From January, many of Lenovo's Ideapad laptops will have Lenovo Video Chat, which uses Oovoo as the underlying engine, pre-installed as part of an agreement between the two firms.

Oovoo uses a mixed pricing model, with certain features such as two-way video chat being free, but other premium functions such as higher resolution video and including more participants requiring payment.

Hundreds of people in Somalia have been forced to watch Islamist militants executing two people accused of spying.

The militants also ordered schools to close for the day as they were keen for children to watch the two men being shot dead by a firing squad.

The aim, said al-Shabaab, was to stop young men from wasting time, and to focus on important things like defending their territory and their religion.

American internet TV service Hulu could stage an abrupt turnaround and begin charging viewers for the right to watch programmes online.

According to News Corp's deputy chairman, Chase Carey, the advertising-supported free-to-air model that Hulu has used so far is not viable in the long term.

Earlier this month, Joanna Rutkowska implemented the "evil maid" attack against TrueCrypt.

In the meantime, people who encrypt their hard drives, or partitions on their hard drives, have to realize that the encryption gives them less protection than they probably believe. It protects against someone confiscating or stealing their computer and then trying to get at the data. It does not protect against an attacker who has access to your computer over a period of time during which you use it, too.

Engineers have created a new fingernail-size chip that can hold 1 trillion bytes (a terabyte) of data -- 50 times the capacity of today's best silicon-based chip technologies.

"Instead of making a chip that stores 20 gigabytes, you have one that can handle one terabyte, or 50 times more data," Narayan said in a press release.

Under the new scheme copyright holders will need a court order before they can punish persistent illegal filesharers.

This differs from the action that had been suggested by business secretary Lord Mandelson earlier this year, coincidentally just after having spent time as a guest of music publisher David Geffen in Greece.

AT&T has been one of the biggest opponents of the new regulation, along with Verizon Communications and cable company Comcast. On the other side of the debate are consumer advocacy groups and large Web-based technology companies, such as Google and Amazon.

"AT&T is practiced in spending money on so-called astroturf groups to give the appearance there is widespread support for their agenda," said Timothy Karr, campaign director for the advocacy group Free Press.

According to Skype's chief blogger Peter Parkes, "If you're fortunate enough to get your hands on a Lenovo ThinkPad or ThinkCentre for your home or office, be sure to keep an eye out for Skype."

The announcement means that those hoping for a fresh Windows install, free of clutter or any applications beyond those they choose to install, might want to look elsewhere - however PC makers offering such a package are becoming increasingly thin on the ground.

Mozilla developers have blocked a Firefox plugin that was quietly pushed out by Microsoft, saying that it presents a security risk.

"Because of the difficulties some users have had entirely removing the add-on, and because of the severity of the risk it represents if not disabled, we contacted Microsoft today to indicate that we were looking to disable the extension and plugin for all users via our blocklisting mechanism," wrote Mozilla Vice President of Engineering Mike Shaver in a blog posting.

The CEO of Russia's No. 1 anti-virus package has said that the internet's biggest security vulnerability is anonymity, calling for mandatory internet passports that would work much like driver licenses do in the offline world.

"I'd like to change the design of the internet by introducing regulation - internet passports, internet police and international agreement - about following internet standards," he continued. "And if some countries don't agree with or don't pay attention to the agreement, just cut them off."