This has been one of those weeks at HQ.

Between all sorts of things IRL and the web, I’ve had very little time to sit down and post things. And wouldn’t you know that our other site writers are busy too.

So most of my linking and news has been via twitter on a mobile.

You can follow @Nerin_ on twitter to get site updates and when we’re having one of these weeks, get some news.

Here are some stories tweeted in the last  few days.

Gravity

While being constantly on the move, I decided to test out a few apps. Gravity was one of them and if you are a twitter fiend you may have noticed some of our tweets were posted Via Gravity.

Now it’s been around a while, but the 10 euro price tag has been keeping it back.

It has great features such as the simple retweet button and the picture posting. But 10 euro seems a bit of a joke for something that is bundled (minus a few features and a bit less polished) with Nimbuzz mobile messenger.

UK Lords criticise Anti Piracy scheme

January 28th. TorrentFreak posted about how the House of Lords were discussing Anti Piracy measures.

They were highly critical of law firms sending letters demanding money from sites they deemed to be copyright infringers.

The letters usually state the the receiver may face serious legal action if they don’t pay. Even though many of the letters reach the wrong target due to “shoddy” research and information, people still pay out of fear.

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Like many file-sharers, some Lords would like to put an end to this copyright abuse, with Lord Lucas accusing the law firm involved of “harassment, bullying and intrusion”. But the criticism of ACS:Law didn’t stop there.

Noting that it could cost around £10,000 for those accused to protest their innocence, but a payment of ‘only’ £500 to make the accusations go away, Lord Lucas called the scheme “straightforward legal blackmail”.

Torrentfreak

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Facebook App opens door for Hackers

An unnamed application called “Unnamed Application” may be a way for hackers to gain access to Facebook profiles.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, explained that users of the social networking site are reacting to a mystery application that may or may not be spying on them.

Facebook users are passing around a message, warning each other about the application, called the ‘Unnamed app’, and unwittingly creating an opportunity for hackers.

“Users are told in the warning that they can find the ‘Unnamed app’ by going to ‘Settings’/'Application Settings’ and then choosing ‘Add to Profile’ from the drop-down box,” said Cluley in a blog post.

“Sure enough, when I went to look on a Facebook account, I found an ‘Unnamed app’.”

Whether the application is malicious or not remains a mystery, according to Cluley. “It seems to me that the only sin it may have committed might be to have been given a daft unhelpful name,” he said.

“According to Facebook itself, it appears to be a buggy presentation of the boxes tab that appears on users’ Facebook profiles.”

However, hackers have exploited the warning messages and created web pages that relate to the ‘unnamed’ application. Cluley said that, by using search engine optimisation tools, the hackers have taken their pages to the top of search results.

Yahoo News

Here be monsters

A “werewolf” is being investigated after she admitted to decapitating a local missing dog.

Sarah Rodriguez, a 23 year old who goes by the name Wolfie Blackheart (well that’s subtle >_> ) claims the dog was already dead when a “friend” brought it to her.

She left the head outside to drain then added it to her trophy collection of heads, including a ram and coyote.

She says she would never hurt a live dog because “I am a canine.”

Truecrimereport

Wolfie, whose myspace account was recently hacked, may have the head of Rigsby, a neighbours dog who has been missing for nearly a month.

“My heart pretty much sank,” Silva told the San Antonio Express-News, “because when I saw that picture, I said, ‘That’s Rigsby.’ He was the sweetest dog ever.”

Dog decapitation would only be a crime in Texas if police discovered its head was cut off before it was dead, which should be easily determined by the medical examiner.

Here be more monsters

According to news24, hundreds of large Humboldt squid have invaded California.

The squid can grow to a fairly impressive size and squirts ink to protect itself.

The local fishing community is delighted at their arrival in what is usually a quiet time of year.

Creating Evolving robots…

Tgdaily reported how a team of scientists had created smart robots using theories of evolution.

After only a few hundred generations, the bots have gotten very smart.

“Just a few hundred generations of selection are sufficient to allow robots to evolve collision-free movement, homing, sophisticated predator versus prey strategies, coadaptation of brains and bodies, cooperation, and even altruism,” say the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and University of Lausanne researchers.

The first robots had random programming that led to very different behaviour from each one, but Darwinian selection meant that the strong traits survived and successful behaviours passed onto the next batch.

Scientists = Nerds. Nerds watch sci fi. How did they think this would be a good idea?!

Wikileaks down

Wikileaks, a brilliant site for finding all sorts of documents someone doesn’t want you to see is down.

For a while now the site has been experiencing problems as they frantically try and get donations to keep the site alive.

Somewhat pertinently, WikiLeaks says on its homepage: “We have received hundreds of thousands of pages from corrupt banks, the US detainee system, the Iraq war, China, the UN and many others that we do not currently have the resources to release. “You can change that and by doing so, change the world. Even $10 will pay to put one of these reports into another ten thousand hands and $1000, a million.”

WikiLeaks had been hoping for a grant from the Knight Foundation to expand but this has not been forthcoming.

The website will not accept government funding – we doubt it would get it – or any sort of corporate funding, so now it waits in digital limbo hoping that some deep-pocketed investigative journo or campaigner can foot the bill.

Those whistles won’t blow themselves.

TechRadar

Screw the IPad, gimme Gpad!

Everyone has been talking about Apples latest gizmo, the IPad tablet.

Its the size of a book, has neat little features and is all shiny.

But the wind was knocked out of their sails this week when some pictures of a Google tablet started whizzing around the net.

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The Ipad lacks flash support and the ability to multi task, plus you are pretty much locked to the Apple app store, so something a bit more open from Google would be a breath of fresh air.

Plus it would give the finger to Steve Jobs after some less then pleasant comments about Google at the Ipad unveiling Q and A.