Posted by: Nik Taylor

It was a somewhat grisly week in the world of tech news, with your most-read story being the tragic tale of a woman who was, a court heard, murdered for spending too much time of Facebook.

Closely behind that article in terms of popularity has been a story about Michael Jackson, who remains in the headlines despite his death more than two months ago.

This time the story concerns German broadcaster RTL, which circulated a video hoax purporting to show Jackson alive and well. Its motive for doing this was apparently to see how quickly the video would spread.

Unsurprisingly, thanks to the public’s insatiable thirst for conspiracy theories, the answer was ‘very quickly indeed’. Glad we’ve cleared that one up.

Did you know, no. 4472:
It is precisely 121 years since George Eastman received patent #388,850 for a roll film camera. The camera, called the ‘Kodak’, was the beginning of snapshot photography. You can see the original patent, dated September 4 1888, at the Patent Plaques website.

On Tech & Gadgets this week:

Gadgets designs that may save the world

Preview of new Star Wars MMO

 
Gaming’s worst peripherals

Top games for September