It is said that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but the PR department at Twitter might well be feeling otherwise at the moment. After coming under fire for using fabricated tweets in promotional material Twitter has been in the headlines after the company faced calls to do more to combat abusive tweets.

Threats of death and rape do not make for pleasant reading, but it is something that has happened to a number of Twitter users. The most recent victims to speak out -- Caroline Criado-Perez, who successfully campaigned for Jane Austin to appear on British bank notes, and UK MP Stella Creasy -- led to a grassroots campaign for Twitter to do more to police its micro-blogging service.

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Thailand has ruled that use of the online currency Bitcoin is illegal. Bitcoin Co Ltd was going through the process of registering with the necessary government agencies in order to operate legally. Having initially ruled that Bitcoin is not a currency, Bank of Thailand now says that due to a lack of existing applicable laws, numerous Bitcoin activities are now illegal.

A statement on the Thai Bitcoin website explains that it now illegal to buy and sell Bitcoins within the country. In addition to this, the buying and selling of goods and services for Bitcoins is outlawed, as is sending and receiving Bitcoins from anyone outside of Thailand.

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Pornography has been in the news a great deal, and David Cameron's bid to make online porn "opt-in" has sparked a fierce debate in many quarters. The apparent aim of the proposed measure is to protect children and the responsibility has been moved squarely to the door of ISPs, just as with access to torrent sites. But is this fair?

The Internet is an important element of democracy. It should be a tool for free speech, free access to information and the ability to communicate worldwide free of charge. Freedom is at the heart of it. Creating a two-tier Internet in which some people are able to access all content, and others can only access a portion of it flies in the face of what the world wide web is all about. It is also dangerous.

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Like the idea of Apple TV but feel the hardware is a little expensive? Today Sky releases its Now TV Box to UK fans for the ultra-low price of £9.99. This is significantly cheaper than Apple's flagship streaming device, and even manages to undercut Google's Chromecast. With the price tag including not just the device itself, but also delivery, there's got to be a catch, right?

The WiFi streaming box provides access to on-demand content from the broadcasters such as Sky, BBC and Channel 5, including sports and movies. There's also the option of using apps such as Spotify and Facebook to transform a regular TV into a smart TV. So far, so couch potato.

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Consuming digital media can be an overwhelming affair nowadays. There are too many devices on the market that do similar things but in different ways. There is the Apple TV, Roku, Blu-Ray Players, smart TVs and more. When Google announced the Chromecast, I was a bit skeptical -- surely I didn't need yet another device. However, the low price of the product ($35) and the fear of it selling out caused me to order it anyway.

When it arrived, I was shocked by just how small the packaging was. Upon opening the little box (OK, tearing into it) I was presented with the Chromecast. The device looks like a very fat flash-drive with an HDMI plug instead of USB. Also in the box was an HDMI extender cable, micro-USB cable and AC power adapter.

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Yesterday Google announced a product called Chromecast -- a $35 HDMI dongle that’s essentially YouTube’s answer to Apple TV. While the event was more Googlish than Applesque (the venue was too small, the screens were too small, the presenters weren’t polished, and as a result the laughs and applause didn’t come) the product itself was astonishing -- or appeared to be.

The press picked-up on the most obvious headline item in the announcement -- the $35 selling price which drops to $11 if you factor in three months of free Netflix per dongle even for existing Netflix customers (now sadly dropped). That’s like Google attaching an $8 bill to every Chromecast -- something Apple would never do.

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Advertising rarely proves popular, but Twitter has made something of a boo-boo with its latest venture -- one that has led to the microblogging site having to apologise to three of its users.

The company mocked up a series of tweets from three genuine Twitter accounts, and used them in a promotional blog post. All without the account owners' knowledge or consent.

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Nerds love rings; it's a fact. Don't believe me? How do you explain Green Lantern, the Wonder Twins and Lord of the Rings? Exactly. Unfortunately, we nerds can only dream of owning a magic ring -- we have to settle for cheap knock-offs for cosplay. However, things are about to change, well sort of, as an NFC enabled ring has been introduced on the crowd-funding site, Kickstarter.

NFC stands for Near Field Communication -- it enables communication between two touching NFC-enabled devices. Have you seen the commercials where people transfer pictures by touching their smartphones together? That is NFC. According to the ring's inventor, John McLear, the NFC technology in the device "can be used to unlock doors, mobile phones, transfer information and link people. Best of all the NFC Ring glides right onto your finger -- no updates, no charging, and no fuss". In other words, technology has enabled nerds to finally feel like they have a magic-powered ring.

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Yesterday my colleague Mark Wilson wrote an excellent article discussing online pornography and the problems of policing it. This came in the wake of UK Prime Minister David Cameron calling for internet companies to do more to block porn on the web.

Today, Cameron announces that every British household will have pornography automatically blocked by their internet provider, although customers can choose to switch off the "family friendly" filters if they so choose.

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After spending a number of years working in the educational tech sector, I can safely pinpoint the two camps that make up the meandering discussion about 1:1 computing plans for K-12 education today. On the one side, we have eager innovators who are determined to place a device in each student's hand -- even if that device fulfills nothing more than a checkbox on an administrator's 'five year outlook' plan.

And in contrast, we have the technical neophytes who are well entrenched in their opposition to devices in the classroom. These folks are the ones most likely to be ingrained in the "industrial force-feeding" approach to education, which by most accounts, is falling flat on its face. As the US continues to slide in education, most recently ranked 17th globally, the debate is no longer whether or not we need a wholesale adjustment of how we teach our youngest minds. Much more importantly, the discussion should be laser focused on how we get US education out of its growing rut.

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Filtering web content is always something of a sticky topic, and there are two very vocal sides to the argument. In the blue corner (red and blue are not being used in a political sense here -- if only because the blue represents right-wing parties in the UK and the more left-leaning in the US) we have those who advocate freedom of speech online, the right for anyone to say whatever he or she wants. In the red corner are those who feel that there is a need for policing, control and regulation.

It is certainly a difficult balance to strike. It would be all but impossible to draw a baseline level of sensibilities that should be catered to -- whatever form of control may be put in place will be seen as draconian in its severity by some, and pathetically lenient by others.

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Well, it's happened again. If it's not the NSA spying on internet users, then someone else is always ready to spoil the fun. Yet another website has fallen prey to hackers, putting the personal details of hundreds of thousands of users at risk.

This time around, it is Ubuntu Forums that has been affected -- visit the site and you're greeted by the announcement that the forums are down for maintenance before some details of the security breach are revealed.

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Listening to music or watching movies on your PC can be a slight disappointment if the audio equipment isn’t as good as it could be. So with that in mind, Acer has developed a new all-in-one desktop system with two 3W front-facing Harman Kardon speakers built-in.

According to Acer, the speakers "leverage thorough and precise scientific methods to accurately produce crystal-clear audio that’s as close to the original recording as possible". The sound quality is further improved with the addition of Dolby Home Theater v4 optimized digital output technologies.

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As superhero fans prepare to gather in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con, McAfee has revealed its first ever Most Toxic Superheroes list. The company has compiled a list of superheroes whose search results are most likely to lead to malicious websites aiming to steal fans' personal details or infect their PCs with viruses.

The top 15 are as follows, the percentages indicating the chance of landing on a website that has rested positive for online threats:

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Print media is dying; some may argue it is already dead. With the launch of the iPad and the current industry trend of tablet media consumption, consumers don’t want to clutter their homes with stacks of paper magazines and newspapers. Not to mention, there is the trend of "going green" which is in conflict with the destruction of trees necessary to make print magazines.

Following these trends, PC World announces it is exiting the print magazine business to focus on digital editions. To be honest, it is surprising that a technology-focused publication even lasted this long in the print world.

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