SpicyTricks

The company said it was being conducted in the light of the current environment rather than a specific allegation.
The BBC has found evidence of possible hacking at the Sunday Mirror, and there are separate claims Daily Mirror journalists hacked voicemails.
The group said its journalists work within the criminal law and Press Complaints Commission code of conduct.
BBC's Newsnight programme has spoken to a journalist who worked on the Sunday Mirror in the past decade who claimed to have witnessed routine phone hacking in the newsroom.
The source said celebrities including actress Liz Hurley and footballer Rio Ferdinand were targeted and the technique was used on a daily basis.
'Clear position' This weekend, former Daily Mirror journalist James Hipwell told an Australian newspaper he is willing to testify that in the late 1990s Mirror journalists were told to go through the voicemails of celebrities to look for stories.
Hipwell has served time in prison for writing about companies whose shares he owned.
A Trinity Mirror spokesman said: "These are totally unsubstantiated allegations and our position is clear: all our journalists work within the criminal law and the Press Complaints Commission Code of Conduct."
The spokesman confirmed the review of editorial controls and procedures was announced on Monday, and said it would apply to all titles across the group which also include the People, Daily Record and more than 160 regional newspapers.
The company's director of corporate communications, Nick Fullagar, added: "In light of recent events, we thought it was timely to look at our controls and procedures. Clearly, after any significant event, it's just good corporate governance."
Trinity Mirror last carried out a review of editorial procedures in 2004 following the Hutton Report, the findings of Lord Hutton's inquiry into the death of David Kelly, a biological warfare expert and former UN weapons inspector in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the company confirmed it had taken on law firm Herbert Smith to help with preparations ahead of the Leveson inquiry - the wide-ranging judge-led investigation into wrongdoing in the media and police.

Although the project will draw on some parts of Google's Android mobile operating system much of the code will be freshly written.
Once finished the operating system will compete with Android as it will run on the same devices.
The project team said all code development would be done in the open and shared as soon as it was written.
Called Boot To Gecko the code creation is being overseen by the Mozilla Project which created the Firefox browser. It was announced on the Mozilla discussion forum by researcher Andreas Gal.
Gecko is the rendering engine that powers the Firefox browser and the Thunderbird email program. A rendering engine interprets the code on webpages and displays it in the right format on screen.
With B2G, the Mozilla developers aim to get applications running without the need for the browser, effectively creating a web-centred operating system.
It will draw on some core parts of Android but aims to add a wrapper around it that is much more open than the one created by Google. If successful, the project will face stiff competition from Google's Android and Chrome as well as Apple's iOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.
The Mozilla team admitted that the project was in its "infancy" but said it already created some basic software from building blocks that are similar to those needed to get the OS running.
The team said they were publicising the project to root out experts in the Mozilla community and elsewhere who could help and encouraged them to get in touch and sign on.
Mr Gal said the project had set its sights high and wanted to do it "the way we think open source should be done".
Its ultimate goal, he said, was "breaking the stranglehold of proprietary technologies over the mobile device world".

Many of those ideas are about making improvements to everyday lives.
Each year the TED organisation chooses a group of new fellows - individuals whose ideas it regards as particularly inspiring.
The BBC has talked to three of them, all of whom share a desire to transform lives in the developing world.

MEDICAL TOYS

Jose Gomez-Marquez has taken an unusual approach to making medical devices for the developing world
Rather than stripping down complex medical equipment, he uses toy guns and Lego.
"Toys have amazing mechanical parts. To get a part made from scratch could cost hundreds of dollars but I can go to a market and find toys very cheaply," he said.
So the trigger of a toy gun can be taken apart and attached to an IV drip to provide a sound alert when the drip is running low.
Lego bricks can be moulded to create tiny conduits for medicines in simplified labs-on-chips.
And nebulizers can be made out of bicycle pumps.
Mashing up technology is the key to his Innovations in International Health team which is based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Collaboration with the wider medical community is also important, but the key to the success of his designs is talking to those on the ground who will use the equipment.
By cooperation with health care workers in Nicaragua, Mr Gomez-Marquez came up with a system to persuade TB patients to take the medicines they needed to help cure them.
Health workers suggested that a good incentive would be offering patients mobile phone top-ups, so he designed test strips which, once used, revealed a code which people could text to receive phone credits.
Mr Gomez-Marquez is also creating kits for field workers, with a range of parts that they can use to build their own makeshift medical equipment.
"I couldn't build them a clinic but I can provide them with a Lego kit for them to make their own devices," he said.

AFRICAN TRADE

Femi Akinde decided to create SlimTrader when he realised that he couldn't buy a plane ticket online when he was in Africa.
"Consumers aren't able to access data, and goods and services don't tend to be online anyway," he said.
To combat this dual problem, Mr Akinde decided to link retailers with customers via a platform that everyone could access - text messaging.
SlimTrade is in the early stages of development but hopes to launch in Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria over the coming months.
The service will allow, for instance, a farmer trying to source fertilizer to send a text message and get a response from SlimTrader outlining all the distributors near to where he lives.
"He can find someone who is a credited distributor so he knows he won't be sold fake fertilizer, which is a very big problem. And he doesn't have to leave his house," explained Mr Akinde.
Mobile phone usage is exploding in Africa and it has allowed mobile banking to take off, bringing previously undreamt of financial services to people.
By tying businesses to customers in a similar way, one of the biggest gaps between the developing and developed world can be closed, explains Mr Akinde.
"Buying online is something the Western world takes for granted. I don't buy anything unless I can find it online," he said.
And in Africa, instant access to a range of services can be really transformational.
"It means people can plan a trip ahead of time and they won't have to travel great distances and not know whether they are going to find what they want at the end," he said.

LIGHTS ON

In Guatemala, 20% of the population has no access to electricity.
It was not a problem that affected Manuel Aguilar who had moved to the US to study and then went on to work in the financial markets.
But one day he had a lightbulb moment.
"I was helping rich people get richer and I thought my skills could be better used," he said.
Back home in Guatemala, he founded Quetsol, an energy company offering a simple solution to the lack of electricity.
The firm makes kits, which consists of a battery, an LED lightbulb and a small solar panel. So far it has sold 1,000.
The battery also offers a socket which allows people to charge their mobile phones, something that was far from easy before.
"People used to have to walk two hours to charge their phones and pay for it," said Mr Aguilar.
In the next few months Quetsol plans to launch a 30 watt battery which will allow people to power a computer.
"It will give families internet access and education for their kids," said Mr Aguilar.
At £240, the kit isn't cheap but the company had done a deal with the biggest bank in Guatemala which allows people to pay $13 a month.
"That is what they would have spent on candles," said Mr Aguilar.
Despite the surprising simplicity of the kit, there is little to rival it in the country and Mr Aguilar hopes his personal approach will pay dividends.
His mobile phone number is printed on the back of the battery pack and he prides himself on customer service.
"If something is wrong with the kit we tell them to take it back to where they bought it and they will get a new one. They have never had service like this before. It is about treating the customer with respect," he said.

The country's first full team was taking part in the 2011 RoboCup in Istanbul over the weekend.
Sadly, the four-strong Edinferno squad from Edinburgh University, was knocked out in the group stages.
The team's coach vowed to return next year with a much improved side.
Dr Subramanian Ramamoorthy, assistant professor at the School of Informatics, said the lack of success was largely due to the fact that the UK has no national RoboCup tournament at which Edinferno could fine tune their hardware, software and strategy.
By contrast, said Dr Ramamoorthy, opposing teams had taken part in their respective national tournaments and honed their players and team work before reaching the final in Turkey.
"I suspect we are one of the few that are here for their first year," he said.
Despite getting knocked out in the early stages, Dr Ramamoorthy said Edinferno had accomplished many of its goals.
"Until this year there was no British team," he said. "And we learned that our core technology is not that bad even though we have not been very successful."
Humanoid Edinferno took part in the Standard Platform League of the RoboCup which sees all teams use bipedal robots made by French firm Aldebaran Robotics. There are four other leagues covering software-only simulated soccer as well as small, medium and humanoid teams of robots. The RoboCup is the largest gathering of robots on the planet.
Dr Cetin Mericli, organiser of the RoboCup, said the event started in 1997 right after chess grand master Garry Kasparov was beaten by the IBM Deep Blue supercomputer.
Football was settled on as a "grand challenge" to focus the research efforts of robot makers and AI experts so the machines they produce get more competent. It gave them a benchmark against which to measure their progress, he said.
The problems that need to be solved to make a good team of football-playing robots are relevant to the many areas of human life that those thinking machines will have to tackle when they live and work alongside us, said Dr Mericli,
"We want to create robots that are intelligent enough to take care of themselves and to take care of anyone around them so they can be part of our lives," he said.
The competition was definitely starting to produce smarter robots, said Dr Mericli, because the rules governing the competitions regularly had to be revised as the machines and their creators got better at walking, recognising objects, avoiding collisions and working together.
Pitches were now bigger, teams had more players and landmarks to help with navigation were being removed as the robots got smarter and played better.
Household name The researchers, graduate students and engineers making the robots that take part were driving the development of robotics, said Dr Mericli.
He predicted that the great leaps being made by robotkind would mean an explosion in their numbers within a decade and lead to them becoming household gadgets that people cannot do without.
"They will be the mobile phones and smartphones of the future," he said.
The ultimate aim of RoboCup is to produce a team that, by 2050 at the latest, can take on and beat the most recent human Fifa World Cup winning team. Dr Ramamoorthy is in no doubt its a reachable goal.
"I think we could get there," he said. "We can make robots that can win that game as all the pieces are here."
"However," he added, "if we did get there, the result would not be just about football. If you had robots that could win that game they would be useful for so many other things."

Called Office 365 the service puts the familiar e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet and collaboration programs on the web.
Microsoft said the programs will be accessible via desktops, laptops and tablets plus Microsoft, RIM, Apple and Android smartphones.
The launch is aimed squarely at Google and others who already offer web-based business software.
Cash cow Office 365 is being formally launched on 28 June via events in New York and London. The service unshackles the well-known programs from a single PC and translates them into a web format.
Charges for the service are based on the size of the business that wants to use it Small businesses with less than 25 employees will pay £4 per user per month for secure access to e-mail, calendar, documents and contacts.
Larger organisations will pay from from £6 to £17.75 per user, per month and get a broader range of extras including advanced archiving, unlimited storage and Microsoft's Lync messaging and communications system.
Customers using Office 365 can host the applications they are using in Microsoft's data centres, use dedicated servers in those centres or put the programs on their own hardware in their own data centres.
Office 365 takes the place of Microsoft's current web-based offering for firms known as the Business Productivity Online Standard Suite.
The move to the cloud is seen as a gamble by Microsoft because much of the cash generated by Office comes from sales of software installed on desktop PCs. Switching to the web could dilute this cashflow which is responsible for about one-third of the company's revenue.
However, a web option is seen as essential in order to combat the growing threat from Google and others that are starting to poach Microsoft customers.
Before the official launch of Office 365, Google put a post on its Enterprise Blog comparing its Apps service with Microsoft's offering.
Shan Sinha, Google Apps product manager, wrote that it was better to start with a new technology rather than add extras to an ageing one.
"Technology inevitably gets more complicated as it gets older," he wrote. "Upgrading platforms and adding features results in systems that are increasingly difficult to manage and complex to use."
In the blog post he runs through the differences between the two services, saying that Google Apps is about teams, the web and choice but by contrast Office 365 was for individuals, desktop PCs and other Microsoft-specific technology.
"You can't just take legacy, desktop software, move some of it to a data center and call it "cloud."," he said. "Apps was born for the web and we've been serving hundreds of millions of users for years."
Other online business software suites are offered by other companies including Zoho, VMware, IBM and Salesforce.com.

Just days after dropping a supreme court action, the twins filed a fresh lawsuit against the company.
It claims that Facebook "intentionally or inadvertently suppressed evidence" during their previous litigation.
Originally, Tyler and Cameron accused Mr Zuckerberg of stealing their idea to create the site.
The story of the feud formed the core of the 2010 film "The Social Network".
The row dates from 2003 when the Winklevosses hired Mr Zuckerberg to write code for their ConnectU site while at Harvard.
He never did, but instead set up Facebook, which quickly became a success around the world.
A court case over who did what was resolved in 2008 when the parties agreed on a financial settlement, reportedly worth around $65m (£41m).
In January 2011 the Winklevosses tried to reopen the case, seeking more money. However, a US appeals court ruled in April that they would have to accept the settlement.
The twins initially said they would appeal against the settlement, but decided this week not to pursue that legal avenue.
New lawsuit
In the most recent suit filed on Thursday with the US District Court of Massachusetts, the Winklevosses and their business partner Divya Narendra said that Facebook hid some crucial information from them during settlement proceedings.
The twins said that Mr Zuckerberg did not disclose some important documents in regards to the relationship between him and the brothers while they were at Harvard.
Facebook's outside counsel Neel Chatterjee said in a statement: "These are old and baseless allegations that have been considered and rejected previously by the courts."

(CNN) -- It's a verifiable fact that the Internet is basically for three things: porn, cats and awkward people (and any ensuing combination of the three). Yes, the Web is a haven for the socially awkward. But we've got good news for those of you who habitually consort with corners at social functions and have a penny loafer permanently lodged in your mouth: That very same Internet is chock-full of tools designed to help you out in the real world as well.
In the past, such people were forced to resort to copious amounts of alcohol and/or therapy (always a wonderful combination) to get through basic social exchanges, but thanks to the many and varied wonders of the Web -- in all of its portable iterations -- they now can fake some fairly convincing social competence.
If you are among that huddled mass of shoe-gazers and heavy sighers, read on -- unless, you know, you're otherwise engaged with one of the Internet's other uses. In which case, er, see you in a few.
If you're remiss at casting a net when networking...
We see you there, professional person at a networking event, clutching the edge of the bar like a child at her first recital clinging to the lip of the piano. The condensation from your whiskey glass is dampening your hand, making you worry that should someone clasp your fingers in a handshake, they would think you're an unusually sweaty person.
Oh, great, now you really are sweating. Yup, you should probably just go home and resign yourself to the fact that you will never get ahead, and that the world is not, in fact, your oyster -- it's just an empty shell.
Before you go all Sylvia Plath on us, you might want to check out Sonar, an iPhone app that launched in May to help those of us who need a little greasing to get socially fluid. Basically, the app connects to several of your social networks (Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook), so that when you check into a location, you can see all the people there, as well as what mutual friends you have on the Book of Faces and "That Twittering Thing."
Then, when you scan the room, you won't see a sea of faces waiting to judge you, but friends of friends (or at least acquaintances). From there, you can introduce yourself with confidence as "John's friend," or "Mary's co-worker." We would, however, avoid: "We both follow Yanni on Twitter!" That's awkward for everyone involved.
If your opening lines frequently get crossed...
Bars are changeable beasts. One night, the dance floor is littered with beautiful specimens, the evening's denouement involving you and one of its denizens making out in the mists of the requisite fog machine.
The next, the drinking hole in question is empty, save for one dude in a deep V-neck T-shirt held together with safety pins, drawling on and on about how "Vegas is the most culturally rich city in the world."
Enter SceneTap, an upcoming iPhone app that will tell you -- in real time -- how many people are at a bar, what the girl-to-guy ratio is, and the age range. The app will also include forums in which barhoppers can rate establishments and converse directly with the bar itself about the scene, as well as get info about deals.
Rather creepily, the app will garner age and gender data via cameras in a selection of registered bars, but, hey, Facebook is already using facial recognition to auto-tag snaps, so you might as well just submit to your voyeuristic, digital overlords already.
While you're waiting for SceneTap to hit the, well, scene, you can check out Assisted Serendipity, a Foursquare plugin that alerts you when the guy-to-girl ratio at your drinking spot of choice has adjusted to your favor. Or you could just leave it up to fate. Sadly, however, there's no app for that.
You're not a sharp-dressed wo/man...
Your entire closet is residing among your tangled bedsheets and you're close to rending cloth like a man in mourning. You have 15 minutes to get ready, and you can't attend this event naked -- it's not that kind of party. What's a body to do?
Well, if the garments littering your king aren't all sweatpants and T-shirts from local eateries ("I Got Crabs at Marco's Shack!"), might we suggest crowdsourcing your look? Go Try It On is a website and iPhone app that lets you gather real-time feedback about what's gracing your body. Just upload a snap and let the masses -- or a private group of friends -- decide if you're fit to go outside.
And if you are of the sweatpants and novelty T persuasion (and don't currently work as a stand-up comic) there's always Hendricks Park, a Skype-powered personal shopping service.

The group -- called The Lulz Boat -- also posted what it said were passwords of journalists, login information for the PBS series "Frontline" and sensitive information about PBS stations.
The Lulz Boat claims it was "less than impressed" after watching the network's program "WikiSecrets" and "decided to sail our Lulz Boat over the PBS servers for further... perusing."
The "WikiSecrets" documentary, which aired last week on the PBS show "Frontline," talked to U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's father and close friends.
Manning, a military intelligence analyst, is suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents that ended up on the WikiLeaks website -- one of the largest leaks of classified material in U.S. history.
In a message linked to from their Twitter account, The Lulz Boat taunted PBS.
"Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They best watch where they're sailing next time," the group said.
PBS acknowledged the hack early Monday morning.
Teresa Gorman, who works in social media and online engagement for the PBS program "NewsHour," published a stream of Twitter messages Monday morning in response to comments about the fake story.
"Thanks for your concern guys - we are aware there is more than the Tupac story being hacked right now," she tweeted.
She said she did not want to comment further to CNN.
The fake Tupac story claims the rapper was "alive and well in a small resort in New Zealand," citing "locals." It goes on to say a small town there -- unnamed due to security risks -- also housed the late rapper Biggie Smalls for years.
In addition to posting the Tupac story, The Lulz Boat also created a page -- within the pbs.org address -- that says "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO LULZSEC." The title of the page is "FREE BRADLEY MANNING. (expletive) FRONTLINE!"
The group's bio states, "We are LulzSec, a small team of 80-year-old men and people who smoke on webcam. Right?"
The Lulz Boat also claimed it was not Anonymous, a hacker collective globally infamous for disrupting the websites of MasterCard, Visa and PayPal in December after the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on unrelated sexual assault charges.

Astronauts Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff's seven-and-a-half-hour walk completed Nasa's part in constructing the ISS.
The astronauts will return to Earth in a few days on space shuttle Endeavour's last voyage.
One final shuttle is scheduled for July to bring supplies to the ISS.
The BBC's Tom Burridge in Washington says the ISS is now the size of a football field and can house six full-time residents who spend their time conducting scientific experiments and research conditions for possible longer missions, such as travelling to Mars.
Astronaut Chamitoff said before ending the 164th and last shuttle space-walk: "Twelve years of building and 15 countries and now it's the Parthenon in the sky and hopefully the doorstep to our future. So congratulations everybody on assembly complete."
As he attached the final 50ft (15m) boom, he said: "Amazing. Boy, this is a big space station."
Endeavour is scheduled to return to Earth on Wednesday.
It will then be prepared for public display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
Russia still plans to carry out space-walks at the ISS, adding at least one more chamber to the structure. Those in the station will also carry out walks as necessary.
Russia will also ferry astronauts to the ISS.

Creator Cooliris hopes it will kickstart innovation in the nascent mobile ad business.
The ad promotes a new series for the US Weather Channel which follows the award winning photographer Peter Lik as he travels across the US to take the perfect photo.
Experts say such ads will take a while to catch on.
A lot of advertising in the mobile space is done using banner ads which include basic static display images at the top or bottom of a phone screen.
They are a low cost way to advertise but not very effective because users find them annoying and rarely click on them.
"Rather than being inspired by the bad advertising we have seen on the desktop and that has migrated to mobile devices, we went back to the drawing board to create a new advertising platform," said Soujanya Bhumkar, chief executive officer of Cooliris
The Interactive Advertising Bureau reported in April that banner ads accounted for nearly 24% of a record $26 bn spent on online advertising.
There was no breakdown for mobile but the IAB estimated that total revenue for the year was between $550m and $650m in the US.
Technology Cooliris said it has developed two technologies that enable ad creators to transform 2D images into 3D.
One is called PageKit which is a digital publishing technology that makes it possible to quickly create dynamic, animated layouts of text, image and video.
RenderKit is a platform for producing immersive mobile ads, and adds 3D to PageKit.
"When you look at a photo of the Grand Canyon on a screen, you can't peek around it and see what it's like on the other side - simply put, photos have a fixed perspective," explained Mayank Mehta, head of products at Cooliris.
"We are able to represent 3D objects on a 2D device by drawing out all the different angles from the scene. As viewers change perspectives using gestures on their mobile device, we show them the corresponding image. This makes it feel like they are at the Grand Canyon," he added.
He said that the iPad lends itself easily to 3D because of a users ability to interact using the touchscreen and tilt functions.
"Until recently the big stumbling block has been the graphics processor that gives you the ability to display these 3D models in a way that is effective, fast and efficient. And that has changed with these next generation devices like the iPad, iPhone and Android devices where we have been able to take advantage of the native processing power they have," he said.
Too expensive But industry watchers see a major hurdle to 3D adverts becoming ubiquitous.
"The limitations for 3D ad campaigns catching on comes down to the devices themselves, their processing power and the fact that the majority of users still have feature phones rather than smart phones," said Justin Montgomery, editor in chief of Mobile Marketing Watch.
"3D will change things greatly but it will be several years down the line until enough people have the ability to even view those ads," he added.
Meanwhile Colin Gibbs, a mobile consultant who writes for the technology site GigaOm, said that it may prove too expensive.
"3D is a great vehicle for certain types of products like cars and technology but I think it will cost an advertiser more to build campaigns around these rich immersive features than just placing a link on a page."
Research by eMarketer has estimated that US mobile ad spending will break the $1bn mark this year and rise to over $2.5bn by 2014.

Once installed, the fake MacDefender, MacProtector and MacSecurity programs pretend to scan a machine and then ask for cash to fix non-existent problems.
The gang behind the programs used search sites to help catch people out.
The clean-up plan starts as the creators of the fake programs release a version harder to avoid.
Fake fix In a message posted to its support forums, Apple has warned users about the fake security software, also known as scareware.
It said a phishing scam had targeted Mac users by redirecting them to sites that warned them that their machine was infected with viruses.
Apple said it would release an OS X update soon to find and remove MacDefender and its variants. The message also gave advice about how to remove the software if they had already fallen victim.
MacDefender and its variants are thought to have caught some people out because the default security settings on the Safari browser allow it to download and queue itself for installation.
Those who install it can end up paying more than $70 (£43) to remove the non-existent viruses the scareware claims to have found.
As Apple was releasing its fix for Mac Defender, the gang behind it had started distributing a new version.
Like older versions, the new one - called Mac Guard - is being spread by tying it to popular phrases typed into search engines.
Mac Guard also gets round one of the factors that limited the spread of Mac Defender as it no longer needs a user's permission to be installed.
Security firm Intego issued a warning about the variant and said those who use the Safari browser should disable a setting that lets "safe" files be installed automatically.

The regulator carried out 4.2 million speed tests across the country.
It found the average download speed across all networks was 1.5 megabits per second (Mbps), rising to 2.1Mbps in better coverage areas.
The report said speed varied greatly depending on location, and that consumers should check coverage before signing up to tariffs.
Orange fared worst in the research with its average download speeds slower than any other network.
T-Mobile also came out slower than Vodafone, 3 and O2.
O2's chief technology officer Derek McManus said: "Our customers are seeing the benefit from the huge investment we have made in our network. We always aim to deliver the best network experience for our customers and these results are another indicator that we are doing just that."
Everything Everywhere - the name given to the partnership between T-Mobile and Orange - declined to comment on Ofcom's findings.
The report, carried out in conjunction with monitoring specialists Epitiro, ran from September to December last year and dealt with datacards and dongles, but not smartphones.
Ofcom said it hopes to run tests on smartphones soon.
As well as achieving success in the download speed tests, O2 also recorded a lower average latency than 3, Orange and Vodafone.
Latency is calculated by the time it takes for a data packet to travel from a user's PC to a third-party server and back again.
Ofcom chief executive, Ed Richards said: "This research gives consumers a clearer picture of the performance of mobile broadband dongle and datacards as consumers use these services to complement fixed-line services or sometimes as their principal means of accessing online services."
Usage rise Of these, 7% use it as their only means of getting online - a 4% rise since 2009.
The research discovered the average download speed for consumers was 1.5 Mbps, which produced an average load time of 8.5 seconds for a "basic" webpage.
This compared to an average of 6.2 Mbit/s for fixed line broadband, Ofcom found.
However, in areas with good 3G coverage, Ofcom found the average mobile speed rose to 2.1Mbps, dropping to 1.7Mbps at the peak times of between 8-9pm.
On the whole, urban areas performed better than rural areas due to better 3G availability.
The report noted that coverage in cities was highly variable "with no guarantee of good performance" in city centre locations.
Hamish Macleod, chairman of the Mobile Broadband Group, told the BBC that he feels the report paints an unfair picture of mobile broadband by comparing it to fixed rate speeds.
"We recognise this is a useful exercise for Ofcom to do.
"Where I am at issue with Ofcom is the way they have made headline comparisons between fixed broadband and mobile broadband just by using averages.
"It's clear from the research that mobile broadband is a good service, that individual customers can either use it as a complement to fixed broadband or alternatively as a reliable stand alone service."
But not everyone agreed that mobile broadband is a viable alternative to fixed line services.
Charlie Ponsonby, chief executive of comparison service SimplifyDigital said: "The Ofcom report confirms what our customers tell us every day - that mobile broadband is no great substitute for home broadband.
It is on average about three times slower than a standard home broadband connection and often offers very limited data usage, relative to a home broadband connection."
Mobile broadband speeds will remain well below that of fixed broadband speeds until the next generation of mobile coverage - 4G - is rolled out across the UK- a process is expected to begin in 2013.
Everything Everywhere will start the first public trial of 4G in September this year.
Consultation has begun into how the 4G network will be allocated to operators, with an auction due to open early next year.

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At an event in New York on Thursday, the tech giant is expected to show off the technology called near field communication or NFC.
The technology allows devices to 'talk' to one another wirelessly.
Consumers wave their phones in front of a reader at a checkout to pay for a purchase or to receive special offers.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the programme will initially be launched in New York and San Francisco before being extended more widely across the US.
Retailers who are said to be taking part include deparment store Macy's, American Eagle Outfitters and Subway fast-food chain.
While Google has made no comment on the reports, it has sent out invites to the press asking them to attend an event at its New York offices where it will show off its "latest innovations".
Mobile network operator Sprint is also expected to take part.
In January Google chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in a guest edition of the Harvard Business Review that mobile money is a key part of Google's strategy for 2011.
"Phones, as we know, are used as banks in many poorer parts of the world—and modern technology means that their use as financial tools can go much further than that," said Mr Schmidt.
Demand Research firm Forrester has said it expects 40-50 million NFC equipped phones to be sold in 2011.
Apple is reportedly planning to include the technology in its upcoming iPhone 5 which is expected to be unveiled at its developer conference next month.
Microsoft is also said to be making plans to incorporate NFC in future Windows phones as is BlackBerry maker RIM.
Samsung and Visa have said they will facilitate mobile payments via NFC on smartphones during the summer Olympics in London next year.
"Google's Nexus S device that it recently announced is the first Android powered device supporting NFC and we expect NFC is going to increasingly become a default feature of every smartphone that is sold over the next couple of years," Charles Govlin, principal analysts at Forrester told BBC News.
Market researcher Gartner said with the total value of mobile transactions reaching $245 billion in 2014, demand for mobile wallet services will be huge.
But not everyone is convinced that contactless payments using a phone will replace cash.
"In my view, while I think it is clear that potentially these phone-based transactions will be widespread, it will happen slowly. One reason being that consumer behaviour changes very slowly," said Mr Govlin.
"The big beneficiary here will be Google, a company that is all about information. The metadata involved in such transactions could allow Google to serve ads and make you a more valuable target for advertisers," he added.
Last week the first NFC service was announced in the United Kingdom involving Orange and Barclaycard.
Mobile wallet services have been available in Japan for a number of years.