In a widely condemned ruling, five activists from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been jailed for periods of up to three years on a number of charges including publicly insulting the country's rulers, and disrupting public order. Of the five, four of them (Nasser bin Ghaith, Fahad Salim Dalk, Hassan Ali al-Khamis and Ahmed Abdul Khaleq) were imprisoned for two years for criminal defamation. Ahmed Mansoor - the most prominent of the group according to news reports - was sentenced ...

Durex has issued a hasty apology over an offensive, misogynist tweet apparently sent out by their public relations company on Friday. The tweet, via the company's South African Twitter account @DurexSA, has caused an outcry amongst tweeters, bloggers and mainstream media. In what is a case study on how companies should not use social media to further their brand, the offensive tweet in question read: Facing a backlash, the Durex Twitter account then initially tried to defend itself in a rather poorly-worded tweet: ...

It's easy to imagine that some day, in the not too distant future, paper distribution of news will become obsolete. It seems that in most concept videos about consumer electronics in the future, a person is featured sitting at a kitchen table, coffee in hand, swiping through the morning's news on a transparent, flexible display. Prompted by the iPad revolution, I’m sure many people have already traded paper and ink, for glass and pixels to consume the news. About a year ...

We love to hate things. Taxi drivers, for example. Cellphone providers. But mostly we like to hate our banks. Bank hatred is a national sport, especially on a platform that lends itself to venting so well: Social media. So when a bank starts to come across as likeable, you pay attention. First National Bank (FNB) is one such bank, gaining considerable kudos for its social media policies. So, what is FNB doing right in social media -- and what can others ...

In this age of mindless first-person shooters and endless chasing down of health packs, it’s refreshing to see a game like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus come around... again. They may be remastered, but they hold an important kind of currency in today’s gaming market: originality. Go ahead and look at other reviews for Ico and Shadow of the Colossus (SOTC), they’ll all focus on the same thing - how the PS2 versions have been improved from Team Ico’s original ...

Arabic is exploding as a language on Twitter. In a reflection of the social network’s importance to the "Arab Spring" (which saw the overthrow of decades-old regimes in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia) the number of Arabic tweets has grown by more than 2 000% in the last 12 months. A number of prominent bloggers, who admit that social networks like Facebook and Twitter were tools used in the revolutions, were widely praised for their real-time reporting of events on ...

Google aired a particularly long Google+ ad during a Thanksgiving day NFL game. In deep contrast to loud football fans cheering on teams while guzzling beer, the ad has a relatively dull tone, dragging on for two minutes. The ad is part of Google’s efforts to promote Google+ as a competitive player in a social space dominated by the likes of Facebook. It basically features a close-up of a computer screen zooming into the various aspects of Google+ and different people talking. ...

Rays of sunlight pierced my venetian blinds, sending UV rays lasering into my room. As I raised my trembling hand to shield my eyes, a tiny Logitech mouse cracked me across the bridge of my nose. Why was it tied to my hands? What happened the night before, and where the hell was my coffee? The office, yesterday, 4:30pm The Logitech M125 mouse, a tiny nugget of user interface fun was thrown onto my desk. “Here, review it. Make it shine,” my ...

The Taiwanese cellphone mega-manufacturer has cut its immediate revenue forecasts by as much as a quarter, citing continuing global recession and competition from Apple and Samsung. It expects it’s fourth quarter revenues to be $3.4 billion – the same as this time last year. “Due to global macroeconomic downturn and market competition, the assumptions of 2011 Q4 financial forecast provided earlier are no longer applicable,” HTC said. Growth will return in the first half of next year, it said. Read more on ...

Apple has pulled the "Jew or not Jew" app from its app stores worldwide following a lawsuit from French anti-racism groups, reports the Register. The app allowed users to measure "how Jewish they were" by cataloguing Jewish personality traits according to how genetically Jewish users considered themselves to be. "Listed for you, thousands of Jewish personalities (through their mother), 'half-Jewish' (through their father), or converts," the app's inventor Johann Levy promised potential buyers on the French Apple Store. The app was pulled ...