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Amazon Marketplace allows smaller businesses access to millions of shoppers but some question whether the benefits outweigh the costsAs the “everything store”, it was never going to stop at books. Founded by Jeff Bezos with the aim of being the one-stop shop for the world, Amazon now sells 120m different items.Alongside the stacks of paperbacks in its warehouses are CDs, DVDs, TVs, iPads, iPods, toys, clothing – but also the less obvious: jewellery, washing machines, garden furniture, windscreen wipers, bonsai trees, doubles basses, boomerangs, pet headstones, inflatable walking sticks, a One Direction onesie. Continue reading...

Pyongyang censors blacklist site popular with journalists and tourists for sharing photographs from inside the DPRKWarnings have started appearing on Instagram accounts in North Korea, with users being told that access to the popular photo-sharing app has been denied.Opening the app using the North Korean carrier Koryolink results in the the following message in English: “Warning! You can’t connect to this website because it’s in blacklist site”. A similar notice in Korean says the site contains “harmful content”, not mentioned in the English version.

Photography agency complaint over Google Image search could see European Commission antitrust investigation expandedPhoto agency Getty Images has been added as an “interested third person” to the European Commission’s antitrust investigation into Google, according to reports.

Senior producer Nick Channon runs through the latest title’s most interesting updates and alterations, including changes to defensive AI and shooting physicsWe’re on the show floor at E3 and somewhere within the hulking Electronic Arts stand, as music and gunfire blares out all around us, EA Sports senior producer Nick Channon and I are preparing to play Fifa 16. Naturally, the game’s demo mode features the two teams of the moment – Barcelona and Real Madrid. Generously, Channon has let me play as the former.But we’re not just having a kickabout. Nick wants to show off the changes to this latest iteration in EA’s annual footie sim. And, as usual, there are big promises. Continue reading...

The Malloy Aeronautics prototype, powered by four bladed fans, is intended to do many of the jobs of a helicopter but will be safer and cheaperScience fiction-obsessed children of the 1960s might have been disappointed to know that half a century later they would neither live in space nor get their meals in the form of pills. One thing that would have impressed them about 2015, though, is the ability to order your own personal hoverbike.You can now do just that, even if it is currently a request for an order with the delivery date uncertain. Malloy Aeronautics, the UK-based firm developing the machine, has already had understandable interest in their creation from the US military. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Tuesday. Continue reading...

Armed with an “insane audio system”, Sheffield post-rockers 65daysofstatic have made an infinite soundtrack for the year’s biggest video gameRelated: No Man's Sky creator: 'We wanted to build a universe'“A soundtrack to infinity” sounds like the sort of thing a hairy bunch of proggers might say about their new album, but Sheffield post-rock outfit 65daysofstatic can actually lay claim to making one, or at least something very close. The band have been chosen to write the soundtrack for the much-anticipated PlayStation 4 game No Man’s Sky, where the player flies by spacecraft through a galaxy that, in playable terms, will be neverending: it comprises more than 18 quintillion planets, each with its own flora, fauna and, of course, lethal robotic drones, and each needs a soundscape to fit. Manic Miner it ain’t. Continue reading...

Sir Martin Sorrell’s marketing services group joins newspaper and tech company in new venture that aims to work across media and ad industry

Taxi app wants access to customers’ data even when they’re not using the app so it can ‘launch new promotional features,’ but a group says it’s a threat to privacyRegulators are being urged to investigate Uber over the taxi app company’s controversial plan to track its customers’ locations – even when they’re not using the service – and harvest details of their contacts.Campaigners at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic) on Monday filed a complaint with the The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claiming that forthcoming changes to Uber’s privacy policy “threaten the privacy rights and personal safety of American consumers”, “pose a direct risk of consumer harm” and “constitute an unfair and deceptive trade practice”.

Study finds significant degradations of networks for five largest ISPs, including AT&T and Time Warner, representing 75% of all wireline households in USMajor internet providers, including AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon, are slowing data from popular websites to thousands of US businesses and residential customers in dozens of cities across the country, according to a study released on Monday.

Taylor Swift’s power over Apple has got the internet thinking. What else can she ask it to change about our iPhones, iPads and Macs?Everything has changed. Taylor Swift has spoken out against Apple and seemingly achieved the impossible – she’s persuaded the tech giant to actually change something. After Swift’s intervention, Apple will now pay artists as it gives their music away for free as part of its Apple Music streaming service trial.Some might say Apple were always looking for a way to shake off its previous stance, but that shouldn’t lead us to underestimate the sway Swift holds. There’s no bad blood between the parties that we know of, so what’s to stop Swift asking Apple for more? What else could she change for us? What in our wildest dreams … Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. Today’s screenshot comes from Anna’s Quest, a new point-and-click adventure from Daedalic Entertainment. It was shown at E3 last week and will be released on PC and Mac soon. The trailer is right here. Continue reading...

From Ada Lovelace to Sheryl Sandberg, women have been shaping the development of technology since the 1800s Continue reading...

Star says plans to not pay royalties during free streaming trial are ‘completely unlike this historically progressive and generous company’Update: Apple has announced a change in policy, and will now be paying royalties during its three-month free trial. The original story follows below.Taylor Swift has spoken out again about streaming music, but this time her target is Apple rather than Spotify. Continue reading...

Amazon says it is ready to fly deliveries by drone as soon as federal rules allow but experts suggest technological intricacies still need to be ironed outHow far away are we from a world where drones deliver packages? If Amazon is to be believed, not far at all. Others are not so sure: technical progress past this point isn’t merely a matter of invention, it’s a matter of public safety.Related: Congress warned that drones present 'a nightmare scenario for civil liberties' Continue reading...

Banks want to become a ‘lifestyle partner’ but consumers are warned to be wary of sharing their dataYou walk past your favourite clothing retailer. You’ve not bought anything for a while, so your mobile phone flashes offering you a discount on the type of things you usually buy.You receive an alert from your bank saying your water bill has shot up and you should check for a leak. Another arrives saying you are paying 20% more for broadband than your neighbours. But don’t worry – your bank has already switched your provider. Continue reading...

The Mercedes-Benz C300 is compact and frugal, yet also smart and luxurious – perfect for the undercover boss£38,120

Court decides that rule would have placed undue burden on women’s right to an abortion as activists praise decision: ‘Politics should never trump medicine’The Iowa supreme court has struck down a restriction that would have prevented doctors from administering abortion-inducing pills remotely via video teleconferencing, saying it would have placed an undue burden on a woman’s right to get an abortion.Iowa is one of only two states that offers so-called telemedicine abortions – Minnesota offers them on a smaller scale – and doctors at Iowa’s urban clinics that perform abortions had been allowed to continue offering the remotely administered abortions while the ruling was pending. Continue reading...

PS3/4/Vita, Xbox One/360, Wii U, 3DS, PC; Warner Bros; £24.99-39.99It’s dressed in the trappings of Jurassic World, but this is a Lego game from top to shiny plastic toe, which means you’ll be wandering around smashing everything into its component bricks, before reassembling them into useful machines that eventually lead you to the next area. Arriving on Jurassic Park’s Isla Nublar, you can choose to play through either the original film’s story or that of Jurassic World, in both cases reimagined with a loving silliness through its surprisingly expressive animated mini-figures.

PS4, Xbox One; Bethesda; £49.99The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was a game so titanically vast you could lose yourself in it for hundreds of hours and still stumble across new places. The fact that Skyrim is just one region of Tamriel tells you all you need to know about the mind-blowing potential of The Elder Scrolls Online, which splices this scale with a population of thousands of real players. While the landmass is just as intimidatingly endless as you’d imagine, the experience of playing Tamriel Unlimited lacks the atmosphere and solemnity of the earlier single-player games. Wherever you go you’ll find players running in all directions, swarming enemies and standing in loose gaggles around important points in quests, blasting immersion-breaking drum’n’bass over voice chat or talking loudly to other people in the room with them. Mechanically things fair slightly better, its relatively dull quests underpinned by solid combat and complex, hard-won upgrade paths. It’s not pretty, never coming close to last month’s Witcher 3, and can feel a little monotonous as you trudge between similarly structured busy work, although it is very early days for a game designed to be played for months on end. Continue reading...

Mobile app connects amateur photographers in the UK with potential buyers in a bid to democratise stock photographyThe photographs that we share on social networks often have emotional value, but could they have a commercial value too?Although nobody is going to pay for your filtered KFC big-bucket snaps anytime soon, the idea of people paying for amateur smartphone shots is not as strange as it may seem. Continue reading...

‘The company is rich and the drivers go back home with empty pockets’ says one ‘freelance’ operator as commission rules drivers are employees, not contractorsShifera Sahilu thought Uber would be his passport to a better life in America. Instead, he said, the ride-sharing company almost ruined him.The fast-growing tech company has built a global business promising new sources of revenue for “freelance” drivers like Sahilu. This week, in a major blow to the company, a court questioned exactly how freelance those drivers are. Uber’s critics cheered the decision. Sahilu is not so sure it will make a difference. Continue reading...

Ketchup buyer mistakenly exposed to porn after Heinz allows a competition domain to lapse, allowing adult entertainment firm to buy itHeinz has apologised to a German customer after a QR code on one of its tomato ketchup bottles linked to a porn site.

Growth of news sharing on sites such as Facebook and Twitter prompts tabloid to make selected digital content available for freeThe Sun is to start to make content available outside its digital paywall for the first time as the tabloid aims to capitalise on the explosion of news sharing on social media such as Facebook and Twitter.Mike Darcey, the chief executive of News UK, said that from early July “select digital content” will be made available for free. Continue reading...

The feature will allow users to follow live events through curated streams of tweets, photos and videosTwitter is going live. After years of attempting to compete with market leader Facebook on its own turf, Twitter is poised to embrace the key aspect that differentiates the two social networks with a new feature, the code-named Project Lightning, which will allow users to follow live events through curated streams of tweets, photos and videos.Those events could be organised events such as the World Cup final or Eurovision, or breaking news events such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Continue reading...

Cycling is safe and easy inside the search giant’s Mountain View HQ, but getting to the site from elsewhere in Silicon Valley means crossing fast-moving expressways and busy train tracks. Is Google’s new bike plan the answer?Inside the Googleplex – the tech giant’s headquarters in Mountain View, California – hundreds of multi-coloured bikes are scattered around. With bright yellow frames and big blue and green rubber tires, they’re seemingly everywhere – clustered at the edges of parking lots, lined near building entrances, or clumsily toppled over into the office park landscaping. The bikes make it easy for Google’s employees to move between its many office buildings, spread over roughly two miles of land at the southern tip of the San Francisco Bay in a neighbourhood known as North Bayshore. Inside the Googleplex, biking is safe and easy.Outside the Googleplex, not so much. Continue reading...

Finally confirmed by Sony, the latest adventure from the creator of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus marks the return of a singular talent in gamingWhen the Japanese game designer Fumito Ueda was a child, he loved to capture and care for wild animals. He was obsessed with the way they moved; and later as a young game designer he imported a copy of the Amiga classic Lemmings, seeing in it something other than a colourful puzzler. “I sensed life on the TV screen for the first time in my life,” he said.Since then, he has become famous for games that explore humanity and companionship. After joining Sony Japan’s development studio in 1997, he oversaw two of the most fascinating and beautiful action adventures of the PlayStation 2 era: Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. These doleful, reflective titles, with their hazy visuals and vast silences, showed us new ways to tell stories and invoke emotions through games. The moment in Ico where the eponymous lead character takes the hand of Yorda, the princess he seeks to rescue from an evil queen, has become one of the great images of the medium. Continue reading...

Regional publisher to launch titles such as the Bristol Post and Leicester Mercury through apps that launch at 5pm dailyLocal World is to launch digital evening editions for 10 of its titles, including the Bristol Post, Leicester Mercury and Nottingham Post.The regional newspaper publisher has struck a deal with Google that will see the titles make a return to the evening market through an app edition that will launch at 5pm daily. Continue reading...

Clare Balding and Jack Whitehall court danger, a birthday greeting from Game of Thrones, Nicki Minaj joins the queen of pop, and Toy StoryWe start this week with a dream come true for an Ed Sheeran fan who was surprised by her hero as she sang hit song Thinking Out Loud. Sydney Bourbeau was performing at her Canadian music school’s fundraiser for the Edmonton Humane Society when Sheeran walked out of an HMV store and on to a stage in the shopping mall. Bourbeau, 13, said: “I was like, should I stop? I didn’t want to stop, but I wanted to talk to him. This is, like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”If only tennis fans Clare Balding, Jack Whitehall and One Direction’s Liam Payne had been so thrilled to meet their hero. Former Wimbledon champion Andy Murray put them through their paces as he coached them to raise funds for Unicef’s Children in Danger Summer Disease Appeal. It was definitely game, set and match to Andy. Continue reading...

Lifeline measure subsidises broadband bills for poor households, whose lack of access shuts children out of schools and keeps adults away from vital dataHigh-speed internet access could now be more accessible to low-income Americans after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed a measure on Thursday to subsidise their internet bills.Fewer than half of American households making less than $25,000 a year have internet access. The FCC voted 3-2 to expand a Reagan-era measure called Lifeline to include broadband. The subsidy program currently serves 1.2 million Americans, providing $9.25 total per household to citizens who qualify. Continue reading...

Royal Bank of Scotland executive Simon McNamara says staff working around the clock to sort payments crash but no system is failsafeRoyal Bank of Scotland cannot rule out suffering another meltdown in its computer systems despite pledging to spend £150m a year making them more resilient, one of the bank’s most senior executives said on Thursday.With the bank still battling to put 600,000 payments into customer accounts that went missing on Wednesday, the bank’s chief administrative officer, Simon McNamara, said he could not make the system failsafe. Continue reading...

Electric Frontier Foundation’s ‘Who Has Your Back’ ratings give full marks to Dropbox, while messaging service is criticised for data request policies

Research by Which? shows ‘poor’ levels of broadband service across the UKThree quarters of British households aren’t getting the promised speeds on their broadband package according to research, which found the problem affects over 15 million households.While 90% of those polled by Which? said speed was an important factor when choosing a provider, the consumer group found just 26% of households with fixed broadband connections were getting the speeds they were paying for. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterThursday! I’m seeing all of EA’s games on this final day of E3. Continue reading...

Court throws out conviction of two men accused of involvement in knife fight after judge sent texts during trial to babysitterA German federal court has granted two defendants a retrial because their judge was sending texts from her mobile phone during testimony to arrange a babysitter for her children.The federal court of justice (BGH) found that “even in an age of limitless mobile phone and internet use”, a judge “must devote full attention to the hearing”. Continue reading...

Firm hopes to persuade regulators to give the go-ahead to £12.5bn deal, which it says is needed to help Britain stay ahead of its peersBT set out to convince regulators to pass its £12.5bn merger with mobile operator EE on Wednesday, claiming the deal will create a digital champion for the UK.The nation’s biggest telecoms company said that swallowing the UK’s largest mobile network will not be bad for consumers, as rivals warned a lessening of competition could lead to price increases. Continue reading...

Uber to appeal California Labor Commission ruling that it is ‘involved in every aspect of the operation’Uber has appealed a California labor commission ruling that declared employees of the ride-sharing company are employees and not contractors.In its ruling, the California labor commissioner said Uber is “involved in every aspect of the operation”, negating the company’s longstanding claim that its drivers are contractors. Continue reading...

Vulnerability remains months after discovery, allowing hackers to eavesdrop on calls, steal data and activate camera, microphone and GPS remotelyA vulnerability in Samsung’s Android keyboard installed on over 600m devices worldwide could allow hackers to take full control of the smartphone or tablet.

British channel’s compilation of nursery rhymes has been watched more than 655m times, sending it into YouTube all-time top 30The wheels on the bus go round and round... and those wheels have helped British YouTube channel Little Baby Bum overtake One Direction’s biggest hit on the video site’s most-viewed chart.Related: Little Baby Bum: how UK couple built world's fifth-biggest YouTube channel Continue reading...

Justin Vernon took to Twitter in support of Spotify – but says physical media is still betterJustin Vernon, bandleader of the Grammy-winning Bon Iver, has criticised Apple’s recently announced streaming service Music and put his support behind Spotify – but, perhaps befitting his indie-rock credentials, he stated that physical LPs are still best of all.Quoting a Fact magazine article, he wrote on Twitter: Continue reading...

Avoiding eating, drinking and getting angry before sunset is tough during fasting month – but these apps can help keep prayer time, habits and diet in checkThe alarm on your phone buzzes at 2:39am. Bleary eyed, you wolf down your toast and sip your water in the last minute before the day of fasting begins. No eating, no drinking, and no getting angry before sunset. You roll your eyes as your phone pings with notifications of yet another message with a mosque emoticon, or a cheesy “I have a date every night in Ramadan” joke. The fast begins. Continue reading...

Smart connected trackers are making it easier to study animals – and find out how the world is reacting to global warming

Government looks into viability of turning whole NHS estate in England into massive free Wi-Fi zoneEvery hospital and GP surgery in England is likely to start providing free Wi-Fi in a move by the NHS to keep patients entertained and help doctors and nurses use much more technology in their work.

Loopimal, Alexi, Detour, Relook, Tiki Taka Soccer, You Must Build a Boat, Fallout Shelter, Angry Birds Fight! and moreWelcome to this week’s roundup of the latest, greatest iPhone and iPad apps and games. All these apps have been released for the first time – ie not updates – since the last roundup.All prices are correct at the time of writing, with “IAP” indicating use of in-app purchases. Continue reading...

Virtual reality is front and centre at the opening of the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015 - better known as E3 - in Los Angeles, with Oculus, Sony and Microsoft all lined up to make it a technology battleground. Dan Ackerman, a senior editor at CNET, the online technology and consumer electronics review site, believes user-friendly VR might finally be here Continue reading...

A Dutch startup has unveiled plans to use robotic printers to weld the structure drop-by-drop in the first large-scale test of the technologyA Dutch startup has unveiled plans to build the world’s first 3D-printed bridge across an Amsterdam canal, a technique that could become standard on future construction sites.

The place to talk about games and other things that matterHey there, it’s Wednesday. Continue reading...