Today on Tech Brief: Google searches for new conquests in nature, the computer with the hardest homework ever and why Tweets might one day upstage Dickens and Shakespeare.

• Not content with harnessing the world's information, Google is now planning to control nature itself with another investment in wind turbines off the US Atlantic coast.

The search giant has been investing heavily in wind energy and this latest deal will see a 350-mile stretch of wind turbines, dubbed the Atlantic Wind Connection.

Google's Green Business Operations Director Rick Needham told Mashable it would be "the world's first superhighway for clean energy".

• One of the ultimate goals in computing is to create a machine that thinks and learns in the same way as people do.

Now a computer at Carnegie Mellon University is beginning the arduous process of reading and learning the whole internet.

Creators of NELL, the Never Ending Language Learner, plan for it to be the largest ever repository of information, possibly even brainier than Stephen Fry.

Dennis Baron writes on the Oxford University Press blog that creating an infinite and immortal database is a big task.

"Since NELL was activated a few months ago it has learned over 440,000 separate things with an accuracy of 74% which, to put it in terms that any Carnegie Mellon undergraduate can understand, is a C."

Must try harder, Tech Brief thinks, although to be fair learning the internet could be the hardest homework ever set

• Stephen Fry's thoughts are also to become the subject of academic study along with other popular celebrity tweeters, including Gordon Brown's wife Sarah Brown, Lily Allen and Jamie Oliver.

Dr Ruth Page, from the school of English at the University of Leicester is going to study their tweets as part of her research into how stories are told.

Yahoo News reports Dr Page's explanation of why she thinks social media is fast becoming part of the fabric of literature.

"Telling stories is a human impulse. Through social media, millions of people are telling their own stories every day in status updates, tweets and blogs."

• Apple has been awarded a patent that prevents users from sending or receiving rude or offensive text messages.

TechCrunch ponders whether it will sound the death knell of so-called Sexting.

"Jobs and company have just sealed the deal on a solution to the number one fear of parents across America, kids sending 'unauthorized texts.' As it looks like whatever algorithm or control the system is comprised of will basically censor the transmission of R-rated content on iPhones."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Today on Tech Brief: Payback time for the Facebook spammer, Internet Explorer loses friends and how to keep a bunch of Italian councillors amused during meetings.

• Microsoft's flagship product, its Internet Explorer browser, appears to be teetering on the brink of losing its dominant position in the market, according to the latest number crunching.

Internet measurement firm StatCounter puts IE below the magic half-way point (49.87%) for the first time. Its closest rival is Firefox with 31.5%, while Google's Chrome is also creeping up at 11.5% of market share.

StatCounter chief executive Aodhan Cullen told V3 "This is certainly a milestone in the internet browser wars."

The death knell of IE might not be sounded just yet though as other measurement companies still give Microsoft a more healthy share of the market.The statisticians it seems may also be at war to be the first to press with the bad news.

• The so-called Facebook spammer, who posted ads for erectile dysfunction medication on people's Facebook walls, has been ordered by a Canadian court to pay the social network giant more than $200 for each of the 4,366, 386 messages allegedly posted. This translated to over 1bn Canadian dollars.

• The battle against illegal file-sharers shows no signs of abating as more law firms jump on the suing bandwagon despite the hacking campaign which exposed that some did not look after the data of alleged file-sharers quite as well as they should.

Gene Simmons, of the legendary rock band KISS, remains particularly defiant.

Ars Technica reports his comments during a panel discussion in Cannes on the issue.

"Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars. Don't let anybody cross that line."

KISS fans, you have been warned.

• Doodling used to be the way to pass the hours during boring meetings but now there is a more hi-tech way to pass the time.

The mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno, has issued laptops to city officials with computer games on them.

He explained his reasoning in Tech Eye.

"Each councillor can amuse himself and defeat stress during our long, hard meetings."

It sounds like a potentially good way of pushing through unpopular legislation. Tech Brief wonders whether a similar approach will be adopted in the House of Commons.

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Today on Tech Brief: Google watches government censorship for us, Facebook urges us to think about friendship and volcano research hots up.

• Friendship on Facebook can be cruel. As well as having to look at loads of pictures of your real friends having much more fun than you, you risk the ultimate shame of being rejected outright.

Ostensibly to offset repeated friendship requests, Facebook has replaced the 'ignore' button for friendship requests with a new 'Not Now' button.

While that may soften the blow of complete rejection it does give the 'friends-in-waiting' access to users' public profiles while their potential new friend mulls whether they want them in their inner circle.

MG Siegler at TechCrunch muses whether this is an attempt by Facebook to further impose its belief that all life on the web should be social by default.

"It's almost as if they're saying 'as long as you don't want to block this person, why not let them follow you?'"

• Components made of a new heat-resistant material could pave the way for a much better understanding of volcanos and even predictions about when eruptions will occur.

Researchers at Newcastle University are developing silicon carbide-based components for a device that they say will be able to withstand 900°C temperatures.

Newcastle University's Dr. Alton Horsfall told Engadget this could make a huge impact.

At the moment we have no way of accurately monitoring the situation inside a volcano. With an estimated 500 million people living in the shadow of a volcano this is clearly not ideal."

• An interesting, potentially wave-making feature from Google this week may well go some way to putting it back in the the good books of the privacy advocates and firmly in the bad books of government.

Google's transparancy report is an interactive map showing what requests are being made by governments to censor or take down Google content.

It shows that in the period from January 2010 to June 2010, the United States government asked Google about user info on 4287 occasions, and asked it to remove content on 128 occasions. Brazil, France, India and the UK all issued over 1,000 requests in the same time.

It also drills down to reveal what specific services were targeted, for example the US made seven court orders to remove YouTube conten in 2009.

Stan Schroeder at Mashable wonders whether governments may attempt to close down the service.

"With it, Google is essentially saying that yes, it will take down or censor content if a government requests it, but it will also inform the users every time it happens.
 
"The tool will definitely help activists and human rights groups create studies about the obstruction of the flow of information and censorship, and it may even make governments reign in their requests for censorship and user info.

• You know you are getting old when a museum dedicated to digital media opens online.

The virtual doors will open officially on 6 October with an exhibition exploring peoples' relationship with the web.

The collaboration between Adobe, UK digital production company unit9; Filippio Innocenti, professor of Architecture Technology at Politecnico di Milano University; and San Francisco based advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein and Partners.

The museum's website sets out what it hopes to achieve.

"Our mission is to showcase and preserve groundbreaking digital work and expert commentary to illustrate how digital media shapes and impacts today's society."

Shows over the coming months will feature work by video artist Tony Oursler and Japanese artist Mariko Mari. Presumably it will also seek to preserve Adobe's Flash technlogy, despite Apple's attempts to archive it.

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Today on Tech Brief: Justin Bieber's continued web domination, how broadband is running politics and the dangers of the iPod "zombie trance".

• With Google due to make a "significant" announcement later today, the web is awash with rumours that it might even be about to make changes to its search engine.

While this shouldn't come as a major surprise, it seems that in recent days very little of the innovation coming out of the Googleplex has actually been about its core product.

But those eager beaver engineers at Google seem to found time, in-between designing Google TV, updating Gmail and handling privacy lawsuits, to think about search.

Mashable is among many to speculate on what the search update might be.

"Google is about to unveil a real-time search overhaul. This is not about adding Twitter or Facebook results to Google search though; this is about search results that change as you type."

A leaked video on YouTube shows the system in operation.

All will be revealed at the Museum Of Modern Art in San Francisco at 6pm BST and then we can all presumably test it for ourselves.

• BT has long been plugging its Openzone wi-fi hotspots and now its broadband customers can get it as a mobile app that will automatically connect their iPhone or Android mobile to free, unlimited wi-fi.

Moneysupermarket's Mike Wilson told the Guardian why it could be an asset to users.

"There are a lot of users who don't know that they can use their bundle minutes away from home. The application even has a map that shows users exactly where their closest hot spots are. It's a real asset to bundle users."

• Broadband has long been creeping its way up the political agenda as people realise that a decent net infrastructure is as crucial as good roads. But in Australia it is being credited with being the crunch issue that settled the recent tight elections.

The Labour Party and the Greens both saw fibre optic broadband as key to the country's future, and pledged to support the AU$43 billion decade-long project. The centre-right Liberal Party wanted to can the project.

Votes were so tight that it came down to three independent candidates, two of which voted for opposite sides. The third, Tony Wilson, is a rural MP which could have helped make up his mind as probably did the comments from his advisor, reported on Computer World Australia:

"You do [broadband] once, you do it right, and you do it with fibre."

• In the unlikely event that you were searching for the archetypal child of the net then you might (if you had tolerant views on music) look in the direction of Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber.

His music was born on YouTube and now it seems he has more than just a big following on Twitter.

A Twitter employee told Gizmodo:

"At any moment Justin Bieber uses 3% of our infrastructure. Racks of servers are dedicated to him"

Today the web, tomorrow the universe. You have been warned.

• Death by iPod might sound quite enticing to the hardcore Apple fan but for road safety experts it is becoming an increasing problem.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that iPods and other devices are being blamed as a contributing factor in the 25% rise in the number of pedestrian fatalities in New South Wales as iPod "zombie trance" means people walk without paying attention to anything but the music.

Harold Scruby, of the Pedestrian Council of Australia, talked to the Herald:

"The government is quite happy to legislate that people can lose two demerit points for having music up too loud in their cars, but is apparantly unconcerned that listening devices now apear to have become lethal pieces of entertainment."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

• It seems the world is going tablet crazy. LG is the latest firm to reveal that it is working on an Android-based tablet which should be available later this year.

The mobile phone manufacturer joins Dell and Samsung in jumping on the iPad bandwagon and Tech Radar reports that it will be bigger and better, or should that be thinner and better, than its rivals?

"It will deliver vastly superior performance than other similar devices currently on the market while still managing to be thinner and lighter than competing devices."

Watch this space.

• Google thinks there is room on the internet for another Facebook, which is perhaps unsurprising given the growing speculation that it is about to launch a rival, which the rumour mill has already named Google Me.

Talking to the Telegraph, UK chief executive Matt Brittin didn't devote many column inches to the rumours but neither did he shoot them down in flames, so of course his few words on the matter have been picked up around the web.

"Facebook is an absolute phenomenon but there are other social networks which are successful too. We've got Orkut, which is fantastically successful in India and Brazil... I think what we'll see is the internet becoming more of a social place, as well as people being social within the context of social networks."

• Iran has once again proved itself to be on the cutting-edge of tech with the unveiling of its very own walking, if not talking, robot.

Surena 2 is a new version of a robot built by students at Tehran University two years ago. According to engadget, it has already been enjoying a bit of celeb status.

"Surena 2 was unveiled by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week, its purpose unknown. Named after a famous Persian warrior, the robot stands 4.7 feet tall, and can walk about slowly carrying its own weight of 99 pounds. Gulf News reports the robot will get vision and speech modules later on down the road."

• It sometimes seems that BT can do nothing right. The telecom firm has been roundly criticised about its tardiness to roll out fibre-optic networks and now that it is (sort of) it seems people don't like the look of it.

Residents in Brighton have complained about the "monster cabinets" which BT needs to install to house the cables for the super-fast broadband update.

According to PC Advisor, residents are concerned about:

"[T]he impact that these monster cabinets could have, both within and outside conservation areas, if they are simply installed wherever Openreach finds most convenient."

• And finally, Tech Brief has to report the sad demise of the internet. Yep it's all over for the net, at least as far as pop icon Prince is concerned.

Prince has been no fan of the internet, filing lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and Pirate Bay for allowing users to download his music for free.

Now Mashable reports an interview Prince gave to the Daily Mirror in which he said:

"The Internet's completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can't get it."

Worse still, the internet is not even cool, according to the diminutive popstar.

"The internet's like MTV. At one time, MTV was hip, and suddenly it became outdated."

And to mark his protest against all things webby, Prince has shut down his official website. It may be the beginning of the end although whether for the web or Prince's music career Tech Brief is undecided.

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Links in full

• Marc Chacksfield| Tech Radar | Interview with Matt Brittin
• Jonathan Sibun| The Daily Telegraph | Interview with Matt Brittin
• Sean Hollister | Engadget | Iran's got a walking humanoid robot, too
• Carrie-Ann Skinner | PC Advisor | Brighton complaint over BT fibre cabinets
• Jolie O'Dell | Mashable | Prince says internet is over

On Tech Brief today; The new way to text, criticisms of the engine that will power the highly anticipated new iPhone and how children are wooed by high tech.

• The iPhone version 4 may not be available until later in the week but already the criticism of the engine that will drive it is mounting.

Apple's iOS 4 has been released ahead of the phone and will be available for old-generation mobiles as well as the shiny news one. It promises 100 new features, including a way to make organising the ever-growing army of applications easier but the Twittersphere is already full of criticisms, with many saying it has made their iPhone's slower.

Many, including V3 have reported the criticisms. One disgruntled user told the technology news site:

"Not happy! Just installed ios4 and it's made my iPhone sooo sluggish and slow it's unbelievable!!"

• Now the Hollywood stars that turned out in force for the glamorous E3 gaming show have gone home, questions are starting to be asked about the products shown off there.

Most were impressed with Microsoft's Kinect and saw it as a game-changer but now, with analysts estimating it could cost up to £100, many including the Guardian is asking whether it will be too pricey to appeal:

"An Xbox plus the Kinect starts becoming a lot more expensive than a Wii-style impulse buy, even if the tech is sexier. In that case then you have to wonder why there weren't more 'core' style Kinect games shown at E3 to attract the early adopters likely to be the initial purchasers and family opinion formers."

• Swype is a new technology that allows phone users to drag their fingers from one letter to another rather than tapping out individual letters, the Telegraph reports

It is the brainchild of Cliff Kushler, who previously invented predictive text software, which might not endear him to all.

Won Park, Samsung's director of technology sourcing, appears to be a fan although he seems to miss mobiles off the list of potential homes for the new technology:

"It could become the de facto standard for tablets, next-generation TVs or next-generation remote controls. It has tremendous potential."

Playwrights aren't generally known as fans of technology and Professional Foul author Tom Stoppard is no exception. He tells Reuters that he is concerned children are ignoring books as technology increasingly vies for and wins their attention.

He muses on how the moving image is more popular than the pages of a book to youngsters:

"I think that's to the detriment... I just don't want the printed page to get swept away by that."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Links in full

• David Neal| V3 | Apple iOS 4 released to widespread criticism

• Greg Howson| The Guardian| Kinect pricing is crucial |

• Telegraph| Telegraph.co.uk | New technology allows phone users to swipe rathan than tap their messages|

• Kylie MacLellan| V3 | Technology sweeping away books, says Stoppard |

On Tech Brief today: Google goes house-hunting, a robotic companion that is actually quite useful and how digital graffiti is so much easier to clean up than old-fashioned spraypaint.

• Google seems to have bounced back from recent controversies over how much information it is collecting with a new service that snoops around houses.

Ok, I should probably clarify that slightly. In fact the search giant has added a property finding service to Google Maps UK which will allow people to search for houses in any given location and get all the vital statistics on rooms, price and location. It has signed deals with a range of estate agents, including Countrywide and online agents Zoopla and Zoomf

Andrew Foster, product manager at Google told the Guardian what prompted the latest service:

"We want Google Maps to be a map that contains all of the world's information. We know that many UK home buyers are already using Google Maps in their house-hunting, and by adding property listings to the map we're putting everything together for them in one place."

• US telephone company AT&T is not enjoying a great record on user security at the moment. Last week it was revealed that 114,000 iPad users' e-mail addresses, including those of White House staff, had been exposed.

Now Gizmodo is now reporting that customers trying to order a new iPhone 4 are being redirected to other users' accounts, with access to some of the their personal information, including their phone numbers and addresses.

AT&T customer Ethan told Gizmodo:

"I logged in to Att.com in the pre-order frenzy. I was immediately greeted by someone else's personal information. Fearful that I had accidentally registered my iPhone to someone else's name I refreshed the page. This time my account info came in correctly."

An unidentified AT&T insider told Gizmodo the issues were related to a weekend outage:

"Over the weekend there was a major fraud update that went down on all of AT&T's systems, from Saturday overnight to Sunday early morning. All systems were down and agents were unable to use any systems."

• Indeed it seems the whole iPhone pre-ordering system is in chaos with lots of news sites and blogs, including PC World reporting that Apple's online store is struggling to cope with demand for pre-orders.

It also seems those hoping to order a white iPhone 4 could be disappointed with none available on either Apple or AT&T's sites. For those who like to be on Apple's bleeding edge it could be back to the old-fashioned way of buying goods by standing in what promises to be a long queue outside an Apple store on release day, 24 June.

• Robotic companions often tend to look cute (in a geeky, metallic kind of way) but are often of limited practical help. LuminAR reverses that trend. It looks just like a desk lamp - but its simple exterior hides a range of exciting technology, including a pico-projector, camera and wireless computer. All that means it can respond to commands, so a swipe of the hand moves it to one side, but more interestingly, it also creates an interface on any surface or object.

MIT student Natan Linder talks up the project:

"The project radically rethinks the design of traditional lighting objects, and explores how we can endow them with novel augmented-reality interfaces."

Turning on the light has never been so exciting.

• We are in the season of wellies, loud music and fields but winner of most obscure festival goes to what it being billed as the world's first projection art festival, kicking off in Florida this week.

The festival is dedicated to digital graffiti and computer-generated graphics; animation and video will be splashed onto buildings around Alys Beach, without a dirty paintbrush or pair of wellies in sight.

Now in its third year, judge Alan Hunter told CNN what the appeal was:

"It was a difficult concept to understand, even for the developers of the event, but once night fell that first year and you could see the projections on the white canvases of the walls of each of the stunning buildings, we all had a big 'ah-ha' moment."

And, unlike other festivals, no need for a big clean-up. Last person to leave switch the lights off.

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Links in full

• Mark Sweney | Guardian | Google UK adds house-hunting to Maps
• Jesus Diaz | Gizmodo | iPhone order security breach
• Naresh Kuman| PSK | Student invents robotic desk lamp
• Katherine Dorsett| CNN Town comes to life with digital graffiti|

Today on Tech Brief: A new breed of nanotechnologist, back to school for the Kindle and a jigsaw-solving computer programme.

• Nanotechnology is a burgeoning industry but with only about 20,000 trained nanotechnologists in the world a recruitment drive is on.

It has led firms to offer a nanotech curriculum in some unexpected places, including the slums of Bogota in Colombia.

In an interview with the Dallas County Environmental News Examiner, Tom Levesque, general manager of Nanolnk described how it was changing lives.

"The setting is that these children come down from these virtual slums behind the school, they go through these programs, and emerge out of the front of the building into society with an education that is not even available at some of the best private schools in Bogota."

• E-books are exciting plenty of interest at the moment but one of its key audiences appears to have rejected them, at least as study aids. US students who were asked to give feedback on Amazon's Kindle said they preferred the look and feel of real text books.

One student told the Seattle Times

"You don't read textbooks in the same linear way as a novel. You have to flip back and forth between pages, and the Kindle is too slow for that. Also, the bookmarking function is buggy."

• Jigsaws have traditionally been time-wasters, something to while away a rainy Sunday afternoon when there is nothing good on telly so news that a computer can solve a 400-piece puzzle in only three minutes could take some of the fun out of it.

A team of scientists at MIT and Tel Aviv University chopped a 5-megabyte picture into 400 squares and fed the date into their computer software, which it interpreted to reform the photo.

Lead scientist Taeg Sang Cho told Physorg that he hoped the software could be used to solve other problems.

"Such as DNA modelling or reassembling fragments of documents or archaeological relics, all of which can be modelled as jigsaw puzzles"

• Tony Blair was not renowned as a techie when he was prime minister but it seems he has finally seen the light. Tech Brief is not sure whether being offered the post of senior adviser to a green technology venture capital firm Khosla Ventures in any way influenced his change of heart but welcomes him heartily to the fold.

Talking to the New York Times Mr Blair said:

"The more I studied the whole climate change issue and linking it with energy security and development issues, I became absolutely convinced that the answer is in the technology"

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Links in full
• Colonel Mason | Dallas County Environmental News Examiner|
• Amy Martinez|Seattle Times| Amazon Kindle fails first college test
• Lin Edwards|Pysorg| Computer software solves jigsaw puzzle
• Claire Miller|New York Times| Blair to join venture firm as adviser on technology

On Tech Brief today: Pirate Bay sails again, work begins on the digital genome and how cows could become the real power behind the Google throne.

• The controversial file-sharing directory The Pirate Bay is back online, this time hosted by the Swedish Pirate Party, a political movement born out of music file-sharing.

It was happy to launch the pirates back onto the high seas of the web. The Pirate Party's Rick Falkvinge told Mashable:

"We got tired of Hollywood's cat and mouse game with the Pirate Bay so we decided to offer the site bandwidth. It is time to take the bull by the horns and stand up for what we believe is a legitimate activity."

In a slightly less articulate blog post, The Pirate Bay boasted:

"TEH PIRATE BAY IZ AN UNSINKABLE SHIP. IT WILL SAIL TEH INTERWEBS 4 AS LONG AS WE WANTS IT 2. REMEMBR DAT, K THX."

• The tech press has been enjoying the lost iPhone prototype story, largely because pretty much every tech journalist can sympathise with the poor Apple engineer who left the precious gadget behind on a bar stool after an over-indulgent after-works drink.

Now it emerges that Steve Jobs personally intervened to try and retrieve the missing phone, e-mailing Gizmodo, the tech blog to which the phone was sold, asking for his phone back.

Phil Muncaster reports in ComputerActive on what was said by Apple to persuade the police to investigate.

"By publishing details about the phone and its features, sales of current Apple products are hurt wherein people that would otherwise have purchased a currently existing Apple product would wait for the next item to be released thereby hurting overall sales and negatively affecting Apple's earnings."

• We have all had days when the duvet seems a whole lot more enticing than the office so imagine how great it would be to have a robot you could send to work in your place.

Robocommuting is the brainchild of Mountain View start-up Anybots. As a starting point for its project, it has unveiled a robot that allows teleconferencing from a range of locations.

Founder and chief executive Trevor Blackwell told IEEE Spectrum:

"We wanted to create a technology that allows remote workers to collaborate more fully - and feel part of the team,"

• Did Bill Gates invent the iPad? Apple is no stranger to patent rows but footage uncovered by Gizmodo suggests the Microsoft boss might have a case himself. Back in 2007 Bill Gates sat next to Steve Jobs and offered these musings:

"I think you'll have a full-screen device that you can carry around and you'll do dramatically more reading off of that... yeah, I mean, I believe in the tablet form factor... You'll have some way of having a hardware keyboard and some settings for that. And then you'll have the device that fits in your pocket."

He must be kicking himself...

• V3 is reporting that work has begun on creating a so-called digital genome, a record of old data formats to make sure that future generations can read everything that is stored digitally.

This important project, funded to the tune of 15m euros, will see data stored in a suitably secure mountain vault in Switzerland, dubbed the Swiss Fort Knox.

The British Library's Adam Farquhar told V3 why it was needed:

"Einstein's notebooks you can take down off the shelf and read today. Roll forward 50 years and most of Stephen Hawking's notes are likely to be stored digitally and we might not be able to access them all."

• We have had Froogle and now it could be time for Moogle as HP engineers point to a future of cow poo computing.

In a paper published today, the engineers demonstrate how manure could be turned into fuel which could power the vast data centers needed by companies such as Google.

Chandrakant D. Patel told the New York Times:

"Information technology and manure have a symbiotic relationship"

Farmers may not agree when they find out that it will cost them $5m to purchase the equipment needed for such a system.

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to @bbctechbrief on Twitter, tag them bbctechbrief on Delicious or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Links in full

• Stan Schoreder, Mashable, The Pirate Bay - We are Unsinkable
• Phil Muncaster, ComputerActive - Steve Jobs intervened to retrieve iPhone prototype
• Erico Guizzo, IEEE Spectrum, Telepresence Robot
• Gizmodo, Bill Gates told Steve Jobs about the iPad
• Iain Thomson, V3, Work begins on digital genome
• Ashlee Vance, New York Times, One Moos and one hums