By Chris Long
Reporter, Click

There is no doubt that free technologies, mainly open source software, are proving more popular both inside and outside the computer industry.

Behind this growing acceptance is a non-commercial movement of independent developers that are putting together the open source software that anyone can use.

Paul Allen, editor of ComputerActive magazine, said the defining feature of open source software was that the set of tools and systems were developed by enthusiasts rather than big companies.

But he added it should be treated as "free thinking rather than a free lunch" because it is not always free of charge.

Out of this movement have come fully-fledged programs, such as Open Office for e-mail, spreadsheets, word processing and presentations, and VLC for video, that were put together for free by a community of people.

"The entire source code for the software is made available to the community and anyone can modify it," said Phil Andrews from open source software provider Red Hat.

‘Catching up’

While the core software may be free to download and install, some companies are making money from open source by offering support services. This can be in the form of a helpdesk or more technical aid to troubleshoot problems once the software is being used.

"In the same way that you would take purchase software and have a maintenance contract… we supply a support contract for open source software," said Mr Andrews.

Despite many businesses turning to open source and its use becoming widespread, it remains relatively unknown to the masses of computer users, said Mr Allen.

He said consumers were particularly unaware of the free versions of operating systems, largely Linux, that are available. This could be because many appear in different versions that can look fragmented to those unfamiliar with them.

Beyond operating systems, many do use open source programs even if they may not know them as such.

"On the applications side, programs like Firefox and Thunderbird are immensely popular and are catching up Microsoft in some places," said Mr Allen.

Many of the open source applications have millions of users.

For instance, statistics suggest that there are about 40 to 50 million users of Linux desktops, while Open Office has been downloaded 60 million times since October 2009.

The browser Firefox has been gaining popularity with web users and the organisation behind it claims it now has 270 million users.

Lawful or not

One factor driving the acceptance of open source software has been the success of small form factor notebook computers that shipped with a version of Linux installed.

One pioneer of this approach was Asus whose netbooks originally shipped with Linux and Open Office installed. Now they are just as likely to have Windows XP and Office installed.

Mr Andrews believes the open source community could have made more of that opportunity.

"But when you have someone like Microsoft who suddenly decides they want that market – they have the war chest to take that market," he said.

The growing popularity of commercial applications has driven the creation of open source equivalents – these are often based on other people’s software, Mr Allen said.

"If a company wanted to have compatibility with a certain type of device or service, it has to reverse engineer its standards, so they are actually breaking into the technology".

"Whether or not it’s legal for them to do so, is not for me to say," he said.

When big companies feel threatened by others tweaking their technology, they have been know to consult their lawyers, he added.</p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

By David Reid
Reporter, Click

Have you ever bought something on the internet and found it does not turn up or it is not quite what you bargained for

Shoppers worried about parting with their money online can now get practical advice about their digital entitlements.

The eYouGuide explains the rights of European consumers surfing the web or shopping in the digital marketplace.

The new online tool created by the European Commission (EC) also sets out a Digital Agenda of possible actions in the future.

It aims to ensure that some of the consumer rights taken for granted in the real world apply to products and services sold on the net.

Many consumers often find it is far harder to get a refund on an unsatisfactory product online, than it is doing it in an actual shop.

Customer power

One area targeted for improvement is the terms and conditions that buyers have often have to click to accept when making a purchase or signing up for a service.

The small print is often hard to understand because the legal jargon in which it is written means few people are prepared to try.

Konstantinos Rossoglou, legal officer at the European consumers’ association BEUC, said most shoppers do not read terms and conditions online.

"Most consumers… just put ‘yes I accept’, and then they don’t know what they have accepted," he said.

He added that failing to read the small print could disadvantage the customer.

He said many companies use the terms and conditions to: "limit their liability, to impose unfair restrictions on the use of their content, and even to restrict the applicable law."

"We were so surprised that a regime that applies to simple material objects would be copied and pasted onto intangible software"

Francisco Mingorance, Business Software Alliance

Level of liability

But the Digital Agenda is not without controversy – it could mean software manufacturers will be liable for bugs in code and compatibility issues that some claim are impossible to anticipate or fix.

Francisco Mingorance, from the Business Software Alliance which represents software makers, said it was unfair to expect the same level of liability from software manufacturers as from the makers of other goods.

He said that computer programs work as part of an environment, and it is not possible to take responsibility for how software interacts with someone else’s components.

"If you buy a car or a fridge it is not going to upgraded in six months," he explained. "There is not going to be a new component that comes into play."

"That is why we were so surprised that a regime that applies to simple material objects would be copied and pasted onto intangible software," he said.

Small producers

Software producer Benjamin Henrion also fears a law change, meant to target big software developers, will hurt his small business.

Like many small independent developers, Mr Henrion uses open source code as a resource to build his software for business clients.

If there is a bug in the open source code he has used, he will not always know about it. As a small firm he cannot afford to get sued.

Developers currently use open source software without a warranty, but making them accountable for it could be "problematic", said Mr Henrion.

"Most of the time you don’t review code you use; especially if you use libraries which means code you can integrate easily into your software," he said.

"Sometimes you discover bugs… so creating liabilities is especially bad for small producers because they don’t have the means to fight a trial in court against a client," he said.</p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

By Ian Hardy
Reporter, Click

The world-famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology – MIT – is a breeding ground for boffins – the next generation of gadget creators.

Ten thousand students, five schools and one college including the famed Media Lab make up MIT – which has an annual research budget of well over $500m (£302m).

Every year hundreds of new inventions and patents are created at MIT and millions of dollars are earned in royalties from previous projects that have become public. So what’s next

Electric cars

Electric vehicle research has gone into overdrive recently and MIT’s Smart Cities Lab is developing a whole new transportation system for urban environments one element of which could be the stackable City Car.

They are like luggage carts at the airport. You pick one up, use it briefly and drop it off at another location.

The City Car charges while stacked.

"It has displays, batteries onboard and different control systems that help us use the vehicle," said William Lark, an MIT research assistant. "But the key feature of this is the wheel itself.

"Instead of having a traditional drive train with mechanics throughout the vehicle," he said.

"We can localise everything to the wheel itself and do things like turn the wheel a full 120 degrees which allows us to have the vehicle spin on a dime, translate sideways, give you all the freedoms and movements that you might get just moving around as we do as humans today.

e-bikes

The Roboscooter follows the same philosophy – clean, green and available anytime anywhere for quick trips. It too charges at its station and folds up for an ultra small footprint.

Another MIT project is an electric bicycle that stores pedal power – allowing the rider to tap into it when going up hills.

Of all the mobility inventions this is the one that is likely to have the fastest and biggest impact in existing societies.

Ryan Chin, a research assistant at MIT, said: "There are actually a lot of e-bikes out there in China and Europe.

"Over 20 million of them in China. The primary difference is that we have integrated the motor and the battery together in the hub space of the wheel which allows us to easily retrofit this unit into any bicycle."

Designing new vehicles is just one aspect of the Smart Cities Lab.

Their big picture is a world where riders and vehicles make decisions based on real time data.

Ideally a navigation system would tell travellers how fast they can get to their destination and which is the cheapest route to take.

Robot carers

Many researchers in the US are working to give robots the ability to learn about their environment without the aid of the humans that built them.

Already a robotic pet has been developed which can be fed information about the terrain in front of it by a circle of cameras.

It is not pre-programmed for the task – but makes its own decisions instantly about which route to take.

Once robots can learn they could find a role in many diverse fields.

Japan, for example, hopes to use humanoids as caregivers for an increasingly elderly population.

Alternatively miniature robots might one day crawl through our intestines looking for and fixing medical problems.

One learning robot project at MIT is an ornithopter that has a computer on board. Every time it flies it learns how to fly better. One day this may be the perfect surveillance or search tool.

MIT PhD student John Roberts said: "There is a lot of computational power which is important because some of the learning algorithms can be relatively intensive.

"We have a number of sensors here that are able to measure the rate it’s spinning, the accelerations it is experiencing."

Better batteries, smaller chips and more computing power are helping the project get closer to its ultimate goal which is for the robot bird to mimic the endurance, manoeuvrability and speed of a living creature.

These are the challenges that generations of students and professors at MIT have tackled.

Thousands of hours of painstaking research, hundreds of tiny scientific steps forward slowly creeping in the right direction until eventually, for a lucky few the eureka moment arrives.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

By Kate Russell
Click Webscape-r

Kate Russell gives us her latest selection of the best sites on the World Wide Web.

CYBER MENTORS (www.cybermentors.org.uk)

Cyber Mentors

The Internet can be a worrying place for children, especially when you hear stories about online bullying.

Cyber Mentors is a UK charity and a community where children can get support and advice from other children, as well as trained professionals – whether they are experiencing problems online or out in the physical world.

The young volunteers who make up the cyber mentor fellowship have all been trained by the charity to be children’s first port of call if they feel they cannot talk about their problems with a grown-up.

They will support and encourage youngsters – urging them to go to a parent or teacher – but there are also councillors available to deal with any serious issues.

Since the site went live a few months ago they have helped 70,000 children, and have just trained up their 1,000th volunteer.

Users need to register to talk to a mentor, and they do ask for some details about your mobile phone, which the site’s creators say is not used for marketing purposes – just their own internal research.

DETOUCH (http://detouch.org)

The Art of DeTouch

The media is often criticised for presenting a distorted view of society with fashion magazines and Sunday supplements crammed with images of impossibly beautiful people.

But they are not as perfect as they look.

DeTouch.org lays bare the tricks and cheats used in photographic publishing, showing you what those picture perfect models looked like before the touch-up artist got involved.

Drawing from a number of online sources where before and after photographs are displayed, this site uses an open source tool called Processing to compare the images pixel by pixel and generate visualizations of the alterations.

Waists are sucked in, chests pumped out. Lines and shadows smoothed and removed.

There is even one lady who has had an eye shifted up – all in the pursuit of creating the illusive perfect beauty.

SEA SALT WITH FOOD (www.seasaltwithfood.com)

Sea Salt with Food

I love food – and not just eating it. I love to cook for friends and family, creating stunning starters, magnificent mains, and of course a totally delightful dessert.

Seasaltwithfood.com is a scrumptious blog providing some of the easiest recipes to create the most amazing meals.

The site caught my attention with the recipe forhasselback potatoes.

This Swedish variation of the baked potato makes my mouth water every time I look at it – and it really could not be easier to make.

All the recipes are beautifully illustrated with clear and concise instructions on how to make them.

FromMalaysian prawn frittersto irresistiblechocolate tartsthere is something to appeal to every taste in these pages.

Subscribe to the RSS feed for regular home deliveries of tempting ideas to concoct in your kitchen. If you are looking for inspiration for a specific occasion you can surf the recipes by category from the panel on the right.

OMEGLE (http://omegle.com)

Omegle

Sitting down for a chat with a total stranger is not something we generally do in our day to day lives, but the results can be fascinating as I found out when I tried Omegle.com.

This is one of those curiosities where you will never have the same experience twice.

No registration is required, and you are thrown into a two-way conversation with a complete stranger on the Net.

You are represented as a stranger and there are no defining features in this chat which give away age, race, sex or whatever.

It allows you to anonymously have a completely frank and unbiased conversation with someone.

This is not a site for younger users, as with any content of this nature, you are going to come across the odd bad egg who might randomly spam you with abusive language. There is a disconnect button.

It is a fascinating insight into the diversity of life and culture on the Web. </p

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.