The first hardware, made by Sony, will offer direct access to the internet, and Google hopes it will also encourage software developers to write apps for televisions as well as for mobile phones and tablets. Google TV has struggled in America, and the interface has been redesigned since it was first unveiled. Special versions of YouTube, Twitter and some websites have now been created for the TV interface, and Google hopes more users will rent films through the new service. A company spokesman said that internet on television needed to be more of a "lean back experience" than it is …

The Guardian has given 20 of its general reporters iPhones in a bid to "take advantage" of the latest mobile photography and video technology to "supplement" the news outlet's existing video output. The trial saw Guardian reporters handed iPhones a few weeks ago, and since then around eight or nine pieces of output have resulted from this, according to national editor Dan Roberts. Speaking to Journalism.co.uk he said the Guardian has been talking about "trying to equip more of our news reporters with iPhones" for a while, and is using this trial to decide whether it is something they want …

A new magazine "of inquisitive journalism and intelligent photography" has launched for iPad. The online version of Auto de Fe went live last weekend and will be followed by a print edition later in the year. The iPad magazine is viewed in landscape and navigated by swiping horizontally through the features, and articles are read vertically. The independent title has been founded by two photojournalists and supported by independent designers, writers and photographers, executive editor of the magazine Jack Laurenson told Journalism.co.uk.

The colourful entrepreneur, who is on bail in New Zealand and wanted in the United States on charges criminal copyright infringement, money laundering and racketeering, took to Twitter to unveil his new venture, Megabox. The new website will offer musicians a way to sell their music direct to fans and keep 90% of revenues. "The major record labels thought Megabox is dead," said Dotcom. "Artists. rejoice. It is coming and it will unchain you." Dotcom, born Kim Schmitz in Germany, was arrested in January in a raid on his mansion in Auckland.

The Doodle is a basic interpretation of the Turing Machine, a hypothetical computing model that Turing proposed in 1936. The machine, he suggested, would be fed with a long piece of tape inscribed with single-character instructions which it would then read and process, moving the tape back and forth according to the instructions given using an algorithm. The notion was considered groundbreaking by Turing's peers -- up until this point, a machine that could react dynamically to multiple instructions by storing data had not been imagined.

Jack Dorsey said entrepreneurs in Europe lack ambition compared to those in Silicon Valley, as his micro-blogging website announced plans to expand its advertising sales in 50 new countries by the end of the year. Dorsey, 34, who was in Cannes to receive the Media Person of the Year award at the annual Lions advertising festival, said of Europe: "There's a huge barrier to entry because there's not a large ambition to take risks. There's a fear of making mistakes in public." In contrast, he said there was a mentality on the West Coast of America that "I'm going to …

Social media marketers may have been aware of some form of preference, but a solid set of results have now been brought to the fore,dailymail.co.uk reports. Researchers from Google have indicated that men are siding with Reddit, while women are contributing to 72% of Pinterest's audience. The former certainly isn't surprising, as social news site Reddit admits freely to targeting men with their approach. The majority of content on the site is classed as 'funny', while politics and science articles are also popular.

Noel Young, chairman of the Online Media Awards judging panel, looks at the future of free news, asking whether readers should pay for online journalism. "How's this for a vision of the future: hordes of 30-somethings getting all their news from TV and broadcasts, printing off the odd page from Facebook to get that tactile feeling referred to by Rupert Murdoch. Newspapers? Gonzo. Partly because they couldn't all get their act together to start charging."

The Guardian was named "website of the year" at last week's Online Media Awards "for not losing its news sense and judgment just because the distribution of the stories is digital". The site "gets the right balance between serious news and lighter features and sports and it is so easy to navigate", according to a release. Guardian special projects editor Paul Lewis took the award for best Twitter feed. His tweets reporting on the England riots were among the nominations which led to Lewis being shortlisted for the Orwell Prize reporter of the year award earlier this year. Another of …

As part of a new safe-sex initiative, the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control (SMI) has launched an app called Provligget, or Test Nooky, allowing you to do just that. "The focus is on condom use ... we're trying to get this issue on the agenda," explained Karin Raagsjoe, who came up for the idea for the app for SMI. The app allows users to "test sex" with fantasy characters, ranging from a personal trainer, to an unfaithful woman, to a handyman, all portrayed by more or less famous Swedish actors. Once users make their choice, they are asked if …