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Bebo's parent company, AOL, has said it will sell or shut the website. Photograph: Linda Nylind Bebo UK plunged into the red last year as post-tax profits fell 143% year on year in the 12 months to the end of May 2009, a performance that led its parent, AOL , to decide to sell or shut the struggling social networking website. The social networking website's UK business moved from a healthy post-tax profit of £2.6m in the previous year to a loss of £1.1m, a 143% year-on-year fall, according to figures for Bebo UK Ltd filed at Companies House. AOL acquired Bebo in 2008 for $850m (£550m) . Companies House figures show that turnover fell 29% year on year, from £8.8m to £6.2m, for the period, while operating profits were down 32% from £798,560 to £541,268.

Last week's announcement by Apple that the UK launch of the iPad will be delayed by a month was the headline news for consumers, but for geeks a more significant development came on Thursday with some changes in the 21,000-word "agreement" that you have to sign if you are going to develop applications for Apple's iDevices. Section 3.3.1 of the document stipulates that "Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++ and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the documented APIs (eg, applications that link to documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)." Incomprehensible, eh? An API is an application programming interface – ie the protocol that programmers must follow if their software is to work with the iDevice. The really interesting clause, though, is the one enclosed in brackets. T...

A new kind of fruit that looks like a white strawberry but tastes like a pineapple is going on sale in the UK. Called pineberry, the strange-looking-variety of the popular summer fruit originated in South America where it grew wild. It had been near to extinction until seven years ago when Dutch began growing it commercially. Pineberries will be on sale for five weeks at selected Waitrose branches. A 125g punnet will cost £2.99 until April 13 and then sell for £3.99. Nicki Baggott, Waitrose fruit buyer, said: ”Pineberries offer our customers the chance to add a new fruit into their diet and the berry’s bright appearance can add an unusual decoration to sweet dishes.”

Social networking site Facebook has launched a new campaign to encourage its 23 million UK users to engage with the forthcoming election campaign. Democracy UK will ask questions and then aggregate opinion and debate. There will be regular polls and on election day itself, the site will also encourage users to sign up to a badge declaring that they have voted.

Industrial designers sometimes make the mistake of thinking that certain product elements are written in stone, or that they just aren’t worth thinking about. And sometimes it takes a set of fresh eyes to see an exceptionally simple yet innovative solution. That was the case when Royal College of Art student Min Kyu Choi re-imagined the bulky UK power plug.