'iPods, loud music may cause deafness'

Are you emotionally attached to your iPod and enjoy it in full volume? Beware, you may suffer from 'iPod-itis' and even risk going deaf, a British audiologist has warned.

Those who play their music at full blast on their daily commute are at greater risk of developing iPod-itis, claimed Dr Tony Kay, senior chief audiologist at a Liverpool hospital.

These are the people at risk going deaf in later life, warned Dr Kay, who coined the term iPod-itis to refer tinnitus or the ringing in the ears problem caused by over use of iPod.

"We all have emotional attachment to our music players but if music lovers are not careful this sustained exposure could eventually lead to complete hearing loss," Dr Kay was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.

"Going out every night or working in close proximity to loud music blaring out of speakers can be extremely hazardous," he said.

"Youngsters who listen to music on personal music players do not understand the damage they are causing."

Dr Kay, who is alarmed by teenagers suffering from tinnitus because of high levels of exposure to loud music, said the number of young music lovers visiting his clinic with hearing complaints has increased dramatically in the last two years.

Usually a complaint suffered by those in middle or old age, the problem can lead to deafness if it is not carefully monitored, he said.

Rivals say Facebook could be tough sell in China

Facebook may be eyeing a move into mainland China, but web firms there cast doubt on whether the social networking giant can tap the monster market, assuming authorities lift a ban on the site.

China has the world's biggest internet population, with 420 million users and rising. It is a hugely lucrative landscape, but is also peppered with dominant domestic brands, technical hurdles and the threat of censorship.

Beijing has set up a vast online censorship system sometimes dubbed the "Great Firewall of China" that aggressively blocks sites and snuffs out Internet content on topics considered sensitive.

The system currently prevents most of the nation's web users from accessing Facebook. The key role the website played in anti-government protests in Egypt and Tunisia will not have gone unnoticed by China's communist rulers.

But Facebook last week said it had opened a Hong Kong office, its third in Asia, while founder Mark Zuckerberg visited China in December, prompting suggestions that Beijing may eventually welcome the California company.

Blake Chandlee, Facebook's vice-president and commercial director for emerging markets, played down any imminent move into the country. "We have no plans right now to talk about entering into mainland China and trying to be aggressive in that," he told AFP at Hong Kong Social Media Week, which wrapped up Friday.

A new makeover for Facebook

The popular social network website Facebook, has launched redesigned pages that more closely mirror its recently revamped profiles, with newly added features and capabilities.

Soon these pages are getting an upgrade that will make them look more like user profiles.

The redesign has already begun and will take effect for everyone from March 10.

Unlike individual-oriented Facebook profiles, pages are designed for businesses, brands, public figures, and organizations and administrators to typically oversee their day-to-day operations.

In a message sent to administrators on February 10, Facebook offered pages owners the opportunity to preview and upgrade early to the new format.

But the company will enact mandatory upgrades in a month, it said. Owners can now browse Facebook "as" their Page.

In other words, comment on other people's pages, "Like" things, etc.

It's now much easier to increase your brand's visibility by liking relevant posts or articles, contributing to discussions, or even poking people, if that's your thing.

It's easy to switch on and off - there's a link on the right for each page you administer.

You now also have photos for your pages which can be stored in albums, much like you can do for your profile.

The 'photos' link is placed under the page's 'profile picture' like it is on your own profile and the latest photos will be displayed above the wall.

Could smartphones go stupid?

Smartphones are rapidly becoming ubiquitous, but they risk becoming a victim of their own success, so clogging networks they are unable to do many of the smart applications that fuelled their sales.

Analysts warn that the mobile industry soon faces growing pains, with congestion choking service at peak times and locations, and operators forced to hike prices and capping or slowing data use.

In either case many popular services that have driven smartphone sales could suffer.

Mobile industry leaders recognise this threat and it will be one of the key questions they address this coming week at their annual gathering.

More than 50,000 people from over 1,300 companies are set to attend the four-day Mobile World Congress opening Monday in Barcelona, including executives from dozens of top firms.

Sales of smartphones have rocketed over the past few years -- nearly 470 million of them sold in the past two years according to Gartner market research firm -- and developing nifty applications for them has become a major industry in itself.

But with each smartphone generating as much as 24 times as much data traffic as a regular mobile phone the volume of network traffic has exploded, with the network firm Cisco forecasting it to grow 26-fold by 2015.

Bing search gaining ground on Google: comScore

Industry tracking firm comScore on Friday reported that Microsoft's Bing gained ground on Google in the lucrative Internet search market in January.

Google continued to dominate, handling 65.6 percent of "explicit core" online queries, but Bing's share grew about a percent from December while Google's slid by about the same amount.

About 16.1 percent of US online searches were done at Yahoo! websites, which are powered by Bing. Bing's handling of 13.1 percent of searches brought its total share of the load to 29.2 percent.

Ask accounted for 3.4 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL Network with 1.7 percent, according to comScore.

Nearly 17 billion online searches were conducted in the United States in January, with Google tending to 11.1 billion of them, comScore reported.

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India keen to promote alternative fuel technology

India was taking serious steps to promote alternative technologies that used bio-fuels and solar and wind energy, a senior official said Saturday.

India also has plans to produce more bio-fuels and electric vehicles to save petrol for other vital needs, Sohail Akhtar, director in the ministry of new and renewable energy, said.

Presently 35 percent of petrol-based fuels was used up by the transport sector, he added.

Akhtar was inaugurating a two-day national conference on power, instrumentation, energy and control at the Aligarh Muslim University.

Earlier, Professor Mohibullah, chairman of the department of electrical engineering, said the department, one of the oldest in Indian universities, has a strong research base.

Mukhtar Ahmad, chairman of the conference, said the event was aimed at providing a forum to network, share and discuss new researches and developments in emerging technological areas.

The conference received more than a hundred papers from various academic institutions spread all over the country.

Yap.TV lets viewers chat as they watch

Startup Yap.TV believes that whether shows are streamed over the Internet, airwaves, or cable lines people will always want to talk about what they are watching.

Yap.TV software for Apple iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch devices lets show watchers engage in real time on Twitter, Facebook or the firm's own social network.

"We mated the television program guide with the Twitter stream and social networks to basically allow you to see what everyone in the world is talking about right now," Yap.TV co-founder Shawn Cunningham told AFP on Friday.

"So when you zap into a show, you are immersed in the experience."

The San Francisco-based firm is working on versions of the "social TV" platform for computer Web browsers and smartphones or tablets running on Google's Android software.

Yap.TV backers include former Apple executive David Austin, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is an advisor to the startup.

"We thought we could create a social world for television content, which people love to talk about almost more than anything else," Cunningham said.

"It was really things like the iPad that opened the gateway," he added. "A second-screen device perfect for this type of activity."