UK aims for superfast broadband

Every community in the UK will gain access to superfast broadband by 2015, under plans due to be outlined, reveals the BBC.

The private sector is to deliver broadband to two-thirds of the UK. Other, mainly rural, areas will receive public funds to build a 'digital hub' with a fibre-optic Internet connection.

Ministers say they aim for the UK to have Europe's best broadband network. This will create "hundreds of thousands of jobs and add billions to our GDP", says culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.

US communications company Verizon's claim it will begin to offer a 4G broadband network in 38 US cities is misleading, according to a top analyst, notes Computing.co.uk.

Steven Hartley, principal analyst at Ovum, explained that services offered by Verizon and its rivals are not truly 4G.

"The ITU [International Telecommunication Union] has recently come up with some specifications that it says define what is 4G. And according to those specifications, nobody currently has a true 4G network," he argued.

Facebook is redesigning the profile pages of its 500 million-plus users to make it more of a reflection of their real lives and emphasise one of the site's most popular features, photos, writes Yahoo News.

Facebook said in a blog post that the changes are meant to make it easier for users to tell their story - who they are, where they work, their life philosophy and the most important people in their lives. The changes place a bigger emphasis on visuals, from photos to images of users' interests.

A new biography section includes not just who you are and where you live, but a set of the most recent photos that your friends have “tagged” you in. Previously, users had to click on a tab to see the latest photos on a profile.

Contacts told American diplomats that hacking attacks against Google were ordered by China's top ruling body, and a senior leader demanded action after finding search results that were critical of him, leaked US government memos show, reports Associated Press.

One memo sent by the US Embassy in Beijing to Washington said a "well-placed contact" told diplomats the Chinese government co-ordinated the attacks late last year on Google, under the direction of the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of Communist Party power.

The details of the memos, known in diplomatic parlance as cables, could not be verified. Chinese government departments either refused to comment or could not be reached. If true, the cables show the political pressures that were facing Google when it decided to close its China-based search engine in March.