Duncan Geere

This week we explore the fascinating story behind Tumblr, how the UK's ICT curriculum is set for a major reform and recap the most interesting news stories from Wired.co.uk this week -- the discovery of an original copy of the Mona Lisa, discoveries in the "unusual spider sex" world, the Pirate Bay's court appeal being rejected and Facebook's epic move to become a publicly-traded company.

By: Nate Lanxon,

I just sent a man to his death. Not in a metaphorical way -- his life essence fizzled away in an electric chair in front of me. A chair that, not two minutes beforehand, I'd supervised being lugged in through a door I'd planned out, between walls that I'd dished out the blueprints for, on top of foundations that I'd carefully laid between the cell block and the storeroom.

I'm playing Introversion's Prison Architect -- a phoenix out of the ashes of the procedurally-generated Subversion, which was binned after its creators realised there wasn't actually a game in it. Prison Architect, as the name suggests, tasks you with building and maintaining a functioning prison. You can build cell blocks, canteens, security offices, kitchens, electrical sub-stations, storage areas and -- inevitably -- showers.

By: Duncan Geere, Edited by: Nate Lanxon

In 2002, Matteo Berlucchi founded Skinkers, a company that developed custom desktop applications that you could push updates to, such as the BBC Desktop Ticker and the UPS Desktop Widget. However, after losing site of the consumer, the company missed the emergence of the mobile apps market completely. Wired.co.uk finds out what went wrong.

By: Wired.co.uk Staff, Edited by: Olivia Solon

A greener future's not all about electric cars; it's about smart building engineering too. Façades are the skin of buildings and can be important environment moderators. But what kind of smart technologies will we want from façades in our new, smarter cities? It won't be mobile connectivity or social media. Despite the hype, I don't think it will be LED screens either. Here are my predictions for the façades of the future.

By: Guest Author, Edited by: Olivia Solon

Apple has removed all 3G iPads and several pre-4S iPhone models from its German online store, in a response to a patent injunction won by rival Motorola in December 2011.

Late last year, a regional German court in Mannheim ruled that Apple was infringing on one of Motorola's intellectual properties. As such, the court ruled that Apple must stop selling mobile devices that used those unlicensed patents.

The patent in question is "method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system".

By: Mark Brown, Edited by: Nate Lanxon

An economic system in which you buy cycles instead of washing machines, and lease lumens instead of purchasing lights could "foster prosperity in a world of finite resources", states a report published this week by managing consultancy firm McKinsey and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

For the 90-page report, Towards a Circular Economy, which former sailor MacArthur took to this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, the consultants analysed a dozen "mainstream products" to see how the circular economy approach could be adopted, as well as highlighting current success stories.

By: Katie Scott, Edited by: Olivia Solon

Last week, Nasa released its 2012 version of the famous "Blue Marble" image. By using a planet-pointing satellite, Suomi NPP, the space agency created an extremely high resolution photograph of our watery world.

The photo centered on the western hemisphere, highlighting North and Central America. It went viral and got more hits on Flickr than the iconic "Situation Room" photo, taken at the time of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.

By: Mark Brown, Edited by: Olivia Solon

A Paris court has ruled that Google is guilty of anti-competitive behaviour with its free Maps service, and has ordered the search giant to pay almost half a million pounds in fines and damages.

French mapmaker Bottin Cartographes complained that Google was abusing its dominant position when providing its free maps to businesses -- Bottin Cartographes also makes street maps for firms, but it charges a fee.

By: Mark Brown, Edited by: Olivia Solon

This is what years of development, revamp and acrimony have yielded: Starting in May, Europe will have the beginning of an operational shield against ballistic missiles, courtesy of Nato.

The system will be modest at first, not much more than SM-3 interceptor missiles aboard the USS Monterrey, a ship enabled with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system and stationed in the Mediterranean. It'll be aided by an early-warning radar system Turkey's hosting at its Kurecik base.

By: Spencer Ackerman, Edited by: Dan Smith

French designer Elsa Lambinet has come up with a concept for modular chocolates -- called Sweet Play -- that can be personalised in three different ways.

The customisation would allow you to choose the type of chocolate (dark, milk or white), the inner filling (different types of biscuit of nougat), and the topping (fresh fruit, dried fruit, nuts, honey).

By: Olivia Solon, Edited by: Dan Smith

Jet engines on airliners can swallow a fair amount of ice during a flight, and to make sure they're up to the task, engine makers bombard them with all kinds of frozen water. This week General Electric pulled the cover off its newest engine testing facility in the appropriately cold location of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The testing ground is designed to take advantage of the cold Canadian winters for ice certification of new jet engines.

Because a jet engine can encounter icing conditions as it flies through clouds, the Federal Aviation Administration requires several tests to ensure engines can operate in freezing conditions. Tests include blasting engines with tiny ice particles similar to those found in clouds, as well as coating engine parts in ice. That's done to check the associated risk of those parts being iced over and the risk of ice breaking loose and going deeper into the engine.

By: Jason Paur, Edited by: Dan Smith

Neil Young is right: Those songs on your iPhone do sound like crap, and it's time we demand better-sounding alternatives for our digital music.

Speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference on 31 January, the outspoken musician expressed his deep dissatisfaction with the MP3 format and  called for an end-to-end reboot of the consumer digital audio ecosystem, from file formats to playback devices.

By: Michael Calore, Edited by: Dan Smith

Recently, I've noticed that more and more iPhone games are starting to use the crafty money-making tactics of the "freemium"business model, while also sporting an upfront price tag.

Freemium, of course, refers to games that are given away for nothing, but the developer tempts addicted players to cough up real-world cash in exchange for virtual items and in-game advancements.

In Facebook's tedious agriculture sim FarmVille, for example, you can pay a few quid to save an hour and instantly make your tomatoes ripe for picking. In freebie iPhone time-sink Temple Run you can spend meatspace money on power-ups.

It was a subversive business model that began in piracy-stricken nations like Korea, China and Russia. Five-or-so years later and now it's a colossal worldwide industry on Facebook and mobile. On the iOS App Store right now, eight of the top ten most profitable games are free, but have optional paid extras.

By: Mark Brown, Edited by: Nate Lanxon

On the evening of August 23, 2011, Chris, a New Yorker who wishes his surname to be withheld, created a Tumblr account. His aim was to raise awareness of the Occupy Wall Street march planned for September 17. The idea was simple: he asked users to submit a photograph of themselves holding a sign explaining their economic circumstances. He called the page We Are The 99 Per Cent, and promptly forgot about it.

Four days later, Chris returned to his flat, after spending time preparing meals for protesters, and checked the We Are The 99 Per Cent tumblelog. When he had left, there had been two photos in the inbox. "I thought, I'll have five or six more submissions," says Chris, now 29. "The inbox was overflowing. I spent that night reading through the submissions. By the time I was done, I had barely dented this thing."

By: Tom Cheshire, Edited by: Dan Smith

Down in the depths of the oceans, sea creatures can grow to alarming sizes. In a trench off the coast of New Zealand, a crustacean has been found that's 10 times larger than its regular-sized cousins.

The 34cm-long amphipod was found at a depth of around 7km in the Kermadec Trench, which lies between New Zealand's North Island and Fiji. It was discovered by a team led by University of Aberdeen marine biologist Alan Jamieson, who told Wired.co.uk in an email: "We weren't actually looking for them. We were after one of the deepest living fish, which we did actually get but the surprise of the supergiants kind of overshadowed that."

By: Duncan Geere, Edited by: Nate Lanxon

The living room TV is at the centre of an internet-enabled storm that is causing viewers, gamers, marketers and their devices to compete to control it.

So far, no single technology company has found a way to bring a web-connected experience to your living room TV at scale. The consumer is crying out for a more integrated experience, but so far no company has provided a universal benchmark. With every new box and remote control, the average end user becomes even more befuddled.

The fact of the matter is that people are more excited by content than the mechanism through which it is delivered -- something that Rupert Murdoch understood when he transformed Sky's ailing fortunes after he bought rights to Premiership Football in the early 1990's and turned Sky TV into a license to print money. More recently, Sky announced its new streaming service that will offer Sky Movies over the web and eventually sell sports content and other programmes. As such, we should be looking at web TV as a means of distribution instead of a product itself.

By: Guest Author, Edited by: Olivia Solon

After twenty years of drilling, a team of Russian researchers is close to breaching the prehistoric Lake Vostok, which has been trapped deep beneath Antarctica for the last 14 million years.

Vostok is the largest lake in a sub-glacial web of more than 200 ponds that are hidden 4,000m beneath the ice. Some of the lakes formed when the continent was much warmer and still connected to Australia.

By: Mark Brown, Edited by: Duncan Geere

It was recently announced that the Wii U will support NFC. As company president Satoru IwataIwata explained, "it will become possible to create cards and figurines that can electronically read and write data via non-contact NFC." If you've played Skylandersyou'll know how the concept of game-saving simply goes away.

On the Wii U all sorts of possibilities open up with NFC's inclusion. Firstly, it could be used to handle payment for downloading games and services. Google Wallet offers a similar feature where consumers store credit card information in a virtual wallet which is then accessed via NFC to make MasterCard PayPass payments.

By: Andy Robertson, Edited by: Nate Lanxon

Enliven parties by convincing guests you are psychic. Richard Wiseman, psychologist and author of Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There, offers three science-based tricks.

For the first trick, you'll need a plastic straw, a bottle and a table. Before you begin, stealthily rub your feet on the carpet to build up a static charge. 

By: Tom Cheshire, Edited by: Dan Smith

The web is a risky space to transact. Anyone who's ever written a business pitch for a reputation-driven service has had to face the fact that our global, online consensual hallucination relies on the archive of our virtual activity. The theory is that someone's digital trail will indicate whether or not they will do what they say they will. And so, as we've migrated online, we've metamorphosed into avatars with reputations based on what we've done - or are purported to have done - in social networks, on forums, on blogs, in videos and anywhere we are online. Actions speak louder than words.

Yet, according to the research, our past actions can't predict future intentions. They can only signal our past reliability and suggest what we might do in the future. Regardless, an entire economy of ideas is based on online reputation, because it's the people with the reputations and the social currency who get people's attention. "Attention" has become a synonym for "influence". And that's nonsense.

By: Aleks Krotoski, Edited by: Dan Smith

Spider silk is well known for some spectacular properties. It is stronger than steel and tougher than Kevlar yet flexible enough to be spun into a wide variety of shapes.

New research shows that the material is not only strong but also smart.

By: Adam Mann, Edited by: Dan Smith

Shine light through a young mosquito and take a look at its delicate internal circuitry.

Babies are not always cute and cuddly, as proved by this Culex mosquito larva. The image was taken by Daniel Stoupin, a ---microbiology student at Moscow State University.

By: Dan Smith,

Nasa's twin Grail probes, orbiting the Moon, have captured a video of the far side of our lunar neighbour. The space agency described the surface as "rugged".

The probes, which were recently rechristened "Ebb" and "Flow" by fourth-graders, have been imaging the Moon since the start of the year, but aren't due to start full scientific operations until March 2012. During their mission, they will answer longstanding questions about the Moon -- including how it and other bodies in the solar system formed.

By: Duncan Geere, Edited by: Nate Lanxon

Biologists have identified a new sex technique used by certain spiders, called "remote copulation", where the males castrate themselves during sex to avoid being eaten, yet still successfully transfer sperm.

This method not only allows the males to transfer more sperm -- making paternity more likely --  but it also allows them to scuttle away from cannibalistic females. The broken male parts may effectively plug the female genitals, preventing them from mating with other males. The flipside is that they are left sterile. This has come to be known as the "eunuch phenomenon".

By: Olivia Solon, Edited by: Nate Lanxon

"If you had told me when I was at high school that one day I would be working for a for-profit company," says Joe Green, the 28-year-old CEO of Causes, "let alone running one, I would have said you were crazy. But I am interested in how you can empower individuals to make change, and Causes is doing just that."

Causes, which Green cofounded with Sean Parker in 2007, lets people form campaigning groups online and raise money through viral marketing. So far members have raised about $40 million (£25m) and the Facebook app has more than two million monthly active users. "We help people take collective action by involving their friends," explains Green. He runs a team of 35 employees from Causes' base in San Francisco and has raised $16.5 million in funding.

By: David Baker, Edited by: Dan Smith

Rampant speculation says Apple has a full-fledged, big-screen TV project in the works -- an iTV, if you will. Now Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster says Apple has been contacting component makers for its set, leading him to believe it will almost definitely land in 2012.

In a note to investors on 31 January, Munster wrote that a "major TV component supplier" told him Apple has been in touch with them regarding TV components. However, Munster also conceded that Apple may never actually release a TV at all.

By: Christina Bonnington, Edited by: Dan Smith

Telecoms regulator Ofcom has revealed that Brits are getting 22 percent faster broadband speeds than a year ago, but more than 40 percent are stuck on speeds of 10Mbit/s or less, even though they could get faster connections at no extra cost if they switched package or provider.

This data comes from Ofcom's sixth report of UK broadband speeds, which measures the performance of home internet speeds, the differences between ISPs and the disparity between advertised speeds and actual download rates.

By: Mark Brown, Edited by: Duncan Geere

After years of waiting for a peek behind Facebook's financial curtain, the company finally filed its prospectus for an initial public offering on Wednesday, seeking $5 billion (£3.17 billion) in funding. It's on track to become one of the largest IPOs in tech company history.

An exciting time for investors and Wall Street, no doubt, and the S-1 filing will most likely be scrutinised for some time to come. But unless you're working for Goldman Sachs, you're probably not well-versed in the ins-and-outs of stuffy financial paperwork.

By: Mike Isaac, Edited by: Dan Smith

The human condition of pareidolia is a well-known phenomenon that can cause us to see human faces in benign environments. A cosmic example of this is the popular "Face on Mars". So widely was this eerie Martian photograph seen as proof of aliens trying to say hello, it was ultimately immortalised in an episode of The X-Files. 

But it transpires that since then, the scientific community has been dealing with something called "space cats", and it's a far more intriguing cosmic anomaly to be aware of. 

By: Nate Lanxon, Edited by: Olivia Solon