Adobe has said it is working to fix a “critical” security flaw in its Reader, Acrobat and Flash Player software.

It warned that the vulnerability potentially enables hackers to take control of affected computer systems, and that users running Windows, Macintosh or Linux operating systems might all be vulnerable.

The company released details of the glitch in its online security bulletin, in which it said: “This vulnerability could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

It added: “There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security software manufacturer Sophos, told the BBC: “It doesn’t really get any worse than a ‘zero-day’ vulnerability like this.”

He said that hackers might try to gain access to a person’s computer through a booby-trapped PDF document or Flash animation, possibly with the intention of gathering personal information or using the machine to send spam messages.

In recent years, PDFs have become a popular means of sharing documents whose contents are considered largely secure and unalterable.

While it worked to fix the problem, the company suggested upgrading to a pre-release version of the Adobe Flash Player, version 10.1, which it said “does not appear to be vulnerable”.

Mr Cluley said that keeping anti-virus software up to date would also help to avoid problems.

“There has been a long history of vulnerabilities being found in Adobe’s products,” he said.

“This is probably because they are everywhere and omnipresent.”

Adobe estimates that more than 95 per cent of computers worldwide have Flash Player installed.

By Richard Morris

Brits are spending the equivalent of almost one day in every month surfing the internet, according to new research.

The UK Online Measurement company (UKOM) says the average web user is online for 22 hours and 15 minutes each month – 65 per cent longer than three years ago.

A report by the BBC said around a quarter of people’s time is spent on social networks and blogs. Email use has increased and now takes up 7.2 per cent of people’s time online, up 0.7 per cent on three years ago. Time spent using instant messaging has fallen by 9 per cent, to just 5 per cent.

Time spent reading online news has increased from 1.5 per cent to 2.8 per cent over the same period.

Alex Burmaster, a spokesman for UKOM, said: “It is like an organism, feeding off itself and getting bigger. People are plugging more and more of their lives into it.”

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Microsoft saw its Internet Explorer web browser claim less than a 60 per cent share of the market in April.

IE, which was by far and away the most dominant browser in the late 1990s, has now lost market share for 10 months in a row according to data from Net Applications. Although IE easily retains its position as the world’s most popular browser with a 59.95 per cent share, competitors are fast encroaching on its territory.

For the month of April, FireFox claimed second place in the browser market with a 24.59 per cent share – up 0.07 per cent from March. Google’s Chrome also continued its assault on IE, increasing its own share by 0.6 per cent to 6.73 per cent.

A report by the BBC said back in 2003 Microsoft had almost total dominance, with a 95 per cent share of the browser market.

The company has taken a number of major knocks in recent weeks and months however. In March, users of Microsoft Windows were made aware they could choose between various available browsers and did not have to remain with Internet Explorer which came as Windows’ default browser. It followed a ruling by the European Commission.

In another blow earlier this year, the French and German governments advised internet users to switch away from Internet Explorer due to security issues.

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British users of Google’s email system will soon be able to have an account ending @gmail.com rather than @googlemail.com.

For the past five years the search firm has been prevented from using the shorter name due to a trademark disagreement with a company called Independent International Investment Research. According to a report by the BBC, the firm claimed it had used Gmail first.

Details of the settlement, which follows years of disagreement, have not been released but UK users will soon be able to change their address ending @googlemail.com to the shorter version – something Google expects will save around 60 million keystrokes a day.

In a blog post, Google said: “If you already have a Google email account in the UK, you’ll soon have the option to switch your existing @googlemail.com address to the matching @gmail.com one, but you’re also free to stick with @googlemail.com.”

The transition is due to take place over the coming week.

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Apple has unveiled details of a mobile advertising platform which is to be included in an update for the company’s iPhone later this year.

iAd, which will be used to allow advertisers to place adverts in third party applications, is the company’s first attempt to enter the potentially lucrative market, according to a report by the BBC.

The programme will allow external developers to take a 60 per cent cut of advertising revenue.

Van Baker, vice president of research at Gartner, told the BBC that mobile could well be the future.

He said: “It has huge potential to really change mobile commerce. The evidence so far is that very few transactions really happen in this space. Mobile is used to compare prices, find restaurants, movie times and the like but very little in the way of commerce.”

The announcement follows Apple’s acquisition of mobile advertising company Quattro Wireless in January for a reported $275m. Two months earlier Google said it had bought AdMob, another mobile ad company for $750m.

Apple was looking closely at AdMob before Google made its move or according to Apple boss Steve Jobbs, “snatched them (AdMob) because they didn’t want us to have them”.

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A plan by the BBC to release an iPhone app to bring its news and sport coverage to a wider group of people has stalled.

Following “representations from industry”, the BBC Trust, the corporation’s governing body, has decided to delay the release of the new iPhone apps. Publishers such as the Guardian and Sky already have their own iPhone apps offering free and paid-for news and sport on demand.

The commercial news providers say the BBC apps go beyond the remit of the corporation. According to a BBC News report, the Trust’s investigation will decide whether the apps are an extension of the BBC’s existing services or a new product. If it is the latter, the Trust will then conduct a more detailed review.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We are focused on making BBC Online’s core web propositions more user-friendly, convenient and accessible, and using existing content to create truly distinctive products around our core public service areas.”

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The decision by the London Times and Sunday Times newspapers to start charging readers to access their websites from this June could be the big step towards a paid-for content model the newspaper industry has been waiting for.

Under the plan, users will pay £1 for a day’s access and £2 for a week’s subscription.

Chief Executive of the papers’ parent company, News International, Rebekah Brooks, said it was “a crucial step towards making the business of news an economically exciting proposition”.

Both titles will launch new websites in early May, marking the first time the six-day and Sunday papers have had separate web presences, as a precursor to moving over to a paid online model.

The two new sites will be available for a free trial period to registered customers. Those who take out a subscription will get access to both sites.

Amid continuing falls in newspaper sales and revenues, publishers have been keen to explore online models to help them recoup some of this lost income.

But many see News International’s announcement as a gamble. It remains to be seen how many of even the most died-in-the-wool Times readers will be enticed into giving up their physical newspaper by the prospect of being able to dip into and out of the websites at will – albeit for a substantially lower cost.

And with the internet making available so much news content for free, NI could well be seen as putting itself at a disadvantage by making people pay to read its articles.

James Harding, editor of The Times, agreed that there was a risk. “But it’s less of a risk than just throwing away our journalism and giving it away from free,” he told the BBC.

He sees parallels in the newspaper market with what has happened in the music business in the past few years: “People said the game is up for the music industry because everyone is downloading for free,” Harding said. “But now people are buying from download sites.”

Ms Brooks said the decision to charge came “at a defining moment for journalism… We are proud of our journalism and unashamed to say that we believe it has value.

“This is just the start. The Times and The Sunday Times are the first of our four titles in the UK to move to this new approach. We will continue to develop our digital products and to invest and innovate for our customers.”

Meanwhile, on the day this announcement came, The Times online carried a story of the type which might just persuade a big audience to part with a £1 daily subscription just to read it.

Just one thought… Roger Boyes?! Is this the work of a mischievous editor?

The University of Sheffield is leading a project designed to bring together a range of documents for historical research in one place.

The Connected Histories project centres around a search engine which will provide links between separate databases of historical information in order to assist academics and members of the public with research projects.

Professor Robert Shoemaker, from the University of Sheffield’s history department, is heading up the project. He said the finished search engine will be “a kind of sophisticated Google” connected to high quality databases of historical material from both academic and commercial sources.

Speaking to BBC News, Shoemaker said: “There are a number of electronic resources that have been created by universities and by commercial providers. They are all available and all separate and some require subscriptions.

“What we are trying to do is join them up to create an integrated search facility so you do not have to conduct more searches than necessary.

“We are creating a kind of sophisticated Google for those selected range of resources that we know are of high quality.”

The first part of the Connected Histories project is due to be completed early next year. So far, a total of 12 institutions have joined the including the Institute of Historical Research and King’s College, London.

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Super-fast broadband will be available to every home in the UK by 2020, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised.

In a speech, Brown called super-fast broadband “the electricity of the digital age” which “must be for all – not just for some”.

At the same time, he pledged to make the British government “the most efficient, open and responsive” in the world, by having a single website created to bring together all government and public sector services.

In his speech, Mr Brown said faster broadband speeds would lead to cheaper and better public services and make trade easier.

But leaving this to the market alone would lead to coverage “determined not by need or by social justice, but by profitability” and “a lasting, pervasive and damaging new digital divide”, he said.

Instead, he said it was up to government to create a fair digital future, adding: “The alternative is our vision: ensuring, not simply hoping for, universal coverage.”

Mr Brown said greater use of the internet would also allow people to have more say over government policy, such as through e-petitions, and could bring major cost savings by making public services more efficient.

Jim Knight, the minister responsible for digital inclusion, told the BBC that the government had to intervene to ensure super-fast broadband reached remote areas of the country.

He told BBC Radio 5Live: “Having universal access to very high bandwidth which allows more streaming video, allows people to watch TV and listen to radio online, it means that we can also release the business and employment potential of this.

The European Court of Justice has decided Google isn’t breaking the law by allowing companies to bid for trademarked keywords through its Adwords sevice.

The LVMH Group, which is behind luxury brands including Moet and Chandon champagne, Louis Vuitton, Dior and Tag Heuer, said Google had breached trademark law by allowing other companies to bid for keywords relating to its brands.

Adwords lets firms bid on search terms and then receive a sponsored link on top of the search results page in Google for that particular term. Companies will bid on a competitor’s keywords in order to bring traffic to their own website, while rogue traders selling counterfeit goods also bid in order to appear in the sponsored links.

The court’s ruling has been eagerly anticipated by industry analysts as Adwords is a major source of revenue for Google. The search giant  gets 97 per cent of its $24 billion income via advertising.

An excerpt from the European Court’s ruling published by the BBC, said: “Google has not infringed trademark law by allowing advertisers to purchase keywords corresponding to their competitors’ trademarks.”

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