In the web world, failure is as much a feature of innovation as success. You have to fail to succeed. When you're a company with practises as innovative as Google's you're bound to fail along the way. The search giant's well-documented policy of having its employees dedicate 20 percent of their time to projects they feel passionately about has resulted in some of the company's biggest successes. Gmail, GTalk, Google News and AdSense are all web products that have emerged ...

With around 20-million users making over a billion shares a day in the short time it's been around, it certainly looks like Google+ is here to stay.Though recent reports have shown that current users may be losing interest in the new social network, it must be remembered that Google+ is still an invite only service and as such, the moment it opens up to the public at large, it will be the buzz all over again.From the outset, it has ...

Nintendo has announced it will be cutting the price of its 3DS handheld game console. In the US it has been slashed from US$250 to US$170, in Japan prices fell by 40 percent, and in Europe the cuts are expected to see at least a third of the retail price taken off.A price drop for a console isn't new; every videogame console has been discounted at some point in its life cycle. Doing so within a four month window? That ...

British police have charged an 18-year-old man on suspicion of being a spokesman for the Lulz Security and Anonymous computer hacking groups, Scotland Yard said.Officers from a London-based cybercrime unit detained Jake Davis on Wednesday in a "pre-planned intelligence-led operation" on the Shetland Islands, off the northeast coast of Scotland, before taking him to London for questioning.Davis is accused of gaining unauthorised access to a computer system, encouraging or assisting offences and two counts of conspiracy to commit offences.The teenager ...

A cheap, highly portable blood test has proven as accurate as expensive hospital-based analyses in detecting HIV, syphilis and other infectious diseases, according to a recent study. Researchers tested prototypes of the credit card-sized lab-on-a-chip with hundreds of patients in Rwanda, reporting nearly 100 percent accuracy.The so-called "mChip", they said, could help knock down three barriers to effective delivery of health care into the world’s poorest regions: difficult access, high costs and long delays for results."The idea is to make ...

Apple and Samsung have overtaken long-time leader Nokia for the top two spots in the global smartphone market, a report has revealed, underscoring the Finnish handset maker's ongoing struggles. US-based research firm Strategy Analytics said the US and Korean smartphone makers outpaced Nokia in the second quarter, with the sector posting record quarterly shipments of 110-million units, or a 76.3 percent year-on-year rise.Read more on Gearburn.com

Indian police have arrested two top officials of Singapore-based online survey company Speak Asia in Mumbai for allegedly duping investors out of US$294-million.Police identified those arrested as Tarak Bajpai, Speak Asia's chief operating officer in India, and financial manager Ravi Khanna, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI) and other media. Two web technicians were also held.The suspects were arrested "in connection with a financial fraud", said joint crime police commissioner Himanshu Roy, according to the Times of India.Roy ...

A Twitter community in South Africa rallied to prevent a potential suicide this weekend, as a Durban-based mother of two dramatically tweeted an attempt to take her own life.The drama unfolded at 9:17pm on Friday night, with a series of tweets over a few hours from the user asking how much alcohol one should consume before "cutting an artery". The tweets continued, becoming more emotional:"...Please don't save me, I just didn't want to die alone""If u hate the mother of ...

Rumours are circulating around the industry that the popular instant messaging application and mobile social network, MXit, is about to be sold to new investors.MXit is represented in a number of international markets including Malaysia, Kenya, India, Indonesia, United Kingdom, United States, Nigeria, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain, where users have access to MXit's chat function.The service claims to have 37-million world-wide users operating in 120 countries, although these figures are unaudited and it's unclear whether they ...

US Internet firm Yahoo! and Japan's SoftBank have announced that they have reached an agreement with their Chinese partners at Alibaba Group in a dispute over online payments platform Alipay.Alibaba Group -- which is 43 percent owned by Yahoo! -- "will continue to participate in Alipay's future financial performance, including a future IPO or other liquidity event," the companies said in a joint statement.Under the terms of the agreement, Alibaba Group will receive no less than US$2-billion and no more ...