Top News Media: Motoring signs

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Sony offers PlayStation Network apology package

Sony has begun offering PlayStation Network gamers incentives to return to the system following its major hack attack.

The compensation package includes a selection of free games and additional days of premium content.

The plans also include a 12-month free identity protection programme.

The protection will be available for PlayStation gamers in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain.

It will offer victim of fraud support, a dedicated helpline and insurance covering expenses incurred in identity restoration.

Details of how to apply for protection can be found on the PlayStation blog. Users must be over 18 and have been an account holder on 20 April 2011.

In a press release, Sony said it will "investigate the possibility of similar programmes" in other countries.

Free games

So far, the announcements have been met with mixed response in the Playstation community.

Many gamers complained the games offered were too old, and that the package was "disappointing".

However, senior PR manager for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) Jonathan Fargher told the BBC it represents a good offer.

"Clearly there's going to be a minority of people out there who have some of those games.

"We certainly believe the welcome back programme and the choice of games that we're offering, for free, is good value."

He added that it is the first step in regaining the trust of PlayStation users, with more plans being announced soon.

In a blog post, SCEE head of communications Nick Caplin told PS3 gamers that they could pick two games from a list of Little Big Planet, Infamous, Wipeout HD/Fury, Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty and Dead Nation.

PlayStation Portable users, who were also affected by the downtime, could choose from Little Big Planet PSP, ModNation PSP, Pursuit Force and Killzone Liberation.

"I would like to thank all of the developers and publishers involved in this programme for their support in making this happen. We certainly couldn't have done it without you," Mr Caplin wrote.

"You will be able to access this content once PlayStation Store comes back online and we are doing everything we can to make that happen as soon as possible."

In addition to the free games, users were also offered 30 days free PlayStation Plus membership which offers premium content not available to free users.

Existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive 60 days free.

Users on the Sony Online Entertainment network - another affected by the hack - will receive their own package of 45 days of game time as well as in-game currency.

Old games

The gaming community's reaction to the PSN package has been mixed.

"I own all of the five games I can choose from and have finished most of them," commented user Arkeologen in response to the announcement.

"Isn't there any way you can offer alternatives instead of these old games?"

However, on the US PlayStation blog, commenter WhizKid105 said: "Jeeze Sony, I know you're sorry, but you don't have to welcome us back that hard.

"Not that I'm complaining or anything."

Oli Walsh, from Eurogamer.net, believes the compensation package is "fairly generous" given that the PlayStation Network is a largely free service.

"They are old games, but they're all good games. The risk is that if you're a real passionate fan you've probably played them already," he said.

"I think it was a very difficult one for them to get right. I'm not sure there is something that would satisfy most people."

Taiwan abuzz over 'pregnant' panda Yuan Yuan

In Taiwan there is excited speculation about a celebrity pregnancy - with a difference. All attention is on Yuan Yuan, the giant panda.

She is one of two giant pandas given to Taiwan by China in 2008 to symbolise improving relations between the two.

Taipei Zoo says Yuan Yuan is showing signs of pregnancy - sleeping more, eating less and is unusually cranky.

Experts at her birthplace in Sichuan told zoo keepers that her mother showed the same signs when she was expecting.

Yuan Yuan was artificially inseminated in February, because the panda pair showed a disappointing lack of interest in each other. Zoologists believe they are simply too young and inexperienced.

Good omen?

But it will not be until June or July that Yuan Yuan's keepers will know for sure if she is pregnant - just two weeks before the birth.

Panda embryos are so tiny they do not show up on early ultrasound scans.

And Yuan Yuan objects to the examinations, so officials are leaving her well alone.

If she is pregnant, Beijing would be thrilled. It would see a birth as a good omen for relations with Taiwan.

China regards Taiwan as a province, even though the island has been governed separately since the end of a civil war in 1949.

It is no coincidence that China named the pandas Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan. When said together, that means 'reunion' in Chinese.

Man fined for shooting swan 'thinking it was goose'

A man who shot a swan thinking it was goose is believed to be the first person in England prosecuted for using lead shot illegally on wildfowl.

Electrician Simon Quince, 36, from Harthills, Barnsley, was fined £445 for shooting the swan and £100 for using the wrong shot.

He appeared at Harrogate Magistrates' Court and admitted killing the swan near Knaresborough last December.

An investigation found he had been using the shotgun cartridges illegally.

North Yorkshire Police and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds found Quince had been using gun cartridges that contained lead shot.

'Significant difference'

Quince was on a shoot on a freezing cold, but clear day last winter.

He noticed four birds flying over and thinking they were geese, he opened fire.

One of the birds came crashing down badly injured and Quince realised he had shot a swan, which is protected by law.

The bird was later put down by a local vet.

Wildlife Officer for North Yorkshire Police Pc Gareth Jones said: "The onus is on the person to identify their quarry.

"There is a significant difference between a goose and a swan. If he wasn't sure, he shouldn't have taken the shot."

It has been against the law to use lead shot on wildfowl shoots in England since 1999.

Lead is banned because it can easily find its way into the food chain of foraging birds on wetlands and is poisonous.

Tardigrades: Water bears in space

In 2007, a little known creature called a tardigrade became the first animal to survive exposure to space.

It prevailed over sub-zero temperatures, unrelenting solar winds and an oxygen-deprived space vacuum.

On Monday, this microscopic cosmonaut has once again hitched a ride into space on the Nasa shuttle Endeavour.

Its mission: to help scientists understand more about how this so-called "hardiest animal on Earth" can survive for short periods off it.

Tardigrades join other microscopic organisms selected to be part of a project into extreme survival.

Endeavour climbs into the sky on Monday

Project Biokis is sponsored by the Italian Space Agency and will investigate the impact of short-duration spaceflight on a number of microscopic organisms.

The project will use seven experiments to investigate how spaceflight affects organisms on a molecular level.

The team will be using molecular biology to evaluate any changes in the organisms' genetic information, as well as investigating how cells physically adapt to cope with extreme dehydration, caused by the space vacuum, and damage caused by cosmic radiation.

One of these experiments, the Tardkiss experiment, will expose colonies of tardigrade to different levels of ionising radiation, determined using an instrument called a dosimeter, at different points during the spaceflight mission.

The results from Tardkiss will enable researchers to determine how radiation dosage effects the way cells work.

Tardigrades are of particular interest following the 2007 European Space Agency (Esa) Foton-M3 mission, during which their ability to survive space conditions was discovered.

Stocky bodies

Tardigrades are microscopic animals more commonly known by their non-scientific name, the water bear.

Their stocky bodies and gait have all the hallmarks of a bear. But this isn't a typical bear encounter.

These bears are less than 1mm long and are found in the sea, in fresh water and on land.

Genetic studies have shown that they originally lived in freshwater environments before adapting to colonise the land, seeking out moist habitats such as soil, mosses, leaf litter and lichen.

Tardigrades earned the "hardiest animal on earth" tag having evolved elaborate dormancy strategies that allow them to shut down all but the essential biological processes when conditions are not conducive to supporting life.

Coloured scanning electron micrograph of the water bear Echiniscus granulatus

Professor Roberto Guidetti from the University of Modena and Reggio Emiliabelieves their ability to suspend life and withstand freezing and desiccation may explain why they can survive in space.

"Tardigrades can be found all over the world from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from high mountains to deserts, in urban areas and backyard gardens," he explained.

"In terrestrial environments, they always require at least a film of water surrounding their bodies to perform activities necessary for life."

But if these conditions change, tardigrades are capable of entering an extreme form of resting called cryptobiosis.

In this state, they are capable of withstanding freezing, a process called cryobiosis, and desiccation, a process called anhydrobiosis.

Arid state

"This capability [to withstand desiccation] involves a complex array of factors working at molecular, physiological and structural levels," Professor Guidetti told BBC News.

"The physiology and biochemistry of anhydrobiosis is bound to a complex system that involves many different molecular components working together as bioprotectants."

Sugars and heat stress proteins, which are expressed when cells become stressed, act as "molecular chaperones" protecting important molecules within the cell.

The disaccharide sugar called trehalose plays a role in the protection of cells and biomolecules from dehydration by replacing water that is normally bonded to hydrogen.

During dehydration, loss of water increases the ionic concentration leading to the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) which damage important biomolecules including DNA.

A water bear egg, imaged by coloured scanning electron micrograph

To counter this attack, organisms produce antioxidants that can mop up ROS minimising cell damage.

The regulation of antioxidant metabolism represents a crucial strategy to avoid damage during dehydration.

"Tardigrades can persist for months, or even for years, in the anhydrobiotic state. When in the desiccated state, tardigrades show a high resistance to physical and chemical extremes," explains Professor Guidetti.

"For example, very low and high temperatures, exposure to high pressure or vacuum, as well as contact with organic solvents and ionising radiation."

Exposure to the conditions found in space induces rapid changes in living systems.

The TARDKISS study may help researchers such as Professor Guidetti develop techniques to protect other organisms, including humans, from the extreme stresses found under space conditions.

It may also help with the future long-term goal of extending the exploration of the Solar System.

Human arrival 'wiped out' Hawaii's unique crabs

Land crabs unique to Hawaii, as big as a human fist and able to travel huge distances inland, were wiped out by the first human colonists around 1,000 years ago, scientists have deduced.

Fossils have been found at altitudes of 1,000m (3,000ft) - unusual for a crab.

Writing in the journal PLoS One, researchers say they identified the species by comparing it with living relatives on other Pacific islands.Early settlers brought animals such as pigs and rats - wiping the crabs out.

The researchers describe this as the first documented extinction of a crab in the human era.

"They'd already vanished from the islands by the time the Europeans got there - nobody's ever seen one alive," said Gustav Paulay, curator of the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

"There are stratigraphic sequences (layers of rock) that have been studied mostly for bird extinctions, and we can date when Polynesian settlers came in, partly by occurrence of Polynesian rats: and when that happens, you don't see any more crabs," he told BBC News.

Land crabs appear particularly vulnerable to contact with animals associated with human spread, and there are documented cases on islands elsewhere where they have fared very badly when rats have been introduced.

Sea changes

Settlement of the Hawaiian islands brought huge changes to the ecology, with many native species including birds and amphibians swiftly becoming extinct.

The same fate appears to have befallen this once mighty land crab, which the researchers have dubbed Geograpsus severnsi.

"When you look at the islands of the Pacific, things don't get there easily, so land animals are scarce - and the biggest things on some of them are crabs," said Professor Paulay.

"They control the ecosystems on atolls to an incredible extent.

"This particular species would have been important as a predator and as an omnivore - it would probably have had a big impact on the insect population, on land snails, and also maybe on nesting birds."

The fossils have been known for many years from various sites around the Hawaiian islands, including caves at altitudes highly unusual for crabs, several kilometres from the coast.

Many crabs cannot live in these conditions as they need regular immersion in salt water.

But G severnsi appears to have evolved the capacity to roam further afield than most, including closely related species found on other Pacific islands.

Even land-dwelling crabs return to the sea to produce larvae - and once in the sea, can be carried from island to island, even across the thousands of kilometres that lie between the Hawaiian archipelago and neighbours such as Kiribati.

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Turkey's bazaar love affair in Sultanahmet, Istanbul

IT'S a well-worn cliche that Istanbul is a magical destination where East meets West.

Situated on the banks of the Bosphorus, the city's trendy bars are only a stone's throw from thousand-year-old mosques, and McDonald's and Starbucks sit happily next to traditional teahouses and pastanesis (patisseries).

While Istanbul has a growing European flavour, it's the Eastern delights that captivate visitors from all over the world.

Nowhere is there a bigger concentration of museums, palaces and mosques than Sultanahmet, a beautiful, cobblestoned suburb nestling on the edge of the Golden Horn. From the majesty of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya to the plethora of ancient artefacts in the Topkapi Palace, the area boasts more history per square metre than many destinations three or four times its size. Throw into the mix good food, fantastic views and a world-famous market, all within walking distance, and Sultanahmet deserves to be your first port of call when visiting Istanbul.Tale of two mosques 

Sultanahmet is dominated by two stunning mosques, Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque. The former is arguably the most popular building in Istanbul and was originally a church when completed in 537, until Mehmet the Conqueror claimed it for Islam in 1453 and converted it to a mosque.

The rather ordinary exterior belies what is within, a jaw-dropping 30m domed ceiling with more than 30 million mosaic tiles. The emperor Justinian said of the interior upon seeing it for the first time: "Glory to God that I have been judged worthy of such a work. Oh Solomon! I have outdone you!"

Across the Sultanahmet Park, the Blue Mosque was built by Sultan Ahmet I in the early 1600s to rival Aya Sofya's beauty, and many locals believe he achieved his goal. With the most minarets of any mosque in the city, the building gets its name from the tens of thousands of blue Iznik tiles on its own impressive domed ceiling.

It is best seen as the sun is setting, so make sure you take some time to contemplate the grandeur of the multi-layered structure in the large courtyard before entering the main building, which is still a working mosque.

Grandest of bazaars 
On the outskirts of Sultanahmet, the world-famous Grand Bazaar (a quick stroll from Beyazit tram stop) is the beating heart of the city, a shopper's paradise since the 13th century and home to more than 4000 shops.

Expect to be accosted by traders wherever you go, as you're urged to view "the best carpet in Istanbul", always for the "best price", funnily enough. However, it's all friendly banter, with bartering and negotiation part of the Grand Bazaar experience for hundreds of years. If you leave without buying anything, you have more willpower than most.

As well as myriad carpet stalls, bookshops and jewellery stores, there are also plenty of great places to refuel after walking the kilometres of laneways. Try the famous Fes Cafe (Ali Baba Turbesi Sokak 25-27) for top-notch Turkish coffee or tea or grab a kebab with a local at the cheerful Burc Ocakbasi.

History lessons 
The Topkapi Palace is the jewel in Istanbul's sightseeing crown, an outstanding museum rich with artefacts from every period of Turkish history Greek, Roman, Ottoman and Byzantine. As home of the ruling sultans, Topkapi was the site of intrigue, murder and rebellion throughout the ages and needs at least a full day of attention to see all it has to offer.

While you are free to wander the grounds of the pretty First Court, the Second and Third Courts (admission 20 Turkish lira, or $12) are home to the museum proper, housed in several opulent buildings around a picturesque courtyard. With collections of Chinese porcelain, regal kaftans, imperial carriages, Ottoman armour and various daggers and swords including the famous Topkapi Dagger and the Kasikci Diamond, the fifth-largest in the world the palace is a history buff's wonderland.

Make sure to head to the Sacred Safekeepings Room, the holiest of all rooms in the palace, where you will see a sword, bow and pieces of the beard of Prophet Muhammad, as well as the Harem, the imperial family quarters. Unfortunately, the Harem was not as debaucherous as some would like to think, with affairs run by the sultan's mother, who had "authority to regulate the relations between the sultan and his wives". Seems even the supreme ruler couldn't escape a bossy mother.

Eat, drink, be merry 
No trip to Istanbul would be complete without sampling the local cuisine.

A top spot for burek (a meat-filled pastry) and baklava is the Cigdem Pastanesi (62/a Divanyolu Caddesi), a cheap and cheerful patisserie frequented by hungry students and locals in the know. As well as top-notch food, they make a mean Turkish coffee to complement one of the sweet, sticky desserts you feel almost obliged to finish off with.

Many restaurants in the Sultanahmet have rooftop areas, offering great views of the mosques and surrounds, especially after dark when they are beautifully lit up. Head to Kutlugun Sk and Utanga Sk for the best selection, and don't forget your camera.

In the wake of disaster - recovering tourism in Japan

FROM the Queensland floods to the Christchurch earthquake and political unrest in Egypt, 2011 has been a year in which major events have not just devastated local communities but also impacted on people's travel plans.

Japan is the latest country to face a dramatic downturn in visitors in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, with fears of aftershocks and radiation from the Fukushima nuclear reactor deterring tourists.

In March the number of Australians travelling to Japan fell by half to about 11,000.

Before the natural disasters, Japan was on a high, experiencing its most tourists on record in the first two months of the year.

Yukio Yamashita, executive director of Japan National Tourism Organisation's Sydney office, is keen to point out that only 0.1 per cent of Japan was affected by the tsunami and the area that was affected was not a particularly popular destination for Australian travellers anyway.

The devastating tsunami struck the Tohoku region, about 400km north of Tokyo on the northeast coast of the main island Honshu.

Most Australians who go to Japan either visit ski resorts on the north island Hokkaido, which was not affected by the tsunami, or follow the "golden route" from Tokyo along the southeast coast to Hiroshima.

The route includes Hakone, where you can view Mt Fuji and enjoy hot springs, the modern city of Nagoya, the traditional city of Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and Okayama.

Yamashita says Australians are also starting to discover new ski destinations such as Appi and Zao, which are also on the main island.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs advises Australians not to travel to Ibaraki, Tochigi, Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures or within the 80km evacuation zone around these areas. But the overall advice for Japan is level three to exercise a high degree of caution.

The United Nations has found that radiation outside the evacuation zone is at permissible levels and poses no health risks.

While radiation levels in Tokyo and Kyoto have increased slightly since the disaster, on an average day, the radiation level in Sydney is actually higher than in either city due to environmental factors.

Although there have been comparisons to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine in 1986, the International Atomic Energy Agency says the two are "absolutely different in view of structure and scale".

About 370,000 tera-becquerals of radioactive materials were emitted in Fukushima, compared with 5.2 million in Chernobyl.

"Chernobyl exploded, Fukushima stopped automatically," Yamashita says.

Most tourist attractions in Japan are now open, although some may have shortened opening hours to conserve power.

All international airports are operating, even Sendai Airport, which was damaged by the tsunami, and the bullet trains are all running as normal.

"At the moment, tourists are still not sure whether to go or not because they don't have enough information," Yamashita says.

"People who have done their research realise that Japan is pretty safe."

Travel and tourism accounted for about 2 per cent of Japan's gross domestic product in 2009, according to the Japan Tourism Agency, but the country has ambitious plans to boost its tourism industry significantly over the next few years.

"I think Australians are familiar with the situation with the floods in Queensland, when a lot of overseas tourists perceived Australia as a whole as not attractive to travel to not just Queensland," Yamashita says.

"We are very grateful to Australian people who have been sending encouragement messages, donations and rescue teams.

"Now we ask Australian travellers to continue their support of the recovery of the other parts of Japan which have not been affected by the tsunami and earthquake but by a drop in tourist numbers."

For those who are planning a visit, Yamashita says January and February are the most popular times for Australians who want to ski, but in late February and March visibility is better.

If you go in late March, you may also catch the cherry blossoms, which flower from south to north for two weeks at a time.

While it can be hot in summer (July to August), it is a great time for events, including fireworks called hanabi that often last for more than an hour.

Ken Osetroff, the director of small group touring company Toursgallery, says the number of phone calls from Australians interested in travelling to Japan is increasing.

"The majority of people are saying they want to go back next year," Osetroff says.

"But that doesn't help Japan much this year. And the problem is the hotels need to keep their staff employed and if they can't they're going to have to close their doors and they won't be there next year."

Osetroff was in Japan last month and has five tours going there this year.

"People don't understand how big Japan is everyone thinks of it as a tiny little place in the world and if there's a problem there everyone is affected," he says.

"That's not the case at all life is going on in 99 per cent of Japan.

"People in Japan couldn't understand what all the fuss was about everything is running as normal."

But Osetroff says there are unlikely to be major discounts to lure visitors to Japan. "Unfortunately, the Japanese don't think that way," he says.

But he says now is a wonderful time to fly to Japan. "You can buy the cheapest possible ticket in economy class and get three seats to yourself," he says.

How Osama bin Laden sent and received thousands of emails without being detected

DESPITE having no internet access in his hideout, Osama bin Laden was a prolific email writer who built a painstaking system that kept him one step ahead of the US government's best eavesdroppers.

His methods, described in new detail to The Associated Press by a counterterrorism official and a second person briefed on the US investigation, served him well for years and frustrated Western efforts to trace him through cyberspace.

The arrangement allowed bin Laden to stay in touch worldwide without leaving any digital fingerprints behind.

The people spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive intelligence analysis.

Bin Laden's system was built on discipline and trust. But it also left behind an extensive archive of email exchanges for the US to scour.
The trove of electronic records pulled out of his compound after he was killed last week is revealing thousands of messages and potentially hundreds of email addresses, the AP has learned.

Holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive.

He then passed the flash drive to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant internet cafe.

At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden's message into an email and send it.

Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.

It was a slow, toilsome process. And it was so meticulous that even veteran intelligence officials have marvelled at bin Laden's ability to maintain it for so long. The US always suspected bin Laden was communicating through couriers but did not anticipate the breadth of his communications as revealed by the materials he left behind.

Navy SEALs hauled away roughly 100 flash memory drives after they killed bin Laden, and officials said they appear to archive the back-and-forth communication between bin Laden and his associates around the world.

Al-Qaeda operatives are known to change email addresses, so it's unclear how many are still active since bin Laden's death. But the long list of electronic addresses and phone numbers in the emails is expected to touch off a flurry of national security letters and subpoenas to internet service providers. The Justice Department is already coming off a year in which it significantly increased the number of national security letters, which allow the FBI to quickly demand information from companies and others without asking a judge to formally issue a subpoena.

Officials gave no indication that bin Laden was communicating with anyone inside the US, but terrorists have historically used US-based internet providers or free internet-based email services.

The cache of electronic documents is so enormous that the government has enlisted Arabic speakers from around the intelligence community to pore over it. Officials have said the records revealed no new terror plot but showed bin Laden remained involved in al-Qaeda's operations long after the US had assumed he had passed control to his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

The files seized from bin Laden's compound not only have the potential to help the US find other al-Qaeda figures, they may also force terrorists to change their routines. That could make them more vulnerable to making mistakes and being discovered.

Meanwhile, three of bin Laden's wives have reportedly been interrogated by US intelligence officers under the supervision of Pakistani's intelligence service.

The women - who were all interviewed together - were "hostile" toward the Americans, CNN reported on its website, citing US and Pakistani sources.

Officials told CNN the interrogation didn't yield much new information, while adding that it was early in the process.

Sydney designer creates ultimate Daft Punk mashup

"I've always considered Daft Punk to be one of my favourite acts in electronic music and I thought I could make a unique retrospective of their work by cutting and splicing as many of their songs as possible into a new track," he told news.com.au.

HAVE you ever wanted to know what Daft Punk's discography looks like?

Well, you could line up their records in a row. Or, you could mix them all together and create the ultimate musical and visual mashup.

Sydney designer Cameron Adams, 31, decided to go with the second, much more fun option for his interactive mashup project "Definitive Daft Punk" at daftpunk.themaninblue.com.

The site plays a seven-minute mix of almost two dozen Daft Punk songs, with a visualisation showing where each track comes in and out.

The music buff used HTML 5 and CSS3 to create the graphics accompanying his mix.

"My day job is actually visual and interactive design, so after I released the Definitive Daft Punk audio, my mind wandered to how it could possibly be represented visually," he said.

"I'd always wanted to create a data visualisation involving the process of remixing and mashups because I think it's an area that not many people fully understand the intricacies of.

"Definitive Daft Punk was the perfect opportunity to do this, as I had access to all the audio files and data, given that I'd made it myself!"

The visualisation shows each track as a ring that pulses and shrinks as it travels out of the mix.

"It gives the viewer a sense of growth and contraction as each part comes in and fades away, almost like the song is breathing," Mr Adams said.

Mr Adams said he was amazed by the positive feedback he received for the project, which took him upwards of 80 hours to create.

"It's been almost 100 per cent positive, which is unusual," he said.

"On most creative projects you generally get a few criticisms. Some of it has been wildly over the top.

"Actually, my favourite one, which was posted on Twitter, is 'Très très bon mashup musical en HTML5!', because it's in French."

The site has already received more than 150,000 visitors since it launched last week.

"That equates to 1 terabyte of outgoing traffic," said Mr Adams.

Mr Adams said he hoped his mashup helped a greater audience learn about and appreciate the art form and, if nothing else, jog people's memories about Daft Punk.

"(I hope) it makes them remember all those Daft Punk tracks of yesteryear that are sitting at the bottom of their iTunes playlist," he said.

While many people have asked Mr Adams to create more mashups like Definite Daft Punk, the designer said he was a little worn out.

"At the moment I'm just exhausted from it, but there will definitely be more mashups in the future," he said.

Mr Adams is also collaborating with a Sydney musician -- whose identity remains a mystery for the moment -- to create a live audio-visual concert which he hopes will occur by the end of the year.

He will also be taking part in the TEDSydney event on May 28, where he will be creating live visualisations of tweets and images posted on the day.

British media must now mind one's tweets; to be regulated by press complaints body

UK journalist and newspaper Twitter feeds are set to be brought under the regulation of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) later this year, the first time that it has sought to bring social media messages under its remit, according to British news reports today.

The PCC believes that tweets can in effect be part of a "newspaper's editorial product", writings that its code of practice would otherwise cover if the same text appeared in print or on a newspaper website, The (London) Times reported.

A change in the code would circumvent a loophole that, in theory, means that there is no means of redress via the PCC if somebody wanted to complain about an alleged inaccuracy in a statement that was tweeted. Last year the PCC found that it was unable to rule in a complaint made against tweets published by the Brighton Argus.

The PCC's intentions emerged after consultative proposals unveiled by the Lord Chief Justice in February that the media - but not the public - should be allowed to tweet live, text or email from court subject to certain safeguards.

Lord Judge has proposed the move because of the "immense public interest" in being able to know the details of what takes place in the courts.

Journalists have already reported on high-profile cases from courtrooms, for instance in the extradition hearing of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

"Technology has developed which removes the need to leave the courtroom to file copy," says the consultation document, citing wireless laptops and smartphones.

The PCC plans to distinguish between journalists' public and private tweets. Any Twitter feed that has the name of the newspaper and is clearly an official feed - such as @TimesNewsdesk or @thesun_bizarre - will almost certainly be regulated.

However, TheJournal.ie reported that a spokesman for the Press Council of Ireland said that the issue of regulating Twitter feeds of Irish newspapers and journalists "had not come up".