An Italian national newspaper has reported that Google plans to launch a service allowing publishers to hide content behind a paywall before the end of the year.

The report in La Repubblica newspaper suggests the system will be linked directly to Google’s search results and will allow consumers to buy paid content directly via Google Checkout with one click. Observes say it could provide a valuable revenue boost for cash-strapped newspapers.

Google is said to be approaching publishers to gauge their interest in its own version of a micropayment system it linked directly to Google’s search results, which would let consumers buy paid content directly via Google Checkout with one click.

According to UK marketing industry magazine Brand Republic, the launch of Newspass would certainly head off some of criticism that has been levelled at Google by the likes of Rupert Murdoch who dispute Google’s claim to send valuable traffic to newspapers.

Murdoch said last year: “We’d rather have fewer people coming to our websites but paying.” And his latest manifestation of this vision is the paid for TheTimes.co.uk website, launched in early June 2010.

La Repubblica has quoted Google’s Vice-President of global media, Henrique de Castro, as saying that his company wanted to forge partnerships with other media organisations, rather than rival them.

According to Brand Republic, it is unclear whether the system is being developed locally in Italy by Google where it already faces an investigation by the country’s Competition Authority. The investigation has been running since last year, after the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers complained about the lack of transparency in how Google News calculates its rankings.

The Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers complained that Google was using its dominant position to stop publishers from earning their fair share of online ad revenues.

It seems likely, however, that the plan is one Google hopes to launch globally in that it sounds similar to an idea that it proposed to the Newspaper Association of America last year, which looked at how a successful micropayments model might work.

A dispute in Australia between members of the public and photographers gathering data for Google’s Street View service has been referred to the country’s police, the country’s Attorney General (senior law officer) has said.

Robert McLelland told journalists ahead of a conference on internet security in the Australian city of Melbourne, that the Federal Police were looking into complaints from members of the public that concern a possible breach of the country’s telecommunications laws.

Google said it would co-operate with the Australian police investigation, and a spokeswoman told Reuters that the company had made an error: “This was a mistake. We are talking to the appropriate authorities to answer any questions they have,” she said.

The ‘Street View’ service has recently been criticised in several countries. The company has said it inadvertently picked up personal data from some unencrypted wi-fi services over several years.

Apple top man Steve Jobs fears that the internet will be reduced “into a nation of bloggers” unless a sustainable way of persuading people to pay for online content is devised.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal-organised D8 conference near Los Angeles, Jobs said that newspapers’ and magazines’ futures, along with that of quality journalism, depended on media outlets finding a way of making it worthwhile for readers to pay to look at website content.

“One of my beliefs very strongly is that any democracy depends on a free healthy press, some of these newspapers, the news gathering and editorial organisations are really important,” he said.

“I don’t want to see us descend to a nation of bloggers. I think we need editorial more than ever right now.

“Anything that we can do to help news gathering organisations find new ways of expression so they can afford to get paid so they can keep their news gathering and editorial operations intact, I’m all for it.”

He was keen, of course, to stress the possible role which his company’s latest big thing, the iPad tablet computer, could play in facilitating this shift in attitudes.

“What we have to do is figure out a way to get people to start paying for this hard earned content. And so this (the iPad) provides us with a potential opportunity to provide more value than a web page and start charging for that,” Jobs said.

However, Jobs appeared to hint that his attempts to take a hard line over charging for iPad apps had made media owners reluctant to develop their own apps, reported Gordon McMillan on MediaWeek magazine’s The Wall blog.
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“I’m trying to get these folks to take more aggressive postures than what they charge traditionally for print because they don’t have the expenses of printing, they don’t have the expenses of delivery, and to charge a reasonable price and go for volume. I think people are willing to pay for content,” Jobs concluded.

His assertion seems to have been borne out by early sales of The Times newspaper’s iPad edition, which was reported to have sold 5,000 six-day subscriptions, at GBP9.99 each (about US$16), in its first three days of availability.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has defended changes to the service which have led to privacy concerns, and said that he has no date in mind for a public floatation of the company.

Zuckerberg used an address to the All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California on Wednesday to reiterate his defiant stance on Facebook’s intention to push the boundaries of its offering to users.

“Certainly on a day-to-day basis if we didn’t disrupt things that would be the easiest way to proceed,” Zuckerberg told the conference.

“But we don’t believe that if we did that we’d be doing the best thing for us long-term or for the industry.”

Just a week before the Wall Street Journal-organised get-together of some of the world’s biggest names in online enterprise, Facebook had simplified its privacy controls, so that users could more easily keep information private.

The steps for doing so are now contained on a single page on the site.

At the same time, the site also made it easier for users to conceal their details from third parties, in an effort to counter some critics who had said the privacy settings were too cumbersome.

But Zuckerberg was unrepentant about his company’s right to pursue a radical and innovative approach to its offering, Reuters reported. It would continue to make what it believed were the right changes, even if some of them were controversial, he said.

The company does have a fine line to tread between encouraging its users to share information socially with others, and their individual privacy, yet it is increasingly being seen as infringing onto territory occupied by the likes of Google and Yahoo as a general resource for information of all kinds.

Zuckerberg revealed to the All Things Digital audience that more than 200,000 websites now use the company’s social ‘plug-ins’, which allows Facebook users to click on buttons across the Web to show that they “liked” a particular online article or video.

Facebook is backed by a range of technology companies and investors including Digital Sky Technologies, Microsoft Corp, Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka Shing, as well as venture capital firms Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners.

But it is under constant scrutiny from investors who hope one day to be able to buy shares in the fast-growing company.

Zuckerberg confirmed recent media reports that the company now had four times as many advertisers than a year ago. He also said that the company’s social ‘plug-ins’, which allow Facebook users to click on buttons across the web to show that they “liked” a particular online article or video, were now being used by more than 200,000 websites.

“I don’t know if we always get it right,” Zuckerberg said about some of the service’s controversial new features. “But my prediction will be that a few years from now, we’ll look back and wonder why there was ever this time when all these websites and applications … weren’t personalised in some way.”

The Sun newspaper in the UK was the target of a torrent of anger from Twitter users when it asked its readers to vote on whether gay people should be ministers in the cabinet of the UK Government.

The paper, the UK’s highest-circulation national daily newspaper, posed the question after the resignation of former Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws, following revelations in one of The Sun’s rival publications that Mr Laws had wrongly claimed expenses for accommodation where his secret partner lived.

On Twitter @duckorange reminded people: “Shocked at Sun’s “gay cabinet minister” poll? Don’t be – this is same paper that ran “Ten ways to spot if your vicar is a pulpit pooftah”.

And a comment from @neilmonnery’s saying: “The Sun really ran a poll asking ‘Should gay people be cabinet ministers? – Even I never thought they could sink that low”, was heavily retweeted.

Of those polled 13 per cent said it was a good thing that gay people were in the cabinet and more than three-quarters said they did not mind. Only five per cent said they were against.

On the afternoon the poll appeared, campaigners from gay campaign group Stonewall said they were not surprised that 90 per cent of the paper’s readers who took part in the poll said that an MP’s sexuality should have no bearing on whether they can be a Cabinet member.

The result of The Sun poll, according to Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill, “must have been a disappointment to the Sun journalists who were silly enough to ask the question.

“This suggests it is more out of touch with its readers than it likes to think.”

Football fans heading to South Africa for the World Cup have been warned by a watchdog group to keep an eye on the cost of their mobile internet use while there.

Consumer Focus says that mobile operators levy huge charges for web browsing on their phones, with prices ranging from £1.25 to £8 per Mb.

That means that uploading 10 photos to Facebook via a mobile phone could cost up to £80, it warns.

Call charges for people travelling outside the European Union are between 80p and £1.50 per minute, and texts cost from 25p to 50p. This compares to a maximum call cost of 37p per minute and 9p per text for people travelling in Europe.

At £1.70 per minute Virgin Mobile pre-pay offers consumers the worst rates for making calls, with T-mobile the most expensive network to use to receive calls from the UK at £1.50 per minute.

Orange and Tesco have the highest data charges, with costs for customers on both networks of up to £80 to upload ten 1MB photos. They are closely followed by T-mobile where the same usage would cost £75.

According to Consumer Focus, Vodafone’s free Passport scheme offers consumers the best call rates and texts. Customers pay a 75p connection fee and then their normal UK rates, while texts cost 11p. 3 UK offers the cheapest data roaming fees of £1.25 per MB.

Nick Hutton, telecommunications expert for Consumer Focus, said: “The watchdog is calling on mobile phone firms to cut their mobile-phone roaming costs and set prices at a similar level to those in the EU.”

Here are Consumer Focus’s top five tips for using your mobile phone abroad:

- Check your rates before you go and ask what add-ons or bundles your mobile phone company offers on calls, texts and data as this could make you considerable savings - Remember that while abroad you won’t be able to use your inclusive minutes, texts and data allowance (except inclusive minutes under Vodafone’s passport service) and will pay to receive as well as to make calls which could add up

- Photos and videos can be expensive to upload on mobiles while abroad so consider other options such as uploading using a computer at an internet cafe or hotel instead

- Consider getting a local SIM card for use in South Africa if you will be making calls to numbers within the country

- If your phone is lost or stolen while abroad report it to your mobile provider as soon as possible as you will be liable for any calls made. Make a note of the emergency contact number for your network and keep this separate from your mobile.

Comedian Stephen Fry boosted the number of pledges for a UK health trust’s campaign to raise awareness of issues surrounding mental illness, after he tweeted details about it.

The 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which covers areas in the north-west of England, including the major towns of Warrington, Wigan and St Helens, initially had 1,400 signatures until Fry, who himself has battled bipolar disorder, intervened on the social networking site and the tally shot up in days.

Fry, famed for his roles in hit TV shows Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster, first posted a message on his profile page on May 14 urging his 1.5 million Twitter followers to get behind the campaign.

“No sooner had the tweet appeared the pledge counter went into overdrive, it was a really exciting moment,” said Joanne Waldron, the Trust’s E-Communications Assistant.

When the actor and quiz show presenter posted another tweet three days after the original, thanking his followers for their support and once again asking people to pledge, the counter rocketed for a second time.

The Times newspaper of London has launched an iPad edition on the same day as the device went on sale in the UK.

The move also came just days after the launch of the News Corporation-owned newspaper launched its revamped website, which will soon go behind a paywall.

The iPad app will allow users to download and read Times content offline. An article on the old Times website promised that the app would make more use of interactive graphics, picture galleries and video.

It has been priced at £9.99 for a 28-day subscription – a different pricing structure from the soon-to-be-launched paywall for the new Times and Sunday Times websites, and substantially lower than the £1 a day or £2 for a week which has already been announced as the cost of a subscription to the new sites.

Speaking at a pre-launch event for the new websites, Sunday Times executive editor Tristan Davies said his newspaper may also launch an iPad app.

However, no details have been given of any payment plan for using the iPad app and accessing the paywalled websites through the device.

“The Times’ iPad application is an optimised, edited edition specifically for the iPad – including most sections of the paper – which can be downloaded and read offline. It is a separate product from thetimes.co.uk, which is why it is priced differently – so readers can choose whether they want to read The Times in a print, online or iPad format,” a spokeswoman for the Times told Journalism.co.uk.

Speaking at a pre-launch event for the new websites, Sunday Times executive editor Tristan Davies said his newspaper may also launch an iPad app.

The 15 billionth Twitter post was sent over the weekend of May 29 and 30, just a few months after the social networking site passed the 10 billion message mark.

According to social media and marketing blog The Wall, it has taken about 12 weeks for the those five billion new Tweets to be posted. It suggests that the speed of the achievement is due to Twitter users becoming more active – although it does sound a note of scepticism about the proportion of spam messages.

Blog post author Gordon MacMillan said: “I’ve certainly noticed more and more people on Twitter – a lot since the election in the UK particularly.”

Twitter itself only last month claimed it had 105 milion users, although there were no statistics to show what proportion of this number was active.

And a major revamp of the site was unveiled last week, allowing Spanish, French, German and Italian speakers to access help pages in their native tongue. The site’s help pages now contain answers to every question the site claims it has ever received.

As @crystal promised in the post announcing the latest update: “This is just the first round of improvements… Stay tuned for even more improvement in the upcoming months.”

Facebook has found itself in hot water with a second country in a matter of days, as a result of ‘objectionable’ material posted on the site about the Prophet Mohammed.

Authorities in Bangladesh have placed a block on the social networking site over the content, an official of the country’s telecoms regulators said on Sunday.

It is believed that the ban, which came into effect the previous day, would be temporary.

Bangladesh became the second Muslim country in a matter of days to take down Facebook, after a court in Pakistan earlier ruled a competition on the site to draw an image of the Prophet was offensive, and blocked access.

The Bangladeshi government acted following protests in the capital, Dhaka, against images on the site which, aside from the Prophet, also included likenesses of several of the country’s political leaders, including the Prime Minister and leader of the opposition.

A man was arrested and questioned by police in Dhaka on Saturday over the images.

But in a TV interview, professor of computer science at Bangladesh’s Shahjahal University of Science and Technology, Mohammed Zafar Iqbal, urged the immediate lifting of the ban, because of the possibility of counter-protests by Bangladeshi youths.