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Apple new CEO Tim Cook has been  given a pay package worth £240 million ($378 million) in 2011, most of which came in shares payable in the coming years.Apple’s board granted Mr Cook 1 million restricted stock units, worth $376m, to signal its confidence in him when he took over from Steve Jobs in August.

His salary and performance bonus, about £540,000 ($900,000) each, made up the rest, a company filing showed.

Mr Jobs, who died in October, owned 5.5 million Apple shares.

He famously received a salary of only $1 a year.

Mr Cook will receive half of the shares in 2016 and half in 2021.

Analysts expect the Apple chief to have been the highest paid chief executive in the US in 2011.

The best paid boss in 2010 was Viacom head Philippe Dauman, with an £54.5 million ($84.5 million) haul based on a new contract that granted him shares and stock options.

Apple reported record breaking profits for the three months to 31 December 2011 of £8.36 billion ($13.06 billion)- more than doubling  up 118% from the same period in 2010.The company also sold 37 million iPhones- more than twice as many as they sold in the last quarter of 2010.

“Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline,” said chief executive Tim Cook.

The firm is expected to release its iPad 3 in March this year.

“We are very happy to have generated over $17.5bn in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.

“Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, we expect revenue of about £20.96 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about £5.48 ($8.50).”

Apple saw strong sales for both its iPads and its Mac range of computers, rising 111% and 26% respectively compared to the same period in 2010.

Wikipedia has taken its English language site offline as part of protests against proposed anti piracy censorship laws in the US.Anyone attempting to access the site just sees a black screen and a political statement: “Imagine a world without free knowledge.”

Wikipedia, which attracts millions of hits every day, is opposed to the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) being debated by Congress.

The legislation would allow the Justice Department and content owners to seek court orders requiring search engines to block results associated with piracy.

The site’s founder, Jimmy Wales, told the BBC: “Proponents of Sopa have characterised the opposition as being people who want to enable piracy or defend piracy”.

“But that’s not really the point. The point is the bill is so over broad and so badly written that it’s going to impact all kinds of things that, you know, don’t have anything to do with stopping piracy.”

The message replacing the normal Wikipedia front page on the internet says: “For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopaedia in human history. Right now, the US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.”

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales: ”These bills are very badly written”

Even Google.com joined the protest, blacking out its logo and linking to an online petition urging Congress to not censor the web.

Sopa’s supporters in the House of Representatives say the legislation is designed to stop revenue flowing to “rogue websites”. A similar bill, Pipa, is making its way through the US Senate.

A sign of how bad this legislation may be is that even the arch hacker Murdoch- whose media organisation has been likened to the mafia for it’s “industrial illegal activities” aka phone and email hacking- supports these bills.

On Saturday the White House issued a statement that appeared to side with critics of the legislation.

It said: “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet.”

Despite the hint of a presidential veto, Wikipedia said that the English site’s administrators had decided to stage its first ever public protest because the bills “would be devastating to the free and open web”.

It added: “We don’t think Sopa is going away, and Pipa is still quite active. Moreover, Sopa and Pipa are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms.”

It is not just humans that are growing in size- web pages are getting bigger too.

The average web page is now about 965 kilobytes in size- reveals a study of top sites by the HTTP Archive trends.

The figure is 33% up on the same period in 2010 when the average webpage was even then a not so slim 726 kilobytes.

Keeping web pages small is vitaly important as not only are an increasing number of people browsing with smartphones, but also because Google use download times as a key search ranking determinant.

Analysis suggests the bloat is down to user demands for more interactivity, as well as the tools used to watch what happens when people visit a site.

To gather its figures, the HTTP Archive run a series of tests every month on the web’s top 1,000 sites.

These showed that average webpage sizes were trending steadily upward throughout 2011 and jumped sharply in October. Big pages generally take longer to load, which can mean visitors quit if a page takes too long to appear.

The metrics the HTTP Archive gathered suggest some causes for the growth. Images are a big proportion of the average webpage, and the higher resolutions people expect have led these to grow.

However, the statistics reveal that the category showing the biggest growth is that for Javascript.

This scripting language is widely used to make webpages more interactive and responsive.

The growth in the amount of Javascript on webpages may be down to the growing use of HTML5.

This is the latest version of the formatting language that defines how web pages should be written.

Online banking at Lloyds Bank is the latest compnay to have suffered problems with their online systems.Some Lloyds TSB customers suffered problems getting into the online banking system on Thursday morning.

The bank’s customer services team has been apologising to customers who have complained about a shutdown in the system.

However, they said that the system should now be working as normal.

The glitch comes in the same week as computer problems affected customers with accounts at the Post Office who visited branches.

Last month, maintenance work affected services for customers of RBS and NatWest – the day after HSBC customers faced a shutdown in online services.

A spokeswoman for Lloyds claimed that the glitch affected the online banking system for an hour.

The source code behind the mobile operating system WebOS, is being given to open source software developers by Hewlett Packard.The company acquired the software when it bought the smartphone maker Palm for £767 million ($1.2 billion) last year.

HP used the code to power its short-lived range Touchpad tablet computers before it abandoned the product line.

The firm said it would continue investing in the project to help third parties add enhancements.

“By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices,” said the firm’s president and chief executive, Meg Whitman.

A statement from the company said it would make the underlying code behind WebOS available under an open source licence. It said third-party developers, partners and HP’s own engineers could then “deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace”.

The firm added that it intended to be “an active participant and investor in the project”.

Analysts said the decision secured the platform’s future, at least in the short to medium term.

Chip maker Intel has said it will miss it’s sales forecasts because of a shortage of hard disk drives.Intel, the world’s largest maker of microprocessors, now expects to make revenues in the fourth quarter of £8.6 billion to £9 billion ($13.4 billion to $14 billion).

Intel shares fell more than 4% on news of the sales reductions.

Floods in Thailand, where several computer manufacturers have plants, have seriously disrupted production.

Intel’s statement said: “The worldwide PC supply chain is reducing inventories and microprocessor purchases as a result of hard disk drive supply shortages.

“The company expects hard disk drive supply shortages to continue into the first quarter, followed by a rebuilding of microprocessor inventories as supplies of hard disk drives recover during the first half of 2012.”

Tom Kilroy, senior vice president at Intel, told a news conference: “In the last two weeks, as the supply became more apparent, we saw a substantial change in our order rate.

“Most of our customers are concerned the shortage will continue – especially through the early part of the first quarter,” he said.

Analysts were not surprised that Intel cut its forecast, as recent news from the industry generally had prompted a lowering of expectations.

Shares of smartphone maker HTC have fallen by 7%, the maximum allowed in one day, after the company cut its growth forecast.Taiwan-based HTC said on Wednesday that it expected revenues for the final three months of 2011 to be little changed from a year earlier.

The firm had earlier forecast growth of 20% to 30%.

HTC, the world’s fourth-biggest smartphone brand, blamed increased competition and weakening demand.

Analysts and the markets were surprised by the statement filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

In October, the company had warned that fourth quarter revenue was slowing, predicting 125bn to 135bn New Taiwan dollars (£2.6 billion- £2.9 billion), compared with T$135.8bn (32.81 billion) in the previous three months.

Although HTC did not give a specific forecast for Wednesday’s further downward revision, it said it predicted no growth compared to the same period last year. HTC’s revenue in the last three months of 2010 was £2.166 billion.

Analysts said the grim outlook could be blamed on lack of new products to compete with an expansion in Apple’s distribution channels in the US.

However, the company said it expected a pick up in revenue in the first half of 2012.

Hewlett-Packard has unveiled a 91% fall in fourth quarter profits after announcing a £2.1 billion ($3.3 billion)  charge to close down its WebOS business.HP reported a profit of £125 million ($200 million) on total sales of £20. 06 billion ($32.1 billion) for the quarter ending 31 October.

This compares to a profit of £1.56 billion ($2.5 billion)  on revenue of £20.81 billion ($33.3 billion) over the same period last year.

The figures are the first since new chief executive Meg Whitman took over.

Despite the slide in profits, revenue rose 1% – analysts had predicted revenue of £20.03 billion.

Ms Whitman took over the firm after her predecessor Leo Apotheker was fired in September.

He had embarked on a series of widely criticised moves to increase HP’s focus on commercial computing hardware and software.

These included cancelling HP’s plans to compete in the tablet and smartphone market with gadgets based on WebOS software that HP acquired when it bought Palm last year – resulting in the £2.06 billion loss which was the biggest contributor to its steep profits fall.

He was also criticised for plans to spin off the firm’s PC division – a decision Ms Whitman reversed on her arrival.

Mr Apotheker also bid £7.8 billion for Autonomy, a software firm based in Cambridge, which analysts felt overvalued the firm by as much as £6 billion.

However, Ms Whitman confirmed the deal would go ahead.

Dell has warned its revenues could be hit by a worldwide shortage of hard drives caused by the flooding in Thailand.
Thailand is a production hub for many global firms like Apple and Toyota, and severe flooding has hurt a wide range of industries.

Dell is the world’s third largest personal computer maker.

The earnings warning came as Dell announced revenues of £9.7 billion ($15.4 billion) and net profits of £564 million ($893 million)  for the third quarter of 2011.

Shares in Dell fell by 2% in after hours trading in New York, after the warning and after analysts said revenues had slightly missed expectations.

Brian Gladden, Dell’s chief financial officer, told Reuters that the Thai floods may mean the company has to give priority to “higher-end customers and products”.

He also warned that the company may have to raise computer prices after the flooding forced the closure of factories and pushed up the global cost of hard drives.

In recent years Dell has focused more on corporate needs and less on the home consumer, which is reflected in its latest results.

Its earnings from large corporations rose by 4% to £2.81 billion compared to the same period last year, and revenue from consumers dropped by 6% to £1.75 billion.