British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has an account on Twitter, the social networking and microblogging site, according to a report from The Guardian. Yesterday afternoon 1,383 people were following DowningStreet's Twitter feed online or on their mobile phones. Brownites who want to keep up with his movements in real time can follow updates on the No 10 website, with a Google map to follow him around the east coast. Link to Full Article

Google has defied predictions of economic doom by delivering a 31% surge in quarterly profits which appeared to vindicate the company's claims that people will continue searching the web in a recession. According to a report in The Guardian, Google's first-quarter earnings jumped from $1bn to $1.31bn and the company revealed healthy growth in the number of "paid clicks" on its advertisements. Its shares, which have slumped by more than a third in recent months on fears of a slowdown, leapt by 17% to $524 in unofficial after-hours trading. Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said the firm was suffering no ill effects from the credit crunch: "We've looked at this really carefully and we do not see an impact at this time." He said there had been "internal conversations" on what might happen if a slowdown in advertising expenditure were to occur but that Google had concluded it would emerge relatively unscathed: "Our conclusion is that we're well positioned if the economics change because our model is so targeted – and targeted advertisements do well in most circumstances." Click here for the full story from The Guardian.

According to a report from the BBC, US sales of video game consoles and software have grown 57% over the past year, defying the economic downturn. Consumers snapped up consoles, games and accessories worth $1.7bn during March, according to research firm NPD. Nintendo's Wii came top with 720,000 units. Microsoft sold 262,000 Xbox 360 consoles, ahead of Sony's PlayStation 3 which found 257,000 customers. "You'd never know the US economy was under distress by looking at the sales figures," said NPD's Anita Frazer. Nintendo executives said Wii sales had been driven by the release of Super Smash Bros Brawl, which was the best-selling game in the US in March with 2.7 million copies sold. Link to Full BBC Report

MIT Technology Review reports: A new patch could one day monitor a person's health using minuscule sweat samples. The patch is being developed by Biotex, a consortium of European research institutes and companies, including the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM). Most clothing designed for health monitoring focuses on physiological measurements, such as body temperature and heart rate. This is one of the first attempts to continuously analyze biochemical signals using clothing. The team employed a novel approach for monitoring: a combination of hydrophilic and hydrophobic yarns woven together to channel the sweat to the sensors. By utilizing natural attraction and repulsion actions to move the sweat, the method also circumvents the need for additional power sources, which would add bulk to such a device and make it less convenient for everyday use. Once the fabric has directed a few milliliters of sweat into the patch, the sensors determine the amount of potassium, chloride, or sodium present. Measuring these electrolytes can provide insight into a person's metabolism. By comparing the electrolyte amounts to reference measurements, such a system could indicate if the user is overexerting herself or stressed, says Jean Luprano, project coordinator at the CSEM. Read the full story from MIT's Technology ...

Web Ware reports: The past 24 hours have seen Mozilla Firefox (download from CNET Download.com for Windows and Mac) getting another security hole plugged, while its social-networking derivative Flock (also at CNET Download.com for Windows and Mac) earns a minor behavioral bug-fix. Firefox's most recent safety snafu is another JavaScript engine security problem that was causing the browser to crash during JavaScript garbage collection. Although there was no indication that this error was exploitable, says Mozilla, other similar errors in the past were. Not to mention the benefit of not having your browser randomly going ka-blooey. Flock's fix involves repairing the People sidebar. For many users, Facebook friends weren't populating in the sidebar and now they should be. Read the full story from Web Ware

Boston Globe reports: If there's anything more useful than a GPS navigation device, it's a GPS device that also lets you order pizza. Global Positioning Systems are built into millions of cellular phones - 175 million worldwide, according to the research firm Berg Insight. And that number will be well over half a billion in another five years. In the United States, the GPS phone boom was kicked off by the Federal Communications Commission, which wanted to ensure that emergency workers could find people who place 911 calls from their pocket phones. Two of the nation's leading cellphone providers, Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless LLC, decided to comply by putting GPS chips in their phone handsets. At first, this phone-based GPS was good only for calling the cops; consumers couldn't make use of the technology. But now a number of software firms make downloadable programs that convert GPS-capable phones into powerful navigation tools. Cellphone companies that once rejected GPS technology, including AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA Inc., now offer GPS-capable handsets so their customers can run these programs. Read the full story from Boston Globe

Reg Developer reports: Less than two months into Sun Microsystems' MySQL acquisition, Sun has succeeded in upsetting the grassroots types with plans to close off features to the community. It's emerged Sun may release extra data back-up features in the Enterprise Edition of the next version of MySQL, due in Q4, to paying enterprise subscribers only. The news slipped out at a partner meeting during the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara, California, and was flagged on former MySQL employee Jeremy Cole's blog. There'd been no hint of the change during earlier conference sessions on the MySQL roadmap. The disclosure fired up a storm of criticism from grassroots users and developers here and here. Marten Mickos, vice president of Sun's database group and former MySQL chief executive, was quick to man the defenses. Responding to criticism, Mickos said the plan is to continue to release standard back-up features under the GPL. However, additional "high-end add-ons such as encryption and native storage engine-specific drivers" could be released under a different license regime. Mickos added the final decision had not been taken but a commercial license is one of the options. Read the full story from Reg Developer

Market Watch reports: IBM Corp. shares rose as much as 2% Thursday after the technology giant reported a 26% rise in its first-quarter earnings and raised its profit forecast for the rest of the year. IBM got a lift after the company late Wednesday reported a profit of $2.32 billion, or $1.65 a share, on $24.5 billion in revenue. That compared with profit of $1.84 billion, or $1.21 a share, on revenue of $22 billion in the same period a year ago. The results beat the estimates of analysts surveyed by FactSet Research, who forecast IBM to earn $1.50 a share on $23.8 billion in revenue. Investors responded positively to IBM's report, sending its shares up $2.56 to $123.02. The stock has been a standout in the tech sector this year, rising 13.7% since January. Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek raised his rating on IBM's stock to buy from hold, and lifted his price target on Big Blue to $150 a share from $110. Misek said IBM showed "solid execution in the services division," as well as strong contributions from emerging markets and growth in the Americas region despite weakness in the broader U.S. market. Global services remained IBM's top revenue generator, with total sales of ...

Business Week reports: Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, the duo behind the 2006 online video phenom, Lonely Girl, have received $5 million from venture capitalists including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, to create an independent online studio. The pair say they turned down money from major media companies to build an independent studio that will let them do things their own way—create what they are calling a "social entertainment" company that will be equal parts TV studio and social networking site. The company is to be called EQAL, a shortening of the world "equal" to show that folks like them have just as much a chance to find a big audience as the huge media companies with their armies of programming executives. The two aren't the only online programming hotshots who have found some deep-pocketed venture capitalists and who have designs on going directly to mouse-clicking videophiles. Former MTV Networks chief Herb Scannell has raised money—including from Spark Capital, one of the backers behind Lonely Girl, to create several online channels. Webby Award Nominations But Beckett and Goodfried have a couple of true hits already. Their shows Lonely Girl 15 and Kate Modern have been viewed more than 150 million times, the two say, and were ...

Computer World reports: Japan's Hitachi Ltd. has dropped plans to sell a stake in its troubled computer disk drive business and aims to turn the business around by going after market share and cutting costs, the head of the unit said today. Hitachi's determination to go it alone comes two days after Seagate Technology's outlook, hurt by price falls, missed expectations and sent its shares plummeting. Hitachi, the world's No. 3 maker of hard drives, last month broke off talks with U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake on bringing in fresh capital after the unit swung to a profit in October-December even as credit markets soured for funds, sources earlier told Reuters. "We've talked to Hitachi [head office] and made a final decision. We have concluded that we will rebuild the business on our own," Hiroaki Nakanishi, head of the unit, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, told a news conference. But Nakanishi added that he would not completely rule out the idea of outside capital a few years down the line. "In this quickly changing market, you sometimes need to be able to spend a lot on research and equipment, to be able to grab market share," he said. Capital expenditure at the unit, which Hitachi bought from ...