Google's Pac-Man logo cost economy $120 million

Google's Pac-Man logo led to almost five million wasted hours and cost the economy about $120 million, an analyst estimated.

Google apparently had about 505 million users on Friday when the Pac-Man doodle went live.

The game took up 4,819,352 hours of employee time and cost the economy a whopping $120,483,800, said Tony Wright, founder of Rescue Time, which is a tool that helps businesses to measure how time and attention was being spent.

'For that same cost, you could hire all 19,385 Google employees. That includes Larry (Page) and Sergey (Brin), right down to the janitors. You could hire them for six weeks - imagine what you could build with that army of manpower,' The Telegraph quoted from Wright's blog post.

Internet users were happy to find the Pac-Man doodle on the search engine's home page. It was to mark the 30th anniversary of game's release.

The game could be played by clicking 'Insert coin'.

It was online for 48 hours before Google went back to its usual logo.

The search engine giant was 'overwhelmed, but not surprised' by the reception given to the Pac-Man doodle, said Marissa Mayer, vice president of user experience at Google.

'Due to popular demand, we're making it permanently available at google.com/pacman google.com/pacman,' she was quoted as saying.

Microsoft investigates Windows 7 'screen of death'

Microsoft investigates Windows 7 'screen of death'

Windows 7 was released in October Microsoft has confirmed that it is investigating a problem described as the black screen of death which affects its latest operating system. The error means that users of Windows 7 see a totally black screen after logging on to the system.

The firm said it was looking into reports that suggest its latest security update was the cause the problem. Reports suggest the flaw also affects Vista, XP and other systems. Software firm Prevx, which has issued a fix for the problem, says millions of people may be affected.

Users have resorted to reloading Windows as a last ditch effort to fix the problem," the firm's David Kennerley wrote in a blog post. ;We hope we can help a good many of you avoid the need to reload." Unknown problem The firm said its fix did not work in all cases.

There can be many causes," said Mr Kennerley. ;But if your black screen woes began in the last two weeks after a Windows update or after running any security program (including Prevx) to remove malware during this time then this fix will have a high probability of working. Mr Kennerly said the firm had identified "at least 10 different scenarios which will trigger the same black screen conditions".

These appear to have been around for years now he said. The firm reports that the problem affects editions of Windows 7, Vista, XP, NT, and Windows 2000. Microsoft said that people who are affected by the problem should contact its customer service line.

A spokesperson said that the reports did "not match any known issues" documented by the firm. It has not issued a fix for the problem, which causes the desktop, task bar, system tray and side bar to disappear, according to reports. The "black screen of death" moniker is a play on the "blue screen of death", which appears when Microsoft operating systems crash.

Twitter hit by major disruption

Twitter has fixed a major bug that saw many users of the service appear to lose all of their followers and friends.

The problem began when a flaw was uncovered that allowed people to force others to "follow" them on the site.

People who typed "accept" followed by a person's Twitter name forced the user to be added to their list of followers.

The hack was quickly passed around the social network with many people using it to force celebrities to follow them.

It could have easily allowed spammers to insert messages into thousands of accounts.

Web flaw

Twitter quickly closed the loophole but was forced to temporarily reset many accounts as it cleaned up the damage. The reset made it look like many users had no followers and were also following no one.

"We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to 'force"' other users to follow them," the site said in a blog post.

People were still able to use the service during the disruption.

Twitter allows users to post messages - known as tweets - up to 140 characters long.

People can see what others are writing by choosing to "follow" them. However, unlike many social networks, both parties do not have to reciprocate the friendship.

The new bug allowed many people to force celebrities, such as Lady Gaga, to follow them by simply typing "accept @ladygaga".

This would make it appear that Lady Gaga had chosen to follow them and would also inject a user's tweets into the singer's feeds.

The flaw only worked on the website and not through third-party software used to access the service, such as Tweetdeck.

A Turkish man known as bilo31 originally posted details of the so-called "follow bug".

He explained on a Turkish website that he has little knowledge of computer programming, and had stumbled on the flaw by accident.

He said that he is a fan of a heavy metal band called Accept. When he tweeted "Accept pwnz", he discovered that he was automatically being followed by the user @pwnz.

Twitter has exploded in popularity since 2007, when it was launched, and now has more than 100 million users.

News of the flaw follows the discovery of a recent high-profile security bug at Facebook, another poster child of the social web.

The exploit - now fixed - exploited the site's privacy settings and allowed users to eavesdrop on their friends' live chats and see their pending friend requests.