Experts have come up with a cellphone that can recharge its own battery by harvesting energy from the owner’s motion.

The self-charging handset by Nokia, who has already filed for a US patent, was predicted to work with heavier components, such as the radio transmitter circuit and battery, supported on a sturdy frame.

The frame apparently could shift along two sets of rails, allowing it travel up and down and side to side, New Scientist reported.

Each rail apparently hosted strips of piezoelectric crystals at its end, capable of generating a current when compressed by the frame such that motion, by the user or the movement of the phone, generates electricity.

That in turn charged a capacitor and subsequently the battery, boosting the charge.

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Jem Stansfield, a BBC presenter, will drive from London to Manchester to test an experimental car, which runs on coffee grounds.

BBC1′s Bang Goes The Theory host will travel 210-miles in the car fuelled by 10,000 espressos.

Stansfield built the car to show how alternative energy sources can be harnessed.

The car, made from scrap, needs to be refuelled every 40 miles.

The vehicle features a system converting the grounds into flammable gases, which fuel the engine instead of petrol.

With his new invention, Stansfield aims to encourage young people to think about how we can tap into energy from waste products and new sources.

“Everyone recognises that coffee can give a person a bit of a boost, but many probably had no idea it had enough energy locked away to power a car,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying.

“It’s important for kids to understand that power is not something that is mystically there, simply at the flick of a switch or by pushing a pedal.

“With the energy challenge that is facing the world, the more we encourage children to think about alternative fuels, where energy is stored and how it can be released, the better,” he added.

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Facebook has become the most-visited site in the US after beating former titleholder Google.

The popular social networking page toppled the search giant after accounting for 7.07 per cent of all US web traffic compared to Google’s 7.03 per cent, web analysts Hitwise revealed.

“It’s definitely a big moment for Facebook, even though they beat by a small margin,” News.com.au quoted Hitwise’s Matt Tatham as telling CNN.

He added: “People want information from friends they trust, versus the anonymity of a search engine.”

The research did not include other Google services such as Gmail and YouTube.

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Facebook has refused to install the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) centre ‘panic button’ on its page to report suspected paedophiles, but it has vowed to develop its existing system.

The social networking site has been pressured to start the ‘panic button’ on its pages, after Peter Chapman was convicted for the murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall, whom he lured using Facebook, reports The BBC.

Richard Allan, director of policy for Facebook Europe, said the site did not plan to include the button, as it might be effective in principle “for other sites,” but not for Facebook.

Nonetheless, the site has agreed to have links to organisations including the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) centre on its reporting pages.

Jim Gamble, head of Ceop, wants the button to be on the front page of every profile page, “so that children are reassured and empowered, so are their parents, and offenders are deterred. That’s the key.”

Websites such as Bebo are already using the ‘panic button’.

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Are you downloading your favourite game or a particular application that allows you to share pictures, videos and information? These days, we have various gaming applications and individual developers coming out with unique and interesting downloadable applications. But, you need to make sure you are not inviting virus to disrupt your mobile handset. You should know that Internet/ mobile applications, if certified, can be trusted; if not, they can hamper your mobile data.

Worms, trojans, viruses and hackers – they not just threaten for your home PC or laptop anymore. As per Trend Micro, an Internet security firm, cyber crooks are on their way into your pocket. The popularity of smartphones like the Blackberry, iPhone and the emerging Droid is on a boom and that’s making them a lucrative target for cyber crooks to cause mischief.

The possibility of someone hacking cellphone became public knowledge when Paris Hilton’s mobile was hacked. Unfortunately for her, numbers of all her celebrity friends were also placed on the Internet – resulting in a barrage of calls to each of them. This was one of the highlighted cases of phone hacking through extracting personal information from the mobile handset.

The ingenuity of cyber criminals to come up with new social engineering angles seems endless. Mobile worms and viruses are similar to those that infect PCs. An unsuspecting user can be tricked into installing a harmless-looking file that infects a device and seeks additional mobile phones to target, often disrupting the phone’s operations.

What can a mobile hacker do? There are quite a number of things that can be done by the mobile hacker. Depending on intent, their main targets are:

Steal your number: Your phone number can be accessed and obtained by hacking. This allows them to make calls and have it charged on your account.

Extract your information: Mobile hacking allows a hacker to contact your cellphone, without your knowledge, and to download your addresses and other information you might have on your phone. Many hackers are not content to just getting your information. Some will even change all your phone numbers! Be sure that you keep a backup of your information somewhere. All you have to do is to ensure that the handset is malware-protected. Here are some quick and easy points a user should keep in mind when downloading applications on mobile phones.

First, identify the source from where you are downloading the application. A general community site that does not have any face is not contactable. For example, download.com is the worst place to get the software from. You can download applications like our P2P software on your mobile.

Check the software for security certificates. Try not to use any unsigned application. These are third-party signatures from Verisign, Symbian and Sun. Absence of any trusted signature can make the application very dangerous. The only warning that you will get is when you install and load the application. So, go for trusted applications.

Once the signature is there, visit the company site to verify application that you have downloaded. Check for warnings, known bugs and the functions that it would provide. This may help you understand the resources the application will take, such as memory, CPU, etc. Applications like file share, Voip, etc use some core OS functionality. In case of a bug, such an application can disrupt other functionalities of the phone.

Social media-based applications that download the files can also bring in a virus-infected file to your handset. In such a case, one should have some anti-virus software installed in the system or the application should check for MIME-type before it allows the download of the content. But, make sure that you protect your handset with anti-virus software to ensure that even if by chance you have downloaded a non-trusted application, security solution providers like Trend Micro or McAfee have anti-virus solutions for you.

Check for your data plan before you start to use an application that uses some sort of data transfers. An application like mBit p2p can generate huge data transfers. The user is advised to get in touch with the customer care to identify an appropriate plan for it. The user can tell the customer support about the desired application and an appropriate plan for the same.

Follow these simple steps and you’ll ahve a happy downloading session. So, treat your smart phones like your laptops or computers, and not a landline phone.

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