Technology news, comment and analysis | theguardian.com

CES 2014 day one – in pictures

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:16:59 GMT

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is the stage for big personalities and little companies - and everything in between. With 3,200 exhibitors and more than ten times as many visitors, here's a peek at some of what's on

Video games and art: why does the media get it so wrong?

Keith Stuart — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 14:20:35 GMT

Another art critic has taken another sideways glance at video games and art; but the medium is strong enough to withstand these withering ovations

Keith Stuart

What does David Cameron's Great Firewall look like?

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:13:00 GMT

The PM panders to parents' fears, offers false hope, and imposes a regime of unaccountable censorship

Getting to say "I told you so" isn't actually as nice as you might expect. Back in November 2012, I predicted that the mandatory, opt-out porn-filters under discussion in the Lords would both underblock (letting things through that you wouldn't want your kids to see) and overblock (misclassifying non-pornographic sites as pornographic and blocking them). I thought it was a good argument, but the PM apparently doesn't read the Guardian (or doesn't care about reason when there are political points to be scored). Last summer, David Cameron and the DCMS mandated that ISPs would have to switch on their customers' content filters (to block everything from "extremism" to "esoteric content") by default, and only deactivate them if the customer rang up and demanded it.

Now the filters have been switched on and we see what the Great Firewall of Cameron looks like. TalkTalk, which started running its filter in May (voluntarily, without a goose from the PM) blocks rape-crisis centres; award-winning, kid-focused sex-ed sites; and sites for helping people with their pornography addictions (a own-goal noteworthy even in the ludicrous world of censorware cockups).

Predictably, the ISPs' spokespeople have said that it's all a matter of honest mistakes that will be addressed in due time.

No algorithm

But as I wrote around this time last year, there's no way to accurately classify the internet. There aren't enough prudes to sort the good from the bad. There is no algorithm that can accomplish this. Hell, there's not even a clear definition of what "adult content" is – let alone "extremism" or "esoteric content".

In the censorware world, lists of censored websites are closely guarded trade-secrets. This means that overblocking can only be addressed in the rare circumstance that a child encounters it, complains to her parents, who then get in touch with the ISP, which then convinces its supplier to unblock the site. It's possible that the people who operate inappropriately blocked sites could come forward to ask for redress, but unless those people are in the UK and using one of the censored ISPs, they may never even discover that their sites on the blacklist. After all, their would-be visitors can't even access their "contact us" page to warn them about the state of affairs.

Overblocking and underblocking are the normal state of affairs in the censorware world. Tomorrow's web will have more sites to overblock and more sites to underblock than today's. An error rate of even 1% in a world with hundreds of millions of legitimate websites means millions of misclassifications – always.

David Cameron's attempt to create a Made-in-Britain version of Iran's "Halal Internet" is the worst of both worlds for parents like me. Kids are prevented from seeing things that they need to access – sites about sexual health, for example – and I still have to monitor my daughter all the time when she uses the net (or teach her how to cope with seeing things no kid should see) because the filter won't stop her from accessing the bad stuff.

Bubble of false security

And for parents who don't understand that filters are bunkum, the situation is much worse. It's one thing to know that there are risks to your kid from the internet. But parents who rely on the filter are living in bubble of false security. There's nothing more deadly than a false sense of security: If you know your car is having brake problems, you can compensate by driving with extra care, increasing your following distance, and so on. If you falsely believe your brakes to be in good running order, you're liable to find out the hard way that they aren't (if you survive, you can thank Bruce Schneier for that apt and useful analogy).

For me, parenting in the internet age means sitting with my child while she's online and still small enough that I can perfectly regulate her network usage – not just to ensure that she doesn't happen on to the bad stuff, but also to instill in her the responsibility, sense and good habits that will help her to steer clear of the bad stuff when she gets a little older and I can no longer monitor all her online activity. It's hard. Parenting is hard. It's scary.

False hope for frightened parents

It's not evil to want to help parents with this hard job. But it's unforgivable to pander to their fears, offer false hope, and impose a regime of unaccountable censorship upon the nation's internet in order to score votes from frightened parents.

When David Cameron told the nation's ISPs to turn on the censorware, he had the DCMS order them to "continue to refine and improve their filters to ensure they do not – even unintentionally – filter out legitimate content." This is a nonsense. If DCMS wanted to attain this goal even partway, it would mandate that the publication of the list of blocked sites, open to scrutiny and debate (just as film- and game-ratings are), and publication of the criteria by which the list was formed.

That probably still wouldn't work very well, but it would at least show willing to prevent overblocking. To do any less is to tacitly admit that the whole thing is a publicity stunt from a government that is totally depraved in its indifference to the consequences of unaccountable censorship.

Cory Doctorow

CES reveals the near future's most incredible toys

Samuel Gibbs — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:03:35 GMT

From mini flying drones to jumping cars with electric skateboards in between, a new generation of toys will be on the wish lists next Christmas. By Samuel Gibbs in Las Vegas

Samuel Gibbs

Yahoo malware turned European computers into bitcoin slaves

Alex Hern — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 11:52:28 GMT

Search firm remains silent on how its ad servers infected thousands of European computers. By Alex Hern

Alex Hern

CES 2014: MakerBot's new digital store is the 'iTunes' of 3D printing

Samuel Gibbs — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 09:59:34 GMT

3D printing firm takes big step towards a content-lead future. By Samuel Gibbs

Samuel Gibbs

CES 2014: Why wearable technology is the new dress code

Samuel Gibbs, Charles Arthur — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 08:29:00 GMT

Other highlights of this year's International Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas include a fridge you can text

If you laid all the wristbands, smartwatches and head-mountable cameras at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) end to end, they would probably run the length of the Las Vegas strip, where the show is in full swing.

But what the firms showing off "wearable" technologies this year would dearly love to know is: will anyone buy them? Because if wearables – devices with computer chips that can monitor your heart rate, steps taken, and even location – don't take off, then the consumer electronics industry will have to fall back on its reliable sellers: big TVs, tablets and PCs.

Or it might just grab your attention with this year's other surprise: household appliances you can text – so you can ask your washing machine how it's getting on.

CES opened its doors on Tuesday to thousands of visitors hoping to see the future products that they will be using and, perhaps, wearing.

The huge Convention Centre is home to thousands of companies touting their wares – or, in many cases, wears. The biggest fad right now is for wearable devices that measure some sort of detail about you, and log it. Sony announced a "SmartBand" allied to a "LifeLog", which head of mobile sales Dennis van Schie explained would "capture more quantifiable information about your life, because you never do one activity in isolation".

Netatmo meanwhile offered "smart jewellery" which monitors your skin's ultraviolet exposure and sends it to a smartphone app. The Wellograph is a smartwatch with a heart monitor that also tracks your movement. And for the truly fitness-obsessed, Runphones has a sweatband which tracks your performance when running.

Also on show was Samsung's Galaxy Gear, a smartwatch released last September to general indifference. Pebble, which raised $10.2m to build a smartwatch in 2012 – and delivered it in 2013 – announced the Steel, a new version with a multicoloured screen and metal surround.

There's no sign yet though that anyone is actually buying them in significant numbers. "The market for smartwatches is getting crowded before there is even a real market of smartwatches," commented Ben Bajarin, analyst at Creative Strategies.

But Ben Wood of CCS Insight says this is a necessary evolution. More than $100m has been invested in wearables through crowdfunding sites, which he cites as evidence of their huge potential: "Technology companies are feeling their way in the dark, but we expect innovative features to appear first on wearable devices that will be integrated into smartphones and other consumer electronics devices."

He cautions though that "many wearable devices will have their five minutes of fame at shows like CES before disappearing into oblivion".

Certainly last year's $100 "smart fork" from Hapilabs, which promised to monitor how much you ate (but mystifyingly hasn't become commonplace), has been supplanted by this year's star – a Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush from Kolibree, which will tell your phone how "efficiently" you've been brushing your teeth, and for how long. "Personal health and wellbeing will be important factors in all wearable devices as consumers try to rationalise buying 'gadget bling' under the pretext of it improving their health and fitness," said Wood.

The other CES staple that could be laid along the length of the Las Vegas strip is TVs. In previous years, attenders have been bombarded by 3D TV, Google TV, and "smart" TV – none of which have grabbed the popular consciousness. This year it is the turn of 4K TV, which promises to offer four times the resolution of HDTV.

The problem now is finding content for such super-detailed screens. Netflix's boss, Reed Hastings, announced that series two of House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey, will be streamed in 4K – for those with a special version of the Netflix app, and a suitable TV. The World Cup final will also be broadcast in 4K, though it is unclear how many broadcasters will be able to transmit it.

Meanwhile two of the world's largest TV makers, the South Korean companies LG and Samsung, vied to be first to show off the biggest – and smallest – curved screens. Samsung flaunted an 85in LCD set which starts off flat but with the touch of a button curves in from the shorter sides.

But when Transformers director Michael Bay was brought on stage to enthuse about this real-life transformer, it turned instead into a scene from another of his films – Armageddon – as the teleprompter failed and Bay, unwilling to improvise, simply walked off.

Nor was the idea of a curving screen received with undiluted enthusiasm. "Like a lot of concept demos at CES, the bendable TV is more a novelty with little practical application," remarked David Katzmaier, who has reviewed TV sets for the website CNet since 2002. "The housing [of the device] is larger than a typical TV, and I can't begin to imagine how much it would cost." Samsung hasn't released pricing.

LG too offered a curved TV, prompting US head of new product development Tim Alessi to announce that "our curved screens, impossibly thin screens, are the future of televisions offering unrivalled immersive pictures."

One theme that keeps returning to CES, year after year, is the "connected home". The "internet fridge" made its regular appearance, this time from LG, whose US head of appliance brand marketing, David VanderWall, proclaimed: "You can text the fridge to find out what you need to buy" – though he skimmed past the detail of how your fridge will know what's inside it.

Washing machines too will answer to your texts, he explained: "For the first time you'll be able to text your washing machine 'What are you doing?' and it'll let you know how it's getting on." He explained: "You no longer need to learn machine commands. Just speak naturally and your oven will understand you. Simply text it to find out what you need for a recipe."

Will we have smart ovens by Christmas that will know how to cook turkey while we watch football on 4K TVs, monitoring our sofa habits with wristbands? At least two of them look unlikely. But CES is always about the promise – not necessarily the product.

Samuel Gibbs

Charles Arthur

Marissa Mayer aims to revive Yahoo with shift 'from complexity to clarity'

Samuel Gibbs — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 23:34:27 GMT

Yahoo's latest digital magazine and news digest products show a media-centric shift. By Samuel Gibbs in Las Vegas

Samuel Gibbs

Ministry of Defence funding research into online habits

Ben Quinn — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 22:53:34 GMT

PhD papers sponsored by military include studies of hacker culture, crowd behaviour and social networking sites

A branch of the Ministry of Defence is funding postgraduate research into the culture of computer hackers, crowd behaviour at music festivals and football matches, and the impact of Twitter, Facebook and online conspiracy theories in times of crisis.

The MoD's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) pays six-figure sums to support individual PhD students to help understand the rapidly evolving world of cyberspace and the way in which social media have become an integral part of daily life.

While some of the PhD projects in the £10m programme have conventional military applications – such as researching technology to support underwater drones, and the development of clothing with fully embedded electronics – £97,487 of funding for research at King's College London into "the rise of the digital insurgency" is typical of the new direction.

Background papers for the digital insurgency doctorate at King's College say that the research will target the so-called "hacktivist" group Anonymous. The project will involve the researcher aiming to interact with members of Anonymous, addressing "known unknowns" relating to the group, and understand its grievances and goals, why people are attracted to it and its internal politics.

Rather than just focusing on hacktivism, however, the DTSL appears to be taking an increasing interest in broader issues of social media and online behaviour too. In February, it will host an invitation-only conference focused on "social influence in the information age".

Other PhD projects funded include one at the University of Exeter, which receives £82,630 from the DSTL, entitled Collective Action in the Digital Age: Social identities and the influence of online and offline behaviour.

Picking out the role of Twitter, Facebook, Skype and mobile messaging, a contract for the project states: "The events of the Arab spring, the London student protests or the summer 2011 riots in English towns and cities show the importance of understanding synchronised collective actions driven by online interactions."

The project aims to "deliver new and innovative ways to understand and influence online behaviour".

Mark Levine, a professor of social psychology who is supervising the Exeter PhD, told the Guardian: "I think [the MoD] are interested in online influence. That is why they have put money into this kind of stuff. They want to know what influences people, when and how.

"They are interested in influences which might promote what, from their point of view, might be antisocial stuff that they might want to stop, but they are also interested in the kinds of things they can do to promote situations where groups themselves prevent things they are worried about online."

Levine, who has been a working with others to demonstrate how groups can reduce violence or promote pro-social behaviour, added that the idea behind the project was to test, in an online environment, the psychological theories about why people behave collectively in the way they do offline, such as in football crowds.

The MoD initiated a national PhD sponsorship scheme in 2011, with the intention that successful bidders for the support would also spend time at the DSTL, "subject to certain caveats", according to the agency. Researchers in a wide range of disciplines have been provided with hundreds of thousands of pounds of funding across a range of applications.

How technology can be used to wield influence is also the focus of a £137,433 PhD programme at Queen Mary, University of London, called "Analysing and influencing crowd behaviours through arrays of ad-hoc mobile sensors". Mobile sensors typically include the digital compasses that are used in modern mobile phones for mapping, but which can also be used to identify the location and activities of their owner.

The contract states: "The PhD student will gather large-scale datasets from a variety of different mass crowd events, such as music festivals, sporting events, etc."

It adds that the research will aim to "provide essential tools for event planners and event monitors for wide ranges of events, planned (festivals, football matches, political rallies) or ad hoc (riots, protests)."

Techniques to be explored will include "targeting influential individuals" and crowdsourcing.

Elsewhere, £139,649 is being channelled to another Queen Mary PhD called "Cross-cultural attitudes and the shaping of online behaviour in crisis situations". It aims to examine trends and patterns relating to the flow of information on social media during events such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Course organisers say it will "look at how news production is mediated by first-hand accounts through social media platforms such as Twitter and, secondly, how crisis situations foster the setting-up of dedicated platforms for communion and their function in mediating trauma as well as in endorsing or rejecting dominant commentaries (including conspiracy theories and propaganda) in mainstream media".

A Queen Mary spokesperson said that as part of the research, small pilot studies had been conducted at a music festival and at internal gatherings, but seeking ethical approval and participant recruitment would begin for large-scale events in 2014. The spokesperson said that the research would examine the impact of incorrect information in transport and disaster situations as well as music festivals. "All research on human subjects at Queen Mary is subject to ethical review. Furthermore all data was gathered and will be gathered with the informed consent of the participants."

The spokesperson added: "For festivals, we are looking at gathering information in order to provide participants with interesting topographical information such as 'fun' or crowdedness. This research will collect data that will provide essential information on crowd dynamics of such events."

Other PhDs benefiting from military financial aid include: "Exploring identity within modern technology – the influence of social and ethnical concerns on models of distributed identity" (£107,012, the University of Southampton); "Achieving legitimacy in a new media ecology" (£85,588, University of Glasgow); "Data mining to understand international dimensions to online identity – a classification of 2+billion names and their linkage to virtual identities and social network traffic" (University College London £106,160); and "Social movement 2.0: collective identity in the era of online participatory media" (Kings College London, £97,486).Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said: "Clearly there is a range of things which the security services already do.

"There is often a strong case for moves in this direction to be tempered by some very hard thinking about the ethics of these questions and the risk of legitimate policing slipping, potentially, into being attempts to control and influence.

"Obviously, the nature and type of the mass surveillance which we now know that the NSA and GCHQ engaged in was simply not legitimate.

"But the fact is that digital information will increase. What has to also increase alongside it is transparency and oversight. We have not really had that debate and the fact that we should be taking note and looking at the potential use of research such as this is entirely appropriate."

Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, said: "People will rightly want to know why the Ministry of Defence is investing in research that clearly carries significant privacy implications. These areas of research also highlight how badly in need of reform the wider legal framework governing surveillance activities is, particularly given the apparent interest in using social networks and internet-connected sensors to track and analyse people.

"The department needs to be much more transparent about why it is funding so much of this research if the public are to have confidence that it does not threaten our civil liberties and that the military's surveillance capabilities are not to be turned on British citizens."

An MoD spokesperson said: "Cyber-security is an issue of growing importance. As routine cyber-security measures (patching, anti-virus) become ubiquitous, socially engineered attacks are a growing threat.

"DSTL seeks to understand these threats and the vulnerabilities they exploit in order to provide effective advice and support to the MoD and wider government on defending against these threats."

The spokesperson added that the MoD was also "trying to understand the world in which we live and anticipate the world in which we will live" and that to do so "it now needs to incorporate an understanding of events in cyberspace and how they might unfold".

Ben Quinn

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's Jelly app wobbles onto iPhone and Android

Stuart Dredge — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 19:33:44 GMT

Social Q&A app aims to 'search the group mind of your social networks'. But who will use it? By Stuart Dredge

Stuart Dredge

CES 2014: documenting the conference's bizarre tech offerings

Rory Carroll, Samuel Gibbs — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 19:30:29 GMT

Join us as we look at the most absurd offerings from the techie wonderland that is CES

Rory Carroll

Samuel Gibbs

The biggest celebrity tech endorse-o-fails

Fredrick McConnell — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 18:09:05 GMT

Director Michael Bay wasn't the only celebrity to come a cropper as part of a tech marketing campaign. He joins Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire and Lily Allen in the hall of shame. By Fredrick McConnell

Fredrick McConnell

Alien: Isolation - game trailer video

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 16:52:26 GMT

Sega has announced a new survival horror adventure based around sci-fi classic, Alien, set 15 years after Ridley Scott's ground-breaking movie

China lifts 13-year ban on video games and consoles

Fredrick McConnell — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 15:01:26 GMT

The government in Shanghai says it will allow video game trade in the region in order to 'explore reform'. By Fredrick McConnell

Fredrick McConnell

Apple reveals iPhone and iPad owners spent $10bn on apps in 2013

Stuart Dredge — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 14:50:44 GMT

iPhone and iPad owners spent more than $1bn on nearly 3bn apps in December alone, despite slowdown reports. By Stuart Dredge

Stuart Dredge

Snapchat founder's Zuckerberg snub row may linger more than 10 seconds

Stuart Dredge — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 14:10:23 GMT

Snapchat v Facebook 'lame and played out' according to Evan Spiegel, but questions about his leadership remain. By Stuart Dredge

Stuart Dredge

Internet fridges: the zombie idea that will never, ever happen

Charles Arthur — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:09:37 GMT

At the Consumer Electronics Show, LG showed off its 'internet fridge' - the latest in 15 years of an appliance that can't deliver (updated)

"This has got to be the coolest gadget yet for the kitchen: a fridge freezer that is hooked up to the internet."

Breathless words from the frontier of technology – in February 1999. For that's when that little kernel of text was published on the BBC, introducing "Screenfridge", which would – it promised – let you send and receive email, watch TV, pay bills and handle personal banking.

And, as it noted, "you can also keep food in it".

This peculiar dream of the internet fridge just won't die. Korea's LG revived this technology zombie once more this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, promising us that you'll be able to text your fridge and "ask it whether it has milk or butter".

Reality check: no, you won't. Well, you might be able to text it, but you shouldn't rely on the answer.

Why not? Because people don't use fridges in that way. I have an electronics clippings file bulging with promises made year after year that this time, the internet fridge is "finally here". In 2009 Samsung offered a fridge with a detachable LCD screen with a message board for "smart food management". Now? No sign of it. In 2010 LG suggested you'd want a fridge with internet access so you could stay tuned to the internet (huh?) while you got a drink. The product never appeared. In 2011 Samsung (again) offered a new internet fridge, the Futuristic RF4289 (catchy name, eh?) with an 8in touch screen – a snip at $3,500 (£2,131).

Price aside, the fact is that making a fridge that knows what's inside it, and whether those contents are close to expiry or risk making you expire, cannot be done. Here's why.

For your fridge to know what's inside it, either you have to scan the packaging every time you take something in or out (else your fridge will think it contains 14,000 milk cartons), or the food inside the fridge has to be able to "tell" the fridge about itself.

The scanning thing is a non-starter. You'll inevitably forget, and then you'll have to clear the fridge and put everything back, laboriously scanning each time. Also, barcodes don't contain information about expiry dates, so you'd have to enter those by hand. Such fun!

The alternative quickly offered by geeks is that the packaging for those items could contain RFID chips, like those embedded in your passport, which would tell the fridge about themselves. This is theoretically feasible. But theory is a long way from reality, and even further from practice.

RFID needs no battery – it's like a tuning fork which is pinged by a radio signal from the fridge) – but the information has to be programmed in. It's widely used in supermarket supply chains for pallets of goods – but hardly at all for individual items.

The problem here is that you'd struggle to persuade food packagers to include RFID chips with the expiry date of that soft cheese you just put in the fridge. It's fiddly, easy to get wrong, and adds time and expense.

This is the heart of the problem: until most people have an RFID-enabled internet fridge, it won't be worth the expense of embedding RFID chips in perishables such as yoghurt, milk or cheese packaging. But until you have RFID chips embedded in your packaging, you won't be able to persuade people to buy RFID-enabled internet fridges.

So forget the internet fridge. Anyone who offers it is, as they have been for the past 15 years, just trying to get noticed. But it will never, ever arrive. Want to know what's in your fridge? Look at your shopping list – or even better, open the door and look inside. It's a low-tech method, but has a 100% guaranteed success rate.

Update: a few people have suggested that "all you need" is to put a camera inside the fridge, and connect that to the internet. Nice try, but this fails for the following reasons:

1) it's true what they tell you: the light inside the fridge really does turn off when you close the door. So your camera would take a picture of darkness. (You can confirm this by setting your smartphone to record video, putting it inside the fridge, and closing the door. You're welcome.)

2) "Infrared camera?" Those work on heat. Fridges are - is this news? - cold. Your IR camera would show darkness.

3) "Night vision camera?" Those work on photon amplification, amping up the light from ambient sources such as the stars. Inside your fridge, it's dark. No light sources. Another black picture.

4) [slightly desperate now] "A light source inside the fridge?" Congratulations - there is one already (it comes on when you open the door). However, your camera will just take a picture of what it sees. That's probably the top shelf. What's on the other shelves?

5) [even more desperate] "Cameras on every shelf, which you can turn on remotely." Then you'll know what's in the fridge (having bumped up its cost, and introduced multiple holes in the lining which will compromise its efficiency at refrigeration). How are you going to see what's inside opaque containers - as milk and juice containers often are?

6) [clutching at straws] "Weight pads as well as cameras." Now your fridge is getting really expensive, and complicated (not to mention obsessive-compulsive), and not necessarily useful: what does it mean if the pad where the milk should sit is showing 0? Does that mean you've got no milk, or it's on the wrong pad?

Admit it, folks - the simplest way to know what's inside your fridge is to look in it. It's quick, free, and mostly accurate.

Of course, none of this will stop more exhibitors from showing off the internet fridge again in a couple of years. Meanwhile, we're grateful to #dfic1999 for this splendid Tumblr of internet fridges - all, of course, unrealised.

Charles Arthur

CES 2014: LG unveils 'talking' washing machines

Samuel Gibbs — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 12:47:00 GMT

Appliances respond to texts or human voice with messages such as: 'I'm just finishing the spin cycle, I won't be long'

LG has unveiled a range of "talking" home appliances that tell owners how many beers are left in the fridge or how long it is until the spin cycle ends in the washing machine.

David VanderWaal, the firm's head of appliance brand marketing in the US, presented products that respond to text message or human voice at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

"You no longer need to learn machine commands," he said. "Just speak naturally and your oven will understand you."

By texting "what are you up to?" to the washing machine, for example, users can get a reply such as: "I'm just finishing the spin cycle, I won't be long."

LG's HomeChat system connects to LG smartphones, tablets and TVs and is the latest technology aimed at connecting electronics into one data-sharing network known as "the internet of things".

The concept of appliances that "talk" to the consumer has been around since Kevin Ashton, a British technology pioneer, used radio frequency tags, or RFID,in 1997. RFID chips can be fitted in almost any remote device, from pet collars to Oyster cards, to wirelessly share data.

Meanwhile, Samsung suggested that its Smart Home initiative could be used to turn off the lights when leaving a room, for instance, or allow people to keep an eye on their properties when they are away by streaming video from a camera built into their televisions.

The biggest issue facing smart home developments is interoperability between brands, something Lowe's – a DIY and home superstore chain in the US – is attempting to solve with its Iris system.

Developed in conjunction with the British firm AlertMe, Iris allows an user to control any number of devices. Lowe's wants any manufacturer that aims to sell smart appliances through its stores to make them compatible with Iris.

One question remains though: do people really want to text their fridges?

Samuel Gibbs

CES 2014: the best wearable smartwatches and fitness gadgets

Samuel Gibbs — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 11:04:05 GMT

The world's biggest gadget show has unveiled a connected toothbrush, heart-monitoring headphones and a light that will improve your sleep. By Samuel Gibbs in Las Vegas

Samuel Gibbs

Bitcoin me: How to make your own digital currency

Alex Hern — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 10:28:37 GMT

What can making your own currency teach you about the world of bitcoin? By Alex Hern

Alex Hern

Samsung pays out $1bn in bonuses to mark chairman Lee Kun-hee's 20 years

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 09:56:21 GMT

World's largest smartphone maker announces fourth-quarter profits down 6% on the year to £4.7bn

Samsung Electronics earned less than even the most conservative analyst forecast in October-December after handing out an estimated $1bn (£610m) in bonuses to mark 20 years since its chairman set it on the road to becoming a global behemoth.

The world's largest smartphone maker has splashed out on its employees from a cash pile of around $50bn just two months after increasing its dividend yield far less than many investors had expected.

Fourth-quarter operating profit was likely 8.3 trillion won (£4.7bn), down 6% on the year and 18% from a record third quarter, Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday before a final reading on 24 January.

The figure was pulled down by bonuses, which analysts put at ₩300-700bn, given to employees to commemorate chairman Lee Kun-hee's "new management" strategy.

The profit would be less than the most bearish forecast among 23 analysts polled by Reuters of ₩8.8tn, and would be the lowest since the ₩8.1tn of July-September 2012.

Samsung shares traded unchanged at ₩1.307m after the announcement, versus a 0.3% gain in the wider market.

"Samsung's special incentive payments to employees including domestic and overseas units appear to have been much larger than the market expected; marketing costs of its mobile business might have also been larger," said Shinhan Investment analyst Kim Young-chan.

Lee took over Samsung in 1987 from his father, who founded the group. In 1993, Lee ordered lieutenants to "change everything except your wife and children" to transform Samsung Electronics from a mid-tier television manufacturer into a global technology leader.

It has since overtaken Sony in TVs, Nokia in mobile phones and Apple in smartphones.

Lee, who turns 72 this week, set the agenda for the future in his New Year speech by stressing the need to drop a hardware-centric culture and adopt new ways of thinking to drive innovation.

The company usually pays bonuses up to 100% of basic monthly salary to employees in units which achieve targets, and up to 50% of annual salary by returning 20% of profits that exceed targets. Korean companies often pay low salaries and top up with bonuses.

Fourth-quarter earnings were also likely affected by Samsung's flagship Galaxy S and Note smartphones losing out somewhat to Apple in the US and Japan during the year-end holiday season.

It estimated fourth-quarter sales of ₩59tn, versus the ₩61tn Thomson Reuters' Starmine SmartEstimate of 23 analysts, which gives greater weighting to the more accurate analysts.

Samsung is bracing itself for its toughest year at its mobile devices division since it started making smartphones in 2007, with analyst estimates ranging from low single-digit profit growth to mild contraction after growing eight times over in past five years.

The division, which earns two thirds of overall operating profit, will come under pressure when Apple makes its phones available from 17 January via China Mobile, through which Samsung has been selling smartphones for around seven years.

Apple is widely expected to sell smartphones with larger screens in autumn when it traditionally announces products, neutralising a selling point that Samsung has enjoyed since introducing its Galaxy Note in late 2011.

"Even taking into account one-off costs, the [fourth-quarter] profit is lower than expected. Samsung has not provided details, but smartphone profit may have fared worse than expected, given increased marketing expenses," said IBK Investment and Securities analyst Lee Seung-woo.

Weak smartphone sales would translate into weaker earnings at Samsung's components businesses, particularly its display unit which counts Samsung's mobile and TV arms as its biggest customers.

Samsung shares have been pummelled in recent weeks by 22 analysts downgrading fourth-quarter earnings estimates over the last 30 days.

The shares, worth $190bn, fell 10% over the last fortnight to a four-month low last week, wiping off market value to the tune of $19bn – equal to the total value of Sony's shares.

The won's rise to a five-year high against the US dollar has also been prompting investors to sell, as a strong won reduces the value of Samsung's repatriated earnings.

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