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The BBC announced today that its longest running astronomy series, The Sky At Night, will continue next year. From February 2014, it will air in a new monthly half-hour slot, moving from BBC One to BBC Four, with repeats on BBC Two.

Last month the corporation said that the programme would continue to the end of this year and plans for subsequent series ‘were being discussed’. Fans of the show feared that those discussions could see it being axed and so took to Twitter and an online petition to protest.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Kim Shillinglaw, Head of Commissioning for BBC Science and Natural History, said: “Sir Patrick Moore inspired generations of astronomers and I hope that alongside the BBC’s other astronomy content, such as BBC Two’s Stargazing Live, The Sky at Night will enthuse further generations about the wonder of the night sky.”

Cassian Harrison, Editor for BBC Four, said: “I’m delighted that we are continuing with such a treasured BBC brand, and look forward to welcoming the programme to its new home on BBC Four, where it will join a rich mix of other science content.”

A travel agency founded in 2010 and based in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, provides tours of Japan — for stuffed animals.

Just visit the Unagi Travel website to choose a tour and pay via PayPal. Then send your stuffed toy via Airmail at your expense to the company’s offices in Japan before the tour deadline.

Image: Unagi Travel

During your toy’s holiday, the company will post photos to their Facebook Page and then return your toy to you with a commemorative photograph along with the data on a CD-ROM.

In just 24 hours, the BlackBerry messaging app BBM has been downloaded over 10 million times by Android and iPhone users, one of the best single-day openings for a mobile app to date. BBM is available for free in the App Store and Google Play for immediate download.

BBM also quickly rose through the rankings on the App Store to be the number one free app in more than 75 countries in the first 24 hours, including the US, Canada, the UK, Indonesia and most of the Middle East.

Image: BlackBerry

“This has been an incredible launch for BBM across Android and iPhone devices. The mobile messaging market is full of opportunity for BBM. We intend to be the leading private social network for everyone who needs the immediate communication and collaboration of instant messaging combined with the privacy, control and reliability delivered through BBM” said Andrew Bocking, Executive Vice President, BBM at BlackBerry.

The following features are available to BBM users old and new:

BBM Chat – Immediate conversations with friends on Android, iPhone and BlackBerry smartphones. Not only does BBM let people know their message has been delivered and read, it also shows them when a contact is responding to a message. Users can simply and instantly share files such as photos and voice notes too.

BBM Groups – Lets users invite up to 30 friends to chat together, as well as share photo albums, calendars and files.

Post Updates and stay in the know – BBM lets people post a personal message, profile picture and a current status, and lets contacts see statuses instantly in Updates.

Unique PIN – Every BBM user has a unique PIN that maintains privacy, so users are not required to ever give out their phone number or email address to a new or casual contact.

Android and iPhone users will have access to BBM Voice and Video calling, as well as the new community building tool – BBM Channels – in the near future.

For more information on BBM visit www.bbm.com. Follow @BBM on Twitter for the latest news and updates.

Blackberry says BBM has more than 60 million monthly active customers, with more than 51 million people using it an average of 90 minutes per day. BBM users collectively send and receive more than 10 billion messages each day, and almost half of all BBM messages are read within 20 seconds of being received.

Yesterday, Apple announced:

iPad Air, featuring a 9.7-inch Retina display in a new thinner and lighter design. Weighing in at just one pound, the iPad Air is 20 percent thinner and 28 percent lighter than the fourth generation iPad, with a narrower bezel.

iPad mini with Retina display, bringing all the pixels from the 9.7-inch iPad to its 7.9-inch screen.

The new iPads feature the Apple-designed A7 chip with 64-bit desktop-class architecture, faster built-in Wi-Fi and expanded LTE cellular connectivity, and the newly-designed iOS 7 operating system.

Images: Apple

iPad Air models will be available in silver or space grey on Friday 1st November, starting at the suggested retail price of £399 inc VAT for the Wi-Fi only 16GB model. The new iPad mini models will be available later in November starting at the suggested retail price of £319 inc VAT for the Wi-Fi only 16GB model.

“iPad created an entirely new mobile computing experience, and the new iPad Air is another big leap ahead. It is so thin, light and powerful, once you hold one in your hand you will understand what a tremendous advancement this is” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

The all-new Mac Pro. Designed around an innovative unified thermal core, the Mac Pro features the latest Intel Xeon processors with up to 12 cores, dual workstation-class GPUs, six Thunderbolt 2 ports, PCIe-based flash storage and ultra-fast ECC memory. The all-new Mac Pro starts at £2,499 and will be available in December.

“The new Mac Pro is our vision for the future of the pro desktop, everything about it has been reimagined and there has never been anything like it,” said Schiller. “The new Mac Pro packs up to 12-core Xeon CPUs, dual FirePro GPUs, ultra-fast ECC memory, new PCIe flash storage, Thunderbolt 2 expandability and more into a radical new design that is one-eighth the size of the previous generation Mac Pro.”

An updated MacBook Pro with Retina display with fourth generation Intel Core processors, the latest graphics, longer battery life, faster flash storage and next generation Wi-Fi. Starting at a new lower price of £1,099, the updated MacBook Pro with Retina display features a high-resolution display, a thin and light design, and the latest technology to power through the most demanding projects.

“We’ve made the world’s best pro notebook even better by adding more performance and even longer battery life” said Schiller.

OS X Mavericks, the 10th major release of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system, is available for free from the Mac App Store. With more than 200 new features, OS X Mavericks brings iBooks and Maps to the Mac, includes a new version of Safari, enhances multi-display support, introduces Finder Tabs and Tags and delivers new core technologies for breakthrough power efficiency and performance.

“Mavericks is an incredible release, which introduces significant new apps and features, while also improving the performance and battery life of your Mac” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “We want every Mac user to experience the latest features, the most advanced technologies, and the strongest security. We believe the best way to do this is to begin a new era of personal computing software where OS upgrades are free.”

Next generation iWork productivity apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote and award-winning iLife creativity apps, iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand have been completely redesigned to take full advantage of OS X Mavericks and iOS 7. All apps have been updated to 64-bit, are integrated with iCloud, and are loaded with hundreds of new features that let you do more than ever across Apple devices.

iWork and iLife for Mac now come free with every new Mac purchase. Existing users running Mavericks can update their apps for free from the Mac App Store. iWork and iLife for iOS are available for free from the App Store for any new device running iOS 7, and are also available as free updates for existing users. GarageBand for Mac and iOS are free for all OS X Mavericks and iOS 7 users. Additional GarageBand instruments and sounds are available for a one-time in-app purchase of £2.99 for each platform.

“This is the biggest day for apps in Apple’s history” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “These new versions deliver seamless experiences across devices that you can’t find anywhere else and are packed with great features like iMovie Theater, Drummer and a new unified file format for iWork documents across all your devices.”