch revealed yesterday that it had been sold to AOL. Its founder Michael Arrington said talks of the sale first started in may after he met with the firm's CEO Tim Armstrong.

"Tim asked me how things were going at TechCrunch. I told him I was exhausted after five years but that a recent move to Seattle made it easier to balance my life. I joked that I was half retired. 'That's too bad, he said, we'd love to acquire you but we'd need to know you would stick around'."

• Yesterday Tech Brief highlighted Malcolm Gladwell's latest column in thw New Yorker suggesting that internet activism - especially via tools such as Twitter - had been overhyped. Blogger and entrepreneur Anil Dash replies with a criticism.

"The problem with Gladwell's premise, though, is that it's wildly anachronistic to think that the only way to effect social change is to assemble a sign-wielding mob to inhabit a public space."

• Gamer stereotypes abound: young, male, socially awkward; stuck in their bedrooms. Of course, the game's world is not like that at all, but a new venture - called Gamescrush - may not help dispel those myths. The site allows gamers to pay to play against other gamers, who are mostly women says Anthony Ha at Gamesbeat.

"On the site, men connect with 'PlayDates', namely female gamers. They play video games together on the site - right now there are seven or eight casual games, but the PlayDates can also share games on their own computers. They can also talk to each other using webcams. "

• And finally, we very much like the bbcx365 project by designer Johnny Selman, who aims to create a poster based on a BBC News website headline every day for a year. Our personal favourite is the Twitter worm. On his blog, he explains the genesis of the project.

"The project began on April 12 with the headline, 'Thailand PM faces rising pressure'. The story of a clash between government troops and anti-government protesters that resulted in 21 deaths. In this poster I used the 'tail' of Thailand to represent the trigger on a handgun. I then put the Prime Minister's name under the word 'Pressure' to show that Vejjajiva was under pressure."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• Google is constantly refining its search to make it faster with more relevant results. Now the search giant's researchers foresee a time when a computer will be able to detect when a search fails, according to Information Week.

"Like bad poker players, frustrated searchers have tells, behaviours that betray their thoughts. They may frown or lean closer to their monitor, to make sure they're not missing anything... And because these signals can be detected, it's conceivable they could be detected by computers, were users to somehow warm to the idea of Google watching them through a Web cam."

• Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell turns his attention to Twitter in his latest piece for the New Yorker, and his take is slightly less breathless than most. In it, he suggests that Twitter, long heralded as one of the tools of social activism, may have been oversold.

"There is something else at work here, in the outsized enthusiasm for social media. Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is."

• The iPhone 4 finally made its debut in China this week to much fanfare. But, according to blog Ogle Earth, some key features have been changed to fit local laws.

"I soon discovered that the Chinese version of the iPhone 4 comes with an aggravating quirk, though: The built-in Maps app is crippled. My phone's base map is hard-wired to Google Maps' censored dataset for China, where the depiction of China's borders complies with the official propaganda of the Chinese government."

• Elizabeth Olson in the New York Times reports on the emergence of TV barcodes, that can be scanned with a mobile phone to take you to extra content.

"Bar codes have been used more widely in Asia and Europe, including on television, but in the United States, the lack of one standard code -- reminiscent of the quarrel over VHS and Beta formats -- as well as the relatively small number of smartphone users equipped with appropriate software have slowed the technology's use."

• And finally, Boing Boing alerted Tech Brief to a hotel in Las Vegas with an unusual claim to fame. Largest swimming pool? Most number of rooms? First with 8 stars? Nope. MGM's Vdara tower supposedly has a death ray.

"MGM's Vdara tower in Las Vegas has a polished, curved mirror surface that focuses a 'death ray' of heat onto the pool area that's hot enough to singe your hair and melt your plastic bags."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• Earlier this week, there was of a spree of burglaries in the US that apparently used Facebook Places to target the victims. This relatively new feature of the site allows people to share their location, but only with friends. For Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine, the reports didn't quite ring true. He e-mailed the detective involved, who confirmed his suspicions:

"One or two of the suspects were Facebook friends with the respective homeowners. They basically had access to the walls and could read that the families were away on vacation. The information was only available to friends and the Facebook Places feature was NOT a part of this."

• Some tech fans have a peculiar obsession with queuing for the latest product or title for days on end. And so it was on Monday, when gamers lined up to buy the latest game in the Xbox series Halo. Now Microsoft says it is the biggest game in its history, taking $200m in sales in the US and Europe in its first 24 hours. But it is not the biggest game ever, points out games site MCV:

"To put all this in perspective, however, back in November 2009 Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 1.23m copies in its first 24 hours in the UK, with combined revenue from [the UK] and North America hitting $310m."

• Ever wanted to tell someone just what you think of their driving? Or that bumper sticker? A new start-up aims to allow you to connect with other drivers, by using their licence plates "like an e-mail address that can be used to contact the owner". At the moment the system is a little clunky - involving dialling into a service and inputting the plate manually. But bump.com is working on smartphone apps that will do it all automatically soon, says Tom Simonite at MIT Tech Review:

"When using it you simply snap a photo of a license plate after which it is processed in the cloud to direct your message appropriately."

• Our very own Rory Cellan-Jones blogged about "the phone that your Dad has" earlier this week. Now Caleb Cox at The Register goes one better with "phones for your grandma" - minimalist handsets which could be "the greatest grandparent phone of all time":

"Built into the back is a removable pen and pad, so numbers can be stored old-school style."

• And finally, what to do with the bane of all park-goers: dog poo? In Cambridge Massachusetts, conceptual artist Matthew Mazzotta has decided to start collecting it and putting it to use, according to Olivia Solon at Wired UK:

"Dog owners collect their dog waste in a special biodegradable bag and throw it into the digester - an air-tight cylindrical container, where the dog faeces are broken down by anaerobic bacteria. A byproduct from that process is methane which can then be released through a valve and burnt as fuel. In this case it is being used to power an old-fashioned gas-burning lamppost in a park."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• All eyes in the tech press are on the Apple event, at 1700 GMT. Rumours abound that it will be used to announce a new range of iPods, a streaming music service or an upgrade to Apple TV, a gadget that plugs into televisions and allows people to rent movies. But it seems some companies are pre-empting the announcement and trying to steal Apple's thunder. Tim Bradshaw at the Financial Times says [registration required] that Sony will launch a new music and video subscription service just two hours ahead of Apple's event.

"Sources in the media industry told the Financial Times that Sony would use its PlayStation games consoles as the starting point for a new service that users will be able to use across a range of other internet-connected devices. That could include Walkman music players, Vaio computers, Bravia TVs, Blu-ray players and Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

• Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal reports that online retailer Amazon is also working on a movie subscription service "that would deliver TV shows and movies over the internet". The report says that the move is part of a "battle among web companies to control entertainment in the living room".

"Amazon's subscription push is a challenge to rivals such as Netflix Inc and Google Inc as they race to dominate digital delivery of TV shows and films, encroaching on turf traditionally controlled by cable- and satellite-television providers. Apple Inc. is also pushing more deeply into TV, and plans to announce 99-cent rentals of television shows through its iTunes store from News Corp.'s Fox and Walt Disney Co.'s ABC as early as Wednesday, according to people familiar with the matter."

• A PC Pro investigation has revealed security holes in two leading price-comparison websites. Davey Winder found that using an e-mail address, surname and date of birth, details he said could be easily harvested from social-networking sites such as Facebook, was enough to access many more personal details:

"This was enough to unlock a veritable treasure chest of further valuable data including telephone numbers, car registration and make details, occupation, personal details of spouse as well as property details where house insurance quotes were available."

• Earlier this year we reported on Sony's decision to remove a feature from the PlayStation 3 that allowed people to run another operating system on the machine, effectively turning it into a desktop computer. The decision sparked outrage amongst a small set of gamers who used the function. Australian Michael Trebilcock felt so strongly, he took the firm to court. Now, he has lost his case for compensation, according to games blog Kotaku.

"[He] had sought $800 in compensation (i.e. the cost of his console) from Sony, claiming that the Japanese company's decision meant that he could no longer use his PS3 in the manner he had purchased it for. A magistrate from Holden Hill Magistrates Court in South Australia has, however, ruled against Mr. Trebilcock after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission decided that Sony was within its rights to rescind the Other OS feature.

• Some people - Tech Brief not included - will have had time for a summer holiday. It's a time to catch up on some reading on the beach and top up the tan. But for the Japanese men, who play the game Love Plus, there was only one destination this summer: Atami in Tokyo. According to Mashable, the seaside town has begun to offer holidays for players who want to take their virtual "girlfriends" from the game on a romantic getaway.

"Players can find 2D barcodes to scan and call up images of the young women in the game. The girls wear different clothing from their typical in-game looks. One hotel has gone as far as putting a barcode in its rooms, allowing players to see their 'girlfriends' in a more private setting wearing summer kimonos."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• Earlier this week up to four million Gmail users found their accounts were being used to pump out what appeared to be spam messages. But, far from being hacked or infected with a virus, the error was a Google problem according to security researcher Graham Cluley.

"At least if your home or business computer is spewing out spam you can pull the cable out of the back of your PC. When web email services like Gmail go wrong you don't have that option."

• However, it's not all bad news for Gmail. Yesterday Google rolled out a free voice call service to its users. Venturebeat reports. that within the first 24 hours more than 1 million calls were made

"The rapid adoption isn't too surprising, since Google says there are hundreds of millions of Gmail users globally (although the feature is only available to US users for now), and a 'significant percentage' of them already take advantage of the service's video chat capabilities."

• Yesterday's Tech brief reported on facebook suing a website for using 'book' in its name. Now, it seems it also has the word face in its sights, according to TechCrunch.

"Face is a pretty generic word and Facebook doesn't actually use it on its own, only in combination with book. If Facebook doesn't get face, maybe it will have better luck with like. It has at least 14 applications to trademark that word as well."

• The lights have gone out on a "critical chapter" in Silicon valley, according to Kara Swisher at All Things D. AOL is officially moving out of the "legendary HQ buildings of Netscape Communications". AOL bought Netscape in 1998 and moved into its offices. More than a decade later Netscape is no more and AOL is a shadow of its former self. Kara quotes AOL's Brad Garlinghouse.

"For good or bad, those buildings are full of ghosts and we need a new space to start a new chapter."

• The second of Asimov's laws of robotics says that a robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, unless that order will endanger humans. Fine in theory. But what happens when those instructions are corrupted? Lewis Page at the Register reports on the "software error" that sent a military robot helicopter straying into restricted airspace near Washington DC.

"Robot planes and choppers lacking instructions from their human masters will normally circle where they are when comms go down, and control is almost always restored shortly thereafter - as in fact happened with the rogue Fire Scout. The difference here is that the MQ-8 failed to follow its built-in failure protocol, instead continuing on course."

• And vinyly, Olivia Solon at Wired UK reports on the company - called And Vinyly - that promises to keep people spinning beyond the grave. The firm offers people the chance to press their ashes in to a vinyl recording. The main challenge, according to founder Jason Leach is choosing the music.

It's difficult to think of what to put on your record because you want it to be the best album you can imagine"

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• A team from Ohio State University may have just set a new record for the fastest electric car on the planet. The Buckeye Bullet was clocked on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats at speeds averaging 307 mph. And it might have gone faster on a later run if they hadn't had a technical hitch, they say on their blog:

"Our last attempt yesterday was all set to be the best run yet, everything was looking great, but midway through the first mile, we busted our clutch. Too much torque from our motor ripped apart the half inch steel teeth that keep the motor connected to the gearbox. After a late night of trying to disassemble the motor and reinstall another type of clutch, we decided to call it: our last record will stay the best."

• Who owns the word book? Well, it depends where you use it, according to David Kravets at Wired who reports on Facebook, which is suing a website for teachers called Teachbook:

This begs the obvious question: Would Facebook sue a social-networking site for priests named Goodbook? Or a librarian-networking site named Librarybook? Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, pointed out that 'we have no complaint against Kelly Blue Book or Green Apple Books or others'."

• The Wall Street Journal breaks down the ABCs of e-books. It says the devices are changing people's habits and, contrary to expectations, people are reading more:

"Among early adopters, e-books aren't replacing their old book habits, but adding to them. Amazon, the biggest seller of e-books, says its customers buy 3.3 times as many books after buying a Kindle, a figure that has accelerated in the past year as prices for the device fell."

• The deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico has highlighted the need for better technology to deal with spills on that scale. An estimated 4.9m barrels of oil leaked into the waters of the Gulf over the course of 87 days, with only 800,000 barrels being captured. Now, researchers at MIT have unveiled technology that could help with similar disasters: swarms of oil absorbing robots:

"The Seaswarm robot uses a conveyor belt covered with a thin nanowire mesh to absorb oil. The fabric, developed by MIT Visiting Associate Professor Francesco Stellacci, and ... can absorb up to twenty times its own weight in oil while repelling water. By heating up the material, the oil can be removed and burnt locally and the nanofabric can be reused."

• Cheating at school used to involve writing answers on the palm of your hand or trying to get a glimpse of the class swots answers. But the Local reports that things have now gone hi-tech. Two schoolgirls from Stockholm have been taken to court for trying to bug their teachers. And they would have got away with it, if they had not revealed all on Facebook:

"The girls, who attend a middle school in the capital, planned to listen in on a meeting the following day at which teachers would decide their grades. They were hoping to glean information that would enable them to get their grades improved."

• And finally, it seems sportswear manufacturer Nike has been catching up on the Back to the Future trilogy. Laura June from Engadget reports on a patent it has filed for auto-lacing trainers. Next up the hoverboard and then, just maybe, a flux capacitor:

"The shoes appear to boast a charging system and lights in addition to the lacing component, and while so few patent apps ever lead to a real retail product, we're really rooting for this one."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• Yesterday, it was reported that a number of iTunes accounts linked to PayPal have been targeted in a scam. Several users complained that they have been cleaned out. The initial explanation was that the victims had been targeted in a phishing scam; using e-mail and fake websites to lure people into revealing details such as bank accounts or login names. But readers that contacted Charles Arthur at the Guardian say it is not that simple:

"Comments on the earlier article from (indignant) users say that they're sure they haven't been phished for the details of their PayPal accounts - and that someone has somehow been making unauthorised (by them, at least) purchases from the iTunes Store."

• Six years ago fresh-faced, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook. Six years later, with more than 500m users and a small name change, it is worth $33bn, according to David Gelles in the FT:

"Common stock in Facebook is trading as high as $76 a share as investors scramble to get a piece of the company before it files for an initial public offering, which analysts say could be the biggest technology IPO since Google's $1.67bn flotation in 2004."

• For the last 20 years a "a mysterious radio station in Russia" has been broadcasting a monotonous signal with little to no variation. Now, Duncan Geere at Wired reports, it has suddenly changed:

"Over the past week or so, the output of one particular station that broadcasts from near Povarovo, Russia, increased dramatically. The station has a callsign of UVB-76, but is known as "The Buzzer" by its listeners because of the short, monotonous buzz tone that it normally plays 21 to 34 times per minute. It's only deviated from that signal three times previously - briefly in 1997, 2002 and 2006."

• Pac-Man fans have long been able to play the classic game on everything from old Ataris to Xbox consoles and Android phones. Now, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, a team of researchers from the University of Michigan have added another games machine to the list: a Sequoia AVC-Edge DRE voting machine:

" We could have reprogrammed it to steal votes, but that's been done before, and Pac-Man is more fun."

• Finally one for gamers, who cycle and live in Portland, Oregon. Mike Schramm at Joystiq reports that an artist there has been painting Mario kart symbols into the cycle lanes. Let's-a go.

"Unfortunately, the bananas, star and speed arrows don't actually confer the same powers they do in the game, but we did smirk to see that all of the bikers do faithfully avoid the banana peel, and hit the rest of the symbols head on."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• We've reported before on the UK law firm ACS:Law which has sent thousands of letters to people it claims have downloaded illegal content. Many of those that have received letters protest their innocence. Now, the consumer group Which? reports that the firm is to face a disciplinary body.

"The move follows a decision by the solicitors watchdog to pursue a complaint lodged by Which? in May 2009 that while acting on behalf of a number of copyright holders, including Reality Pump and Topware Interactive, ACS Law engaged in 'bullying' and 'excessive' conduct."

• On Monday, eight tourists were killed in Manila after a gunman took their bus hostage. Within hours, a game called Bus Hostage by Policeman had appeared on the Newgrounds website. And just as quickly, ABS-CBN news reports commenters told the developer exactly what they thought of it.

" The game drew flak not only for its 'awful graphics' and 'sucky gameplay.' but also for 'making fun of' an event that claimed innocent lives."

• Earlier this month Russian hacker BadB - real name Vladislav Horohorin - was arrested on a trip to France. Andrew Kramer at the New York Times describes him as "a disembodied criminal flitting from one server to another selling stolen credit card numbers". His arrest, Mr Kramer says, shines a light on the shadowy world of cyber-criminals.

"Law enforcement groups in Russia have been reluctant to pursue these talented authors of Internet fraud, for reasons, security experts say, of incompetence, corruption or national pride. In this environment, BadB's network arose as 'one of the most sophisticated organizations of online financial criminals in the world'."

• Two things we have all got used to: the ever increasing power of gadgets and the fact that there seems to be a phone app for everything these days. Now researchers at MIT and Texas Instruments have created an Android app that can help solve simulations from a supercomputer, reports Priya Ganapati at Wired. Their motivation, supposedly, is that supercomputers are still a previous resource.

"Researchers have to book time on them and they aren't available for computations that need to be done quickly. Supercomputers also can't be carried into field experiments. Having a device in hand that could help solve a problem quickly can be handy."

• The web loves to speculate on the next gadget from Apple. Now, the team at Patently Apple have dug up a patent which suggests that the Cupertino based firm plan a touch-screen iMac desktop computer with swivelling display.

"Imagine having an iMac on your desktop one minute and a gigantic iPad the next."

• Finding a job that fits your skills exactly can be a difficult task. But, according to blogger Malcolm Coles, UK newspaper The Daily Mail seems to have hit on a clever ruse to find the ideal candidate for the role of search engine optimisation expert. They hid the job advert in the robots.txt file. Mr Coles explains:

"For those who don't know, the robots.txt file is how you tell search engines which pages they can and can't crawl on your site to include in their index. In the past it was worth occasionally checking out newspapers' robots.txt files as they listed the URLs of stories that they've had to withdraw for legal reasons (or joke Polish editions). Sadly, they don't seem to do that so much these days. "

• The Nmap project recently rose to prominence after it was revealed that a developer for the project harvested and published the personal details of 100m Facebook users. Now, the project has produced a graphic of the top million web sites on the web, sorted by their icons.

• And finally, Maria Popova - known as Brainpicker on Twitter - highlighted these animations of complicated machines. Tech Brief particularly likes the one showing how a sewing machine works. No words needed. Just enjoy.

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• Apple has previously come in for criticism for banning apps from its store, sometimes in an inconsistent fashion. The latest developer to be booted out of the store is Nate Weiner, developer of Read it Later, an app that allows you to store web pages and read them offline. He had submitted an update to his app, that had been successfully accepted and distributed before. In a blog post, he copied the letter he had been sent by Apple that suggested the reason that it had been blocked was because "applications cannot require user registration prior to allowing access to app features and content".

" If that is true, then outside of games, almost every single popular application in the app store would be affected. The Facebook app, Twitter app, Evernote app, Google Reader apps, and any other application for a web-based service that requires an account would be rejected."

• In related news, Dan Goodin at the Register reports on a patent application filed by Apple for "an elaborate series of measures to automatically protect iPhone owners from thieves and other unauthorized users". However, he warns, that the patent also includes functions that would allow Apple to identify phones that had been "jail broken" to run unauthorised software:

" The application, which was filed in February and published Thursday, specifically describes the identification of "hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or removal of a SIM card" so that measures can be taken to counter the user. Possible responses include surreptitiously activating the iPhone's camera, geotagging the image and uploading it to a server and transmitting sensitive data to a server and then wiping it from the device."

• The file-sharing landscape seems to be constantly in flux, as record labels and authorities play a game of cat and mouse with sites for posting links to copyright videos and music. But Ernesto at Torrent Freak says that "despite many legal battles and pressure" the landscape has largely remained unchanged:

" This suggests that the ecosystem is more stable and conservative than most think it is. Up to a certain degree this is true, but it's not entirely invincible. Four out of the five websites have been dragged to court and two of them have suffered serious damage."

• A message board that was originally set up to allow people to post images from Japanese animation and cartoons but has since morphed into a focal point for web pranks and hacktavism may not seem like an obvious business opportunity. But, according to a detailed piece for MIT Tech review, big investors now want a piece of the 4 chan message board and its founder Christopher "moot" Poole:

"Many in the internet business have been watching 4chan with interest. The steady growth of its traffic and the viral spread of its content, after all, represent the kind of social success that web businesses require."

• Last week we reported on plans to immortalise the Google twins on the silver screen. Jay Yarrow at Business Insider doesn't see a huge amount of potential for the film:

"The Google story is about two big nerds who made a great product, then got rich. Good luck sexing that up, Hollywood."

• And finally; keeping with the Star Wars theme of a few recent posts, we present you a collection of Darth Vader's inspired commercials that passed by the Tech Brief desk today. Impressive. Most impressive:

"Lots of companies have tried to cash in on Lucas' money machine since the first Star Wars came out in 1977 by paying homage to the film and its characters in commercials, including a certain evil Sith lord who you wouldn't think would make the best pitchman. But it turns out he is."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• It sounds like the plot of a movie. A computer virus infects vital systems and ends up causing a plane crash. Now, Spanish magazine El Pais says that it believes that is what happened two years ago when a Spanair passenger plane crashed at Madrid Airport in 2008, killing 154 people:

"The Spanair central computer which registered technical problems for planes was not functioning properly because it had been contaminated by harmful computer programs."

• Mikko Hypponen of security firm F-Secure gives his take on the news. He says that he is unable to confirm whether a Trojan was responsible, but he says that there are several well-documented cases of infections attacking critical infrastructure:

"The network congestion caused by Slammer dramatically slowed down the network traffic of the entire Internet. One of the world's largest automatic teller machine networks crashed and remained inoperative over the whole weekend. Many international airports reported that their air traffic control systems slowed down. Emergency phone systems were reported to have problems in different parts of the USA. The worm even managed to enter the internal network of the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio, taking down the computer monitoring the state of the nuclear reactor."

• David Kravets at Wired's Threat Level blog reports on the story of a Hawaiian gamer who is suing the maker of the online game Lineage II, saying that he is addicted to the game and is "unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends"@

"Craig Smallwood, the plaintiff, claims NCsoft of South Korea should pay unspecified monetary damages because of the addictive nature of the game. Smallwood claims to have played Lineage II for 20,000 hours between 2004 and 2009. Among other things, he alleges he would not have begun playing if he was aware 'that he would become addicted to the game'."

• People always say that news stories about them portray them incorrectly. Now, reports Mike Masnick at Techdirt, a bank robber in Germany seems to have let vanity sometimes get the better of him:

"[He] contacted the press and the police to correct the 'errors' in their reporting on the crime, noting that they got 'his age, height, mode of escape and accent wrong.' Of course, e-mailing that info made it easy to track him down, and a few hours later he was in custody."

• The rivalry between Facebook and Google continues, but this time it has moved to the silver screen. Later this year, a movie about the founding of Facebook is due out. Hot on its heels will be a movie about Google, according to Mike Fleming at Deadline:

"Michael London's Groundswell Productions has teamed with producer John Morris to acquire movie rights to the Ken Auletta book Googled: The End of the World As We Know it. They will use the book as the blueprint for a feature film that tells the story of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and the fast rise of the juggernaut web business that made them billionaires."

• And if that weren't enough for film fans, there is now a new Star Wars film on the horizon. Well, a remake. Made by fans. Brought together on the internet. The first clip has just been released:

"It's made up of all the highest-rated scenes voted on by the fans. We have a fully-edited version of the movie produced, but we are working through the legal issues in order to bring that to everyone as soon as possible. "

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• Earlier this week, it was revealed that the secretive North Korean government had taken to Twitter. Now, it seems, its neighbour is fighting back.

"Seoul has already blocked access to the Uriminzokkiri site, but Pyongyang has started putting different addresses on its Twitter page so users can bypass the block. The communist state has even put programs on the Uriminzokkiri homepage which users can download to help them break the block and enter the site, which is Pyongyang's official internet mouthpiece. "

• Last year, we reported on the efforts of George Hotz - the US hacker who gained notoriety for unlocking Apple's iPhone as a teenager - to hack the PS3. After he released the code for his hack, Sony responded by disabling some of the functions on consoles that he had exploited. Now Vlad Savov at Endgadget suggests that someone else has hacked the console.

"Scepticism remains advisable here. The PS3 has been a fortress of hacker unfriendliness, so we'd rather kick back, relax, and wait for some braver souls than us to do the testing."

• Facebook may be the biggest social network, but more nimble start-ups have stolen a march on it by launching services that allow you to tell your friend when you are at a particular location. One of the best known is FourSquare. Not to be outdone, Facebook has just announced its Place feature, which has many similar features, including the logo, says Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch.

"On the left is the logo for Facebook's newly launched geolocational product Facebook Places, on the right is the logo for the current leader in the space Foursquare. Notice anything interesting?"

• Finally, ever wanted to design your own car? Italian car-maker Fiat gave people that chance by opening up its design process to the internet. Olivia Solon at Wired UK reports on the its first-ever crowd-sourced car concept called the Fiat Mio.

"Submissions include an idea to have wheels that rotate 90 degrees to allow for easier parallel parking; cameras instead of rear-view mirrors and inter-vehicle communication to avoid collision."

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• The web is dead, says influential tech magazine Wired. In a piece that is currently Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff argue that the rise of apps on smartphone's is gradually displacing the web.

"Within five years, Morgan Stanley projects, the number of users accessing the Net from mobile devices will surpass the number who access it from PCs. Because the screens are smaller, such mobile traffic tends to be driven by specialty software, mostly apps, designed for a single purpose. For the sake of the optimized experience on mobile devices, users forgo the general-purpose browser. They use the Net, but not the Web. Fast beats flexible."

• But not everyone agrees. Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing take issue with some of the figures used and remodels the articles main graph, which appears to show the slowing of web growth.

"Without commenting on the article's argument, I nonetheless found this graph immediately suspect, because it doesn't account for the increase in internet traffic over the same period. The use of proportion of the total as the vertical axis instead of the actual total is a interesting editorial choice."

• Matthew Ingram over at GigaOm also takes issue with the piece:

"Anderson is right in a technical sense when he says that the web is "just one of many applications that exist on the Internet, which uses the IP and TCP protocols to move packets around." But he also gets it wrong when he conflates the demise of the web browser with the demise of the web itself. "

• In May this year, Google announced that it would stop selling its own brand Nexus One phone. However, its failure doesn't seem to have put them off developing new hardware. Download squad now says it is on the cusp of realeasing a tablet computer powered by its Chrome operating system.

"Our source tells us that Google is building a Chrome OS tablet. It's real, and it's being built by HTC. No surprise there, since HTC churned out the Nexus One for Google."

• Finally, Priya Ganapati at Wired UK reports on the hydraulophone, a fish-shaped musical instrument that, its inventors say, could one day influence computer interfaces.

"The instrument resembles a large flute, except with water flowing through it instead of air. It has 12 holes, each of which spews out a water jet. The chords are played by blocking one or more of the water jet holes with the fingers."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• Two of the biggest names on the net are squaring up to do battle. There have been plenty of rumours that Google is piecing a new social network, possibly called google.me. David Gelles and Richard Waters in the Financial Times say the new offering is "explicitly designed to challenge Facebook".

"The most visible evidence of this fight is Google's sudden shopping spree. On Friday it bought Jambool, a company that runs virtual currency systems for social games, including those played on Facebook. This month Google paid about $200m for Slide, a major developer of Facebook applications with a wealth of talented engineers. And shortly before that it invested $100m in Zynga, the largest maker of social games. "

• Earlier this year, the arrest of 10 alleged spies in the United States thrust the art of steganography into the limelight. Now Jim Giles at New Scientist reports on a new tool called Collage, which can be used to hide messages in digital images. It is aimed at people in countries where the web is censored and will allow them to download stories from blocked sites, while seeming to visit "uncontroversial sites such as Flickr".

"In the prototype, stories from the BBC news site are used, but in principle any web content could be hidden. Collage can hide as many as 15 news articles in just seven medium-sized Flickr images."

• Pylon of the Month - an invaluable resource for those interested in the electricity pylons. But for some, the giant structures are an unsightly blot on the landscape. Now, Duncan Geere at Wired reports on a design that would transform them into art. The giant human-shaped pylons have been proposed to carry electricity cables across Iceland's landscape.

"The figures can be placed into different poses, with the suggestion that the landscapes could inform the position that the sculpture is placed into. For example, as a power line ascends a hill, the pylons could look as if they're climbing. The figures could also stretch up to gain increased height over longer spans."

• Google recently landed itself in hot water over its admission that it had mistakenly been collecting personal wi-fi data, via its Street View cars. Then last week, reports circulated that it was testing drones to help with its mapping services, although the firm later denied the reports. Now, according to Slashdot, Dutch hackers have merged the two concepts to create their very own wi-fi sniffing drone.

"Designed to provide a vehicle to project cyber-offensive and defensive capabilities, and visual / electronic surveillance over distance cheaply and with little risk. "

• And finally, Star Wars fans rejoice: George Lucas has given the release date for the six-part Blu-Ray boxset. Unfortunately, there is still a long time to go, as the release date is far, far away. October 2011, to be precise.

"Why wait? Lucas doesn't appear to have said, but the wait gives him plenty of time to make the tweaks and adjustments he always seems to make when any of the movies have been re-released on tape and disc. "

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• On yesterday's Tech brief we dedicated the whole blog to reaction to Google and Verizon's proposal on net neutrality. Today, the story continues and it does not get much better for Google.

Ryan Singel at Wired accuses the firm of being a "surrender monkey" and backtracking on its mantra of "don't be evil":

"Principles are easy to discard, it seems, when one's in search of the next gold mine "

• Jeff Jarvis - author of What would Google do and along term ally of the firm - also doesn't like what he sees.

"I am baffled by the Google-Verizon agreement on nonnet-nonneutrality. I'm mostly baffled by why Google would put its name to this."

He particularly objects to the two firms seemingly categorising new services and the mobile web as being exempt from their network neutrality proposals:

"So ol, grandpa internet may chug along giving us YouTube videos of flaming cats, but you want to get that while you're out of your house? Well, that's the nonnet. I can hear the customer "service" rep explaining this to us: 'Oh, no, sir. That's not offered on the internet. That's on the schminternet.' You want something new? Anything created after 2010? 'Schminternet, sir'."

• In a piece not a million miles away from the net neutrality debate, Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land asks if Google and Apple "sold out the cell phone revolution". He points out that many of the things that we accept as part of having a mobile phone would not be tolerated elsewhere.

we're still largely buying a device for a particular carrier and then living with that carrier for two years. It's an absurd situation that we'd never tolerate with our computers."

• Elsewhere, it's bad news for a UK start-up that hoped to challenge some of the Silicon Valley behemoths. Plastic Logic, a spin out form Cambridge University, showed off a lightweight, touch-screen device earlier this year designed to rival the Kindle. Now, it has cancelled the project, according to Ina Fried at Cnet.

Plastic Logic had already delayed the Que several times after showing early versions of the product for years. Starting at $649, the Que was priced well above the iPad and many notebook computers, not to mention all other e-readers on the market. And that was before a recent spate of price cuts that has pushed the price of the Kindle, Nook, and many other devices below $200. "

• Gabriel Perna at International Business Times picks up on research at the University of Utah, seemingly inspired by Spiderman. The researchers have designed a wall climbing robot that can "swing like an ape from tree to tree".

" The robot, called ROCR (the last three letters are for oscillating climbing robot), has two claws, a motor and a pendulum-like tail and can scale an eight foot wall in 15 seconds. "

• Finally its hoax over. Yesterday, the internet was awash with links to a story about a girl called Jenny who had supposedly quit her job by emailing her colleagues a set of 33 photographs of her holding a set of whiteboards with various messages on them, many directed at her boss. Many were sceptical of the story and today Techcrunch, amongst others, confirm it was a hoax by a website called The Chive:

"The Chive (which gets around 5.6 million unique visits a month, according to Google) is part of a network of viral sites run by brothers Leo and John Resig, who have a storied history of manufacturing Internet hoaxes, most notably the $10,000 Donald Trump tip and the infamous 'virgin text messages her dad that she lost her virginity.' Both hoaxes ended up punking various mainstream media outlets including Fox News, Gawker and Jay Leno."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.