Chinese Web users boycott Google

While some gathered outside Google's head office in Beijing in support of its decision to end censorship, other Chinese citizens have expressed anger, reports the BBC.

Comments left on Chinese Web site sina.com.cn include "Google, out of China" and "Go away, we have Baidu".

Internet and mobile company TOM Online, which is run by Hong Kong's wealthiest man Li Ka-shing, said it would stop using Google.

Avira has added cloud technology to the latest version of its popular freebie anti-virus scanner, reveals The Register.

Version 10 of Avira AntiVir, released on Tuesday, adds cloud-based detection to a free-of-charge security scanner that competes with similar products offered by Avast and AVG.

All three firms aim to move consumers to fuller featured paid-for security suites, as well as sell security software pitched at the SME end of the business market.

Nasa's rover, Opportunity, is getting smarter through software, says CNet.

Celebrating its seventh year investigating the surface of the Red Planet, Opportunity is now able to make its own choices about which rocks it should investigate further and which ones it should leave alone, according to a Nasa report on Tuesday.

Thanks to a new software upload, Opportunity's computer can analyse the photos taken with its wide-angle camera and isolate rocks that meet specific criteria. It can then determine whether specific rocks are worthy of close-up shots through its narrow-angle, colour-filtered camera.

Tiny semiconductor particles known as "quantum dots" have been used in a sensor that could make mobile phone cameras that outperform larger cousins, reports the BBC.

A film made from these dots is more light-sensitive than existing approaches to camera sensors, according to its manufacturer, Invisage. This means cameras made using the film need not be as large to achieve the same performance.

Invisage suggests the films will make it into camera production by mid-2011.