TECHNOLOGY WORLD

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Facebook is temporarily disabling a feature that gave app developers access to some of the most sensitive personal data it possesses: Members' addresses and phone numbers. The company had slipped the feature in quietly, announcing it at the end of last week in a post on its developer blog. But late Monday, Facebook said it is suspending the feature until it can fine-tune how it works. * 572 * * * Email * Print "Over the weekend, we got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly aware of when they are granting access to this data," Facebook wrote on its developer blog. "We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so." Those changes will roll out "in the next few weeks," Facebook said. In the meantime, it has suspended the phone number and address gathering option. In its blog post last week describing the new feature, Facebook said me...

The Indian state of Gujurat is planning to host Asia's first commercial-scale tidal power station. The company Atlantis Resources is to install a 50MW tidal farm in the Gulf of Kutch on India's west coast, with construction starting early in 2012. The facility could be expanded to deliver more than 200MW. The biggest operating tidal station in the world, La Rance in France, generates 240MW, while South Korea is planning several large facilities. To claim the title of "Asia's first", the Indian project will have to outrun developments at Sihwa Lake, a South Korean tidal barrage under construction on the country's west coast. Atlantis's recent feasibility study in Gujurat concluded that the state had good potential for tidal exploitation. "About two and a half years ago we ran a global study of tidal power resources and came up with some hotspots where resource seemed pretty well matched to load," said Atlantis CEO Tim Cornelius. "One of them ...

A telescope in the back of a modified 747 jet has snapped images of the Orion Nebula at a colour of light no other observatory in the world can see. They are the first results from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (Sofia), designed to capture colours blocked by Earth's atmosphere. The images show the star-forming region in unprecedented clarity. Further study could yield insight into stars that are just lighting up, one of astronomy's "holy grails". The results were presented at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting in Seattle, US. Sofia is a successor to the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO), which was retired in 1995. The long-delayed Sofia project is now picking up where the KAO left off - allowing astronomers to see light at colours deep in the infrared. Space telescopes can see out in this part of the spectrum as well, but Sofia allows far more flexibility. Beyond the dust "The real unique thing is that you have a platfor...

Twenty-eleven will be the "year of launchers", says European Space Agency director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain. Europe expects to have three different rockets operating from its French Guiana spaceport in the coming months. The workhorse Ariane 5 will be joined by the Russian Soyuz vehicle and a new small launcher called Vega. At his annual Paris press conference to preview the year ahead, Mr Dordain said this represented a major change in the way Esa conducted its space activities. And he told the BBC everyone might be surprised at how complex an undertaking this would be. "For 30 years we have exploited one launcher, the best launcher in the world, Ariane - but it was one launcher," he explained. "From this year, we will exploit three launchers in parallel - Ariane, Soyuz and Vega. It will introduce some constraints because the traffic will be much heavier from [the spaceport], and I'm not so sure we've yet totally understood the constraints which ar...

Sailors may soon have a weapon in their battle against sea-borne raiders: an anti-pirate laser. BAE Systems has demonstrated its new laser system, which can temporarily blind would-be attackers. The system would prevent pirates from being able to aim their weapons at targets, BAE claims. But further safety testing is needed before such a system could be commercially deployed. BAE said it has developed a low-cost laser distraction system that can travel through the sea air while being housed onboard a moving ship. At distances of between 1.2km (0.75 miles) and 1.5km (0.85 miles), the laser beam acts as a warning signal, letting the pirates know they've been spotted, said Brian Hore of BAE. "Today's pirates tend to be opportunistic. If they know they've been spotted, they're likely to look for an alternative target," he told BBC News. Blinding light At closer ranges, the green laser beam will dazzle them, making it difficult for the pirates to use weapons of the...

Astronomers have discovered the smallest planet outside our Solar System, and the first that is undoubtedly rocky like Earth. Measurements of unprecedented precision have shown that the planet, Kepler 10b, has a diameter 1.4 times that of Earth, and a mass 4.6 times higher. However, because it orbits its host star so closely, the planet could not harbour life. The discovery has been hailed as "among the most profound in human history". The result was announced at the 217th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, US, by Nasa's Kepler team. The Kepler space telescope, designed to look for the signs of far-flung planets, first spotted the planet 560 light years away, alongside hundreds of other candidate planets. Kepler relies on the "transiting" technique, which looks for planets that pass between their host star and Earth. A tiny fraction of the star's light is blocked periodically, giving a hint that the star has a planet orbiting it....

Astronomers have discovered the smallest planet outside our Solar System, and the first that is undoubtedly rocky like Earth. Measurements of unprecedented precision have shown that the planet, Kepler 10b, has a diameter 1.4 times that of Earth, and a mass 4.6 times higher. However, because it orbits its host star so closely, the planet could not harbour life. The discovery has been hailed as "among the most profound in human history". The result was announced at the 217th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, US, by Nasa's Kepler team. The Kepler space telescope, designed to look for the signs of far-flung planets, first spotted the planet 560 light years away, alongside hundreds of other candidate planets. Kepler relies on the "transiting" technique, which looks for planets that pass between their host star and Earth. A tiny fraction of the star's light is blocked periodically, giving a hint that the star has a planet orbiting it....