• Apple may be keen to keep digital filth off its gadgets but it can do little about real filth, finds Ryan Tate at Gawker:

"Your filthy iPad is an excellent vector for transmitting influenza and other viruses, scientists say. In fact, if it's anywhere near as bacteria infested as a cell phone, you should be fairly disgusted to share the Apple tablet without sterilization."

• Tech Brief has never shirked from pointing readers to signs that robots and thinking machines are about to rise up and take over. Early signs of that awakening could be found via the tweets from Nell, a Carnegie Mellon computer that tells the world via Twitter what it has learned about us. Julie Beck at PopSci believes it has a long way to go:

"Nell isn't perfect though. And thank goodness, because that means we get some pretty adorable not-quite-there-yet tweets, such as: 'I think "chicken recipe time" is a #condiment' and 'I think "anonymously" is a #fish.' Nell's followers can tweet corrections to her and help her improve her associations."

• Robots in Slovenia are also getting help to find out about we fleshy humans, by punching six people repeatedly. Paul Raven at Futurismic sees no reason to panic yet:

"But it's all in a good cause, you see - in order to ensure that robots don't harm humans by accident, you have to assess what level of harm is unacceptable."

• Young people today are all about the hands. If they are not throwing down gang signs or mashing the buttons on a game controller they are texting everyone via their phones, according to Nielsen research. Edward Moyer at CNet runs through the report:

"During the second quarter of 2010 (April through June), device users in the 13- to 17-year-old bracket sent or received more than six text messages every hour they were awake, Nielsen said. That's an average of 3,339 texts a month, an 8 percent increase from last year. At the same time, voice activity decreased 14 percent--to 646 minutes, nearly 11 hours, of chatter per month--with many teens citing the ease and speed of texting over voice calls."

• Finally documents from the dawn of the Windows era have emerged thanks to Ray Ozzie who found some of the press materials for the release of Windows 1.0. Ben Parr at Mashable gets all misty-eyed about those innocent days.

"Windows 1.0 was the beginning of the Control Panel and the Clipboard, but more importantly it was the beginning of an era that brought personal computing to billions of households worldwide."

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.

• Paris Hilton is securing her virtual celebrity by releasing a line of clothes that do not exist. Chris Matyszczyk at CNet reveals Ms Hilton's "virtual collection" will be on sale to Brazilian gamers.The clothes are for the avatars populating the popular online game Vida nas Passarelas (Life is a Catwalk).

"Some might struggle to conceive why one would buy something simply in order to 'have' it in a virtual game. But then many of us often choose to suffer in the actual rather than take our pleasure in the virtual. This is clearly a retrograde way of life. Paris Hilton and her partners are surely about to show us what the hotel empress' new clothes can generate in terms of excitement, style, and lucre."

• If you recently got spam from Microsoft asking if you are happy with your current physical configuration (nudge, nudge), then writes Dan Goodin in The Register, the software giant would like you to know that it wasn't entirely its fault.

"Microsoft has confirmed that two devices on its corporate network were compromised to help a notorious gang of Russian criminals push Viagra, Human Growth Hormone, and other knockoff pharmaceuticals."

• For those festooned with smartphones and dongles who live in augmented reality, life without the net is unthinkable. But, writes Mark Jackson at ISP Review, 43% of all Europeans are offline according to research by the European Commission. Why, we hear you cry, Why?

"It should be noted that many of those non-connected at home state that they are simply not interested in the Internet."

Mr Jackson also noted the EU's broadband ambitions.

"The EU's current Digital Agenda promises to bring basic broadband to all Europeans by 2013 and superfast 30Mbps to 100Mbps services by 2020."

• Apple keeps tight control over the stuff people can do with its gadgets. Now comes word that it wants to extend that oversight. Robert X Cringely at PC World takes a look at the patent Apple recently received that lets it review text messages before they are sent. It's not about porn, he says, but parents.

"From the descriptions, it seems the filter can bleep out any terms you don't want appearing in the kids' texts. It could block the message outright, substitute different words in place of the naughty ones, and/or alert parents their kids are up to no good. Apparently, it can even notify parents when their kids are using improper grammar in texts."

And, he said, it does not stop there.

"If Apple can control what's inside the texts you send or receive, what's to stop it from censoring, say, any mention of Android or Google Voice? Ladies and gentlemen, start your paranoia engines."

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.

On Tech Brief today: Hackers, hackers, everywhere. Indian code ambitions and the fossils of the web.

• Avoid high phone bills, route all your calls via the net. It seems easy advice to follow and it is, says Darren Pauli at ZDNet, until wily hackers get involved:

"Australian network companies have told of clients receiving phone bills including $100,000 worth of unauthorised calls placed over compromised VoIP servers. Smaller attacks have netted criminals tens of thousands of dollars worth of calls."

• How wily are those hackers? Exactly? Tom Glocer, chief executive of Thomson Reuters has some bad news:

"We should assume that the power grid, ATM and financial systems, and civilian aviation networks of most advanced nations have already been penetrated. Most of these know incursions have been made by the military or clandestine services of other nation states."

Thankfully, Mr Glocer has some suggestions on how to fix the problem:

"I can imagine a layered internet in which the nuclear arsenal is controlled by the highest and most secure level, the power grid, air traffic control and ATM networks are secured by a sufficiently robust next layer, but an open cyber frontier -- a wild west -- remains for individuals to roam free of government control and authentication, but also open to attack and abuse."

• You can't fault the ambition of India's Defence Research & Development Organization. John Ribeiro at IDG writes that it is kicking off a project to build its own operating system:

"Having its own operating system will help India prevent hacking of its systems, VK Saraswat, scientific adviser to the Defence Minister, and DRDO Director-General said on Saturday, according to media reports. Two software engineering centers are being set up for this purpose in Bangalore and New Delhi, he added."

• Finally, a jog through the history of the web by likening the way it has changed to Darwinian evolution. Alexander Dawson at Six Revisions is the one with the brush and rock pick:

"If we examine any aspect of web design, we can see that trends and technologies being discarded, improved on, or superseded by something better is common. Evolve or die, pick one of the two options. And if we delve deeper, we can see three core elements that dictate this natural selection and evolution."

Though net history moves fast, Mr Dawson spots where the history is written:

"Looking back at the Internet's past, I find it interesting that we can 'carbon date' our sites based on the techniques and technologies they use, and even scarier is that much of the web today remains fossilized within the bedrock of our servers."

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.

On Tech Brief today: Put away your fat pants, virtual drug dens and the robot bear that tries to heal your brain.

• It has often been said that the camera adds pounds to its subject. Not any more, says Lizzie Schiffman at PopSci, who writes about the Movie Reshape program that can alter the morphology of people in films:

"The software builds on existing programs that track an actor's silhouette through a scene, mapping the body into a morphable model. Using the compiled 3D scans, the program can create realistic-looking and moving body parts to the programmer's specifications. The more dramatic the alteration, the more noticeable it may be against a constant background, but in a survey of 30 viewers, none reported the distortions to be distracting."

• More virtual-is-real shenanigans via addiction researchers at UCLA. Elizabeth Moore at Cnet reports on their work to build a virtual meth house - "the everyday life experiences faced by stimulant addicts" - and let addicts have their avatars wander through to see if virtual cravings match the real deal:

"Their heart rates and blood pressures were measured, they were allowed to click on pipes and syringes if/when they wanted to use, and they self-reported on their levels of craving."

The researchers are doing more than just making a home-from-home for addicts:

"[T]he next step is to record and analyze more participant behavior within the virtual meth house so that they can design treatments that help avoid and/or overcome the strongest temptations to use again."

• If meth is not your thing, perhaps SUVs are. Brad McCarty at The Next Web writes about an ad campaign from Mitsubishi that has a novel web element:

"Using a combination of remote control software and hardware and a unique system interface, participants will be able to take an actual 2011 Outlander Sport for a virtual spin on a closed course from their personal computers."

• One way in which the virtual has become real is in the therapeutic robot bear developed by Fujistu and shown off at the Ceatec show. Rik Myslewski at The Register runs through the ways the bear can provide aid:

"Fujitsu's 'social robot teddy bear' has but one goal in life: to provide interactive comfort for demented old folks. To aid in that noble mission, he's equipped with an arsenal of sensors and motors beneath his cozy, furry coat, plus a synthesizer with the voice of a five-year-old boy and a nose-mounted camera capable of recognizing a human face."

Early results, suggests Fujitsu, are good:

"...the salubrious effects of the cuddly robo-companions are measurable. Testing has shown that after playing with the cute li'l guys, test subjects showed increased autonomic and lowered sympathetic nerve activity, which improved the subjects' ability to resist stress and to relax."

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.

• As a child you were taught to Stop, Look and Listen before crossing the road. As an adult, you should be taught to Stop, Think and Connect before crossing the information superhighway. So says a grand alliance of US government agencies and security firms keen to ensure people stay safe online. Elinor Mills at Cnet went along to the launch.

"In its long form, the message is stop and understand the risks; think about how your actions could impact your safety and the safety of others; and connect with others with confidence.

The campaign, said Ms Mills, has a different emphasis from earlier security initiatives.

"Engineers who used to blame end users and complain that 'you can't fix "stupid"', have come around to realizing that they can't ignore the human factor, that there is a science to changing peoples' behavior. Making security easy and understandable will have more impact on protecting the ecosystem than throwing sophisticated tools at the problem, they acknowledge."

• A couple of users who should have stopped and thought before they connected are the folks who talked about a terror plot on their mobile phones. Rebecca Boyle at PopSci found out how they were rounded up.

"The British Government Communications Headquarters, which snoops on criminal suspects and works with MI6 spies, used voice identification technology to help uncover the plot. Several of the voices were recorded along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border."

• When spies are not out and about, they are back at base secretly crafting technologies that the real world invents years later. Or, at least, that's how it was in the 1970s. Barry Collins at PCPro talked to some former spies who had a good idea long before anyone else.

"Between them James Ellis, Clifford Cocks and Malcolm Williamson invented Public Key Cryptography, a system that permits secure communications and electronic transactions without the prior exchange of a secret key. Their work was used to secure Government communications - and naturally their bosses at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) wanted to keep their discovery top secret."

• The technology was re-invented in the late 70s and led to the trio being forgotten. Until now.

"The British trio's amazing breakthrough remained under wraps until the late 1990s, when it was revealed that they had beaten the Americans to the punch. Today, their work is finally being given the recognition it deserves by the The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), who are awarding the GCHQ trio a Milestone Award, a prestigious honour that has previously been bestowed on breakthroughs such as the Bletchley Park Enigma machine and the first transatlantic TV broadcast."

• Finally, reports of innovation with a very modern tool. In this case Minecraft, an online game that revolves around its players digging for different materials and turning them into useful stuff. Alice Taylor at Wonderland works through what is possible.

"Redstone on a block produces a powered block, which can be powered on, or off. Alright! Which means logic gates. Which means things like, combination locks"

Not only that. It means the ability to build computers in the game. One player has crafted a 16-bit adding machine.

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.

On Tech Brief today: The iPhone in the afterlife, its usefulness as a parenting aid and free speech in games.

• If anyone did not get the chance to say their last goodbyes to actor Tony Curtis then worry no more. Joe Fay at The Register suspects there might still be time to leave a message:

"Tony Curtis went to his grave packing an iPhone yesterday, his family have revealed."

TechBrief wonders if anyone is going to be brave enough to call it. What if they get an answer?

• Smartphones. Is there anything they can't do? Eric Pape at Slate has found that they might even be able to raise children. His young son Luka has become convinced that his mother is Mr Pape's iPhone:

"Luka's mother lost her natural maternal title altogether. She became nameless; Luka summoned her with a mere gesture of his hands or a random squeak. Eventually, he gave her a peripheral title: 'Mammon,' a sort of extension of his iMama. The only time that Luka directed 'Mama' at his mother was when she used my phone."

• In space no-one may be able to hear you scream, but in cyberspace they can certainly see you cheat. Eddie Makuch at GameSpot notes that Bungie, maker of the Xbox shooter Halo: Reach has reached out and slapped down players who were not playing fair:

"According to a Bungie employee post on Bungie.net, the developer has reset credit tallies for 15,000 players who have 'egregiously' exploited a credit rip-off. The post reads, 'Specifically, we targeted an exploit that allowed players to complete a Challenge 20+ times via intentional network manipulation (i.e., disconnects).'"

Mr Makuch said Bungie expects to nab many more cheaters as it carries out a more comprehensive sweep.

• Finally, a thoughtful post by developer Ian Bogost at Gamasutra looking over EA's decision to remove a portion of the multiplayer version of Medal of Honor that would allow players to play as the Taliban. He wonders why EA did it in the first place:

"If a meaningful simulation of the Taliban ever existed, one that meant more than 'the name for the current enemy that is in Afghanistan,' then the studio would have had to admit that no other name can be given for that opposing force, and that to hedge would ruin the unique artistic expression the game hoped to communicate."

Mr Bogost goes on to explore what EA's decision means for the gaming world as a whole:

"Free speech is not a marketing plan. Free speech is only any good if you take advantage of its invitation. So I say this to you, my video game maker brethren: say something. Say it like you mean it. Otherwise you just make a mockery of those who do, those who have the courage -- the honor even -- to go out on a limb, to compromise their popularity, their success, their safety even on behalf of something more than a bonus check."

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.

On Tech Brief today: burying the iPhone, monetizing every chit chat and StarCraft made easy.

• We all know that everything we do online is recorded, analysed in giant databases and then used to sell us more stuff. If the technology covered by Aaron Saenz at Singluarity Hub pays off, the same thing might soon be happening with every conversation you have, no matter where.

"Called Centamental, this proof of concept platform translates casual remarks you make, say in a store, into valuable data that companies can use to understand how average people feel about their products."

• On the subject of privacy comes research from computer scientist Eric Smith who has looked at the ways iPhone apps expose your personal data by leaking unique ID codes. Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica runs through his findings.

"a majority of iOS apps transmit user data back to their own servers. But because some store more info than others--and in some cases, in plaintext--it can be easily pieced together to reveal more about individual users than they bargained for."

• On the subject of the iPhone comes a report from Bill Rigby at Reuters about a strange ceremony on the Microsoft campus.

"Last month, a few hundred Microsoft Corp employees acted out their fantasy with a mock funeral for Apple Inc's iPhone at its Redmond, Washington campus. The bizarre gathering, which morphed into a spirited Michael Jackson Thriller dance routine, marked the completion of its Windows Phone 7 software, and showed how badly Microsoft wants to resurrect itself in the viciously competitive phone market."

Mr Rigby remains silent on whether the burial was in the plot next to that holding Windows Vista.

• Continuing on the theme of burying and recycling comes the Recompute computer. A green PC. So far, so what. But, says Paul Miller at Ars Technica, this one is greener than most. Its case is made from cardboard.

"Sure, the internals are standard off-the-shelf PC components, but from the outside Recompute looks like nothing we've ever seen, and that's really saying something for a desktop industry that's tried just about every look twice."

Sadly, all did not go well when Mr Miller put the machine through its paces.

"While pushing the plug into the Recompute's power supply we heard the distinct crackle of tearing velcro or loosening adhesive. Somehow the simple act of plugging the computer in seemed to be ripping the computer apart internally."

• On that theme of recycling and re-use comes startling work by computer science graduate Ben Weber who has made the venerable StarCraft game much easier to play. Instead of having lots of buttons to press and an overwhelming number of choices to make he has turned it into something more appropriate to these busy, busy times.

"My system provides the user with a GUI containing 8 buttons and lets the AI take care of the rest of the complexity associated with normally playing StarCraft. In the fully realized system, EISBot, the AI decides which buttons need to be pressed."

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.

On Tech Brief today: Hot chicks fool the spooks, a gaming cataclysm and Ballmer's bonus.

• The steely-eyed cyber soldiers who keep the internet safe are free of the vices that plague mere mortals. Set up a fake Facebook identity using a snap of a pretty girl and sassy entries on hacking and they will see through it in an instant. Or not.

Tech Radar reveals that Thomas Ryan created just such a fake identity, called Robin Sage, to see how gullible those cyber defenders are:

"Sage was able to connect with staff at the offices of the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Marine corps, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and British military personnel serving alongside Americans."

Ms Sage even got job offers from a bank, a games firm and Google. Anyone curious as to why the scam worked, need only know this:

"When it's a hot girl, people have blinders on."

• The problem with JPEGs is that they are just too big. Taking up all that space on your hard drive like some digital whale. Help is at hand thanks to Google which is pushing its own-brand skinny image format called WebP or Weppy. Stephen Shankland at CNet broke the news:

"Google plans to announce the new WebP graphics format today along with its research that indicates its use could cut image file sizes by 40 percent compared to today's dominant JPEG file format. That translates to faster file transfers and lower network burden if Google can convince people to adopt WebP."

• Paladins, are you ready? Warlocks, are you ready? Warriors, are you ready? You get the idea. The next expansion for World of Warcraft looks set to drop in early December according to the obsessives at Wowhead and MMO Champion. Oli Welsh at Eurogamer reads the runes:

"[T]he fan sites have concluded that the third expansion for the mighty MMO will release on December 7th - a Tuesday. This tallies with recent rumours that Cataclysm had slipped slightly from a November to a December launch date."

• Pity Steve Ballmer. The impoverished mite has had his bonus cut this year even though Microsoft racked up its highest-ever sales. Reuters says it was slashed because of the failure of the Kin phone, Windows mobile troubles and its failure, so far, to produce a rival to the iPad:

"Ballmer, 54, received a cash bonus of $670,000 for the fiscal year ended June 30, equal to his salary, but only half of the maximum bonus payout, according to a filing with securities regulators on Thursday."

• He's not hurting for cash though:

"With his bonus, Ballmer got a total direct pay package of $1.34 million for fiscal 2010, about 6 percent higher than $1.26 million the year before."

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.

On Tech Brief today: Chinese hackers could be reading your Gmail and database hacking with a pencil and paper.

• Google has begun warning some Gmail users that someone in China is trying to access their account. Paul Roberts at Threat Post says that although one of the people who has been warned by Gmail has spoken against Chinese government censorship, there doesn't seem to be a pattern.

"[A] survey of other GMail users who were warned suggests that the China-based attacks were widespread and lacked a clear pattern. Andrew Turnbull, editor of The Extraordinary Marketing Blog and a recent business school graduate from Alberta, Canada was one. Others included media consultants, doctors and gamers from the US, Canada, Columbia and countries in Europe - most without any clear personal or professional connection to China."

• Give a hacker an interface and they will try to subvert it, even when it is paper based. Jonas Elfstrom at the Alice, Bob and Mallory crypto blog notes that some of the written votes in the Swedish election had a very familiar format. Some appeared to be database query text designed to crash the log of votes.

"Well, it's probably just a joke but even so it brings questions since an SQL-injection on election data would be very serious."

Mr Elfstrom speculates that this could be a case of life imitating art. He suggests the inspiration is the XKCD cartoon about Little Bobby Tables which warns about the dangers of not sanitising database inputs.

• Networked computers, laser printers and graphical user interfaces seem very modern but most of these were developed in a lab 40 years ago. Not just any lab, the legendary Palo Alto Research Centre or Parc. Daniel Terdiman at CNet gets all misty-eyed over Parc's history.

"What may best set PARC apart from its group of august corporate R&D lab competitors, St. Claire and others have pointed out, is that it was started with the idea of giving its employees an unprecedented degree of intellectual freedom. This, the idea went, would allow the researchers to focus on solving the problems at hand."

• Put that paperback down, Grandad. The future is electronic. Kindle, iPad, Nook. E-book readers are everywhere and are taking over. Or are they? Chris Mims at Tech Review runs the numbers and is not so sure.

"[B]ack of the envelope calculations suggest that ebooks are only six pecent of the total market for new books."

He is also sure that physical books are going to be around for a while yet.

"So the world is left with an unconvertible stock of used books that is vast. If the bustling, recession-inspired trade in used books tells us anything, it's that old books hold value for readers in a way that not even movies and music do. That's value that no ebook reader can unlock."

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.

On Tech Brief today: the cookies that refuse to die and European politicians want you to stop file-sharing.

• As if web users were not watched enough, now come zombie cookies. Persistent versions of the little text files lots of sites use to track visitors. The difference being, says Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica, that these cannot be killed. Just like zombies. Particularly worrying is the evercookie created by Samy Kamkar.

"When implemented by a website, evercookie stores a user ID and cookie data in not two, not three, but eight different places--with more on the way. Among them are your standard HTTP cookies, Flash cookies, RGB values of force-cached PNGs, your Web history, and a smattering of HTML5 storage features. In addition, Silverlight Storage and Java are apparently on the way."

• There are all kinds of ways for a company to get its message out but Netflix has shown definitely how not to do it. The net-streaming movie service has been caught out paying actors to pose as customers during a launch event. Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing wonders why it thought it could get away with it.

"It's funny how bizarre a corporate culture this move implies, a board-room full of people inhabiting a reality-distortion bubble nodding enthusiastically to one another, saying, 'Yeah, sure, sure, no one will ever find out that they're all actors. It'll be great. Really, really great!'"

• File-sharers beware, European politicians are upset with what you do. David Meyer at ZDNet reports that the European Parliament has adopted the Gallo report which recommends a crackdown on copyright infringement.

"Although it stops short of recommending the three-strikes rule, the Gallo report calls for greater enforcement of copyright law. Much of the report is devoted to lambasting the Commission for not having a sufficiently strong framework in place for defending intellectual property rights (IPR). The report also suggests that the EU needs to introduce criminal sanctions for copyright infringement, in addition to the civil sanctions that are already available to rights holders."

• Google is also mad as hell and isn't going to take it anymore. Dan Goodin at The Register details the action it is taking against rogue pushers of prescription pills.

"In a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the search behemoth accused the owners of two websites of intentionally bypassing prohibitions preventing unlicensed online pharmacies from selling drugs through its AdWords program. According to the complaint, the advertisers used a variety of tricks to evade technical restrictions designed to enforce the policy."

• The humble barcode is throwing off its humble trappings and emerging as the portal through which cyberspace will flood reality. Chad Catacchio at The Next Web takes a look at how the barcode, and its sharp-suited sibling the QR code, is morphing.

"One of the emerging focuses of geolocation startups has been to transform QR codes and barcodes into a way to not only confirm that a person has physically been present at place, but also as a way to either add a web note to the barcode (whether as a check-in, picture, status update or even a video) and/or to "unlock" secret messages or prizes. Mainly because of these two reasons, this idea should have a lot of appeal to marketers, especially marketers that sell retail merchandise."

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.

On Tech Brief today: Mixing pop and politics, and how money can make your computer chip run faster.

• Singing, dancing, wearing meat: Lady Gaga generates debate no matter what she does. Of late she has been actively encouraging discussion by exhorting her 6.3 million followers on Twitter to lobby the US Senate over its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy which bans gay soldiers from being open about their sexuality. Judy Breck at SmartMobs ponders if this will change politics:

"It seems to me that the 6.3 'lil monsters' are unlikely to act much as a mob, either a smart or dumb one. They are... receiving a request from the person at the top about whom they are gaga. She hopes they will individually call their representatives in Washington."

• If you think your computer is running a bit slow, Intel might be able to help. The chip giant is selling upgrade cards for some of its processors that, on payment of $50, will unlock some of the hidden power of that machine. In PC Pro Barry Collins says this move is unique:

"Chip manufacturers routinely handicap processors to differentiate between different products. Sometimes imperfections in the manufacturing process are exploited to, say, offer a cheaper processor with only three functional cores instead of the normal four. At other times, processor speeds are artificially capped using BIOS settings, for example. However, this is the first time a company has charged consumers to unlock the full potential of their processor."

• Not everyone is happy with Intel's decision. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing is rather exercised about the idea of a company charging you to do more than the basics with their wares:

"This idea, which Siva Vaidhyanathan calls 'If value, then right,' sounds reasonable on its face. But it's a principle that flies in the face of the entire human history of innovation. By this reasoning, the company that makes big tins of juice should be able to charge you extra for the right to use the empty cans to store lugnuts; the company that makes your living room TV should be able to charge more when you retire it to the cottage; the company that makes your coat-hanger should be able to charge more when you unbend it to fish something out from under the dryer."

• Cyber-criminals can be a confident bunch. Especially those who set up fake Facebook accounts in the name of Ronald K Noble - one of Interpol's police chiefs. John Dunn at Network World reports that impersonators used the accounts to get intelligence about who was being targeted by Operation Infra Red:

"Although Facebook itself wasn't compromised in any way, the example cited by the Interpol head hinges on the ease with which the criminals were able to forge his identity without challenge. This is a problem both Facebook, and that other giant of social media, Twitter, have been grappling with."

• The five billionth picture was posted on photo-sharing site Flickr over the weekend. It was a snap of the Woodward's building in Vancouver taken by Aaron Yeo. Hans Kullin at Media Culpa looks at how Flickr is matching up to Facebook.

"Despite the fact that social networks like Facebook have become popular places to share photos, it seems that the growth of Flickr continues at the same pace as during the last 3 years, adding about one billion photos per year. (Facebook claims that users uploaded 2.5 billion photos per month, in February 2010.)"

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.

On Tech Brief today: The hidden history of a picture that became a sensation in Japan.

• You know how it is with the internet. You write a blog entry or upload a pic, it gets posted here, there and everywhere and boom! you are the leader of an international movement. How about that happening without your knowledge, for ten years, from when you were a baby? Stephen Rout knows how that feels after an image of him as a nipper became a sensation in Japan, as Matt Gross reports in the New York Times.

"Somehow, Stephen's smiling face had permeated a corner of Japanese visual culture. It showed up on wacky television game shows, and occasionally it blotted out images of genitalia in pornography, to comply with Japanese law. There are so many iterations that, for a time, if you did a Google Image search for "happy baby," the original photo of Stephen was the first result."

• Film pirating has become easier as Intel has confirmed that the key released on the net early this week is the master for the High Definition Copy Protection system. This locks away high-definition content as found on Blu-ray discs. Mark Hachman at PC Mag runs through what this will mean.

"HDCP is the content encryption scheme that protects data, typically movies, as they pass across a DVI or an HDMI cable. The bitstream now can be recorded and decrypted, allowing an encrypted film to be copied - a huge blow to Hollywood. "

• Technology has adversely affected many standards of behaviour and, it seems, more courtesies look set to come crashing down, if the survey looked over by Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica, is to be believed.

"29 percent of Americans are OK with being 'plugged in' while honeymooning (a descriptor that other news outlets seem to interpret as 'all sex, all the time'), while six percent say it's OK during a wedding. Eight percent are cool with checking the iternet during a religious service - hey, gotta set those fantasy football lineups before the benediction - while 41 percent think it's acceptable while having dinner with family and friends."

• There are many ways in which a nation can improve its efforts to catch up on technology. Brian Ellsworth at Reuters notes that Brazil is taking its own idiosyncratic route - via the ears of cows.

"The South American giant is preparing to use its first locally-designed microchip in cattle earrings, a device that could eventually help authorities crack down on destruction of the Amazon rain forest caused by roaming herds."

• Facebook rival Diaspora has unveiled the first chunks of code it hopes will knock the social networking giant off its plinth. Looking it over, blogger Jarin Udom is sceptical.

"I think the Diaspora dev team is well-intentioned but naive. I just wish they had used that part of the $200,000 they raised from the community on things other than paying lawyers to sabotage their vision before it even got off the ground. The only things that can save Diaspora from just being a social network for Free Software and privacy nuts now are for the developers to publish the protocol documentation and change the reference implementation license to something less restrictive (like the BSD license)."

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• This is getting ridiculous. First there was Google Instant. Then Google Maps Instant. Then YouTube Instant and now there is App Store Instant and iTunes Instant. The latter comes courtesy of Stephen Ou who, says Brenna Ehrlich at Mashable,

"is younger than various pieces of my wardrobe."

Ms Ehrlich takes it for a spin.

"iTunes Instant is basically a search engine for iTunes, which the creator said he made because, 'Search within iTunes.app is extremely slow and cluster, I've never used it. So I use Apple's Search API instead, and develop[ed] this app in less than three hours that will make your life better.' A quick test of the app reveals that it does work pretty well -- a search for relatively obscure jams returned relatively accurate results in near real time. (However, it doesn't quite work when searching for both artist and song.)"

• Tech Brief is no stranger to culture and is readying its cummerbund and bow-tie to attend the first opera with robots. Called Death and the Powers it has been put together by the MIT folks who created Guitar Hero. Rebecca Boyle at PopSci reports that it will debut in Monaco in late September.

"The opera takes place sometime in the future, when no humans remain -- only robots. Former poet laureate Robert Pinsky wrote the libretto, which tells the story of an inventor named Simon Powers. Powers builds 'The System' to preserve his legacy, allowing him to download his memories and personality into the built environment. His personage is then expressed through robots, giant blinking bookcases and a musical chandelier made of Teflon, which his wife plays like a harp."

• Word is starting to circulate that the master key protecting high-definition content, such as that found on Blu-ray discs, has been released. Richard Lawler at Engadget wonders what this will mean.

"if this information is what it claims to be, then the DRM genie could be permanently out of the bag allowing perfect high definition copies of anything as long as the current connector standards are around."

• Finally more future-gazing courtesy of Jon Stokes at Ars Technica who wonders how the technology world will change when Intel decides what to do with McAfee - the security company it bought earlier this year.

"So with McAfee, Intel probably plans to offer a default walled garden option, of sorts. At the very least, it's conceivable that Intel could build its own secure app store ecosystem, where developers send code to McAfee for approval and distribution. In this model, McAfee would essentially act as the "Apple" for everyone making, say, MeeGo apps."

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On Tech Brief today: Creating Bladerunner and why thieves are not using Facebook to rob your home.

• Environmental and other pressure groups in Russia have won a pledge from Microsoft which will see it be more discriminating about the way it stops people using fake copies of its software. In the New York Times Clifford Levy reports that the concession was won when it emerged that Russian security services were using pirated software as a pretext to raid the offices of dissident groups.

"Across Russia, the security services have carried out dozens of similar raids against outspoken advocacy groups or opposition newspapers in recent years. Security officials say the inquiries reflect their concern about software piracy, which is rampant in Russia. Yet they rarely if ever carry out raids against advocacy groups or news organizations that back the government."

• Sometimes urban myths turn out to be just that. Stories were circulating of a group of burglars in Nashua, New Hampshire using Facebook to work out if high value targets were away so they could call round and liberate their furnishings. Or perhaps not, according to the Facebook statement relayed by New England Cable News.

"We've been in contact with the Nashua police, and they confirmed that they while they have an ongoing investigation and have already made a number of arrests, the only Facebook link was that one of those arrested had a Facebook friend who posted about leaving town in the near future (which is why they believe that home was targeted) and it had nothing to do with Facebook Places. The police confirmed that the other burglaries had nothing to do with Facebook altogether"

• Continuing the Facebook theme, comes news from Cade Metz at the Register about what we spend our time doing on the web nowadays. Search is, like, so yesterday.

"US netizens are now spending more time on Facebook than on all of Google's sites combined, according to the latest data from online research outfit comScore."

• Google's Instant Search inspired Feross Aboukhadijeh to whip up YouTube Instant, what he calls a "serendipitous video browsing experience". Reaction, said Peter Kafka at All Things Digital, was instant.

"So far the most tangible benefit Aboukhadijeh has gotten from his instafame is a job offer, via Twitter, from YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley. But the Stanford junior can't take him up on it - he's already working for Mark Zuckerberg, as a Facebook intern, working on something 'really cool.'"

• Finally Bladerunner's special effects director Douglas Trumbull reveals on his website how he created the opening scenes of the film showing the world going completely out of control.

"Doug and his Entertainment Effects Group team created thousands of acid-etched brass miniatures lit from below with hundreds of bundles of fiber-optic lights, shot in forced-perspective through layers of smoke to create layers of light refraction, creating depth."

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• Google Instant Search has got the clickerati debating what it will do the search landscape but, Sean-Paul Correll from Panda Labs believes, it will be the makers of fake security software that will do well out of it.

"As a test, I thought I'd search for 'antivirus' and see what suggestions came up. Lo and behold, Antivir Solution Pro, a well known Rogueware infection was amongst the suggested search terms."

Mr Correll thinks the quick tempo of Instant Search will spell trouble for PC users when bad guys, aka blackhats, cash in.

"We know for a fact that most Blackhat Search engine optimisation campaigns automatically query Google's trending topic results and now it seems that Google Instant will be suggesting those trending phrases (verbatim), potentially putting millions of victims directly in cyber criminals' cross hairs."

• On the subject of cyber crime, John Leyden at the Register has news of the fate of hi-tech thief Viktor Pleshchuk, he of the scam that netted $9.4m (£6m) from RBS World Pay.

"Crooks broke into the computer systems of RBS WorldPay in November 2008 and created counterfeit payroll debit cards using the data they stole. They also succeeded in increasing the daily withdrawal limits on compromised accounts and obtaining PINs needed to withdraw funds. Foot soldiers were then recruited to cash-out the compromised accounts using more than 2,100 ATMs in at least 280 cities worldwide to withdraw $9m overnight in around 12 hours. Pleshchuk allegedly monitored the withdrawals in real-time before unsuccessfully trying to destroy evidence of the break-in."

Mr Pleshuk has avoided jail by turning informant and returning the cash he nicked.

• US scientists are teaching robots to lie. Researcher Ronald Arkin explains in EurekAlert.

"We have developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and we have designed techniques that help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to reduce its chance of being discovered."

• Continuing the theme of robots playing mind games comes work from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Cory Doctorow reports in Boing Boing that researchers there have created robots that turn themselves into furniture.

"The type of scenario that we envision... is a group of Roombots that autonomously connect to each other to form different types of furniture, e.g. stools, chairs, sofas and tables, depending on user requirements. This furniture will change shape over time (e.g. a stool becoming a chair, a set of chairs becoming a sofa) as well as move using actuated joints to different locations depending on the users needs. When not needed, the group of modules can create a static structure such as a wall or a box"

• We're wasting less energy with rechargers. These take in mains power in one circuit and shift it down to the low voltages our gizmos need in another - and that first circuit is typically squandering power whenever the recharger is plugged in. Manufacturers have implemented quite a few electronic tricks to reduce that lost energy, but Sanowar Khan, a professor of instrumentation and sensors at City University London thinks mobile handets alone still waste something like six gigawatt-hours a year.

Prof Khan has a simple, way to get that "less than before" down to zero: make the act of plugging in the gizmo start the juice in the first circuit. It would be an easy thing for manufacturers of chargers to implement, but don't rush out and make one yourself - TechEye reports that the Prof's got a patent and he's looking for takers:

"Manufacturers are being sought to build the patent and make it as standard. City reckons that as well as the obvious green angle, it'll provide a safety advantage because wires don't remain live, which can be dangerous in case of dodgy insulation or a flood."

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