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With executives leaving Yahoo at a steady pace, the company is contemplating a major reorganization. According to a report in Friday's Wall Street Journal, Yahoo's management is considering a plan that would centralize various product groups into a single global-product organization, instead of the current, separate divisions for mail, search and home page.

The Journal said the change is being sought by Yahoo President Susan Decker as a means of improving communication between product teams and overseas sales units.

The Peanut Butter Manifesto

The reorganization follows the announcement this week that Jeff Weiner, executive vice president of Yahoo's network division, will exit the company. No successor has been named.

Weiner's exodus is only the latest in a series. The senior vice president of search, Vish Makhijani, is leaving to work for a Russian search company. The executive vice president for search and advertising technology, Qi Lu, has also said she's leaving.

Executive Vice President Usama Fayyad and two people involved in the creation of Flickr, Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, have also left or are in the process of doing so.

And Brad Garlinghouse, senior vice president for communications and communities, has said he's quitting. His position covers e-mail, messaging, Yahoo Groups, and Flickr.

One of Garlinghouse's claims to fame is something he wrote called the Peanut Butter Manifesto. Originally penned as an internal memo, it was released to The Wall Street Journal. It criticized Yahoo for spreading itself too thin across too many products, as peanut butter might be spread on bread.

Yang, Icahn, Microsoft, Google

That diluting of the Yahoo brand was seen by outsiders as one of the reasons that cofounder Jerry Yang assumed the position of CEO. Like Steve Jobs coming back to Apple, Yang's top leadership role was seen as possibly providing a spark to the company.

But not everyone appreciates a spark. Investor and Yahoo stockholder Carl C. Icahn is trying to gain control of the company's board and he has said he will remove Yang as CEO.

It was that board, of course, that recently rejected the advances of Microsoft, which has abandoned its $46.5 billion bid for Yahoo.

Following Microsoft's departure, Yahoo decided to add Google to its dance card. Last week, the two companies announced they will share some advertising revenue, although there are expectations the agreement still must be approved by the U.S. Justice Department.

That deal will enable Yahoo to place Google ads on Yahoo and participate in the revenue. Yahoo has an estimated 16.6 percent of the search market, while Google has more than 60 percent, and some observers project that the arrangement could help Yahoo grow its cash flow by $200 million annually.

Yahoo still has a variety of other strengths. For instance, it is the number-one Webmail service on the planet, with more than 260 million e-mail users. This week it decided to get even bigger, by announcing two new domains to go with @yahoo.com — ymail.com and rocketmail.com.

TOKYO (AFP) - Toys are no longer just child's play in Japan, where an ageing population and expanding waistlines have spawned a wave of gadgets to help adults beat stress, battle the bulge or relieve loneliness.

From exercise assistants to dancing robots and nodding potted plants, Japanese toymakers are increasingly turning their attention to grown-ups as a growing market to make up for flagging sales to kids.

The shift comes amid increased efforts to get people into shape in a country where more than one fifth of the population is aged 65 or older, a percentage expected to rise to 40.5 percent in 2055, according to the government.

“Toy companies are increasingly focusing more on toys for adults due to health worries but also lonelier people as there are more single households as the population ages and fewer women marry,” said Sei Toyama, one of the organisers of the Tokyo Toy Show which got underway on Thursday.

Tokyo in April passed a law that requires companies and local governments to measure the waistlines of their employees aged between 40 and 74 years old.

If waistlines for men exceed 83.75 centimeters (33.5 inches) and 88.50 centimeters (35.4 inches) for women, they are categorised as having “metabolic syndrome” and firms will be financially penalised.

In order to encourage workers to walk to the office instead of taking a cab, Bandai Namco Group has come up with the “Taxi Walker” — a pedometer that acts as a taxi meter with the fare appearing in real market prices.

For a two kilometre (1.24 miles) stroll, the base fare would come up as 710 yen (seven dollars) and increase by 90 yen for every additional 280 meters, showing users exactly how much they are saving by using their own two legs.

“We want employees struggling with metabolic syndrome to actively walk but enjoy doing so at the same time,” said a Bandai official at the toy show, where 134 Japanese and foreign firms are showcasing their latest gadgets.

“If they see the number of steps they've taken and the equivalent taxi fare, they will feel elated at how much money they would have saved. That will encourage them to walk more,” he added.

Meanwhile Sega is betting that a strikingly realistic potted plant that nods when a person speaks will help lonely or stressed out adults.

The “Pekoppa” two-leafed plant can bow and flap its leaves in response to noise.

“This is useful for people who live alone and have no one to talk to, or for stressed out workers who feel like no one agrees with them,” said a Sega official.

“It's perfect for the manager who is frustrated at his subordinate who doesn't listen. It's a plant that can adapt to the mood of the person,” he added.

If that doesn't work then Bandai's squishy imitation “Edamame” soybeans — a popular dish in Japan — can be popped out of their skins to help workers relieve stress and take their minds off the job.

And for people who are too busy or shy to go out dancing, Sega and Hasbro have teamed up to develop the Ampbot, a two-wheeled dancing robot with stereo sound.

“The Ampbot is for men who like robots and who as children dreamed of living one day with robots,” said Sega's Osamu Takeuchi.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L) will seek next week to challenge a retrospective change to Indian tax law as it fights a $2 billion tax bill on its purchase of a controlling stake in an Indian mobile operator last year.

The Bombay High Court is scheduled to resume hearings on June 23 in a case which is being closely watched by international investors, after adjourning it in March.

Vodafone said in a statement on Friday it had submitted an amended writ petition challenging the “constitutionality of the retrospective amendment of the changed tax law” to the High Court on June 12.

It said the court had asked the tax department to respond within a week and the next hearing was due on June 23.

In May this year, the Indian parliament passed an amendment to a bill to allow the government to take action against companies which do not withhold taxes when making a transaction.

Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone company by sales, last year paid $11.1 billion to a unit of Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa (0013.HK) for the controlling stake in the mobile operator, which has since been renamed Vodafone Essar.

The company has said Indian law at the time did not require it to withhold tax on the acquisition, and has said that capital gains tax is usually paid by the seller, not the buyer.

India's tax department has argued that Vodafone was liable to pay capital gains tax as most of the assets involved are based in India, and that Indian tax law requires buyers to withhold capital gains tax liabilities and pay them to the government.

(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by John Mair; Editing by Quentin Bryar)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's consumer chief will propose new rules to make it easier and safer for the bloc's 490 million consumers to shop online in any corner of the 27-nation EU.

Some 150 million EU citizens turn to websites such as Amazon.com and EBay for shopping but only 30 million buy goods and services from another EU state, spending on average 800 euros ($1,240) a head.

“This autumn I will propose new legislation to cut back the current jungle of complex laws. I will table a simplified common set of rules for business to consumer contracts across the EU,” EU Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said.

She will also start work on EU rules to stamp out unfair commercial practices in online retailing.

Kuneva wants a more consistent approach to rights and practices, from cooling-off periods to guarantees.

“A single, simple set of core rights and obligations will make it easier for consumers and business to buy and sell across Europe,” Kuneva said in a speech in London and made available to the media.

Past efforts to harmonize consumer rules such as on consumer credit have proved a time-consuming minefield as some states battle to avoid dilution or a toughening of national regulations.

“This will be maximum harmonization so that the same rights apply everywhere without giving the possibility for member states to go beyond what's proposed,” said Nuria Rodriguez, a legal officer at pan-EU consumer lobby BEUC.

“This is challenging and dangerous as certain, more protective legislation in some member states will be put into question.”

States also need to introduce proper penalties for flouting consumer protection rules, Rodriguez said.

The move is the latest step from Brussels to make itself more friendly and relevant to people's everyday lives, particularly after the rejection of the EU's Lisbon Treaty in Ireland.

There are also Commission plans to make switching bank accounts free and to cut the cost of sending text messages and downloading data abroad using a mobile phone or laptop.

The British Retail Consortium, a lobby whose members include Amazon.com, Tesco and Europe's biggest online consumer electronics retailer, Pixmania, said it backed moves to harmonize consumer rights.

“It can give a much-needed boost to consumer confidence in online retailing and will fuel innovation within retail both online and in terms of retailers with pan-European ambitions,” a spokesman said.

Kuneva said in May that one in three European consumers using websites selling airline tickets were being misled or ripped off and told industry to improve or face legal action.

TEAR DOWN BARRIERS

Brussels believes that the full potential of the EU's internal market — already the world's biggest trading bloc serving a 10 trillion euro economy — has yet to be fully tapped.

Retailer lobby Eurocommerce said online shopping was growing and welcomed by many members but proving tricky for small shops.

“For example, a retailer selling cameras will talk with a customer for an hour showing the different cameras and the customer then leaves and buys the camera online,” a Eurocommerce spokesman said.

The Commission wants to tear down barriers to cross-border goods and services to boost competition, offer businesses a bigger market and cut prices for consumers.

Kuneva said 56 percent of EU citizens had access to the Internet for shopping, and business models should not be restricted to national borders because of unnecessary barriers.

“I believe the time has come to look closely at the legitimacy of market partitioning along national boundaries, notably in online retail,” Kuneva said.

She wants business and consumer organizations to develop price comparison sites that compare prices among countries.

Kuneva also wants to crack down on unannounced fees and charges faced by consumers buying online, and practices such as the use of pre-checked boxes for buying costly options like insurance when buying travel tickets.

(Editing by David Cowell and Tony Austin)

PARIS (AFP) - Agence France-Presse announced Friday the launch of a new service providing mobile phone users with access to its global news coverage and incorporating multimedia and messaging options.

The AFP Mobile Journal service will provide round the clock access to the international news agency's production in text, photographs and videos.

AFP Mobile Journal is a multimedia feed covering major news from across the globe in a variety of diverse categories, available now in English and French, and with Spanish and Arabic versions expected by year's end, the company said.

Editorial formats of Mobile Journal are specifically designed for mobile screens, it said.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Wi-Lan Inc (WIN.TO) has begun litigation against Motorola Inc (MOT.N), Research In Motion (RIM.TO)(RIMM.O), and UTStarcom Inc (UTSI.O), alleging that their mobile handheld devices and other equipment are infringing on Wi-Lan's patents, the company said on Friday.

The Ottawa-based technology and licensing firm said it has initiated litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division.

Wi-Lan also said that it has settled its dispute with Marvell Semiconductor Inc in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Wi-Lan has licensed its intellectual property to over 100 companies and has a portfolio of patented inventions in a range of electronics and communications products, the company said.

(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; editing by Janet Guttsman)

A Dutch charity is funding an open-source project to design smart card software that offers stronger protection of personal data in light of security vulnerabilities found with cards used today in the U.S., U.K. and Netherlands.

NLnet Foundation will give €150,000 (US$234,000) to Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, for the project, which will run through 2010, said Valer Mischenko, the foundation's general director.

The research and the code will be published for peer review, an open-source development model that can offer a stronger security model than undocumented, proprietary systems that dominate the smart-card market, Mischenko said. Companies will be able to use the software in future products, as it will be licensed under the GNU General Public License.

The need for more secure systems is clear. Researchers revealed last year security vulnerabilities in the Mifare Classic RFID (radio frequency identification) chip, which is used in up to 2 billion smart cards used for building access and public transportation systems worldwide.

The researchers figured out how the Mifare Classic's encryption algorithm worked, allowing them to obtain the 48-bit encryption keys the cards used. With that information, it's possible to create a clone of the card or, in some cases, add money to the card for public transport systems, said Bart Jacobs, information security professor at Radboud University.

The Mifare card chips “are from the 90s,” Jacobs said. “At the time when they were developed, there was little computing power on those chips.”

Using more complex encryption algorithms requires more computing power, which potentially means that a person could have to stand at a turnstile longer during a transaction. One of the aims of the new research is to strengthen that encryption but still have the transaction take a second or less, Jacobs said.

“You don't want to stand before a gate 10 seconds before it opens,” Jacobs said.

Another aim is increased privacy. London's transport agency, Transport for London (TFL), uses Mifare chips in its contactless payment system known as the Oyster card. Customers have a couple of options when getting the card: they can register it with TFL, which offers benefits such as free replacement if the card lost, or buy an unregistered one.

If the card is registered, some of the person's travel record is stored by TFL databases, Jacobs said. That's a potential privacy risk if the data is misused. Jacobs said the project also aims to create card that can still offer special, personalized benefits for the rider but also not unnecessarily transmit more information than needed to a centralized database.

“Our point is that you can get these benefits without sacrificing privacy,” Jacobs said. “We'd like to try this out.”

A person's public transport history could also be used for marketing or other commercial purposes which may suit some interests but not necessarily be in the best interest of privacy, Jacobs said.

“In our improved card, the card behaves more like a paper ticket,” Jacobs said. “It is electronic, but hides its identity and only says to a gate 'I'm allowed to make that trip'.”

The research, headed up by Jacobs and Wouter Teepe, will start in July in the university's Digital Security Group. Jacobs said within about six months the researchers should have a good idea if a stronger algorithm will be technically feasible and practical in use.

All of the research will be open source and licensed under the GNU General Public License, Mischenko said.

More than 20 years ago a generation of schoolchildren sat down to complete a questionnaire they were told would predict their future.

Their answers were fed into the Jiig-Cal computer, which filled an entire building at Edinburgh University and promised to reveal their ideal job.

The arrival of the Jiig-Cal results was met with hysterical excitement in classrooms across the country.

Many children had their dreams of Hollywood or football stardom shattered as the computer predicted they would become wig makers or lighthouse keepers.

But the questionnaire - and the often bizarre career suggestions it produced - remains one of the defining childhood memories for most of the estimated four million pupils across Scotland, England and Wales who completed it.

Now a BBC Radio Scotland documentary is to transport listeners back to the early 1980s, when today’s generation of tech-savvy 30-somethings were still in short trousers, and computers were something most had only seen in science fiction movies.

The Jiig-Cal system - an acronym of Job Ideas and Information Generator Computer Assisted Learning - was the brainchild of Jim Closs, an occupational psychologist teaching in the business studies department of Edinburgh University.

Mr Closs, an enthusiastic pioneer of early computer technology, believed he could harness its fledgling power to improve the careers advice pupils were given at school.

In those days, the sum total of pupil’s career guidance was a 30-minute chat with a careers officer shortly before they left school, much of which was spent by the officer gently attempting to persuade the youngster that their dreams of becoming an astronaut or model were perhaps a little fanciful.

Mr Closs recalled: “This of course was a big disappointment to the pupil and it didn’t leave much time for the careers officers to get down to what would really suit the student.

“What needed to be done was for the schools to do some work on helping the kids to begin thinking on what was going to happen after they left school, so when the careers advisor came in there was a basis there already.”

Mr Closs spent several years in the mid-1970s perfecting his system before unleashing it on the nation’s youth, who were immediately awe struck at the thought of a supercomputer that could predict their futures.

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The first pupils to undergo the test found themselves confronted by a pencil and an A4 sheet of multiple choice questions, which asked them about their aptitudes, interests, likes and dislikes.

They were quizzed on how much they enjoyed working outdoors, if they minded being very hot or very cold, and whether they liked children, animals and getting dirty.

Their response sheets were carefully sealed and delivered by van to the university, where they were fed into the computer through an optical reader which could determine where they had placed their pencil marks.

The computer would then churn away and do all the matching operations between the pupil’s answers and its database of potential jobs before producing its results on green and white lined dot-matrix computer paper.

“The computer was very large, a huge great beast in fact - this was the days of mainframe technology, not the kind of desktop microcomputer that everybody is familiar with now,” Mr Closs said.

“It had a whole building to itself which was air-conditioned and it had a team of specially trained computer operators to work it.”

The results were not returned to the school for several weeks, leading to teachers the length and breadth of the country being pestered by pupils anxious to learn what awaited them in their adult lives.

But while many ripped open the sealed envelope to discover they were to become doctors, lawyers or scientists, others were not quite so lucky.

For those unfortunate children, the mythical computer foretold a future of pig farming, funeral directing or wig making - jobs which no self-respecting 13-year-old would ever consider.

Mr Closs admitted: “Sometimes pupils would react quite negatively to jobs of that kind being suggested to them, but one of the principles of careers guidance is to broaden the pupil’s horizons by putting before them ideas that they would never otherwise have considered.

“I am sure we had some pupils who were offended when they got funeral director on their printouts, but are now actually practising funeral directors.”

He revealed that his own daughter went on to become a teacher, which was one of the options Jiig-Cal had presented to her, while a study later found 70% of pupils went into jobs suggested for them by the computer.

The Computer That Predicted the Future will be broadcast on Radio Scotland at 1130 BST on Friday.

SecureMac claims to have discovered several variants of a Trojan horse in the wild targeted at users of Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. The Trojan is being distributed from a hacker Web site through iChat and Limewire, the company said.

Distributed as a compiled AppleScript called ASthtv05 or as an application, the Trojan allows remote access to the system and can transmit system and user passwords. SecureMac also said the Trojan is also capable of logging keystrokes and turning on file sharing.

The Trojan takes advantage of a vulnerability with Apple Remote Desktop that allows it to run as root. You must download and open the infected file for the Trojan to become active, but once it is active, it will add itself to the System login items.

SecureMac said its product, MacScan, has been updated to remove the Trojan.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao answered just two questions in his online debut on an official website on Friday, the first being — what do you usually do on the Internet?

Nearly 200 questions awaited Hu on the website of People's Daily (www.people.com.cn), the Communist Party's mouthpiece, shortly after an unexpected announcement that Hu would chat with his country's 221 million Internet users later in the morning.

Hu began the “chat” by saying his work was “usually relatively busy and it is impossible for me to surf the web every day.”

The first question he answered was what did he usually do on Internet.

“The first thing is read domestic and foreign news. Second, it's what interests people on the Internet and I like to see their advice and suggestions on the work of our party and country.”

The second question he answered was whether he could see the problems and suggestions raised by people on the Internet.

His answer? “We pay a lot of attention to the advice and suggestions raised by surfers… We need to listen to the people's voices broadly and consolidate people's wisdom to do things and make decisions.

“To find out public opinion and collect people's wisdom through the Internet is also an important channel.”

His online chat lasted 20 minutes. “Why did it ends so quickly? asked a disappointed surfer who wrote under the name of Love Blog.

Hu promised to “seriously read and study” the posts sent to him.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Nick Macfie and Roger Crabb)