Pilotless flight trialled in UK shared airspace

A Jetstream aircraft became the first to fly "unmanned" across UK shared airspace last month.

An on-board pilot handled the take-off, from Warton, near Preston in Lancashire, and landing, in Inverness.

But during the 500-mile journey, the specially adapted plane was controlled by a pilot on the ground, instructed by the National Air Traffic Services.

There were no passengers, but the 16-seater aircraft flew in airspace shared with passenger carriers.

Known as "the Flying Testbed", it contains on-board sensors and robotics to identify and avoid hazards.

National Air Traffic Services unmanned air vehicle (UAV) expert Andrew Chapman said: "Nats ensured that this test flight was held without any impact on the safety of other users of airspace at the time.

Regulatory framework

"Although there is still work to be done it would seem that, on the basis of the success of this flight, a UAV could operate in different classes of airspace."

It is the latest in a series of test flights carried out by Astraea (Autonomous Systems Technology Related Airborne Evaluation and Assessment), which has received £62m funding, from commercial companies and the UK government, to research how civilian unmanned aircraft could fit in to shared airspace.

A representative of BAE Systems, one of the companies to have invested in Astraea, said: "The flights were part of a series of tests helping flight regulators and Nats to understand how these flights work, and what they need to do were they to go ahead and put a regulatory framework in place for the unmanned flights in manned airspace.

"It's still very early days in terms of that regulation taking place."

Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon described the latest flight as "pioneering".

Social impact

The specially adapted 16-seater Jetstream had no passengers.

"Astraea has made significant achievements, placing the UK industry in a good position globally on unmanned aircraft and the development of regulations for their civil use," he said.

The project has the support of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

At a media conference last year, Astraea project director Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal said getting unmanned aircraft (UA) into shared airspace was more than a technical challenge.

"It's not just the technology, we're trying to think about the social impact of this and the ethical and legal things associated with it," he said.

"You've got to solve all this lot if you're going to make it happen, enable it to happen affordably."

Blackberry expands BBM chat app to Android and iOS

The Blackberry Messenger (BBM) app is to be offered as a download to run on rival platforms.

Blackberry said it would initially offer texts, photo messages and group sharing functions on devices running Google's Android and Apple's iOS operating systems from "the summer".

It added it planned to roll out screen sharing, voice and video calls - all without charge - later in the year.

The move could prove disruptive to Skype, Whatsapp and other rivals.

Blackberry chief executive Thorsten Heins revealed the surprise news at the end of his presentation at the firm's annual developers conference in Orlando, Florida.

The company said that more than 60 million Blackberry owners already used BBM at least once a month.

But Mr Heins played down the idea that offering the feature to rival devices would harm sales of the Canadian company's own handsets.

"You might ask the question why is Blackberry doing this now," said Mr Heins.

"It's a statement of confidence. The Blackberry 10 platform is so strong and the response has been so good that we are confident the time is right for Blackberry Messenger to become an independent multiplatform messaging solution."

He added that for the app to work iPhone users would need at least iOS 6 and Android users the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Google's software. There was no mention of Windows Phone.

Wider impact

One analyst said it was too soon to know if the move would force competitors to change their own strategies.

"BBM has been a significant traffic driver for Blackberry - particularly the consumer audience," said Chris Green, principal technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group Europe.

"Expanding it to be multiplatform not only widens the consumer appeal but also may help woo back corporate customers it lost due to earlier technical problems.

"However, other players like Whatsapp will only drop their fees if they see BBM making major inroads into other platforms."

Ben Wood from telecoms consultancy CCS Insight added that Blackberry might have felt forced into the move because of the growing popularity of cross-platform alternatives which also includes Facebook Messenger.

"It will increase feature competition among mobile messaging platforms," he said.

"It dramatically increases BBM's long-term relevance - but it is unclear how Blackberry will ensure the move benefits its own hardware sales."

Cheaper phone

Blackberry also announced a new smartphone powered by its BB10 system - the first to be targeted at emerging markets.

The Q5 features a physical Qwerty keyboard and a 3.1in (7.9cm) touchscreen.

The Blackberry 10 device will be released in parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America in July.

It should be cheaper than the Z10 and Q10 which were unveiled in January.

However, the firm has yet to confirm pricing.

"We understand the importance of having devices to suit all markets and needs," said Mr Heins. "It's a sleek, slim high-performance device."

One company watcher said it was important for Blackberry to have a device running BB10 on sale in parts of the world where its handsets were still bestsellers.

"The Q5 could be a very significant device for the company because there is a significant opportunity for high-quality low-cost smartphones," said Adam Leach, devices analyst at telecoms consultancy Ovum.

"If Blackberry can replicate the success of the Blackberry Curve in emerging markets then it will certainly help establish the Blackberry 10 platform.

"However, Blackberry has significant competition in this area with low-cost Android devices and with Nokia's Asha 501 which sells for just under $100 [£65]. It will be crucial to see if Blackberry can match or undercut that."

Ovum predicts that emerging markets will account for 40% of smartphone shipments by 2017.

According to data from IDC - another tech consultancy - Blackberry devices accounted for just over 19% of global smartphone shipments at the start of 2010. But the firm suggests that figure had dropped to less than 4% by the end of last year.

Blackberry has yet to release sales figures for its first BB10 devices.

Germany tells Google to tidy up auto-complete

A German federal court has told Google to clean up the auto-complete results its search engine suggests.

The court said Google must ensure terms generated by auto-complete are not offensive or defamatory.

The court case was started by an unnamed German businessman who found that Google.de linked him with "scientology" and "fraud".

Google must now remove defamatory word combinations when told about them, said the court.

A person's privacy would be violated if the associations conjured up by auto-complete were untrue, the federal court said in a statement about the ruling.

However, it added, this did not mean that Google had to sanitise its entire index. "The operator is, as a basic principle, only responsible when it gets notice of the unlawful violation of personal rights," it said.

The ruling on auto-complete overturns two earlier decisions by lower German courts.

In the past, Google has defended itself by arguing that it has no control over the combinations of words that auto-complete suggests. Instead, it said, these were automatically generated by the frequency with which other people were looking for such keywords.

A Google spokesman said he was "disappointed and surprised" by the court's decision, in an interview with Bloomberg. He said it was "incomprehensible" that Google was going to be held liable for the searches carried out by users.

The ruling could also have a bearing on another case involving auto-complete. Bettina Wulff, wife of former German president Christian Wulff, sued Google because auto-complete suggested words linking her to escort services. Mrs Wulff denies ever working as a prostitute and has fought several legal cases over the accusation. The case against Google is due to be heard soon in a Hamburg court.

Facebook blocks 'social suicide' app

A Facebook app offering users a one-in-six chance of deleting their account has been pulled from the site.

Social Roulette mimicked the lethal game of Russian Roulette, in which players spin the cylinder of a revolver hoping to avoid the one loaded chamber.

According to its developers, the app was brought to Facebook's attention by an automated system that deals with "negative user experience".

Facebook said the app "violated its platform policies".

The Social Roulette website says the app may suit people "looking for the opportunity to start fresh" or those "just seeking cheap thrills at the expense of your social network".

"Everyone thinks about deleting their account at some point, it's a completely normal reaction to the overwhelming nature of digital culture," it adds.

Bit murky

While it acknowledges that permanently deleting a Facebook account is very difficult, it promises to "completely remove all your posts, friends, apps, likes, photos and games before completely deactivating it".

"You could say the shutdown was a bit murky as there's not a specific platform policy that the app's data deletion function violates, but Facebook typically enforces the spirit, not the letter, of the law," co-founder Kyle McDonald told tech news site TechCrunch.

"It might end up adding a specific provision banning apps that focus on deleting your data."

But Eden Zoller, an analyst at research firm Ovum, said the existing platform policy had "scope to ban apps which pose a competitive threat to Facebook".

"Facebook would obviously rather the users don't delete their accounts but if people are going to it would prefer that they use Facebook's own processes," she said.

"What happens if someone plays it and afterwards wishes that they hadn't done it. Does the developer have anything to deal with this situation?

"This can be seen as Facebook being controlling or acting responsibly depending on your point of view," she added.

Facebook envy

Increasingly there was a niche of social media users keen to exit Facebook and this would have been a "fun way to do it", said Dr Hanna Krasnova, from the Berlin's Humbodlt University.

She has conducted a series of studies into the emotional impact of social networking.

"On Facebook you are exposed to so much social information and this can cause anger, frustration and envy," she said.

"Social networking is itself a kind of game. We don't need it to survive and many people feel that Facebook creates more negative emotions than positive ones."

Social Roulette is not the first app to be blocked because of negative feedback.

In February the social network blocked access to Vintage Camera - similar to Facebook-owned Instagram - saying there had been "negative feedback from users".

Facebook data suggested there had been about one negative report per 1,000 images shared via the app.