London, October 29: Microsoft researchers have developed a system called SideSight that can allow a mobile phone user to control a handset placed on a table by wiggling his/her fingers in the space around it.

The technology was unveiled last week at the User Interface in Software and Technology symposium in Monterey, California.

Alex Butler, a researcher from the Sensors and Devices Group at Microsoft Research Cambridge in the UK, has revealed that the system derives its exceptional ability from infrared sensors that can pick up the movement of fingers up to 10 centimetres away.

"The big advantage of our prototype is the finger does not block any of the screen space," New Scientist magazine quoted Butler as saying.

London, Oct 29: English rocker Gary Glitter, convicted for sexual offences, stands to make 100,000 pounds after advertising chiefs used one of his songs for an ad.

The ad, made for computer giant Hewlett Packard, used the pop paedophile’s 1972 hit ‘Do You Wanna Touch Me’ to promote a new touch-screen model.

The song, which is featured in a major marketing campaign with TV adverts being screened all over America, is a 1982 cover version sung by US rocker Joan Jett.

But since it was originally written by 64-year-old Glitter, he gets to collect all the royalties, and if the ad sparks a surge in Internet downloads, he will end up earning a lot.

US campaigners are now demanding Hewlett Packard to remove the advert.

New Delhi/Kolkata/Kanpur, Oct 29: Diwali festivities were marred due to various fire accidents caused by firecrackers across India.

In Delhi, seven people were injured, including four firemen, when a massive fire broke out in a in a slum cluster in Jehangirpuri area of Delhi last night.

"All our belongings are burnt, nothing is left. We are not even left with clothes to wear. We don''t know whether any human being is injured in the fire but pets like dogs, cats, and goats have all died in the fire," said Shrikant, a victim.

New York, Oct 29: American actor Zac Efron is in talks for Kevin Bacon''s iconic role in the Paramount remake of the movie ‘Footloose’.

Efron has been rumoured to take the lead role in the movie, and after he made 42 million dollars last weekend for ‘High School Musical
3’, Paramount has moved forward with production and hopes to start filming next spring.

Kenny Ortega will be directing the movie along with “Nick and Norah''s Infinite Playlist” director Peter Sollett, who will rewrite the script.

According to Variety magazine, the studio is also working on a slew of new songs to jazz up the soundtrack, reports New York Daily News.

London, Oct 29: The home planet of Star Trek’s hero Mr Spock could really exist, as per a new finding.

The find was made through a powerful telescope, which found rocky worlds around the star, Epsilon Eridani, which has Spock’s planet Vulcan orbiting in the TV show.

The star Epsilon Eridani is surrounded by two bands of rocky and metal fragments like the asteroid belt that lies beyond Mars in our solar system.

And NASA experts believe if they are there, rocky planets like Earth must be there too, and it boosts that chance that this new solar system could be inhabited.

Washington, October 29: An expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says that rapid digitising may ultimately lead to a “digital dark age”, where digital photographs will become unreadable to future computers.

Jerome P. McDonough, an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the university, says that the issue of a looming digital dark age originates from the mass of data spawned by the ever-growing information economy — including electronic records, tax files, e-mail, music and photos.

He is afraid that data produced with ever-shifting platforms and file formats may eventually fall into a black hole of inaccessibility.