Young people will soon be able to get a taste of what it is like to be a "MP for a Week", as the Parliament Education Service releases their own computer game. Commons speaker, John Bercow, is targeting the game at 11 to 14-year-olds, reports the BBC.

Using footage from the Commons chamber, as well as interviews with politicians, "MP for a Week" will allow players to experience the daily life of a backbench MP and be scored according on the effect their decisions have.

Players will be able to choose their speeches, use their mouse to get the Speaker's attention and even "face a baying pack of journalists". The game also includes footage of MPs giving advice to players, including Liberal Democrat Lembit Opik, Labour's Natascha Engel and Conservative Adam Afriyie.

"It's vital that young people understand the role of Parliament and the work of MPs," said Bercow. "Parliament has a duty, which should also be a pleasure, to connect with the public and MP for a week is an innovative way for students to explore our democracy."

Tom O'Leary, head of the Parliament's Education Service, believes the game will give students a better understanding of how Parliament works. "MP for a Week gives students an understanding of how Parliament works in a way that hasn't been attempted before - by letting players experience life on the back benches.

"By learning through play, we hope students will find the political process interesting and more meaningful to them."

A study released by Motorola Inc. indicates over half of consumers utilized mobile phones during the holiday shopping season. Fifty-one percent of shoppers across 11 countries scouted for coupons, did comparison shopping, and looked for reviews using phones, making the use of mobile technology a high priority for retailers.

Frank Riso, Senior Director of Retail Solutions at Motorola, states, "With nearly seven in 10 surveyed holiday shoppers either reporting flat or declining budgets, retailers vying for finite shopper dollars need to provide a seamless customer experience. By utilizing mobile technologies, consumers have become empowered, better informed and more critical shoppers. Retailers need to establish near-term strategies to provide product information, stock availability, discounts and coupons directly to shoppers to help them to remain competitive."

The study also found that when in-store workers were equipped with mobile devices, such as two-way radios and handheld computers, shoppers enjoyed a better experience overall. The availability of coupons had a large impact on purchases, as well. According to the study, 39 percent of shoppers were willing to abandon intended purchases if coupons and discounts were not available. Limited stock, lack of competitive discounts, and poor customer service caused the percentage of abandoned purchases to double from 2008.

In what was feared to be a downturn in consumer spending, retailers are on the lookout for trends in customer habits. With the use of mobile phones playing a large role in consumer spending, retailers need to deploy mobile technology to keep up with the needs of shoppers.

In the past, when an organization would rent out computers to an institution, business, or whomever, the company would purchase the computers with standard Windows and Office licenses, and then ship those computers to their renters. According to Microsoft, these companies are in violation of their software license agreements.

To alter the license agreement and add support for organizations that lease out computers to third-parties, Microsoft has instituted Rental Rights Licensing. According to Microsoft, "Rental Rights are a simple way for organizations to get a waiver of these licensing restrictions through a one-time license transaction valid for the term of the underlying software license or life of the PC." In other words, Rental Rights are a way for Microsoft to charge an additional free, on top of the already paid Windows or Office license, which is already installed on a computer.

Rental Rights are not a form of additional software, nor are they actual software licenses. When you purchase these rights, in essence, all you are getting is a "pass," which will appease Microsoft and have them look the other way when you lease out a Windows based computer (or copy of Office). Up until now, companies have been doing this without any sort of prior arrangement, free of charge. Instead of prosecuting these people, Microsoft is giving them a way to legalize what they're doing. The rental fees will probably end up hurting the end-user, as companies will begin charging more for the computers that they lease out, in order to cover this extra cost. Many colleges lease computers from other organizations in order to keep their schools up to date with the latest systems on the market. This new rental fee is sure to come at an extra cost to them, as well as other renters.

This Rental Rights License was put into effect on January 1st, 2010. CNet notes that in order for Microsoft to get companies to participate, and to ease the burden of paying for something that was once free, they are offering 30% off the license fees to those who sign up by June 30th. Keep in mind, the rental fee is on top of the cost of the software itself. The discounted prices are:

• Office Professional - $58
• Office Standard - $45
• Windows - $23

Facebook is the most popular social networking website in the world. It has over 350 million active users, and as such, hosts a very large amount of personal data. However, most people don't realize how dangerous this can be, as an anonymous Facebook employee explained in a recent interview.

The interview, posted on The Rumpus, revealed how easy to access your data is to anybody at Facebook. The interview is quite lengthy, though it does reveal some rather worrying facts:

Rumpus: You've previously mentioned a master password, which you no longer use.

Employee: I'm not sure when exactly it was deprecated, but we did have a master password at one point where you could type in any user's user ID, and then the password. I'm not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out ‘Chuck Norris,' more or less. It was pretty fantastic.

Rumpus: This was accessible by any Facebook employee?

Employee: Technically, yes. But it was pretty much limited to the original engineers, who were basically the only people who knew about it. It wasn't as if random people in Human Resources were using this password to log into profiles. It was made and designed for engineering reasons. But it was there, and any employee could find it if they knew where to look.

The anonymous employee continued to state that not only could any Facebook employee access your data should they look in the right places, but in the past, several people had done just that. One employee was fired after having changes a person's listed religious belief on the site, and the employee in the interview has used their privileges to view other profiles.

Rumpus: Would you suppose that Facebook employees might read people's messages?

Employee: See, the thing is — and I don't know how much you know about it — it's all stored in a database on the backend. Literally everything. Your messages are stored in a database, whether deleted or not. So we can just query the database, and easily look at it without every logging into your account. That's what most people don't understand.

Rumpus: So the master password is basically irrelevant.

Employee: Yeah.

However, the managers at Facebook are strict; if an employee doesn't have a good excuse for logging in as another person, then they'll get into serious trouble. In fact, they even appointed a Chief Privacy Officer, just to ensure things stay as secure as they can be.

Lastly, the employee notes that the social networking site tracks every move that you make. Be it viewing a photo, writing a comment or just writing a wall post, it will be tracked. This is another lesson of how careful one should be when exposing personal data on the Internet, though it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anybody in this day and age. No company is perfect, though it's still interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes. We'll leave you with an excerpt about Facebook's stereotypical nerdy engineers.

Rumpus: So tell me about the engineers.

Employee: They're weird, and smart as balls. For example, this guy right now is single-handedly rewriting, essentially, the entire site. Our site is coded, I'd say, 90% in PHP. All the front end — everything you see — is generated via a language called PHP. He is creating HPHP, Hyper-PHP, which means he's literally rewriting the entire language. There's this distinction in coding between a scripted language and a compiled language. PHP is an example of a scripted language. The computer or browser reads the program like a script, from top to bottom, and executes it in that order: anything you declare at the bottom cannot be referenced at the top. But with a compiled language, the program you write is compiled into an executable file. It doesn't have to read the program from beginning to end in order to execute commands. It's much faster that way. So this engineer is converting the site from one that runs on a scripted language to one that runs on a compiled language. However, if you went to go talk to him about basketball, you would probably have the most awkward conversation you'd have with a human being in your entire life. You just can't talk to these people on a normal level. If you wanted to talk about basketball, talk about graph theory. Then he'd get it. And there's a lot of people like that. But by golly, they can do their jobs.

With the recent release of the Nexus One, some have been rather critical of Google. It's a company that licenses its mobile OS software to other companies, but has now introduced a competitor to those exact phones. Microsoft is one such criticizer, stating Google's scheme is very difficult.

In an interview posted on Business Week, Microsoft's head of mobile development, Robbie Bach, stated, "Google's announcement sends a signal where they're going to place their commitment. That will create some opportunities for us and we'll pursue them." He noted the fears that Google will prioritize its own phone over other vendors offering Android based devices, continuing with, "Doing both (selling the Nexus One whilst offering its software to others) in the way they are trying to do both is actually very, very difficult."

Bach isn't the only one with this frame of mind. An analyst at the research firm Interpret LLC, Michael Gartenberg, said, "No one has ever succeeded in selling their own device while trying to license to partners simultaneously. As much as Google can say it's not a Google phone, the phone says Google on it. They're going to have to convince their licensees they're not in competition with them." Whether or not you're a fan of Google, the pair make a rather good point; it's hard on partners when a company offers a product that directly competes with other products packing software developed by the very same company. Bach predicted that some companies may even give up using Android and switch to another operating system. Regardless, the coming months (and even years) will be very interesting and exciting ones for the mobile industry.