There is a mind-boggling array of social networks out there, from Facebook, the king of them all, and the ailing Myspace, all the way through to the ones you don’t know about, which target niche interests such as a love for auteur cinema and an interest in cheese.Memeburn roamed the world of social networks and picked out eight choice examples, selected for their surprising user numbers, intriguing content and quirky characters. Here they are, in no particular order:The AtlasphereUsers: ...

Nokia has left the ring with a bit of a swagger after announcing today that it had finally reached an agreement with its rival Apple that would see the Finnish mobile giant being paid a one-time settlement fee and ongoing royalties.In a statement released today, Nokia says the “financial structure of the [patent licence] agreement consists of a one-time payment payable by Apple and on-going royalties to be paid by Apple to Nokia for the term of the ...

A 40-year-old US student based in Scotland has unmasked himself as the author of the "Gay Girl in Damascus" blogs, which sparked a security crackdown in Syria.This is the latest in a series of attempts by Westerners to use social and online media to stake a place in the limelight for themselves in the Arab uprisings which have dominated headlines in 2011.Tom MacMaster, an Edinburgh University masters student, admitted on Sunday that he was "Amina Abdullah", who had ...

Social network Facebook is likely to go public in the first quarter of next year with a valuation of over US$100 billion, the CNBC business news network reported on Monday, despite reports that the social network’s growth is tailing off in North America.Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly stated he is in no hurry to take the social network public, but the network’s report said the company may be forced to do so by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ...

Mobile payments may be the next big tech gold rush, depending on who you listen to. For something getting so much hype, and with so many start-ups popping up in the field, it is a surprisingly vague term.There are at least a half dozen different approaches competing to become the de facto format. All of them share one thing: the use of mobile devices – mostly cell phones, but increasingly other devices such as tablets – to exchange money. ...

Samsung scored a smash hit with the Galaxy S, a phone that almost single-handedly established it (along with Android) as a viable threat to the iPhone hegemony on big, flat, beautiful, minimalist, keyboardless smartphones. Time passed, other phones came, Samsung got back to work. And now, ladies and gentlemen, live and in the plastic, the Galaxy S II.I had lunch with a friend yesterday. She has a Galaxy S. “Oh, you have the new one,” she said a little ...

Most of us think of Facebook as a positive, fairly innocuous, tool for social engagement and peer-to-peer networking. But courts and lawmakers are increasingly seeing the potential of this platform for issuing legal summons where no other avenue of communication is viable or even possible.“There are people who exist only online,” Joseph Demarco, co-chair of the American Bar Association’s criminal justice cyber crime committee, told Bloomberg.com. It is these kinds of online-only individuals – itinerant workers who move ...

The International Monetary Fund was the target of a sophisticated cyber attack earlier this year, according to senior IMF officials quoted by the New York Times.The global financial institution, which has been spearheading the response to the euro-zone crisis in recent months, has detailed and market-moving information on the fiscal shape of the world's economies."This was a very major breach," the Times quoted an IMF official as saying. The attack, which lasted months, began before Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head ...

A research team from IBM has managed to produce an integrated circuit on a sheet of graphene, a sheet of carbon a single molecule thick. Until now scientists have managed to fabricate discrete components such as transistors, but have struggled to find a technique that allows them to be integrated and fabricated as a wafer. Graphene, like its cousin, carbon nanotubes, exhibits fascinating electrical, optical, mechanical and thermal qualities – but finding ways to use them in commercial technology is...Read ...

It’s easy to think of the latest startup like a pimple in the middle of your forehead: you wake up one morning and it’s all you can see. And then, one day, for no specific reason, it’s gone.“Anyone know what happened to Whatchamacallit?” After some enquiry, all you’ve got is a handful of rumours and a bucket of spin. All we know for sure is that it’s over. Truth is, most of the time, it failed because of ...