Justin Bieber impostor meted child sex charges in Australia

SYDNEY | A man posing online as pop superstar Justin Bieber was Thursday charged with more than 900 child sex offences in Australia after enticing young fans to send him explicit images, police said.

The 42-year-old used online platforms including Facebook and Skype to impersonate the chart-topping Canadian singer, with his alleged offenses dating back to 2007.

“Detectives had been investigating a man who allegedly posed as Justin online in order to solicit explicit images from young children,” Queensland state police said in a statement.

“As part of the investigation, a 42-year-old man had earlier been charged with a number of child sex offences including possessing child exploitation material and using a carriage service to groom persons under 16.

“After a thorough examination of the man’s computer, he has been further charged with another 931 child sex offences.”

The charges include rape, indecent treatment of children, making child exploitation material, using a carriage service to procure person under 16, and using a carriage service for child pornography material.

Bieber, who once enjoyed a squeaky clean image but has recently had frequent run-ins with the law, has a legendary army of fans dubbed “Beliebers”.

Detective Inspector Jon Rouse described the breadth of offences as “horrendous” and urged fans to be extra vigilant when using the internet.

“This investigation demonstrates both the vulnerability of children that are utilising social media and communication applications and the global reach and skill that child sex offenders have to groom and seduce victims,” he said.

“The fact that so many children could believe that they were communicating with this particular celebrity highlights the need for a serious rethink about the way that we as a society educate our children about online safety.”

source: interaksyon.com

Skype marks 10 years of shrinking the world

STOCKHOLM — If David Huang had left his native Taiwan for Sweden a generation ago, he would have taken a giant leap into the unknown.

Now, with the help of Skype, the 35-year-old businessman is able to reach relatives from his Stockholm home as easily as if they lived around the corner, and not half a world away.

“Skype has made work easier, but more important than that, it has enabled me to talk to my family whenever I feel like it,” he said.

Internet messaging service Skype, which celebrates its 10th anniversary on Thursday, has shrunk the world in profound ways that few could have foreseen in 2003.

A total of 300 million users make two billion minutes of online video calls a day. And in the surest sign of success, the brand name has been turned into a verb – a rare distinction shared by the likes of Xerox and Google.

In another sign of success, Skype has spawned competitors with a host of similar technologies, most importantly Apple’s FaceTime.

But revolutionary as Skype’s technology may seem, it didn’t start completely from scratch but built on existing communication technologies.

“We already had cheap international calling using the Internet,” said Martin Geddes, a leading Britain-based telecommunications consultant.

“The significance of Skype was and is the ‘Wow!’ experience of high definition voice, and the sense of ‘being there’ with your distant friends and family in a way not possible before.”

Skype was launched in late August 2003 by two Scandinavian technology entrepreneurs, Niklas Zennstroem of Sweden and Janus Friis of Denmark, who expanded on existing peer-to-peer networking technologies.

Skype, which allows its online users to make high-quality calls to each other anywhere in the world for free, quickly took off, bringing the world closer together in an age when globalisation and intercontinental travel pulled more families apart than at perhaps any other time in history.

“I’m touched by the ways people use Skype, from an active duty soldier meeting his baby girl for the first time… to just the simple, extraordinarily ordinary instances,” said Elisa Steele, Skype chief marketing officer.

These simple instances, she said, include “a mum and daughter being able to see and talk to one another in a way that feels like they’re just sitting across the kitchen table from each other. Our greatest achievement lies in these moments.”

While Skype helps people to stay in touch with those they already know, it also enables new connections to be formed.

One example was early this year, when students aged between 11 and 15 from Woodham Academy in Britain and Merton Intermediate School in Wisconsin carried out a cross-Atlantic dance contest.

“For a lot of them, I think they’d been in a small-town mentality where they hadn’t really gone out as far as they might have wanted to into travelling,” said Woodham assistant head teacher Jon Tait.

“They had seen films from abroad, but to actually physically speak to these kids in America was absolutely brilliant. It was amazing.”

Skype isn’t for humans only. At Cameron Park Zoo in Waco, Texas, orangutans Mei and Mukah are rewarded for completing tasks by being allowed to communicate via Skype with orangutans in other zoos.

The question many ask however is: Is it possible to make money on a business offering free calls? US software maker Microsoft thought so, paying $8.5 billion for Skype in 2011.

In the 12 months ended on June 30, Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, which includes Skype, reported operating income of $848 million, up from $380 million the year before.

Within just a decade, Skype moved from being nowhere to being everywhere. Could the reverse also be true? In an era of rapid transformation, could it be gone again in another decade? It’s hard to imagine, according to observers.

“It’s not going to go away. It’s going to be utilised and put into more and more devices, videophones, devices for your kitchen, tablets as we mount them on cabinets,” said Michael Gough, author of the book “Skype Me!”

“I can see for example a home automation scenario, where you have a tablet in your kitchen, an Xbox connect in your living room, and you can literally be on a video call and it will follow you around the house. I can actually see that occurring.”

source: interaksyon.com

Man’s bloody suicide witnessed by girlfriend via video call

A woman from Berkshire, England could only watch in horror as his 53-year-old boyfriend who was on a business trip in India slashed his wrists, throat and stomach while on a video call with her through Skype.

According to a report by the UK-based newspaper Mirror, Julie Zalinski was on the call with Adrian Rowland when the incident happened. Rowland was reportedly in a “complete state” during the call, “was sweating profusely” with eyes staring.

“He said there were people in the room that weren’t there. I just kept reassuring him that nobody was there. I told him I’d get help,” Zalinski told the Mirror.

“He walked into the kitchen, grabbed a glass and smashed it on the table then stuck it straight into his neck. He was holding his bloodied wrist out to the screen,” she added.

“He kept saying, ‘they are going to get me, they are going to get me’.”

The woman immediately called help from the UK police to contact authorities in India, but even as Indian emergency services managed to reach Rowland’s apartment, Indian law prevented them from breaking down his door.

“Agonizingly, [Rowland] slowly bled to death as [Zalinski] continued to beg him to accept help,” the report said, adding that he was found dead 10 hours after the first Skype call.

The coroner in the UK said Rowland was “going through a mental crisis,” as Zalinski shared how he had been acting strangely just a day before, saying he had been entertaining guests at dinner even as the Skype video didn’t show anyone with the 53-year-old in the room.

Rowland had reportedly gone to India as a consultant in the automotive industry, and had been emotional before he left.

“He didn’t like being away from the UK and me,” she said,” Zalinski told the inquest that followed.

source: interaksyon.com

Busy Microsoft

MANILA, Philippines — We are about done with the first week of Lent, a period that was supposed to be slow and conducive for reflection.

Instead, we had more of the usual — reports of killing and dying, of thieving and lying, and of hurting and maiming. Maybe it is part and parcel of our season of passion to suffer, to be tortured by these developments that highlight our seeming powerlessness, our apparent inability to make any difference at all in the overall course of things.

But don't give up. Do hold on. Lent goes on for about five weeks more.

Heavy Week

Microsoft had an interesting week. First, Cisco Systems made it known that it plans to appeal the European regulators' approval of Microsoft's purchase of Skype. Senior vice president Marthin De Beer's post on his company's blog says that while they do not oppose the merger per se, they wish the European Commission would require Microsoft to offer "standards-based interoperability."

Bottomline of Cisco Systems' opposition to the Microsoft-Skype deal has to do with the impending marriage between Skype and Microsoft's Lync unified communications system. A Skype-Lync tandem would combine the best that consumer and business telephony systems offer.

Should a closed platform emerge from the merger (which most observers think will happen), Cisco Systems' competing technologies might get left out in the rain, cold and lonely.

Meanwhile, rumor mills have been busy. According to some "news leaks," Microsoft is reportedly preparing its Tango update for the Windows Phone 7 smartphone operating system. Russian Web site WP7Forum.ru has it that the update will endow the Microsoft mobile OS with features including the ability to manage contacts right there on the SIM card.

But the most exciting bit would be the Tango's ability to run on 256MB Windows Phone, which would be like Windows 8 running on a Pentium III PC.

Sony's Vita Push

Sony launched its PlayStation Vita handheld gaming platform in the United States and European markets last week. The basic, WiFi version is priced at $250, while the 3G-equipped edition goes for $300 and a monthly data fee from AT&T.

Sony is pushing the Vita with a $50 million marketing campaign.

Unlike with its PlayStation Portable experience, however, Sony is likely to find it hard to sell the Vita. After all, for quite so long now, consumers have been used to playing games on mobile phones and other handheld gadgets that aside from doing games can also perform other tasks, such as make phone calls, take photos, shoot videos, connect to the Web, and play digital songs.

So, the million-dollar question now is why would any game-loving consumer buy the PlayStation Vita when it makes much more sense to buy an iPhone, or any Android or Windows Phone 7 smartphone instead?

The Vita comes with a 5-inch screen, front- and rear-facing cameras, and is powered by a quad-core processor, which is also found inside the market's currently fastest tablet computers.

Certainly, the Vita launch means so much for Sony. After too many quarters of not so pleasant developments, Japan's electronics giant could use some good news.

This corner hopes enough numbers of mobile gamers fall in love with the latest portable gaming console from Sony.

That's all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.

source: mb.com.ph