Forget 15 minutes of fame, researchers at Google have concluded today's stars don't dim quite so quickly, thanks to sites likes Twitter.

A group of researchers from Google, eBay and Berkeley University have been studying the famous and wanted to know how fame had changed over the past two and a half centuries.

They suspected that thanks to social media and 24-hour rolling news, fame today would be far more fleeting.

But how to set about measuring fame? The researchers, led by Alex Fabrikant of Google Research, alighted upon a pair of measurements: the likelihood a reader might read a news article at random and find their name mentioned in it; and the period around which that name continues to appear in news stories.

They also accounted for those that appeared genuinely famous – either by a large volume of mentions or a long-lasting series of mentions. Luckily for them, to help with this they had access to Google's digitised news archive, which stretches back 250 years.

The researchers then set about using tools to pick out people's names from this vast archive – some of which is stored as digital content, while a huge proportion is generated from optical character recognition tools being applied to microfilm.

Up until the 1940s, the researchers predictions appeared to be correct: there was a gradual decline in the length of time people stayed in the news.

But following the Second World War, the researchers detected a complete volte face.

“Over the course of 70 years, through a world war, a global depression, a two order of magnitude growth in (available) media volume, and a technological curve moving from party-line telephones to satellites and Twitter, both of our fame duration metrics showed that neither the typical person in the news, nor the most famous, experienced any statistically significant decrease in fame durations," the report explained.

What's more, after 1940, those people that were famous appeared to stay famous for a longer time than previously.

Which is great news for Peter Andre, but probably bad news for humanity.

Forget data mining, Google's bosses seem to have set their sights on far loftier goals – asteroid mining. Well, that at least, is the assumption.

Later this April, a new company called Planetary Resources, is set to reveal its purpose to an eagerly-awaiting public. The firm is backed by a host of star names, including Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, along with film director and aquatic explorer James Cameron and former Microsoft bigwig Charles Simonyi.

The details of what Planetary Resources will attempt are at this stage pretty sketchy – an invitation to the company launch – spotted by MIT's Tech Review – promises to “unveil a new space venture with a mission to ensure humanity's prosperity".

"The company will overlay two critical sectors - space exploration and natural resources - to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP."

Those details are enough to convince many that what's being proposed is an asteroid mining operation. And perhaps with good reason.

Planetary Resources is led by Peter Diamandis, founder of the X-Prize foundation, which offered a $10m prize private-sector manned spaceflight. 

Also on board is renowned space entrepreneur Eric Anderson. In 2010, Anderson gave a speech at the TEDGlobal 2010 conference promoting the idea that asteroid mining could be used to make commercial space travel profitable.

More recently, Diamandis has been giving his own TED talk. Earlier this year, he took to the stage promising his audience that mankind's future was one blessed with an abundance of resources – perhaps hinting at his ideas for where else we might look for precious minerals.

Keep watching the skies...

Modern CGI combined with centuries old optical tricks in a historic performance from rapper Tupac Shakur this week at the Coachella music festival.

The performance, first heralded as a display of holographic ingenuity turned out to be just a really cool optical illusion combined with computer graphics.

Fans of magic and rap were delighted when the dead MC took the stage with still living friends Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg to perform two songs. The performance, being referred to as a three dimensional hologram, is actually just an update of a 19^th century magic trick.

Using an optical illusion known as "Pepper's Ghost" the dead famous rapper was able to rock the stage at the California music festival.

As explained by MTV's James Montgomery, the image was in fact a two-dimensional projection which used a series or mirrors and screens to render the 3D effect.

"There's an overhead projector that sort of reflects down onto basically a tilted piece of glass that's sort of on the stage floor," said Mongomery. "That then reflects the reflection onto a Mylar sort of screen, and it projects in this sort of 3D kind of thing where it allows the other performers to sort of walk in front of Tupac and basically interact [with] him."

British chemist John Pepper adapted the trick with fellow Brit Henry Dirks for use in 19^th century theater acts.

The mixture of classic magical trickery allowed for a CG Tupac to perform his hit songs "2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted" and "Hail Mary". While the illusion dates back to the 1860s it has since been adapted for use at theme parks, museums, and now concerts.

The ghostly performance was the result of four months of collaboration between Dr. Dre’s production company, James Cameron’s Digital Domain, and two hologram-imaging companies, AV Concepts and UK-based Musion Systems.

While the exact methods of the performance have been kept under raps by all parties involved, the trick does mark an interesting step for the technology.

Some have speculated that the technology could be expanded to include entire sets and revues from artists and bands which have long since departed.

That prospect should excite music lovers hoping to catch John Lennon live at the Royal Albert Hall. Or get a glimpse of Jimmy Hendrix in Madison Square Garden. No word yet on any impeding Buddy Holly tour.

There have been some notable moves in the world of government IT personnel this month, and V3 wonders if it’s alone in spotting a potential link between them.

Last week, Chris Chant, a government IT veteran whose most recent role was to lead the government’s cloud computing project, stepped down from the position with the Home Office CIO set to take over at the end of the month.

The G-Cloud project lets public sector bodies purchase systems from a selection of vetted vendors on a pay-as-you-use basis, and is an attempt to prevent the costly, unwieldy and ultimately unsuccessful IT contracts of the past, which have seen millions of pounds of public funding wasted.

Although it could be argued that the timing of Chant’s departure isn’t such a blow as it comes after the project went live, rather than jeopardising it before launch, G-Cloud could still do with its champion on-board at this early stage to ensure it continues on the right path.

Chant also had plans to open up the CloudStore to third parties to host, plans that may never be followed up now he's gone.

To coincide with the news of his departure, Chant posted a scathing blog post about government’s approach to IT, headlined ‘#Unacceptable IT is pervasive’, listing a series of complaints about the single supplier, out of date technology in use in the public sector.

“CIOs across government, including me in various roles at the centre of government, have been guilty for too long of taking the easy path,” he lamented.

What's interesting to note is that just a week before Chant’s departure from the world of government IT, Liam Maxwell was appointed the new deputy government CIO, reporting into CIO Andy Nelson, who himself only took the position in January.

V3 can't help but wonder whether the timing of Chant’s rant and subsequent departure was purely coincidence, or whether it was in response to others getting the nod for the top spots in government IT.

After all, surely the man who developed and launched the G-Cloud project, which – if it goes as planned – could totally turn government IT on its head and make the public sector a leader in innovative technology use, would be an ideal fit to lead the government’s IT strategy?

Chant certainly didn’t hide his feelings about the lack of suitability of certain government IT chiefs.

“CIOs will need to increase the capability of their teams – and their own capability too – otherwise they will find that they are no longer playing a part in this new approach.  Some CIOs and some teams will not be able to make that transition,” he noted.

“CIOs across government need to recognise what has changed and stop hiding behind the comfort blanket of what has always been done before. That blanket is on fire.”

Chant clearly doesn’t have a high opinion of current public sector CIOs, so he could be frustrated that unqualified people – in his view – are being put in charge and won’t make the necessary changes to improve government IT strategy.

Perhaps his resignation was a drastic way of making the government sit up and take notice of the current poor state of its IT.

Then again, perhaps he just wants to retire to a nice, quiet life by the sea or in the countryside, far away from all the Humphreys and Malcolms in Whitehall.

ORLANDO: As one of the technology industry's biggest spenders on research and development, it was no surprise to find IBM showing off a range of projects that staff in its Center for Social Business are busy working on behind the scenes.

The project that most caught V3's eye was its Gamification Engine for the Enterprise product that looks to offer organisations a way to provide staff with a more engaging way to share knowledge or learn new skills.

The interface is heavily reminiscent of geo-location service Foursquare, with users able to acquire badges if they complete certain tasks or goals, as well as comparing their ranking with other users in a certain group or division on a public leaderboard.

The tool lets users earn badges, rewards and compete with co-workers.

Yaniv Corem, a software engineer at IBM, explained to V3 that, thanks to services like Foursquare, staff in organisations are "no strangers to gamification" and that the tool could have several uses within the business community.

"With this tool you can build databases of knowledge on key topics by allowing staff to share information in a competitive and playful way," he said.

Corem added that the firm is considering adding the tool to its Connections platform at some point in the future, but that nothing was guaranteed as yet.

Another tool the firm is working on is its "time-based storytelling" offering Historio, which it has already used itself to gather together information on its 100th anniversary celebrations that took place in 2011 (see image below).

Each blue dot represents a key moment in IBM's history, which links to more information on that topic, including text, images and video.

Jamie Rasmussen, another IBM software engineer, explained the tool could have uses for businesses to document their company’s history to the public, as IBM has done, or for staff to share knowledge of a product's history internally.
 
Another interesting tool the firm was showcasing was a Twitter analysis platform that attempts to gather 'human data' on users of the site to analyse the likelihood of them responding to a question or their interest in a given topic.

"This will help a brand know if it is worth trying to engage with a user, the best questions to ask and whether they should offer an incentive to encourage feedback," IBM research staff member Jeffrey Nichols told V3.

Such projects show that, after 100 years of being one of the biggest technology firms in the world, IBM has no intention of resting on its laurels and is keen to place itself at the heart of the social business revolution taking place in the market.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt argued at the Le Web conference on Wednesday that Silicon Valley needs to have more competitors on the world stage.

Schmidt said he considered a number of European cities to be eligible rivals for the California tech hub. Schmidt named Paris specifically, although this may well have have been because Le Web is taking place in the French capital.

"Today's entrepreneurs tend to break out young, they are risk taking, they are less family oriented, and these kinds of people prefer cities," said Schmidt.

"Also the diversity that cities offer tends to produce stronger organisations."

Schmidt said the role of governments in creating the next Silicon Valley should be to ensure all citizens have access to fixed and wireless broadband. "Then the government should let the citizens do everything else," he said.

Schmidt also told entrepreneurs attending the event that he thinks his country's authorities are "idiots" for having such strict visa regulations that deprives the US of innovative ideas.

"You can't move to the US because we are idiots and we won't give you a visa," said Schmidt.

Facebook's European managing director, Joanna Shields, agreed with Schmidt that the 'next Silicon Valley' will be in a city.

"City clusters are really where innovation is starting to happen. Europe, Paris, London, Berlin are really going to give Silicon Valley a run for its money," she said.

All of which is great news for London's Tech City, which David Cameron and the coalition government have really being pushing as a centre for technology entrepreneurs.

With investment from Google, Yammer, Huddle and a host of other technology firms, the area has already tripled in size to feature over 600 companies now in just its first full year.

However, there have been concerns from some that the area is running low on office space, with Old Street and Shoreditch particularly swamped, while areas to the north and east, towards Stratford and the Olympic Park, remain relatively untouched.

A school in Kent is to give 1,400 pupils an iPad 2 at the start of the academic year in September, in a move that underlines just how pervasive Apple's market leading device has become.

The project was set in motion in April, but came to light after a local reporter heard from the parents of a pupil at the Longfield Academy that the programme was going ahead.

It was organised in conjunction with education charity e-Learning, which will provide a grant to cover part of the cost, the rest made up by voluntary donations from parents.

V3.co.uk spoke to the chief executive of the charity, Valerie Thompson, who explained that providing children with technology such as the iPad 2 has numerous benefits.

"Using technology is something children relate to and enjoy. It helps them get better grades, to increase their attention span and means they can access all sort of resources through dedicated applications on the iTunes store," she said.

"Parents aren't being forced to buy the iPad; it's up to them to make a donation and most have been very impressed by the project and keen to contribute. Those that can't afford to do so, though, will be able to have the cost covered by the school and ourselves."

Of course, having 1,400 pupils running around wanting internet access could well put a severe strain on the school's Wi-Fi network, something also noted by Roger Hockaday, marketing director at wireless networking firm Aruba Networks.

"It will be interesting to see how this develops, and I suspect many other institutions will be keeping a close eye on the rollout at Longfield Academy over the next few months," he said.

"However, before taking the decision to follow in Longfield Academy's footsteps, it is important to recognise that iPads run bandwidth-hungry multimedia applications in a way that laptops simply do not."

While many will be unconvinced by the project, wanting pupils to use stuffy, musty old textbooks full of long, impenetrable text, it's an indication that even the simple back to school check list is becoming more hi-tech. Shoes, check. Pencil case, check. IPad 2, check.

Digital Inclusion Champion Martha Lane Fox has revealed plans to get the nine million digitally excluded adults in the UK online.

The plans, which form part of Lane Fox's Race Online 2012 campaign, include a local network of 100,000 volunteers who will help support the offline adults in getting started with the internet.

The network is the UK's biggest ever cross-sector volunteer force, according to a statement from prime minister David Cameron, who urged even more members of the public to get involved.

"By supporting this vital campaign we really can become the first nation in the world to get everyone online and ensure that something the vast majority of us take for granted can be enjoyed by all of us," he said.

The 100,000 volunteers are made up from workers at Mecca Bingo, post offices, libraries, Jobcentre Plus, retailers including John Lewis, Age UK and 40,000 scouts.

The ways in which the volunteers will help get people online will vary, according to a spokeswoman for Race Online. For example, John Lewis is opening up training programmes, while the scouts will visit elderly people in care homes.

The campaign also includes a new array of low price recycled PC products from Microsoft, Remploy and XMA, which range from £92 to £120.

The fact that the volunteer force is so wide and varied, and that it is to be combined with low cost PCs, should bring a certain amount of success to the strategy.

However, there are a large number of adults who have shown little interest in getting online, and have proved to some degree that they can live without the internet. So it will be interesting to see how Lane Fox's strategy pans out. Critics argue that the most socially excluded and vulnerable will still lose out.