Google Pac-Man eats up work time

The Pac-Man game Google put on its home page gobbled up almost five million hours of work time, suggests a study.

The playable version of the classic video game was put on Google's front page on 21 May to celebrate 30 years since the launch of Pac-Man in Japan.

The search giant reworked the game so the layout was arranged around letters forming its name.

The Pac-Man game proved so popular that Google has now made it permanently available on its own page.

Time delay

The statistics on how many people played and for how long were gathered by software firm Rescue Time. It makes time-tracking software that keeps an eye on what workers do and where they go online.

On a typical day, it suggests, most people conduct about 22 searches on the Google page, each one lasting about 11 seconds.

Putting Pac-Man on the page boosted that time by an average of about 36 seconds, the firm said based on the browsing habits of 11,000 Rescue Time users.

The firm believes this is a relatively low figure because only a minority realised that the logo was playable. To play, people had to click on the "insert coin" button which replaced the more familiar "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on 21 and 22 May.

Extrapolating this up across the 504 million unique users who visit the main Google page day-to-day, this represents an increase of 4.8 million hours - equal to about 549 years.

In dollar terms, assuming people are paid $25 (£17.50) an hour, this equates to about $120m in lost productivity, the firm said.

For that money, suggested Rescue Time, it would be possible to hire all Google's employees and put them to work for about six weeks.

Ariane 5 rocket makes 50th flight

Europe's Ariane 5 rocket has made its 50th flight from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

The rocket lifted away from the launch pad at 2201 GMT, carrying two telecommunications satellites with a combined mass of almost eight tonnes.

After failing on its very first mission in 1996, the Ariane 5 has developed into a highly reliable vehicle with a dominant role in the launcher market.

About half the world's large commercial comms satellites now launch on Ariane.

Friday's dual payload included the SES Astra 3B spacecraft, which will deliver TV and broadband services to Europe and the Middle East, and the ComsatBW-2 platform which will provide secure data links for the German armed forces.

The 5.4-tonne Astra 3B was the first to be deployed by Ariane some 27 minutes into the flight; the 2.4-tonne ComsatBW-2 was released six minutes later.

Ariane's departure ended two frustrating months for the rocket's operator, Arianespace.

The mission had been postponed three times since late March. The previous launch attempt in early April even got to within a minute of blast-off before the countdown sequence was halted.

Inquiries set up to investigate the delays and quality control issues in the rocket's preparation resulted in a regulator that maintains pressure in the vehicle's super-cold (cryogenic) hydrogen and oxygen propellant tanks being exchanged.

The generic Ariane 5 launcher went into full commercial service in 1999, and was followed a few years later by the beefed-up version, the ECA, which is capable of lofting nearly 10 tonnes of payload into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) some 36,000km above the Earth.

The rocket has two solid boosters to lift it off the ground, a cryogenic main stage to do most of the work of getting into orbit, and an upper-stage to place the satellites in the target orbit, or GTO.

Friday's mission marked the 36th consecutive successful launch for an Ariane 5.

Highlights in the vehicle's 14-year-history include the launch of Europe's flagship Herschel and Planck space telescopes last year; the bloc's 2bn-euro Envisat Earth-observation spacecraft in 2002; and its "Jules Verne" robotic supply ship that went to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2008 weighing more than 20 tonnes.

European ministers have approved a programme to upgrade the rocket. This "mid-life evolution" should enter service later this decade and give the vehicle a GTO capability of 13 tonnes.

Despite the late start to its 2010 launch campaign, Arianespace promises to fly six further Arianes this year, including a second ISS freighter called "Johannes Kepler".

Farage injured in plane crash on election day

The former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said he was "lucky to be alive" after his plane crashed in Northamptonshire.

The aircraft came down at Hinton-in-the-Hedges Airfield near Brackley.

Mr Farage is being treated at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for broken ribs and other minor injuries. Pilot, Justin Adams, is also in hospital.

It is thought the aircraft came down when a trailing campaign banner became entangled.