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US X Factor crowns first winner Host Steve Jones announces the first winner of US X Factor. Footage courtesy of Fox The first winner of the US version of The X Factor has been named as Melanie Amaro from Sunrise, Florida. Amaro, 19, won a $5m (£3.2m) contract with Simon Cowell's record label SyCo and a role in a TV commercial. "I want to say 'America, thank you for giving this girl an opportunity'," said Cowell after Amaro was named the winner ahead of runner-up Josh Krajcik, 30. Justin Bieber, Stevie Wonder and 50 Cent were among the stars who appeared on Thursday's season finale. Amaro had been tipped by the show's four judges to win after her rendition of the Beyonce hit Listen on Wednesday's X Factor show. Her triumph was all the more notable given she was originally eliminated from the contest during the judges' houses stage of auditions, only to be subsequently reinst...

A strange metal ball dropped out of the sky and slammed into the remote grassland of northern Namibia recently, according to press reports. The 14-inch-wide (35-centimeter) metallic sphere hit the ground about 480 miles (750 kilometers) north of Windhoek, the African country's capital. It left a crater 13 inches (33 cm) deep and 12.5 feet (3.8 meters) across, the Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported Thursday (Dec. 22). The metal "space ball" weighs 13 pounds (6 kilograms). It has a rough surface and appears to consist of two halves that were welded together, according to AFP. The mystery sphere was discovered in mid-November, but local authorities held off on announcing the find until they could perform a few tests. They determined it poses no danger to the public. "It is not an explosive device, but rather hollow, but we had to investigate all this first," police deputy inspector general Vilho Hifindaka told AFP. However, Hifandaka and his c...

Google to abandon older browsers   Microsoft has run an extended campaign to get people to abandon IE6 - one of its older browsers. Google is phasing out support for older browsers from 1 August. Those using IE7, Safari 3, Firefox 3.5 and their predecessors to view Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites will then lose some functions. Eventually, it warned, these web services will stop working for those sticking with older browsers. The move is part of a trend to stop the use of ageing browsers which can be insecure and not sophisticated enough to handle the latest web technologies. Code malfunction Statistics on browser versions gathered by StatCounter suggest about 17% need to change in the light of Google's decision. Google made its announcement in a blogpost saying its engineers were keen to make use of the latest capabilities in browsers, and that required support for HTML5 technology. As a result, from 1 August, Google will only sup...

Webpages showing sharp growth in girth   Slowly but surely, webpages are getting bigger and bigger It is not just humans that are steadily growing in girth, webpages are going the same way too. The average page is now about 965 kilobytes in size, reveals a study of top sites by the HTTP Archive. The figure is 33% up on the same period in 2010 when the average webpage was a svelte 726 kilobytes. Keeping webpages small is likely to become more important as increasing numbers of people browse the web on the move. Analysis suggests the bloat is down to user demands for more interactivity, as well as the tools used to watch what happens when people visit a site. Speed trap To gather its figures, the HTTP Archive ran a series of tests every month on the web's top 1,000 sites. These showed that average webpage sizes were trending steadily upward throughout 2011 and jumped sharply in October. Big pages generally take longer to load, which can mean visitors...

Gardens of Time beats Cityville in Facebook games list   Disney bought Gardens of Time developer Playdom for more than $500m (£318m) in July Facebook has named Playdom's Gardens of Time as the most popular game on its social network in 2011. The Disney-owned firm's hidden-object title beat Zynga's Cityville to the top spot despite statistics suggesting it has fewer active users. Facebook said it gave priority to games with the highest satisfaction scores. The TechCrunch blog described the move as a "snub", but other analysts said the site might have wanted to promote its recommendation tools. Reviews of Gardens of Time have praised its design and addictive gameplay. However, several internet bloggers have expressed surprise it topped Facebook's list. Zynga's city-building simulation ranked third on the scoreboard behind Electronic Arts' The Sims Social. However, Zynga can still lay claim to being the most successful publisher a...

The 'Marxist Old Lady' founder of Mama Meng's Living House By Neil Koenig Series producer, Start-Up Stories Ms Meng chose the screen name of "Marxist Old Lady", which she says makes clear to customers and business partners what her values are The strong economic growth that China has experienced over the past few decades has been accompanied by the creation of a multitude of new enterprises. But entrepreneurship in the world's second largest economy is not just a game for the young. Meng Fang Ning is in her 60s and owns and runs a successful online business selling snacks and other products to customers all over China. Ms Meng worked in the human resources department of a state-owned enterprise for many years. She retired in 2005, but then became ill with cancer. Whilst recovering from treatment for the disease, she came to live with h...

Eric Hobsbawm on 2011: ‘It reminds me of 1848...’ By Andrew Whitehead BBC World Service News   The renowned historian Eric Hobsbawm has watched the revolutions of 2011 with excitement - and notes that it's now the middle class, not the working class, that is making waves. "It was an enormous joy to discover once again that it's possible for people to get down in the streets, to demonstrate, to overthrow governments," says EJ Hobsbawm at the close of a year of revolutionary upheaval in the Arab world. He has lived his life in the shadow, or the glow, of revolutions. Born just months before the Russian revolution of 1917, he was a Communist for most of his adult life - as well as an innovative and influential writer and thinker. He has been a historian of revolution, and at times an advocate of revolutionary change. “Today's most effective mass mobilisations start from a new modernised middle class ...