The Guardian – Sims 3 and Renault announce product-placement deal
Players of The Sims 3, one of the most successful game franchises of all time, will now be able to download Renault’s two-seater Twizy electric concept car into their game as part of an “Electric Vehicle Pack”, which also includes solar panels and other environmental gadgets.

IT PRO -Boffins detail uber secret encryption breakthrough
A team of researchers claim to have made theoretically perfectly secret data transmission an everyday possibility.

IT PRO – Volcano shows off cyber criminals’ spelling skills
Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano has been causing problems for all kinds of people, but cyber criminals have unsurprisingly jumped on the news surrounding it in their attempts to lead users to malicious links.

Total Telecom – US teens push up text messaging in US
Text messaging has eclipsed the telephone call to become the most frequent form of communication among U.S. teenagers, and girls send more than twice as many messages as boys, according to a new study.

Total Telecom – Mass smartphone adoption threatens operators’ profits
The rising uptake of smartphones threatens to damage the profitability of operators, according to a new report published on Tuesday.

Information Age – HCL boss slams “old boys’ network” in UK public IT

CEO of Indian outsourcer says competition for government IT contracts throttled by dominant suppliers. The chief executive of Indian outsourcing company HCL has criticised public sector IT procurement in the UK, which he says is disadvantaged by the dominance of an “old boys’ network” of established players.

CIO – Google is blocked in one in four countries

Google’s services are blocked or censored to some degree in one-fourth of the countries where it operates, the company said on Monday.