Remaining stories

2)             Windows 8 hits 200m licences - at a pace putting it on a par with Vista

Microsoft announces 200m licences for new version of OS, well behind Windows 7 - which had sold 300m by the same time - and putting it on a similar strike rate to unloved. Windows 8 has passed 200m licences sold - including the slow-selling Surface tablet. Photograph: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images. Microsoft has sold 200m licences for Windows 8, the company announced late on Thursday. The announcement comes 15 months after the release of the software, and nine months since the last milestone - of 100m licences sold. But it contrasts starkly with figures for Windows 7, which by the same period had sold 300m licences. Instead, the comparator for Windows 8 seems to be more closely with Vista, the poorly received version released in November 2005 which saw many people either hanging on to Windows XP, or avoiding it and waiting for its successor, Windows 7.

3)             What’s new, pussycat? The growing economy of internet cat videos

Grumpy Cat, Keyboard Cat and other felines are helping cats (and their owners) build careers on and off YouTube – Videos such as

The economy of internet cat videos? Yes, it’s a real thing. The Internet Cat Video Festival? Another real thing. A “meme manager” whose job is to build online brands for Keyboard Cat, Nyan Cat and Grumpy Cat? Oh yes, he’s real too. Veteran You’ve Been Framed viewers will attest to the fact that funny cat videos were a thing long before YouTube, but cats of all shapes, sizes and degrees of grumpiness have become one of the defining content categories on Google’s video service. By people uploading more cat videos onto social networking sites such as YouTube, it has helped their careers as they have claimed to have gotten better jobs.

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Google is integrating its Gmail service and Google+ social tracking network so that people without your Gmail address can send you emails by a name search. Google has also made the change opt-out, so that users will have to change their settings to prevent unknown people emailing them. The senders will not see the email address of the person they are sending the message to unless the recipient replies.

5)             Google battles legal fallout of copyright ruling on anti-Islamic film

• Actor with five-second role blocks distribution online
• Court decision could have major implications, expert warns

Cindy Lee Garcia, an actor in the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims has been granted copyright over her role. Photograph: Bret Hartman/Reuters

The video had flimsy production values and was just 14 minutes long, but internet service providers fear they will pay a lasting price for Innocence of Muslims. A court order to remove the anti-Islamic film from YouTube has paved the way for attempts to menace other creative visual works under cover of copyright, some legal experts have warned.

Cindy Lee Garcia, an actor who appeared in the video, last month convinced the ninth US circuit court of appeals in San Francisco that she had copyright to her role – as opposed to the filmmaker – and so could demand the video’s removal from YouTube. Google, which owns YouTube, has tried in vain to overturn the ruling, prompting concern that a precedent has been set.

6)             WhatsApp adding voice calls is a logical move

Facebook's newest acquisition aims to repeat its success at texting by extending its operations to voice calls

Adding voice to WhatsApp is a logical move. Having taken text messaging revenues from mobile phone operators, Facebook is now looking to do the same with voice calls. People already use WhatsApp to send texts, pictures, video and short sound files. If you're on a data connection, all the things you send and receive as data are broken into packets.

The same can be done with a voice signal: that's how Skype works, and it is available on mobile phones as well as desktop computers.

Carriers, especially those that make lots of money from international calls, have every reason to be worried. Text messaging, or SMS, has been the most golden of geese. It generated global revenues of $104bn in 2013. But this represents a peak as WhatsApp and other messaging apps such as BlackBerry Messenger and Apple's iMessage began to take over. The research company Strategy Analytics forecasts that SMS revenues will keep dropping, probably by another 20% by 2017.

7)             If Nintendo makes mobile games, what can it learn from Sony and Microsoft?

Start with the obvious: Nintendo already makes mobile games. Nobody keeps their 3DS tethered to a television, after all. But it doesn't makemobile games for smartphones and tablets.That may change. The company has traditionally knocked back questions about taking its stable of gaming brands to other manufacturers' devices, but as Nintendo announced its latest financial results this week, there was a marked change of tone in president Satoru Iwata's comments.What might a winning strategy look like for Nintendo? One place to start is by examining what its two main rivals in the console market, Sony and Microsoft, have been doing on smartphones and tablets, with lessons to learn about several possible strategies.Microsoft has released Kinectimals for iOS and Android, for example, as well as puzzle game Wordament and Ms. Splosion Man from its Twisted Pixel studio. Windows Phone game Tentacles: Enter the Dolphin has also been released for iOS and Android. For now, Halo spin-off Halo: Spartan Assault remains exclusive to Windows-powered device.Sony has launched a smattering of games for iOS, including free-to-play Ratchet & Clank: Before the Nexus, and Knack's Quest – the latter tying in to PlayStation 4 launch title Knack. The company has also launched an umbrella app called PlayStation All-Stars Island – a partnership with Coca-Cola that includes mini-games based on brands like Uncharted, Gravity Rush and LittleBigPlanet.

8)             Mark Zuckerberg goes to Barcelona to make mobile friends

Facebook founder to join phone-makers at Mobile World Congress because he knows future lies with them

If confirmation was needed that we live in the age of the mobile phone, then the presence of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the Mobile World Congress gathering next week should underline the ascendancy of the handset. Zuckerberg will deliver the keynote address on Monday, fresh from announcing a $19bn (£11.4bn) deal to buy WhatsApp, the hottest mobile texting app in town.

The presence of this social media superstar at one of the less glamorous trade shows is proof that mobile is now the priority for technology giants such as Facebook and Google. Facebook has shifted its focus from laptops and PCs as it strives to catch up with consumers' changing technological tastes. As a result its mobile site, also accessible via tablets, is now used by 945 million of its 1.23 billion monthly active users.

Facebook will attend the MWC event with every big name in technology, including every global mobile operator and handset maker. In all, 75,000 delegates descend on Barcelona to showcase the next wave of smartphones and gadgets.

Facebook has obviously seen mobile as the key to its future for a while. Its purchase of WhatsApp last week, which added another 450 million monthly active users, is the biggest in a long line of acquisitions that includes Instagram, the mobile-based photosharing site.

Facebook has its own home-grown mobile applications too. The standard Facebook app has become one of the primary ways of accessing the social network for millions, while its Facebook Messenger application has joined WhatsApp in the ranks of text message replacement services.

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The article states that Hans Rosling believes that we need to make news more interesting and we need to bring data alive to the world and allow everyone to easily understand and enjoy it. He states that well made videos are some of the ways of making data come more alive and become more appealing to audiences instead of just having one person talking and staring blankly into a single static camera, the BBC do well with animation but it's all for branding and not enough for making data come alive. He believes that this is where newspapers and their websites are failing.