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The rapid rise in shopping online – and the use of electronic media – has prompted a major review of contract law in Scotland.The Scottish Law Commission said the law must be updated to take account of modern technology and ensure consumers and businesses are fully protected.

The current law is based on traditional oral and paper contracts.

But the commission has asked how they can be formed online, and whether electronic signatures are valid.

It has launched a discussion paper to discover if the law should be updated.

Few people realise they are entering into contracts every day, whether they are buying a bus ticket or a loaf of bread.

But this review has been prompted by the rapid growth of electronic contracts, for example downloading a ringtone or music or purchasing books or clothes from an online retailer.

The commission said that in most cases they work perfectly but said it was unclear whether electronic transactions carried the same weight of legal protection as written contracts for a house purchase or agreement to build a new hospital.

Because of the rapid rise in the use and importance of electronic media, it said answers were needed urgently to questions such as how a contract was formed in the electronic age and what role electronic signatures play.

It has asked: “Do the rules which were designed for oral and paper contracts still work for e-contracts?”

The lead commissioner, Prof Hector MacQueen, said: “With the rise in new technology it is high time that our law on how contracts are formed is reviewed and updated.

“Our proposals would lead to a clear and modern law in line with developments in technology and its usage.

“We think that the innovations would be particularly attractive for commercial parties, for whom the proposals offer world-class levels of certainty and convenience.”

Responses to the discussion document should be received by 29 June.

Tablet computers are being put in the basket of goods used to calculate the UK’s rate of inflation.Items dropped from the basket include the cost of developing colour film.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) updates the basket each year so the contents accurately reflect current trends in spending.

The basket contains 700 items, with 180,000 individual prices collected each month.

“Tablets have been added as they represent a significant and growing market,” the ONS said.

“However, charges for developing and printing colour film are being removed as the popularity of digital cameras means fewer and fewer people are using analogue cameras,” the ONS added.

The basket of goods is not changed just because spending on individual items has fallen or risen. Changes are made to broaden or widen the coverage of a particular group of items.

So pineapples are in this year, to give more varied coverage of volatile price movements for fruit and vegetables.

Other categories have been changed simply to make them more representative.

Hot oat cereals are in to broaden the category of bread and cereals; continental soft cheese has been added to the milk, cheese and eggs category; and cans of stout have been added to widen the range of beers in the basket.

In addition, the costs of vehicle excise duty, TV licences and trade union and professional subscriptions, which are used to work out the RPI, will now also be used to calculate the CPI, in line with European statistical standards.

After 244 years the reference book firm Encyclopaedia Britannica has decided to stop publishing its famous and weighty 32 volume print edition.It will now focus on digital expansion amid rising competition from websites such as Wikipedia.

The firm, which used to sell its encyclopaedias door-to-door, now generates almost 85% its revenue from online sales.

It recently launched a digital version of its encyclopaedias for tablet PCs.

“The sales of printed encyclopaedias have been negligible for several years,” said Jorge Cauz president of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Companies across the globe have been trying to boost their online presence in a bid to cash in on the fast-growing market.

Various newspapers, magazines and even book publishers have been coming up with online versions of their products as an increasing number of readers access information on high-tech gadgets such as tablet PCs and smartphones.

Britannica said while its decision to focus on online editions was influenced by the shift in consumer pattern, the ability to update content at a short notice also played a big role.

“A printed encyclopaedia is obsolete the minute that you print it,” Mr Cauz said.  “Whereas our online edition is updated continuously.”

At the same time, frequent users of the encyclopaedia said they preferred using the online version more than the print one.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, the company, has largely moved away from its encyclopedia work focusing most of its energies in recent years on educational software.

Apple has unveiled a new iPad with a high definition screen.It said the resolution of the display was 2,048 by 1,536 pixels. The tablet is also powered by a new A5X chip with improved graphics performance.

Apple dominates the market but should face a fresh challenge later this year when tablets running the full Windows 8 system are expected to go on sale.

The new iPad – which is simply called by that name – also features a 5-megapixel camera sensor. It will be able to run on 4G LTE networks where the service is available and can act as a wi-fi hotspot for other devices if carriers allow the function.

It is 9.4mm deep, slightly thicker than the 8.8mm profile of the iPad 2. The basic 16GB model with only wi-fi will cost £399 and the top of the range 64GB model with wi-fi and 4G will cost £659.

It is due to go on sale on 16 March in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, France, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and Japan.

The previous model will stay on sale at a reduced price, starting at £329. Mr Schiller said that would make it more affordable for schools to buy the machine.

The firm also announced an upgraded TV box which can now handle 1080p video

TripAdvisor has been ordered to rewrite some of its marketing claims by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority.The ruling follows complaints by hotels that the site had said that its holiday reviews could be “trusted”.

The ASA said it was concerned that consumers might be fooled by fraudulent posts since the entries could be made “without any form of verification”.

TripAdvisor described the ruling as a “highly technical view” of “copy that was used in a limited capacity”.

However, the watchdog said that the ruling served as a warning to all UK-focused sites with user-generated material.

The ASA said that the US based firm’s site originally carried statements saying that it contained “reviews that you can trust” and that it had “more than 50 million honest travel reviews”.

It said that two hotels and the online reputation firm Kwikchex, which represented others, had complained that the claims were misleading since they could not be substantiated.

The advertising body said it acknowledged that reviewers were asked to sign a declaration that their reviews were real and that they had no incentive or competitive interest with the places commented on.

It also recognised that the site said that it used “advanced and highly effective fraud systems” to identify and remove fake content.

However, the ASA said it was still possible that “non-genuine” reviews could appear on the site undetected and that users might not be able to spot them.

It warned that this was particularly a problem in cases where an establishment only had a small number of reviews. It added that offering hoteliers a right to reply did not fully address the problem.

The ASA ordered the site to avoid running adverts in the same form again and said it must not claim or imply that all its reviews were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted.

The ASA’s ruling was based on a survey of the site carried out in July 2011 when it was still owned by the travel booking service Expedia.

It has since been spun off as a separate entity. The current management downplayed the risk of customers being misled.

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.

China has more than 513 million internet users, and nearly half of them are using microblogs – mostly Chinese microblogging tools collectively called Weibo.The numbers from China Network Information Center’s report sound staggering, but China’s Internet penetration rate is actually only 38.3%.

The country added around 55.8 million new internet users in 2011, which represents a 4% annual growth — lower than the average annual growth rate of 6% between 2006 and 2010.

Interestingly enough, the slowdown was to be expected, as most people with a high school diploma (90.9%) and nearly all with a college education (96.1%) are already online.

The rest simply haven’t got the funds or the education level to use the web.

Microblogging might be the answer for further web usage growth, as it has become an extremely important way of accessing the web in China.

The number of microbloggers increased by 296% year-on-year to 250 million in Dec. 2011.

For comparison, Twitter reported 100 million active users and 200 million registered users in Sept. 2011.

Unfortunately for the largest microblogging service outside of Asia, grabbing a chunk of the vast Chinese market is, for now, an impossible task.

“We would love to have a strong Twitter in China, but we need to be allowed to do that,” said Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey at the AsiaD conference held in Hong Kong last year.

Weibo services, the largest of which is Sina Weibo, can compete anywhere they want. Sina Weibo is currently working on an international version; it’ll be interesting to see what it can do on the Western markets.

From: http://mashable.com/china-500-million-web-users/

Google is profiting from ads for illegal products generated by its pay per click advertising system.The ads include unofficial London 2012 Olympics ticket resellers, as well as cannabis and fake ID card sellers.

Google has since taken down links to illegal Olympic ticket resellers following requests from the police.

But the search engine confirms that the company keeps any money it might make from companies advertising illegal services before such adverts are removed.

Selling tickets on the open market without permission from the Olympic authorities is a criminal offence in the UK under the London Olympic and Paralympic Games Act 2006.

The maximum penalty fine for reselling Olympic tickets without authorisation from the Olympic authorities was raised last year from £5,000 to £20,000.

Despite this, Google has placed adverts for unofficial ticket resellers which are breaking the law by selling London 2012 tickets to customers in the UK.

But research found other sponsored Google adverts – for online cannabis sellers, fake ID cards, and fake UK passports.

Google’s Pay Per Click AdWords advertising system is partly automated and this helps make the initial selection of the advertisements which appear at the top of its search results.

Google’s AdWords does filter key words that can help sift out adverts which might be offering unlawful services.

If a filter flags an advert, then Google will run a manual assessment – a human takes a look – and if it breaks Google’s policy, the advert will be taken down.

In a statement, Google said: “We have a set of policies covering which ads can and cannot show on Google. These policies and guidelines are enforced by both automated systems and human beings.

“When we are informed of ads which break our policies, we investigate and remove them if appropriate. Our aim is to create a simple and efficient way for legitimate businesses to promote and sell their goods and services whilst protecting them and consumers from illicit activity.”

However, dubious online retailers are still finding their way to the top of the advert results and can do so by paying a higher cost per click than other advertisers.

Google says the quality of ads also plays a role in the ranking advertisers achieve, as well as the price the advertiser is willing to pay.

Google’s sponsored links have proved costly in the past and, in August, Google agreed to forfeit £324 million ($500 million) for publishing online adverts from Canadian pharmacies selling illegal drugs to US customers.

Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM) has said its co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have stepped down from control of the company.Mr Lazaridis, who founded RIM in 1984, will become vice chairman. Mr Balsillie will continue to sit on the board but not have any operational role.

Investors have called for a strategy change as the company struggles to compete with Apple and Google.

The departure of RIM’s co-chief executives was long overdue. Not even troubled computer giant Hewlett-Packard – which lost two CEOs in less than a year – was as bad a technology car crash as Research In Motion.

Here was a company that defined what smartphones were all about; that had cornered the important corporate market; that had made serious inroads into the youth market with cheap entry-level smartphones. And then threw it all away in an orgy of poor executive decisions, lacklustre innovation, unkept promises in delivering new product and – the greatest sin of all – a total lack of understanding that its part of the tech industry was undergoing a fundamental shift.

First Apple, then Google managed to eat the Blackberry pie, and RIM did nothing to stop them. The company’s new boss will have to work very hard to keep RIM in the smartphone game.

Mr Lazaridis, speaking after the announcement, said he recognized things needed to change at the company.

“There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership,” he said at a press conference at RIM’s headquarters in Waterloo, Canada.

“Jim and I went to the board and told them that we thought that time was now.”

Mr Heins started at RIM in 2007, having previously worked at Siemens Communications. He became the chief operating officer in August 2011, according to the company.

Mr Heins said: “As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains. We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result.”

Barbara Stymiest, who has been on the board of RIM since 2007, has been made the new chairman, a post that Mr Balsillie and Mr Lazaridis also shared.

It had its worst service outage in 2011 and has been losing market share to its competitors in the smartphone markets.

Billions of dollars have been wiped from its market value as shares have tumbled 75% over the past 11 months and sales have dropped.

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.