TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's trade ministry said on Tuesday that three fires had been caused by overheating Apple iPod nanos, which it said could be due to a battery defect.

No one was injured in the three fires involving the music players made by Apple Inc but the government said in a statement Apple had reported two other cases where people had suffered minor burns.

Apple officials were not immediately available for comment but the ministry said the firm had said a possible defect in iPod nano battery cells could have caused them to overheat.

The trade ministry said iPod nanos with known overheating incidents were sold in Japan between September 2005 and September 2006.

A semi-governmental body specializing in product safety will look into the cause of the incidents in cooperation with Apple, a trade ministry official said.

"We are not in the position to speculate on the outcome of the investigation. But after several incidents like these, it would be appropriate for Apple to take some measures to raise the public's awareness," the official said.

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One in 10 web pages scrutinized by search giant Google contained malicious code that could infect a user's PC.

Researchers from the firm surveyed billions of sites, subjecting 4.5 million pages to "in-depth analysis".

About 450,000 were capable of launching so-called "drive-by downloads", sites that install malicious code, such as spyware, without a user's knowledge.

A further 700,000 pages were thought to contain code that could compromise a user's computer, the team report.

Researchers say the company has "started an effort to identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious".

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(UPI) – Record labels are seething that they aren't getting what they see as their fair share from popular music-based games like Guitar Hero, analysts say.

With the zooming sales of such video games as Activision Blizzard Inc.'s Guitar Hero and MTV's Rock Band, which use songs by popular bands as their basis, music publishers say privately they're being shortchanged on the deal, The Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

Warner Music Group Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr., brought the record labels' concerns into the open during a teleconference call with investment analysts earlier this month, saying, "The amount being paid to the industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content that we own and control, is far too small." And privately, many other industry executives agree, the Times said.

"Music publishers see music-based games as a growth opportunity in an otherwise struggling music business, and they're trying to grab as much of that growth as they can," Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Lazard Capital Markets, told the newspaper.

Analysts' estimate the sales of music-themed video games should top $1.5 billion this year and grow as much as 35 percent next year, the Times said.

Internet experts have urged companies not to ban staff from using social applications such as Facebook and MySpace, insisting they encourage social interaction.

Web analyst Gartner says businesses should learn to understand how social communities work as they are become a crucial part of employee participation.

Gartner has also suggested firms develop policies to make sure the applications are used responsibly.

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(UPI) – A British scientist says metamaterials could someday replace bulky electronics in routing information on the Internet.

Fiber-optic cables carry streams of information in different channels that have their own light frequencies. Those frequencies must be separated and sent to their destinations, where they are converted into electrical signals, the BBC said Wednesday.

Metamaterials, described by Information Week as "composites with the ability to bend electromagnetic waves, to negatively refract light," may be able to slow light signals that transport information so there would be no need for an electrical conversion once the information arrives at its destination.

"The light and the fibers can quite cheerfully sustain a couple of terahertz, but your electronics can't do more than a few gigahertz," Chris Stevens of the University of Oxford told the British network.