260m mobile phone dating users by 2012 Over a quarter of a billion people will be using mobile dating and chatroom services by 2012, according to a new report from Juniper Research. The UK-based research firm said revenues from the two sectors will pass $1bn by 2010, while strong growth from India will contribute to 260m users globally by 2012. “Major brands such as Match.com and Webdate have recognised that customers are willing to pay a mobility premium for 24/7 access to these services and are increasing deploying mobile applications to complement and enhance their existing offerings,” said the report author, Dr Windsor Holden....

Facebook: The most dangerous site on the web? There can be few regular internet users who haven’t heard of Facebook.com, the social-networking phenomenon launched in February 2004. The brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook was originally intended for US college and university students – the term is derived from the book of faculty members’ mug shots that’s handed out to new students each year. Facebook offers various privacy options. You can sign up to a regional network and make your profile available only to people on that network, for example....

Improved Xbox 360 processor planned Singaporean contract chip maker Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing will produce a 45-nanometre (nm) processor designed for video-game consoles, probably an upcoming version of the processor used in Microsoft’s Xbox 360. “We have customers’ activity for products in the CPU space that goes into a video-game device,” Chia Song Hwee, Chartered’s president and CEO, said when discussing the company’s 45nm manufacturing plans with analysts during a recent conference call....

Google launches YouTube France As reported last week, Google has launched versions of its video-sharing service YouTube in French and other languages. Localised versions now exist for the UK, Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the US. TheFrench YouTube siteat features titles and help pages in French, and the top video is a welcome message from French rapper Kamini, who began promoting his brand of rural rap through YouTube’s English-language site last November with a video clip entitled ‘Marly-Gomont’....

Blog etiquette: Top 10 dos & don’ts Fuelled in large part by the usercentric Web 2.0, the internet has evolved considerably as a communications platform, offering people innovative means for keeping in touch and sharing knowledge instantly with others. Blogs and wikis, which allow people to broadcast their thoughts to the web and collaborate on documents are the heavyweights of this movement. And though they are wonderful tools for bringing disparate people together and for accumulating knowledge, they can also quickly devolve into the online equivalent of grunting apes....