Java creator leaves Oracle

Oracle CTO James Gosling, inherited from the takeover of Sun, is leaving the company, reports TheRegister.

In a cryptic blog post, Gosling said: "The rumours are true: I resigned from Oracle a week ago (April 2nd)." The blog is mostly down at the time of writing.

He said: "As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: Just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good."

In a country where nearly 40% of male students are reportedly addicted to video games, South Korea is trying to curb the growing problem by cutting off access to online games after midnight, writes TGDaily.

According to the Korea Herald, the country's Ministry of Culture and Sports announced the policy today. It will require users of primary and secondary school age to choose an option of midnight-6am, 1am-7am, or 2am-8am where the country's online networks will automatically shut them out of a handful of online games.

Games like Maple Story and Dragon Nest, along with 17 other online role-playing games, will be part of the ban. Those 19 games account for 79% of South Korea's online game market.

Twitter executives are to unveil something called "Sponsored Tweets", a search ad program that will put brands' messages into users' Twitter streams. It's formally slated to debut on Tuesday, states CNET.

Early advertisers in the program include Starbucks, Virgin America, and Bravo, all of which have already been using Twitter's reach to promote their brands.

With "Sponsored Tweets", the organically built promotion is becoming official much as Twitter eventually built its own version of fan-created "replies" and "retweets".

In keeping with Google CEO Eric Schmidt's promise last year that his company planned to resume its previously rapid rate of acquisitions, Plink is now part of Google, says InformationWeek.

Plink, a UK-based start-up, was unveiled four months ago to offer an Android application called PlinkArt that allows users to identify photographed artwork through visual search technology.

PlinkArt's ability to recognise artwork depends on whether the captured image can be matched to one of the tens of thousands of famous paintings in the application's database.