London turns to Twitter for clean-up operation
Riot-ravaged Londoners have turned to social networks in a bid to kick-start the recovery and clean-up operation after last night's looting rampage across the capital and further afield. Social media has been blamed for helping to organise the riots, notably via BlackBerry's messaging services, but ordinary Twitter users have grouped together to organise a clean-up operation and to try and identify criminals. On Twitter, a #riotcleanup hashtag and those controlling a @riotcleanup account are organising times and meeting points for people able to help.
PC Pro

Wikipedia Seeks Balance, Recruiting Female Contributors
Wikipedia has initiated a new recruitment campaign in order to include more members of the fairer sex in its team of editors. According to the site’s founder Jimmy Wales, the move has been taken as the existing team of “26 year old geeky, male” contributors suffer from a lack of expertise to edit some of the pages. Wales said that while the site has lived up to the mark when it comes to the domain of science and technology, the coverage of many other issues was suffering a setback because of the sheer lack of diversity in its existing community of editors.
It Pro Portal

Guardian overhauls user data, as first step in digital-only transformation
Guardian News & Media is overhauling the way it gathers and stores user data, as part of its digital-only transformation. The move will bring together user data – currently from disparate sources such as apps, jobs, dating and subscriptions – into one system, from which GNM will build commercial and content products and services tailored to individuals across a growing number of digital platforms, including connected TV, mobile and online.
NewMediaAge

Networking outfits gutted by government cuts
Networking companies like Cisco, Juniper Networks and Brocade have been walloped by government cutbacks on big projects. Cisco has warned that government spending cuts will include network equipment and will report its quarterly results on Wednesday. Investors expect things to be bleak. Already Juniper Networks and Brocade have warned that profits will not be as good as they hoped. The results caught Wall Street on the hop as the cocaine nose jobs failed to realise that networking companies were so dependent on government contracts. Shares in networking companies have been involved in a big selloff.
TechEye

Orange wrestles with O2 for movie lovers
DING, ding – seconds out for round two in the mobile phone giants’ scrap for movie lovers. In the Orange corner is a new weekly offer giving customers the chance to download films such as The Wrestler free from iTunes. It’s an attempt to fight back against its rival in the blue corner, O2, which had it floored. O2’s Priority Moments, which launched last month, included an offer of half-price Odeon cinema tickets from Sunday to Thursday. It had Orange’s once-a-week offer of two-for-one tickets on Wednesdays on the ropes.
The Mirror

Social network overuse 'breeds narcissism'
According to new psychological research, teens who spend too much time on social networks like Facebook, are more likely to show narcissistic tendencies and display signs of other behavioural problems.  The findings of the research were presented by Larry D. Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University, at the 19th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association. In a talk entitled ‘Poke Me: How Social Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids’, Rosen explained the potential psychological risks for teens who spend too long on social networking services.
The Telegraph

Two out of five US mobile users on Android platform
The Android operating system continued to gain ground in the US mobile market in the three-month average period to the end of June, accounting for 40.1% of the US smartphone market in June. According to a new report from comScore, Samsung was the top handset manufacturer overall with a 25.3% (+0.8 percentage points) market share. Around 234 million Americans aged 13 and older used mobile devices in the three-month period.
Smart Gorillas

Syrian cyber soldiers hit Anonymous
After Anonymous claimed that it had defaced Syria's Ministry of Defence website for squashing anti-government protesters, it seems that it took on a little more than just a website. Anonymous hit the site and posted "The world stands with you against the brutal regime of Basher al-Assad, All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Basher al-Assad is next." The site is still offline. However, according to ComputerWorld, the response from Syria was swift. A Syrian hacker group posted gruesome snaps on Anonymous' embryonic social network AnonPlus.
TechEye

IBM and NCSA scrap project to build petaflop-speed supercomputer
IBM and the University of Illinois's National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) have called a halt to a $308m (£188m) project to build one of the world's fastest supercomputers, citing unforeseen cost and complexity. The partners had planned to build a petaflop-speed supercomputer capable of a thousand trillion floating point operations a second, and have been working on the project since 2008. In addition to cost and complexity, pundits said the fact that new techniques with potentially lower cost and less complexity have been emerging since the project started could be another key factor in the decision to call a halt.
Computer Weekly

Sony distribution centre engulfed by fire
Sony Corp's compact discs and DVDs warehouse in Enfield, north London, was on fire throughout the night. The Japanese electronics giant may have been caught up in the riots that sporadically swept across London on a third consecutive night of trouble in the capital. However, the firm is yet to determine the cause of the blaze. Sony's 20,000 square metre three-storey warehouse has been burning since late last night and into the early hours of this morning, reports Reuters.
The Register