Tech Brief
On Tech Brief today: A modern day Marco Polo; Swedish net providers embrace the spirit of the sixties; simple and safe passwords and the new darling of the Twitterati.
• Facebook is fighting another battle over its ownership. Web developer Paul Ceglia sued the firm in late June, claiming that an April 2003 contract entitles him to ownership of most of the company. He says he was contracted to develop and design a website in exchange for a $1,000 fee and a 50% stake in the product. The contract, he says, stipulated that he would get an additional 1% interest in the business for every day after 1 January 2004, until it was completed. Facebook had previously dismissed the claim, but the firm is less certain:
A lawyer for Facebook said she was "unsure" whether company founder Mark Zuckerberg signed a contract that purportedly entitles a New York man to 84 percent of the world's biggest social-networking service.
• Passwords continue to be one of the weak points of internet security. , points to a study that found that almost half of a batch of 32 million passwords that were inadvertently leaked in December 2009 were found to be "trivial" and easy to guess. However, Microsoft researchers think they may have a solution:
Instead of enforcing complex passwords, as many organizations do, the new scheme makes sure than no more than a few users can have the same password, which has a similar overall effect on security.
• If you're on Twitter, you can't have missed the chatter about Flipboard, an iPad app that creates a "social magazine" based on various feeds and the links that are being passed around amongst your friends on social networks. . was also one of the first to get her hands on it:
"Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate, personalized format in a mobile tablet touchscreen environment. In this social magazine, there are pull quotes, photos, videos, status updates and even the first paragraphs of content linked out to. There is also the ability to comment and share, as if one were on Twitter or Facebook."
• National Public Radio in the US was one of several sites that a trip described as "a modern-day version of Marco Polo's journey". A team of Italian engineers on are attempting to drive 13,000km (8,000-miles) from Italy to China. The catch? The car has no driver:
Governments have yet to write rules of the road for driverless vehicles, so the team has obtained prior permission from all countries along the route to carry out the experiment. To protect themselves from liability, they are placing one of the technicians in the driver's seat, ready to assume the controls or slam a red shutdown button if necessary.
You can follow the trip .
• Finally, pirates may soon have a safe haven. tells the tales of Sweden's pirate political party - a keen supporter of torrent site Pirate Bay and know for its anti-copyright stance - which plans to launch the world's first "pirate ISP":
"It's clever lateral-thinking approach to a very modern issue, yet reminds us of the spirit of the famous pirate radio stations of the 1960's--which actually shook up the existing legal system, changed the thinking about popular music and helped shape some of today's most highly regarded radio stations."
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