If war breaks out the result would be "chaos."

... with the worldwide electronics supply chain grinding to a halt and stopping major market product segments in their tracks, including smartphones, media tablets and PCs...

"It is important for companies to understand the magnitude of South Korea's role in the global electronics market--and to prepare for any contingencies," said Mike Howard, senior principal analyst for DRAM & memory at IHS.

South Korean electronics giants Samsung and Hynix are headquartered just 30 miles from the border with North Korea. And large manufacturing operations are within 30 miles of the capital.

War would severely limit production of most electronics devices.

While some gadgets could have their amount of memory reduced--a smartphone with 32 gigabytes (GB) of NAND could be downsized to 8GB, or an 8GB laptop reduced to 4GB--other devices must have the memory for which they were originally designed, especially where DRAM is involved.

"A server with only half its intended DRAM is essentially half a server--and a smartphone cannot have its DRAM quantity changed, as it needs the original amount for which it was designed," Howard noted.

Good luck building cloud infrastructure with hobbled servers, or bringing out new smartphones and tablets. 

A Korean war would be disastrous for the revenues of leading US companies, Intel's server business and Apple's gadget sales.

The unremakable financial performance, and the warning of a large loss, didn't upset shareholders by much:

Its shares oscillated in after-hours trading once its results were released but settled down 2.9 per cent. - Amazon boosts margins even as profit falls - FT.com

As Amazon steps up competition against giants such as Apple, against HBO with its popular Netflix service; and against cloud computing vendors Rackspace and others, it has a massive competitive advantage: Its shareholders. They simply won't dump its stock, even when profits are weak and there's the prospect of a large loss.

On $16.1bn in sales, Apple would have reported the equivalent of $3.5bn in net profits. Amazon: just $82m.

Apple is hugely profitable but has less room to maneuver. Take a look at this six-month chart comparing $AMZN and $AAPL. Apple shareholders have dumped more than $279 billion in market cap over the past 6 months simply because earnings per share missed by a tiny fraction, and explosive sales growth had slowed slightly.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, has to be very careful, he can't take too many risks or else Wall Street will pummel the company's share price.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos can take more business risks, such as trying out different tablet devices, or different business models for online content - that Apple simply cannot without weighing the considerable risks to its share price if it stumbles minutely.

It's an interesting paradox that a barely profitable Amazon can have a significant advantage over a much more profitable (42 times), and far richer ($145bn cash v. $11.5bn) competitor. And it's because of its stalwart shareholders.

- - -

[Keeping in the eye of the media is key to Amazon's strategy because it helps communications with its shareholders. Jeff Bezos recently invested $5m in Business Insider, an online news site founded by Henry Blodget. He's a former star Wall Street analyst who made his name by predicting AMZN shares would nearly double in a year, sparking a massive two-year bubble in e-commerce stocks. It's interesting to see the two aiding each others' fortunes, again.]

The Free Culture Foundation is warning that Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and giant Hollywood music and movie companies, are pushing for an extension to the  HTML5 standard that will give them control over who can access web content.

They are backing a proposal to include Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), within the HTML5 standard. It's a digital rights management (DRM) technology that has no place in HTML5 because it undermines the purpose of the W3C standard, says FreeCulture.org:

DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal to all Web users and undermines the W3C's self-stated mission to make the benefits of the Web "available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability." 

The move would legitimize proprietary plugins from companies such as Adobe, Microsoft, and others, as HTML5 standards, when one of the goals of HTML5 is to remove the need for proprietary plugins.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposes EME:

It would be a terrible mistake for the Web community to leave the door open for Hollywood's gangrenous anti-technology culture to infect W3C standards. It would undermine the very purposes for which HTML5 exists: to build an open-ecosystem alternatives to all the functionality that is missing in previous Web standards, without the problems of device limitations, platform incompatibility, and non-transparency that were created by platforms like Flash.

Defend the Open Web: Keep DRM Out of W3C Standards | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Vote against EME: Tell W3C: We don't want the Hollyweb | Defective by Design

About Free Culture Foundation:

"The mission of the Free Culture Foundation is to undo the exploitation enabled by private ownership of technology, media, and communication networks. Our members work locally and globally through targeted campaigns, public education, and policy advocacy in areas including:

- Promote the advancement free software, free formats, & free cultural works
- Raise critical consciousness around technology and intellectual property
- Campaign and defend against significant technological and legal threats to privacy and autonomy
- Network within the free culture movement and build coalitions with other anti-oppression groups
- Organize the development of high-priority projects that support our mission."

Good news -- the White House was not really attacked. Bad news -- Reddit has found some suspects anyway.

Hilarious Tweet, serious subject. I love how Reddit is allowing us to relearn the power of the media and recognize it needs to act responsibly. And it can't be done by servers and software, it requires editors.  Redditors too.

See: AP Twitter account hacked, makes false claim of explosions at White House (update) | The Verge

By Matt Grimshaw, Editorial Director, Future-Fab International

Change seems to be the only constant left in this age of double caffeinated, taurine infused hyper-communication. Icons seem to be a thing of a bygone era, now the world is populated by sharks; to stop swimming is to die. The Chip industry in particular is facing several key infliction points in parallel.

We’re entering an age of exponential change, in everything we know and take for granted, and the chip industry is no different. In fact it’s the chip business that is the catalyst for most of the changes; well what do you think runs your gadgets, laptops, TV’s and the like?

Well you haven’t seen anything yet – if some of the Star Trek Tech that I see coming from Universities is anything to go by prepared to not only accept change, but have that change happen to your physical being – for an idea of that which I speak take a look at this presentation by Juan Enriquez speaking at TED.

The News This Week…

Tons of analysis in another quiet week of non-news as the chip industry takes a big deep breath before the double whammy of Semicon West and the Design Automation Conference both in July and both in San Francisco.

Lets kick off with a bold statement by the head of a new memory company called Unity Semiconductor who claims that the Memory business model is broken, a statement that is quite possibly valid but as his company is hoping to fill the void I’m sure the rational for the argument could be argued over until the cows came home, although I’ve no idea where the cows went in the first place. Highlighting many of the points made by that story news of Qimonda’s break up is rather disturbing to someone like me who has countless friends at the beleaguered DRAM Company.

Memory is not the only segment that’s taking a beating; start ups in the semiconductor sector also face a torrid time with VC money being hard to come by in this economy allied to the fact that the cost of entry is getting up there with that of a satellite launch or a Vente latte at Stabucks.

One highlight of news this week is a very well thought out article from Mark LaPedus asking is Intel a fab tool broker or breaker? Well worth a read… and good to see that journalism isn’t dead yet.

After that mainly analyst’s doing their thing…starting with Gartner who first say that a sustainable recovery is coming in 2010 although it will be a slow recovery in the electronics sector, however that’s not as tough as the lithography sector is this year…

Many analysts are piping up about last week’s news of Morris Chang re-taking the reins of TSMC while Future Horizons claim April’s growth was the best since 1996 which no matter what the figures say is hard pill to swallow psychologically speaking considering the waves of ugly news that we’ve been wading through recently.

Finishing on an upbeat note there’s a good article from Emma Lo Russo on the positives to take from recessions – a view I partake of myself although I should warn readers to watch out for the halitosis comment in the first paragraph, indeed don’t be drinking coffee when you read as I was unless you want to spend 10 minutes cleaning up your laptop after snorting coffee out of your nose laughing…

Geek of the Week…

This weeks GotW goes to a rather non-geeky type of person. Bertrand Piccard the Swiss adventurer (first man to fly solo around the world in a balloon) has plans to fly solo around the world in a Solar Powered plane… My CEO met him a few years ago at Semicon Europa and tells me he is easily a contender for the real ‘Most Interesting Man in the World’. I doff my imaginary cap to you sir, for if I were a cap wearer, you certainly deserve a doffing.

Matt Grimshaw is the Editorial Director of the Semiconductor Technical Journal; Future Fab International (www.future-fab.com) and writes a weekly blog post for FFI’s social network site Future Fab Connect (www.futurefabconnect.com) that offers a tongue in cheek review of the weeks news and his wanderings in search of Editorial in the Semiconductor industry.

By Matt Grimshaw, Editorial Director, Future-Fab International

It’s been a whirlwind of a week… you know the sort; you wake up on Monday go to work and then it’s like some sort of Hollywood blur/FFWD cut scene…then POW it’s Friday and you’re left with a distinct sense of “what the hell just happened??”.

During the blur, flashbacks of memorable occurrences stand out; things like distinct conversations and hanging out in a bar with three PR gurus (names omitted to save them) mid week to discuss that favorite subject of Tom Foremski’s – the emergence of New Media and the struggles of Old.

The Semiconductor industry is not immune to the effects of this trend. Although it isn’t what you’d call a trend setter, hell it’s not even a fast follower being more akin to an arthritic tortoise plodding along in the dust cloud of a rather speedy hare muttering things like “pesky kids…when I were a lad we did things differently” etc.

Regardless, all media entities in the Semi sector are struggling to make sense of the new reality – from magazines to trade shows and technical conferences… My mid week discussions highlighted something that’s interestingly unique to the Semiconductor industry though…the perception of marketing & PR. It’s viewed as a luxury in the Semi business, a fact that’s underlined by the thousands of laid off PR/Marketing folks out there who were first to fall under the axe as soon as it became evident how bad the housing industry collapse was going to be.

Seriously; print magazines are now so thin you can see through them if you hold them up to the light, trade shows & conferences have become like old towns from Spaghetti Westerns complete with random Tumbleweed bushes rolling through the aisles between booths for added drama…

The bottom line is that it’s unsustainable – if it carries on like this then there will be no PR, or communications from the Semi industry – it’ll be a barren wasteland. And sooner or later someone will write something titled “what happened to Semiconductor media?” in which all sorts of C-Level people will gripe at an industry as big as the Semiconductor segment not having it’s own media….

This is of course a dramatization as we’re not there yet, but it’s certainly got me thinking about why media types (myself included) and those in the marketing/PR world are not being more vocal about this… Let this be the start of the discussion.

The News This Week…

- The more things change the more they stay the same… Apparently Moore’s Law will be dead by 2014, well until someone says “oh no it isn’t”…ah that’ll be this story then. In more of the same type of news EUV could be getting pushed out AGAIN according to Intel as they have (in a lab at least) figured out how to push 193 immersion Litho down to 15nm. You know, I’m starting to think that EUV is a joint massive hallucination as it’s been ‘almost ready’ since I’ve been in the business (10 years), I know some technologies have a long incubation period but seriously…

- Bell Labs (a name lost in time) is partnering with IME Singapore on Photonics research with an aim to lower the cost of the technology.

- In a ‘Back to the Future’ moment IBM announced that they’re bringing back the water cooling concept for high end servers…will flying cars be next?

- Graphene (essentially unrolled carbon nanotubes) appears to be heading the race to replace Silicon although we’ve heard that before a few times.

- In final news I’d like to extend my sincere condolences to the friends, family and colleagues of Steven Case who died in a plane crash on Tuesday 16th June. Steven was the Founder & Chairman of CyberOptics a provider of Sensors & Inspection systems.

Geek of the Week

As I've said many a time, being a geek is not necessarily about just tech - you can be a geek in anything. This week’s winner is seriously at the upper echelon of geekyness but not about tech (strictly speaking), about SPEED.

For almost anyone in the world a 600hp V12 would be more then enough power...not for Richard Noble and his team though - because they are trying to break 1000mph with the Bloodhound project (even a refrigerated name!)... The V12 is just their fuel pump!

The main thrust comes from an engine that usually calls a fighter jet home, but even that isn't enough...they strap a rocket on that as well!!!....how deeply cool (if not exactly politically correct) is that?

Matt Grimshaw is the Editorial Director of the Semiconductor Technical Journal; Future Fab International (www.future-fab.com) and writes a weekly blog post for FFI’s social network site Future Fab Connect (www.futurefabconnect.com) that offers a tongue in cheek review of the weeks news and his wanderings in search of Editorial in the Semiconductor industry.

Microsoft's John Schappert coming back to EA -SFGate

The return of Schappert is the latest in a number of EA-Microsoft moves. Peter Moore, the former head of Microsoft's Xbox business, left Redmond in 2007 to become president of the EA Sports label. Don Mattrick, a former EA president, made the jump to Microsoft earlier that year and eventually replaced Moore.

Ballmer: We Should Have Built Search Sooner -WSJ

“In our industry, the No. 1 mistake that people make is that they quit too early,” Ballmer said during comments to the Executives’ Club of Chicago. “If you look back at any great technology business, it took a while to build up.”

Report Shows Big Drop In PR Agency Profitability -web2.0

In his blog, Harvard Business professor John Quelch writes, “This is not the time to cut advertising. It is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.”

LG to produce monitor with virtualization technology -Reuters

"Every single one of our workstations needs a monitor, so why not build our technology directly into the monitor," said Stephen Dukker, chief executive of privately held NComputing.

U.S. company tells PC makers: halt China anti-porn software -Reuters

Solid Oak Software Inc, which said it found pieces of its CyberSitter Internet-filtering software in a similar Chinese program, said it had faxed cease-and-desist letters to Dell, HP and Gateway, and to the U.S. units of Sony, Toshiba, Acer, and Lenovo.

Jury rules against Minn. woman in download case -AP

This case was the only one of more than 30,000 similar lawsuits to make it all the way to trial. The vast majority of people targeted by the music industry had settled for about $3,500 each. The recording industry has said it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead now working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders.

China Holds Firm on Software Filter, U.S. Firms Say -NYTimes

In a further sign that Chinese officials are trying to assert more Internet control, the city of Beijing wants to recruit 10,000 volunteers by summer’s end to monitor online content, said an employee of the city government’s Spiritual Civilization Office.

Congress Questions How Web Sites Use Personal Data -NYTimes

Congress today summoned executives from Facebook, Google, and Yahoo to inquire about how they are tracking consumers for advertising purposes. The hearing signals an increasing interest on Washington’s part into what online companies are doing with all the data they have on their customers.

The iPhone OS 4.0 Wishlist -SFGate

we noted a few new features that should be thrown in for the next update as well as a few existing apps that desperately need a makeover.

Computer-makers fight China's filter order -SFGate

The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday ordered Expedia to collect and pay hotel occupancy taxes to the west Georgia city of Columbus. This could set a precedent for San Francisco and dozens of other municipalities across the country waging similar pitched battles with online travel companies.

Salesforce.com Now Lets Companies Build Both Apps And Sites In The Cloud -TechCrunchIT

Salesforce is also announcing a free edition of Force.com, giving small businesses and entrepreneurs a budget friendly way to use Salesforce’s platform.

Cisco technology changing the way fans watch sports -MercuryNews

Increasingly, the nation's $750 billion sports entertainment industry will depend on technology to cement relationships with young fans faced with a multitude of activities competing for their attention, said Rick Horrow, a sports business analyst for CNN who teaches a sports law class at Harvard University.

U.S. wireless providers debate about competition -Reuters

The issue of exclusive agreements among some of the biggest companies like Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone and service provider AT&T Inc (T.N) is at the center of some lawmakers' concerns about whether such practices hinder competition and innovation.

Keep writing those Moore’s Law obits and you’re bound to be right someday -SiliconValley.com

Most of the predictions are based on running up against fundamental physical limitations, but in its own new calculation of the law’s expiration date, market research firm iSuppli cites not the size of the transistors, but the size of chip makers’ budgets.

I.B.M. to Invest $100 Million in Cellphone Research -NYTimes

I.B.M. said it hoped its research would serve “the millions of people who have bypassed using the personal computer as their primary method of accessing the Internet and instead use their mobile devices for managing large forces of enterprise field workers, conducting financial transactions, entertainment, shopping and more.”

Intel to rebrand some chips, phase out "Centrino" -Reuters

The company plans to repackage its Core family of microprocessors with a simpler naming scheme -- the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 -- describing basic, mid-range and high-end features within the Core line, respectively.

Top senator: NSA not violating surveillance law -AP

"Everything that I know so far indicates that the thrust of the story - that there are flagrant actions essentially to collect content of (American e-mails) - is just simply not true, to the best of my knowledge," Feinstein said at a Senate hearing Wednesday.

Google agrees to Germany's terms regarding Street View -SFGate

Germany has given Google the green light to launch its Street View mapping service in this country, but only after the company agreed to comply with German authorities' privacy concerns.

Amazon Acquires Software Maker SnapTell -WSJ

The SnapTell purchase is Amazon's latest move to beef up its mobile capabilities. In April, the Seattle company acquired Lexcycle, the maker of a popular application called Stanza for reading books on the iPhone. Amazon has continued to develop Stanza as a separate program from its own Kindle e-book reading application for the iPhone

Identity Battles Come to Facebook -NYTimes

Social media sites give companies new ways to promote their brands, said Howard H. Weller, a trademark lawyer at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp in New York. But he added that “these are all new avenues for abuse, and it’s more resources trademark owners need to devote to policing and enforcement.”

Sophisticated online crime ring detected -SFGate

"This is the most advanced network we've found," said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, the chief technology officer of Finjan, a venture-funded security company based in San Jose that found the network two months ago. "They're trying to combine all the elements together and enable more people to participate in this crime."

S.F. techie helps stir Iranian protests -SFGate

But for the past few days, Heap, an IT director in San Francisco, has been on the virtual front lines of the crisis in Iran, helping people there protest the presidential election, which opponents of the incumbent regime maintain was fraudulent.

Guessing game: How much money is YouTube losing? -AP

RampRate reasons the perception of large losses at YouTube helps Google negotiate more favorable contracts with movie, TV and music studios licensing their video. What's more, copyright owners also are less likely to go to court in pursuit of unpaid royalties and damages if they believe YouTube is a big money loser, according to RampRate's thesis.

Apple Implements App Ratings/Restrictions for iPhone, iPod Touch -GigaOM

In addition to a rating, each app also receives a brief description of how it earned that classification, so you know Apple reviewers weren’t just choosing at random because their eyes are bleeding from reviewing thousands of apps.

Stanford scientists discover a possible successor to silicon -SiliconValley.com

The researchers found that electrons in a chemical compound called bismuth telluride have a unique property: They can travel without resistance, losing no energy. This suggests that there might be a new way to carry more information than silicon-based chips can handle.

Obama backs repeal of tax on personal cell phones -Reuters

A 1989 law requires companies seeking to deduct worker cellphones as an expense to track personal use with painstaking documentation of minutes. The government, in a notice last week sought public comment on making compliance easier, but now says the law should be scrapped altogether.

AP eyeing better deals with Internet heavyweights -AP

Charging consumers and relying more directly on ads would herald a significant change for the AP, which traditionally has gotten most of its revenue from selling its material to other media - newspapers, broadcasters and, more recently, Internet sites. About 17 percent of the AP's revenue come from the Internet or other digital sources.

Adobe Systems posts drop in 2Q profit, sales -AP

Chief Financial Officer Mark Garrett said Adobe is continuing to invest in the areas of its business that will drive growth once the economy recovers. These include its core Acrobat and Creative Suite products, which bring in the bulk of Adobe's revenue, as well as products like LiveCycle, which is aimed at large businesses.

Judge tosses long-running lawsuit against Oracle -AP

A federal judge has thrown out a long-running lawsuit accusing Oracle Corp. (ORCL) (ORCL) of misleading investors about the company's health before the tech meltdown of 2001 whacked its sales and stock price.

Gmail to Get More Protection From Snoops -NYTimes

Free, always-on HTTPS is pretty unusual in the email business, particularly for a free email service, but we see it as an another way to make the web safer and more useful. It’s something we’d like to see all major webmail services provide.

Social Networks Spread Defiance Online -NYTimes

Many Twitter users have been sharing ways to evade government snooping, such as programming their Web browsers to contact a proxy — or an Internet server that relays their connection through another country.

Encrypt the Cloud, Security Luminaries Tell Google - Update -Wired

“Few users know the risks they face when logging into Google’s Web applications from an unsecured network, and Google’s existing efforts are little help,” the letter reads. “As a market leader in providing cloud services, Google has an opportunity to engage in genuine privacy and security leadership, and to set a standard for the industry.”

Facebook user names leave their cyber mark -SFGate

In an effort to prevent cyber squatters, the company allows users to fill out forms to bar others from registering their trademarks. Members also can contest registered user names through an intellectual property infringement form. Yu stressed that the company owns every user name and "can assign or restrict them as we see fit."

Google vs. Bing: The fear stops here -SFGate

Bing is probably better than Google anticipated and early indications are favorable in terms of user adoption; however not on any scale to threaten Google's position. I wouldn't be surprised if Google is taking Bing seriously and trying to carefully assess its algorithm.

Use Their Work Free? Some Artists Say No to Google -NYTimes

“When a company like Google comes out very publicly and expects that the market would just give them free artwork, it sets a very dangerous precedent.”

Music cos. vow to show Minn. woman shared 24 songs -AP

Marks estimated that only a few hundred of the more than 30,000 illegal music sharing lawsuits the industry has filed still remain unresolved, and that fewer than 10 defendants including Thomas-Rasset are actively fighting them. He said their intent is not to be punitive, but to provide an effective deterrent.

Sun Micro kills "Rock" high-end chip project: report -Reuters

News of the chip's demise came after Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison recently said he planned to boost investment in developing Sun's server chips after he closes the acquisition.

Tech Museum celebrates 10th birthday amid renewed optimism -SiliconValley.com

"The Tech Museum is one of the anchors of our downtown. It has attracted 5 million people here in the last decade," said Mayor Chuck Reed on Sunday.

Hot papers at 2009 VLSI Technology Symposium -EETimes

We are getting close to the tipping point for solid-state drives. I think it is more than hype as the next couple of years are bound to prove. So it should be no surprise that this list is biased toward nonvolatile memory.

Amazon’s Bezos’s ‘Strong Opinions’ on Google Settlement -WSJ

Critics of the Google book settlement say the agreement, which lets publishers and authors share profit with Google from online sales of their works, could limit competition in the nascent digital book market. It is one of several matters in which the search giant faces regulatory attention.

7 Tips for Keeping IT Employees Upbeat -NYTimes

Strong staff morale is critical to ensuring that productivity and retention levels remain high. The organizations on Computerworld's Best Places to Work in IT list come from diverse industries and vary in size and geographic reach, but they all share a common feature: They're focused on maintaining an upbeat work environment and sustaining employee morale.

Apple, Google, Palm rule smart phones -SFGate

"Each of these organizations has raised the standard in their own individual way," said analyst J. Gerry Purdy of Frost & Sullivan, who coined the Golden Triangle term for the three companies. "Palm has multitasking and synergy, while with Android, you have a flexible and customizable user interface, and with Apple, you have a tightly integrated product.

Survey: Family time eroding as Internet use soars -AP

more people say they are worried about how much time kids and teenagers spend online. In 2000, when the center began its annual surveys on Americans and the Internet, only 11 percent of respondents said that family members under 18 were spending too much time online. By 2008, that grew to 28 percent.

Data-Driven Schools See Rising Scores -WSJ

The high-tech strategy, which uses intensified assessments and the real-time collection of test scores, grades and other data to identify problems and speed up interventions, has just received a huge boost from President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Technology to keep students, parents in touch -SFGate

"to learn to turn to people other than your parents," said Barbara Hofer, a professor of psychology at Middlebury College in Vermont. "It's part of growing up, part of becoming an independent person."

Universal Music and Virgin Reach a Download Deal -NYTimes

Analysts said Virgin, which has more than seven million broadband customers, might have been willing to yield on copyright enforcement because it also produces and sells content via its cable television system, unlike many broadband providers, which simply serve as a conduit for content.

Virgin Strikes U.K. Music Deal -WSJ

U.K. cable provider Virgin Media Inc. said it will introduce an unlimited, music-download service in partnership with Vivendi SA's Universal Music publishing arm.

Hanging on for dear life -TechCrunchIT

With Oracle swallowing Sun, the enterprise dynamics have swung hard to right, past cloud computing, and directly into the mobile identity landrush. It’s easy to pigeonhole smart phones as the latest version of Studio 54 society politics, but in fact our identities are being consolidated around the SIM chip, with our social graph around the Follow/Track architecture of Twitter and its subsidiaries.

U.S. company accuses China of stealing software -Reuters

"We found actual proprietary code areas within the Green Dam program itself which are incredibly suspicious because they use our proprietary encryption methods," he said. "There's a lot more to it than just a list of bad words."

H-P Throws More Cash at Scientists -WSJ

Carnegie Mellon’s Noah Smith is getting a grant this year to study how “opinions are propagated through social communities” on political blogs, and “analyze how the vast amount of data can be leveraged for commerce, social advertisement and other commercial and statistical methods.”

What Intel Can Teach Google About the Cloud -NYTimes

The future of cloud networking, and the only way to enable the full value of cloud compute cycles, is in WAN optimization. It’s a strategy that has worked well for Intel and AMD — and it ought to work for Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace Mosso, and even Google.

Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran -NYTimes

The western world's most feared government is shaking with insurrection in the streets after a contested election and the leading name in news, CNN, is shockingly absent from the story. Twitter, meanwhile, is how Iranians are communicating with the outside world.

Privacy may be a victim in cyberdefense plan -msnbc

Military officials say there may be a need to intercept and examine some e-mail messages sent from other countries to guard against computer viruses or potential terrorist action. Advocates say the process could ultimately be accepted as the digital equivalent of customs inspections, in which passengers arriving from overseas consent to have their luggage opened for security, tax and health reasons.

Alleged Hacking-Terror Effort Thwarted -WSJ

The case shows that hacking is no longer the province of teenagers or even organized crime, said Erez Liebermann, the assistant U.S. attorney who is prosecuting the case. "With the connections outlined in the Italian and Philippines side, we have now moved into the realm of hacking as a financing mechanism for terrorism,"

Hey, Just a Minute (or Why Google Isn’t Twitter) -NYTimes

Google checks news feeds constantly but does not so easily pull in tweets. At a press event in London last month, Mr. Page was asked to comment on any plans that Google had to search Twitter in real time. After praising Twitter for doing a “great job” in showing information to users in real time, Mr. Page said he had long been pushing his search teams to index every second.

Software change makes Twitter more accessible for the visually impaired -SFGate

Members of San Francisco's Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired appealed to Twitter executives during the company's first business conference in late May to make changes to its CAPTCHA security software and make it more accessible for the blind and visually impaired.

AP IMPACT: Weak security enables credit card hacks

The government leaves it to card companies to design security rules that protect the nation's 50 billion annual transactions. Yet an examination of those industry requirements explains why so many breaches occur: The rules are cursory at best and all but meaningless at worst, according to the AP's analysis of data breaches dating to 2005.

Politicians Fail to Grasp Peer-To-Peer -NYTimes

After Sweden tightened its anti-piracy laws and sentenced to jail the founders of a site called The Pirate Bay, the popularity of a political group dedicated to free file-sharing soared. The Pirate Party has won a seat in the European Parliament, and similar groups are springing up elsewhere in Europe.

Auction of domain names never happens -SFGate

Or perhaps the recovery of the real estate market isn't as close as Harrison thought. On Thursday afternoon he had four buyers interested in joint ventures - which he can't auction - he said, but no one willing to take the risk and buy the names on their own.

Microsoft Launches Search Engine for China — But Don’t Call It Bing -WSJ

The Chinese version has thus been named “biying” (必应) which means “must respond/answer” and which Microsoft is marketing it as a“decision engine”– something that will provide information to assist Internet users with their decision-making processes.

By Matt Grimshaw, Editorial Director, Future-Fab International

It seems as if the chip industry is working its way through the procedure to recover from a heavy night….It woke up with a bad hangover, memory loss and for some strange reason; random street furniture on or around it’s bed (take your pick; traffic cone, street sign, car tyre etc).

Then it had its black coffee, whilst sifting through broken memories of the night before and now feels strong enough to face some food…

Nervously picking through a pile of eggs & toast hoping that it can hold it down long enough to get its blood sugar levels back to something nearing the standard classification of ‘alive’.

I’m not sure why, but this week seemed to indicate a sense of normality (if there is such a thing in this business) returning, an emergence from the fog of earnings (or lack of) announcements and a recommencing of the usual lunacy surrounding the tech business that allows all other tech businesses to exist in the first place…

The News This Week…

There’s only one word dominating the news this week: Foundries. Most of the meat seems to surround the biggest of the foundry players; TSMC, with lots of strange things emanating from the chip manufacturing powerhouse, not least of which is Morris Chang, TSMC’s 78 year old legendary Chairman & founder, taking over the CEO role again…put into context this would be like Gordon Moore coming back to take up the reigns at Intel again…simply put; weird.

Sticking with TSMC for the moment, their sales are up 12.5% this month (from last month), which is echoed by arch rival UMC who are up 9% and Chartered Semi who’s wafer shipments are up 60%.

This is all causing the Foundry rankings to change as companies vie to grab the biggest chunk of the pie heading into a period of growth/recovery. As the established players duke it out for market share, the new kid on the block; GLOBALFOUNDRIES (I’m not shouting, you HAVE to write it in caps apparently) has reaffirmed its commitment to build a $4.2bn facility in New York.

Fab spending is expected to take a big step towards recovering lost ground in 2010 lthough the down side of this news is that due to the 300mm fabs productivity gains less fabs are being built. The lithography market has not exactly been the hotbed of news in the last 5 years with Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) getting delayed ad-infinitum, and 193 immersion managing to plug the ever increasing gap – however even 193 is really running out of oomph now and increasingly desperate measures are being taken including the horrendously expensive double patterning technology, although even that pales against EUV.

Speaking of which ASML is touting its potential customers for EUV tools including TSMC who are keeping their options open.

In final news just to remind us all that there still is an economic crisis to get over Gartner throws out a gloomy forecast and the seemingly forever embattled Aviza Technology jumps on the Chapter 11 bandwagon, will they be the last? Who knows…

Geek of the Week…

GOTW was pretty easy this week, but a little out of the normal sphere of what is traditionally known as Geekdom. This week the collective accolade goes to the GSI Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt for adding another element to the periodic table although they haven't gotten around to naming it yet and the discovery was made 13 years ago…

Seeing as they named their first in 1981 – bohrium (atomic number 107), after the physicist Niels Bohr – and other elements after scientists, such as meitnerium (atomic number 109, after Lise Meitner) and roentgenium (atomic number 111, after Wilhelm Roentgen) think the time is right for einsteinium no?

Matt Grimshaw is the Editorial Director of the Semiconductor Technical Journal; Future Fab International (www.future-fab.com) and writes a weekly blog post for FFI’s social network site Future Fab Connect (www.futurefabconnect.com) that offers a tongue in cheek review of the weeks news and his wanderings in search of Editorial in the Semiconductor industry.

Reconciling social computing with the enterprise -ZDNet

Jeff Jarvis and Michael Arrington made similar points over the weekend about process vs. product, ostensibly about their particular industry (journalism) and how social processes are competing — often more effectively, though very differently — with traditional, non-social “product” creations, namely news stories.

A New List of How Much AT&T Knows About You -NYTimes

Taken as a whole, the new document shows that AT&T has access to a vast amount of information about people, and it claims the right for all parts of AT&T to do almost anything with that data, including trying to sell customers other services, set prices and sell advertising to other companies.

Controlling Virtual Worlds with Your Mind -h+

The EEG-based headset passes your brain’s electrical signals to software on your PC, which extracts patterns and translates them. Without moving a muscle, you can move worlds on your PC.

DLNA flunks Best Buy's tests _EETimes

The new video profile could play a key role in next-generation residential gateways that send metadata from a service provider to a consumer's digital TV set, letting H.264 silicon in the TV render the video. Systems using that approach could appear as early as next year, he added.

Tesla Founder Sues Company, CEO Elon Musk -NYTimes

Martin Eberhard, founder of Tesla Motors, the anointed darling of the electric vehicle industry, has filed suit against the company and its current leader, Elon Musk (right), who he accuses of slander, mismanagement, and, bizarrely, giving him a damaged Tesla roadster (the firm’s first product).

Environmental program helps companies save energy -MercuryNews

"We're really helping to create the next generation of business leaders who will automatically look at the environment as a business opportunity," said Elizabeth Sturcken, managing director of corporate partnerships at EDF.

Yahoo names new CFO, fills void left by shake-up -AP

Yahoo said Thursday it has plucked Tim Morse from chip maker Altera Corp. (ALTR) to serve as CFO.
He fills a job vacated by Blake Jorgensen, who left in February as part of an overhaul by Yahoo's new chief executive, Carol Bartz.

MySpace prepares for "massive" layoffs: report -Reuters

A search and advertising deal with Google Inc will expire in July 2010, and it is unclear whether the two sides will renew. MySpace derives $300 million a year from that deal, and most Wall Street analysts believe there is no chance that Google will forge a deal on similar terms.

Microsoft to unveil free anti-virus software -Reuters

"Microsoft's free product is basically a stripped down version of the OneCare product Microsoft pulled from the shelves," said Symantec Consumer division president Janice Chaffin. "A full Internet security suite is what consumers require today to stay fully protected."

Whoops! iPhone 3G S Specs Leaked Online -SFGate

The truth, of course, is that Apple's secret wouldn't have stayed quiet much longer, anyhow. With the 3G S set to hit store shelves next Friday, the iPhone's deepest alleys are just days away from being fully explored. Still, between this and T-Mobile's leaked data fiasco, one has to imagine it's a good week to be anywhere but inside the T-Mobile corporate conference room.

Microsoft to Sell Windows in E.U. Without Browser -NYTimes

Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it would ship the newest version of its Windows operating system in Europe without its Internet Explorer web browser, in a move to counter European regulators' concerns that the company unfairly forces out competition from other browser makers.

Kiva to make microloans inside the U.S. -SFGate

The San Francisco non-profit has arranged microloans for borrowers in Africa and other parts of the developing world since 2005. Now it will also serve borrowers in the U.S.

Henry Blodget was the poster boy Internet analyst that everyone loved to hate during the Internet mania years. He could and did move markets with his analysis. He often chose outrageous targets for companies such as Amazon and he was often right.

But when the dotcom boom turned into a dot bomb he became the most visible target for the backlash to all the Internet hype and tears of many broken investors. And he also became a target for an army of lawyers.

Mr Blodget was barred from the securities industry and forced to pay a $4 million fine.

A lot of people took pleasure in his downfall. The British love to use a German word "schadenfreude" to describe that peculiar aspect of human nature.

Yesterday, that whole affair came to a close. The fines that Mr Blodget and top Wall Street firms had paid into a fund had been paid out to qualified plaintiffs, and there was money left over.

Mr Blodget wrote about this on Silicon Alley Insider, a New York based news site that he founded and that is very successful. (The site is a testament to Mr Blodget's continued analytical prowess.)

As most of you know--and as some of you are fond of observing when I say something you disagree with--back in 2003, I was named in a civil fraud complaint the SEC brought against Wall Street after the dotcom research and investment-banking scandals. As you may also know, I paid $4 million (oof) to settle my share of that charge, and I got booted out of the securities industry.

There follows an interesting account of what happened to his $4 million (plus $200K interest - the headline gives it away :) Blodget's SEC Fine To Reduce National Debt By $4.2 Million

But it's the comments that added a lot to his post. People are sharing how they were trading in those heady days and the huge effect of Mr Blodget's words on the market -- and on their fortunes

For example:

Daily Bail writes:

One of the best pieces I've ever read from you. I don't know how you kept all sense of anger out of the post. I read it 3 times trying to find even one flicker of deserved indignation on your part, and there was nothing there.

...I traded against your picks in a general sense from 1998 onward. I was a semi-notorious short-seller trading with about $15 million of personal funds (including margin) against the entire networking/dotcom/infrastructure mania of the time.

It almost bankrupted me. I remeber the day Julian Robertson publicly folded his short positions against all of these companies and I knew that must have been the top. It came about 3 weeks later on my birthday March 10th of 2000. I had had a horrible week trading as the NAZ kept rallying with the breathless daily, siren calls from Maria Bartiromo talking about NAZ 10,000.

I lost $1.5 million that week as the NAZ rallied hard and I continued to add to my short positions everyday. Microstrategy, Priceline, Infospace and many others.

It was the worst birthday weekend of my life as I contemplated being wiped out the following week. IT turns out that that Friday was the top. I made $2.7 million the following week and about $3 million the week after as I hammered these over-inflated pieces of hype and hope with more and more stock.

The period from Mid '99 through mid 2001 in these spaces (as we used to say) is almost impossible to explain to people these days. It was the most surreal trading environment ever seen.

Jizmo writes:

Historically, all regulators burn the pathfinders; accept that and resume taking your bite out of life.

Personally, I'm proud of your snappy little self!

Alan writes:

Dot Com days were fun and then horrible. Doubled my money in no time and lost most of it back in no time, but I did manage to buy a very nice house with some of the money and that investment kept me from losing even more than I would have if I hadn't bought the house.  

...So every time I look out at the Pacific Ocean view I thank the Dot Com mania for at least giving me something of substance.

So what is the next crazy bubble investment?

There's more here: Blodget's SEC Fine To Reduce National Debt By $4.2 Million

Foremski's Take:

I feel that the end of Mr Blodget's penance is significant because I see it as potentially the start of a new period, one that isn't defined by the sins of the old era and exists according to its own laws of physics and economics.

For too long we've been looking backwards at the mistakes of a prior decade. Now we are free to make new mistakes and that is exciting and a lot more interesting.

Free broadband won't entice all -BBC

Some 42% of adults said that they had no interest or need for the internet. This so-called self-excluded group tended to be older or retired, with 61% confessing to never having used a computer.

Manipulating light on a chip for quantum technologies -h+

The Bristol Centre for Quantum Photonics has demonstrated precise control of four photons using a microscopic metal electrode lithographically patterned onto a silicon chip.

Barry Diller: The Internet 'Absolutely' Will Become a 'Paid System'. Time Projection: Within 5 Years -ZDNet

Inevitably, Diller said, the “base model” of the Internet will be paid, at the end of the chaos. The forms will include not just subscriptions and individual one-time purchases, but rapid-fire micropayments and other mechanisms.

China Faces Criticism Over New Software Censor -NYTimes

“To be honest, nobody really knows what this software is capable of,” said one executive at an American computer maker who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his company is still trying to work with the government on the issue. Computer experts fear that it could allow the government to monitor Internet use and collect personal information.

Survey: Venture capital firms look outside U.S. -SFGate

"The U.S. is no longer the only area in the world for venture capital activity," said Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, which conducted the survey along with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. "It's truly a global phenomena that's changing economies all around the world."

London to Electric Car Biz: On Your Marks, Get Set -NYTimes

London’s official foreign direct investment agency, Think London, pitched more than 50 executives from cleantech companies at an event in San Francisco, laying out the appeal of setting up shop in London.

USA Today publisher sees hope in mobile platforms -AP

As one step toward expanding its revenue sources, on Aug. 3 USA Today will start selling e-mailed replicas of its daily newspapers for about $10 a month, Hunke said at a gathering of reporters. USA Today already has been selling electronic editions for $13.95 a month, but now it is switching to a new technology provider and putting more resources into promoting the service.

Google unfazed by 3 US government inquiries -AP

In a sign that the book inquiry is intensifying, investigators have issued formal demands for more details about the settlement. Google confirmed Wednesday it is among the settlement participants that received the civil investigative demands, or CIDs. A federal judge is scheduled to review the settlement in October.

French court curbs disputed Internet piracy rules -Reuters

France's top constitutional court on Wednesday seriously weakened a law backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy that was aimed at punishing Internet pirates.

Ex-Apple Executive Who Led Its iPod Division Is Named Chief of Palm -NYTimes

Mr. Rubinstein, 52, will remain chairman, a post he assumed in October 2007 to help bring innovation back to the company. He said in a statement he was excited about his expanded role.

Craigslist expects record revenue: $100 million -SFGate

"Craigslist, whether you agree with what it's doing or not, has pretty much changed the way we look at classifieds," said Jim Townsend, editorial director for AIM. "They're a game changer."

Digital downloads spell end for video game stores? -Reuters

Digital downloads are still a small, but fast-growing business. According to the NPD group, 17 percent of games sold in 2008 by PC gamers were digitally downloaded. Microsoft and Sony are trying to convert console gamers who have become accustomed to consuming music and movies digitally via services like Netflix and Apple Inc's iTunes.

U.S. Presses Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Book Settlement -NYTimes

The Justice Department has sent the requests, called civil investigative demands, to various parties, including Google, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and individual publishers, said Michael J. Boni, a partner at Boni & Zack, who represented the Authors Guild in negotiations with Google.

Online Multitasking Increases Bandwidth Demand -NYTimes

A huge engine of traffic growth will be smartphones and other mobile devices. According to Cisco, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2013, jumping 66 times from 2008.

Microsoft patches 31 Windows, IE, Office security holes -ZDNet

Microsoft’s batch of patches this month is a big one: 10 bulletins covering a total of 31 documented vulnerabilities affecting the Windows OS, the Internet Explorer browser and the Microsoft Office productivity suite (Word, Works and Excel).

Brain Bots are Developing Personalities – and a Whole Lot More -h+

“It’s obvious that the brain is a huge population of individual neurons,” says UC Irvine neuroscientist Jeff Krichmar. “Neuronal Group Selection meant we could apply population models to neuroscience, we could examine things at a systems’ level.” This systems approach became the architectural blueprint for moving neurobotics forward.

Google CEO says looking to buy smaller firms -Reuters

"We primarily look for technology. It's a typical build versus buy. How long does it take us to build it with our engineers, versus there are already engineers in this other company that have built this thing."

IT staff snooping on colleagues on rise: survey -Reuters

More than one-third of information technology professionals abuse administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues' salary details or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey.

Google News Might Add Wikipedia as a Source -NYTimes

Perhaps Wikipedia will someday supplement other news coverage in this kind of way, acting as a public clearinghouse for readers interested in an aggregation of all the facts reported, along with more extensive historical context.

China hands HP a corporate quandary -SFGate

How, for example, would they suggest HP weigh the bottom line - 40 million PCs were sold in China last year - with the "moral reasoning" and "practical ethics" that Stanford students are supposed to figure in the equation?

Friday is final curtain for analog TV signals -AP

"We were nowhere near ready for a nationwide transition in February. Had we flipped the switch back then, we would have faced a debacle that would have made New Coke look like a stroke of marketing genius."

APNewsBreak: Group says poker winnings are frozen

Documents obtained by the AP show that a magistrate judge in the district issued a seizure warrant last week for an account at a Wells Fargo bank in San Francisco, and that a federal prosecutor told Alliance Bank to freeze accounts.

Facebook land rush to start in three days -SFGate

"Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web," DiPersia said. "People can enter a Facebook user name as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names."

E3 2009: Who won? Who lost? Who wins a golden Ars? -ars technica

This was a big show filled with games, parties, lines, headaches, and, of course, celebrities. What rates as a Golden Ars? Here are our picks.

IBM aims to bolster partnerships amid weak economy -Reuters

Sources told Reuters late last month that IBM was in talks with network equipment maker Juniper Networks Inc for an OEM or original equipment manufacturer deal, in which IBM would resell Juniper equipment as part of its own family of products.

The next Silicon Valley -EETimes

Like Silicon Valley, regional tech centers from Brazil to Bangalore are finding that technology development thrives in an environment of creative intellectual energy that offers a networked economy, proximity to research institutions and universities, unique intellectual property development, a diverse base of high-tech talent, access to investment capital and infrastructure.

Apple unveils faster iPhone with new features -SFGate

Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, said Apple is migrating the iPhone even more toward becoming a true mobile computer, in the process distancing itself from rivals who are having trouble keeping up.

Tech cos enlist Democrat to blast Obama tax plan -Reuters

The Technology CEO Council recruited Robert J. Shapiro, a former top Commerce Department official, who wrote a report released on Monday arguing that significant jobs losses could occur under Obama's plan.

Two Views of Sun Micro’s Future in its Proxy -WSJ

Where Sun executives once talked up their advantages over rivals, the proxy lays out a series of disadvantages the company faced in remaining independent. For example, Sun’s revenue base is more dependent on a smaller number of larger customers than its competitors, many of them in the hard hit financial services sector, according to the filing.

Most firms unaware of Web domain changes: survey -Reuters

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees domain names, is expected to start taking applications for new top-level domains early next year, said Future Laboratory, which conducted the research.

Minn. regulators drop bid to block online gambling -AP

"Broadly, it's a victory for Internet rights because what you had was a government administrative branch deeming a list of sites to be a blacklist that should be censored," said Joe Brennan Jr., the industry group's chairman. "It was preventing Minnesota residents from freely accessing the sites."

‘Franken-Products’ Abound at Taiwan Computer Show -NYTimes

This year’s show signified the computer industry’s move far beyond traditional desktop and laptop PCs into more exotic devices. If dancing girls and loud music at an exhibitor’s booth helped attract attention to these strange new computers — or explain them — all the better.

NYC Waterfalls: How Real-Time Cellphone Data Can Impact Local Economies -NYTimes

Not only did the waterfall vantage points gain in popularity, but other points of interest on the waterfront in the vicinity also improved - e.g. Main Street Park, Brooklyn Bridge and South Street Market.

Movie studios launch Epix, 720p streaming service for films -ars technica

Epix would love to avoid streaming HD content across the public Internet wherever possible. One way to make that happen, which the company is currently pursuing, is to install caching servers directly in the data centers of ISPs with whom Epix has a relationship.

TI Raises Profit, Sales Targets -WSJ

The general manager of TI's mobile communications and computing business unit, Seshu Madhavapeddy, last week said the technology sector is bottoming out and companies are seeing a better performance in the second quarter compared with the first quarter.

AT&T’s New Network May Not Help Your Old iPhone -GigaOM

When I specifically asked if this meant the device could reach HSPA 7.2 speeds, however, I was not given an answer. I asked the question again today and was again pointed to the aforementioned link on the web site.

Software designed to make older drivers sharper -SFGate

Fernandez has just co-authored a consumer guide to brain fitness, and SharpBrains challenges claims made on public broadcasting that some of Posit's software can rejuvenate brains by 10 years. Posit CEO Steven Aldrich said the claims are backed by scientific research.

Snow Leopard: An Even Better Leopard -NYTimes

OpenCL is another new technology meant to better harness the raw hardware power that is already in your Mac. Today’s video cards or graphics processing units (GPUs) are capable of performing calculations for 3D graphics and modeling at an amazing pace. OpenCL is an attempt to let developers harness that power for use in other applications beyond drawing thousands of polygons on screen with fancy textures.

Ozzie at the Bat -TechCrunchIT

Ozzie knows this is the line in the sand Google is trying to draw with Wave, Chrome, and Android: that open standards will force Microsoft to comply with standards-based technologies that will reduce IE’s control of the browser landscape. Yet throughout his Valley sojourn, Ozzie reflected a confidence

Intel Exec Points Up Quirks In the Mobile Market -WSJ

Rather than always relying on a wireless router or access point as a shortstop for making Wi-Fi connections, Intel is backing software to make it easier for laptops to communicate directly with Wi-Fi-equipped cameras, electronic picture frames, printers–and even a robot that appeared on stage with Eden.

Hacking Traction: The Dark Side of Marketing Optimization -GigaOM

Multivariate testing and other optimization schemes can be a great way to make a good product even better, and they are underutilized by many companies. But too many startups have begun misusing such traction techniques as a strategy rather than as a tactic, inadvertently destroying the feedback needed to build a great product.

Search (and Destroy) Engines -h+

It has been suggested that this recent rise in online vigilantism was unique to China, partially because so many involved are educated but underemployed. For thousands of years, China was the source of social innovations, and with the world's biggest crowds and a new focus on crowdsourcing "justice"; China may again have generated a civilization-wide advance in governance.

Microsoft exec sees lower margins from "cloud" -Reuters

In theory at least, customers save money on hardware and maintenance while suppliers get a new source of fees by storing data and providing services online.

Quantifying the Mobile Apps Revolution -NYTimes

The results from the study, called “Apps Get Real,” show the different ways in which these programs are changing the way people use their phones, spend their time and organize their lives.

Jobs may spark move in Apple shares on Monday -Reuters

Global Equities Research senior analyst Trip Chowdhry said Apple's stock will likely remain high if Jobs appears, but could sell off as much as 10 percent if he doesn't, a scenario he finds more likely.

Japan explores using cell phones to stop pandemics -AP

Until now, technologies like GPS have mainly been used to help people figure out where they are and what is nearby. As networked devices like the iPhone become more popular, new applications let people track their children or friends, and could give companies and governments access to their location.

NYPD looking at futuristic weapons technology -AP

One idea involves the use of radio frequency tags that would allow officers to pinpoint where other cops are in the city, Browne said. Another involves tags that would work gun-to-gun and use an infrared sensor: When a weapon is pulled from an officer's holster it would trigger a signal that would be sent to the gun of a nearby officer. The signal may be seen or heard.

I, for One, Welcome Our New Android Overlords -Slate

While Microsoft is setting up barriers for netbook makers, Android is inviting them with open arms. Google offers the OS to anyone at a price even lower than what Microsoft charges for XP: It's free.

Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest -NYTimes

Not all fallow blogs die from lack of reader interest. Some bloggers find themselves too busy — what with, say, homework and swim practice, or perhaps even housework and parenting. Others graduate to more immediate formats, like Twitter and Facebook. And a few — gasp — actually decide to reclaim some smidgen of personal privacy.

Twitter Study Overload: Stop the Madness -SFGate

Harvard Business research data has proven -- without even the faintest glimmer of a doubt, in case you were crushing the guts out of your keyboard in anticipation -- that Twitter is a broadcast medium and not a conversation.

OK to sue VeriSign, appeals court rules -SFGate

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a suit accusing VeriSign Inc. of colluding with the government-backed nonprofit that oversees domain names to fix prices and lock out competition.

Get the Tech Scuttlebutt! (It Might Even Be True.) -NYTimes

The truth-be-damned approach recalls an earlier era of newspapering that was memorialized in the movie classic “Citizen Kane.” The main character, modeled on the newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, is told that a writer sent to Cuba to report a war can find no war. “You provide the prose poems. I’ll provide the war,” Kane replies.

Suspense builds ahead of Apple extravaganza -Reuters

While many analysts believe Apple has a variety of new gadgets in the pipeline -- from new iPhone models to a long rumored, so-called tablet mini-PC -- the company has said the conference will focus on important but less sexy software operating system upgrades.

Sony joins Universal, YouTube for music video site -Reuters

The move marks the first major record label besides co-founder Universal to sign on to the service to be called Vevo and expected to launch later this year. Sony and YouTube could not immediately be reached for comment.

Intel, an infrequent acquirer, snaps up Wind River -SFGate

One reason Intel wants more diversification is that it's getting hard to rely on continual growth from microprocessors with smaller circuitry. The pace of innovation required to keep up with Moore's Law — the famous prediction by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore

Web Series Tied to ‘Blade Runner’ Is In the Works -NYTimes

In an indication that the filmmakers are interested in exploring a new kind of collective, social creativity, the episodes in the series will be released under a Creative Commons license, marking the first time a major Hollywood director has embraced that alternative licensing scheme.

Tesla Motors to open seven sales, service centers this summer -SiliconValley.com

This past weekend, Tesla delivered its 500th Roadster in the United States. In late June, Tesla will begin producing the Roadster Sport, a higher-performance electric car that goes from 0 to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds.

Online job ads up by 250K, research group reports -MercuryNews

The May gain was the first monthly increase since a rise of 21,000 in October 2008. And it was the largest since online ads rose 198,300 in October 2006.

Tony La Russa sues Twitter over alleged fake page -AP

La Russa's lawsuit said the page bearing his name was hurtful to the 64-year-old manager, who has led the Cardinals since 1996 and also managed the Chicago White Sox and Oakland A's during a 30-year managerial career.

FTC shuts allegedly rogue Internet provider -AP

The FTC says the case marks the first time the agency has ordered the shuttering of an Internet provider. The agency has usually focused on taking out harmful Web sites individually.

Twitter Users Talk About Themselves, Other Guys -WSJ

Ten percent of tweets contain a question, says Oxford, publisher of the Oxford dictionary and other reference works.

The White House and Web 2.0: Reality Sets In -ReadWriteWeb

The one recurring motif in this memo is that it is hard for the White House to scale its operation in order to really engage the public, and that politics obviously often get in the way. It obviously also doesn't help that the White House staff can't rely on the hundreds of volunteers

Is the Hacking Threat to National Security Overblown? -Wired

“We can see why the press and government agencies talk about cyber-terror and cyberwar,” Lin said, referring ostensibly to page views and budgets, respectively. “But we don’t consider spies inside the United States to be an attack on the United States.”

An online Terms of Service watchdog -SFGate

The Electronic Frontier Foundation today launched a new online tool that tracks changes in the Terms of Service agreements of 44 Web sites like Google, eBay, Amazon, Craigslist and Facebook.

Unwritten Code Rules Silicon Valley Hiring -NYTimes

“Most companies have a hands-off list,” said Ken Perluss, who recently left Yahoo as director for talent acquisition after more than 11 years with the company. “It tells recruiters, ‘Don’t recruit from this company. They are our partner.’ ”

Financial services execs were the most pessimistic about their outlook, believing the recession will alter consumer behavior for at least three years.

Here's a few more findings from the Bain survey of 1400 top executives worldwide:

- Broad pessimism about short term prospects, lots of optimism about long-term prospects.

- 75% said they will use recession to boost their competitive position. (Statistically impossible, says Bain.)

- Benchmarking was the top tool out of 25, gaining in North America, but most are not satisfied with it.

- Strategic planning was top tool since 1998 now is #2.

- Outsourcing jumped to #4 on tool list.

- Business Process Reengineering remains in top ten.

- 88% that downsized in 2008 didn't cut back enough and plan more cuts in 2009.

- Just 24% think that market leaders will maintain leadership in 5 years.

- 7 out of 10 execs concerned abut meeting their growth targets in 2009.

- 6 out of 10 execs expect downturn to last until early 2010.

Regional differences:

Confidence remained relatively high among Indian and Latin American executives, even as projections for GDP growth dropped in both places. Executives in China, however, who felt the downturn earlier, appeared less confident. When asked if they are planning for the downturn to last until early 2010, 70 percent of the Chinese executives said yes, compared with 65 percent of Latin American executives and only 56 percent of the Indian executives surveyed. This difference is underscored by downsizing plans for 2009: 40 percent at Chinese companies say they will have significant layoffs, but just 23 percent of Indian respondents expect significant layoffs.

You can read more here: Bain & Company Results June 2009 Edition | Management Tools

U.S. Video Views Up 16% in April to New High -NYTimes

While the number of U.S. video viewers continues to hold at something like 78 percent of the country’s Internet population, the number of videos they’re watching continues to soar.

Yahoo CEO says no pressure for deal despite Bing -Reuters

Bartz said. "I want the audience."
And she said that Yahoo is not interested in acquiring a large company, but small, "tuck-in" acquisitions of technology or content would represent a good use of Yahoo's cash

Free digital book plan costly, educators say -SFGate

The idea of free digital textbooks is nice, but given the associated technology costs and teacher training, they won't save schools much money now or anytime soon. In short, digital textbooks require that teachers, if not all students, have working computers and presumably online access.

China blocks Web sites as anniversary looms -SFGate

Over the years, human rights groups and members of the U.S. Congress have intensely criticized U.S. Internet companies for agreeing to restrictions in China, including censoring search results as Google does. Yahoo, in particular, has been attacked for turning over personal user information to Chinese police that was used to identify dissidents and imprison them.

NAB: House majority opposes new performers royalty -AP

If the music industry succeeds in requiring new fees for traditional radio airplay, performance artists could be sharing hundreds of millions a year. Such a move also would unlock an estimated $70 million to $100 million per year that is collected by radio stations abroad for U.S. artists, but never paid out because U.S. stations don't pay foreign artists in return.

U.S. Investigating Hiring Practices At Google & Others -WebGuild

“This could be collusive restraint on trade, which could have a serious impact on competition. Such an agreement would underscore the fierce competition over top engineering and business talent,” said Albert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute.

Ex-Googler’s New White House Job Rankles Some -WSJ

“We do not object to Mr. McLaughlin’s appointment because he is associated with Google per se. The problem is that he has been a lobbyist for the biggest digital marketing company in the world, and we believe no special-interest connected person should assume a position of vital importance to the country’s future,” wrote John M. Simpson, founder of Consumer Watchdog, and Jeffrey Chester, founder of the Center for Digital Democracy.

Cisco rallies channel to target virtualized data centers -ZDNet

Cisco’s trump card in the data center wars - ts history as a networking company - has caused it to be a major disruptor of this space. Its architecture integrates the networking equipment into the data center, reducing all of those wires and cables that once connected boxes into one single cable.

Success Of Start-Ups Is All About The People -WSJ

When it comes time to hire employees, entrepreneurs should be careful of making promises. Mitchell said it’s important to draft an employment letter that lays out all the terms of the agreement. He has seen legal disputes develop around the amount of equity supposedly promised at the time of hire after a disgruntled employee leaves the company.

IBM expands Information on Demand portfolio -NYTimes

Rather than competing head-on with packaged business application giants like SAP and Oracle, through the IOD strategy IBM is focusing on data management, delivery and analysis products and services that make applications work more effectively.

Facebook use grows by 700%; maintains top social networking spot -SFGate

The one thing that is clear about social networking is that regardless of how fast a site is growing or how big it is, it can quickly fall out of favor with consumers.

NetApp claims victory in bidding for Data Domain -SFGate

NetApp Inc. has claimed victory over EMC Corp. in a bidding battle for Data Domain Inc., a company whose products help cut unnecessary data storage.

BlackBerry maker warns on security vulnerability -Reuters

When companies publicize security flaws, criminals rush to exploit them because it can take weeks or months for users learn of such problems and protect against them.

Yahoo sues NFL Players Association -AP

Yahoo Inc. has sued the NFL Players Association, claiming it shouldn't have to pay royalties to use players' statistics, photos and other data in its popular online fantasy football game because the information is already publicly available.

Oracle CEO wants more Java on netbooks, devices -Reuters

"You'll see us get very aggressive with Java, and developing Java apps for things like telephones and netbooks," he told programmers attending a Java users conference in San Francisco. "There will be computers that are fundamentally based on Java."

Facebook brings in payment system -FT.com

Facebook hopes that by offering a site-wide currency it will encourage more commerce on the website. By serving as the payment provider, it will capture a percentage of every transaction.

US grapples with how to retaliate in cyber attacks -MercuryNews

"In the face of our almost universal reliance on untrusted systems, the United States currently is facing a grave national security challenge in the form of exploitation of our government and private-sector networks and information," said Steven Chabinsky, assistant deputy director of cyber issues for the Obama administration's director of national intelligence.

Publishers look to music lessons on digital content -Reuters

"It's clear now that there's going to be enough demand for books distributed as digital content, that there is going to have to be a digital distribution mechanism for books," he said. "If we handle the transition correctly the electronic model may actually monetize better than the print model."

Google courts business customers with new products -Reuters

The Internet search giant unveiled a pair of new products on Tuesday aimed at large corporations with strict technology requirements and at small businesses that may not even have Web sites, respectively.

YouTube Moves Closer to the Boob Tube -NYTimes

YouTube’s move is the latest in a string of developments that aim to bring Internet content to television screens and to allow users to interact with that content from their couch. It comes just a week after YouTube’s top online rival, Hulu, unveiled a desktop app that can be controlled through a remote.

Ex-Fed: Privacy Advocates Should Go After China, Lay Off NSA -Wired

Speaking on panel at the Computers Freedom and Privacy Conference here, one-time NSA general counsel Stuart Baker raised the specter of Chinese government spying, focusing in particular on the so-called GhostNet findings reported by security researchers at the University of Toronto in March.

Dept. of Justice: Cablevision remote DVR should stay legal -ars technica

The result is that a Supreme Court ruling on the case would only address the question of whether the RS-DVR made Cablevision a direct infringer of copyright; it would not settle the general issues. If the networks won at the Supreme Court and started suing other RS-DVR users, those firms could just claim "fair use!" and we would need a whole new trial to generate precedent on the issue.

IBM on Sustainability: Time For Real Time -ZDNet

Relative to their CSR ambitions, the businesses surveyed are ill prepared with the management information essential to managing their strategic sustainability goals. In turn, we in society risk not seeing the improvements that we need to rapidly realize in order, for example, to arrest climate change.

The Obama Administration’s Silence on Privacy -NYTimes

Peter Swire, an Ohio State law professor who served on the Obama transition team, offered one reason it might be difficult for the administration to find its voice on privacy. There is a split, he told the conference, between the typical view of privacy among technology experts and the emerging view of people brought up in the social networking, Web 2.0 world.

Windows 7 confirmed for holiday season PCs -AP

Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that Windows 7, the next version of its computer operating software, will go on sale Oct. 22, in time to possibly give the slumping PC industry a lift in the holiday season.

PC Touch Screens Move Ahead -NYTimes

The PC industry wants to make touch functions more sophisticated and widespread. On-screen objects could be twisted and turned with several fingers, mimicking the action used in real life. The next version of Windows from Microsoft, Windows 7, will usher in a new era of touch technology when it appears on PCs later this year

NASA Uses Semantic Web to Help Power its Constellation Program -ReadWriteWeb

Semantic technology company TopQuadrant announced today that NASA is using its semantic application platform, the TopBraid Suite, to "model, organize, integrate and exchange data" within the NASA Constellation Program.

Online advertising spend rises on back of innovation -zero strategy

“Market conditions are tough, yet online is continuing to innovate and emerging formats such as mobile advertising and online video advertising look set to become big players in the next few years as brands see the benefit of cross-platform marketing campaigns,” she added.

APNEWSBREAK: US military tweets -AP

Many military commands and individual troops have long used social networking sites. The Air Force and Army have Facebook pages, as does Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq. But the new effort in Afghanistan is the first in an active war zone to attempt to harness the power of social networking sites as a primary tool to release information.

The Manhattan Project -TechCruchIT

Google Wave may be a big deal for Google, but it’s an even bigger deal for Microsoft.

Forrester on Future of Mission-Critical Cloud Computing -SOAWorld

The heritage of what cloud computing represents dates back to the dawn of information technology (IT), to the very beginnings of how government agencies and large commercial enterprises first accessed powerful computers to solve complex problems.

7 Technologies Shaping the Future of Social Media -Mashable

Social media in the future will be effortless and everywhere. Here’s a look at some of the new technologies in store for us over the next 10 years that will make our social (media) lives easier.

Cisco's addition to Dow boosts tech's clout -MercuryNews

Cisco's addition to the Dow Jones Industrial Average reflects the increasing importance of information technology in the U.S. economy. IBM was added to the list in 1979. It was followed by Hewlett-Packard in 1997, then Intel and Microsoft in 1999.

Facebook Gets a Break in New Study on Grades -WSJ

“In none of the samples do we find a robust negative relationship between Facebook use and grades,” the researchers wrote in First Monday, a peer-reviewed online journal.

Microsoft unveils new Xbox technology, enlists Facebook -Reuters

On Monday, Microsoft also said it planned to boost its Xbox 360 gaming console by integrating music-streaming service last.fm, Web social network Facebook and microblogging site Twitter into its Xbox Live online community.

NASA plans launch invitations to Twittering media -Reuters

NASA figures it can handle between 100 and 150 Twitterers and bloggers in a makeshift media site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Assessing Napster - 10 years later -SFGate

Napster helped change the mind-set of a generation that now sees digital forms of all media, from music to newspapers, as more convenient, said Mike McGuire, research director for Gartner Industries' Media Team.

Despite hype, Twitter largely ignored by young adults -SFGate

These are the findings of a survey published today by Participatory Marketing Network and Pace University. The results, based on responses from 200 people from 18 to 24, show that Twitter, despite its ample hype, has a long way to go to attract younger users.

Few Rules for Recycling Electronics -NYTimes

Over the past several years, numerous documentary films and news reports have described the toxic ecosystems that develop as a result, where acrid plumes of smoke rise from circuit-board smelting pits, and children bustle amid a soup of dioxins and mercury leaking from mountains of smoldering electronic trash.

Can the Internet Make a More Open Government? -NYTimes

I’m not sure that most people who send a letter to the president expect he will read it personally. But I do know that the campaign promise for open and interactive government is a difficult one to keep. And the promises keep coming. It invites citizens to find and report abuse in the stimulus program using its recovery.gov Web site.

E3-2009: Microsoft wows with full motion camera, games -SFGate

Project Natal captures full motion, recognizes faces and also comes equipped with speech recognition. You can play fighting games with full kicks and swings or a racing game using just your hands mimicking a steering wheel and stick shift.

Preparing to Sell E-Books, Google Takes on Amazon -NYTimes

Google’s e-book retail program would be separate from the company’s settlement with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project, under which Google has scanned more than seven million volumes from several university libraries.

Nielsen also found that nearly one third (30 per cent) of those using Google, also use MSN/Windows Live. The company says that this "disloyalty" means Microsoft could have a smaller hurdle in getting users behind Bing. It also likes MSFT's focus on key verticals such as travel, shopping, health and local search as being a good strategy rather than "simply trying to make a better Google."

Foremski's Take:

There's nothing "simply" about making a better Google. Nielsen doesn't say anything about who are the heavy searchers and why they do so many searches.

Heavy searchers are not necessarily heavy spenders. MSFT needs to convince a large number of the 80 per cent of regular searchers to use its search services. And that's tough because it must become a user habit rather than an occasional foray to find cheap travel deals.

Cecile Kohrs Lindell, reports :

According to Washington antitrust lawyers, the Department of Justice antitrust division's networks and technology section, led by chief James Tierney, has sent letters to at least a dozen major computer hardware and software companies. Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Apple Inc. are believed to be among the recipients, as is at least biotechnology firm, Genetech Inc.

. . .The letters suggest that antitrust division lawyers suspect that some of the targeted companies have agreed not to poach each others' employees. Such an agreement, if DOJ lawyers can prove it exists, could be a violation of the nation's oldest antitrust law, the Sherman Act of 1890, which prohibits agreements among competitors that result in restraint of trade.

Foremski's Take:

The DOJ, under the new leadership of Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney, seems to be determined to find some type of anti-trust behavior by top US tech firms, especially Google. But this investigation seems to be clutching at straws. Even if true, it would probably not result in a criminal prosecution. The Deal Pipeline reports that the letters are in the form of a Civil Investigative Demand.

Critics of large companies such as Google are quick to accuse it of violating anti-trust because of its dominance in online advertising markets and its role on the Internet. However, there is no law against success. Anti-trust laws are designed to prevent criminal business activities.

Does Social Media Need an ROI? No and Yes. -elites tv

Just as a consumer will “tune out” interruption marketing that is too company-centric, corporations will eventually fatigue of soft programs that can’t be tracked to something: improving reputation, increasing awareness, and ultimately driving sales).

Google Analytics for Phone Calls and Chat – How Deep Is Too Deep? -RISMedia

The very first online priority for the future success of the individual real estate professional, and for the brokerage, is a website, blog or both that have comprehensive and useful IDX search and lead generation tools in place.

PROMISES, PROMISES: Battling cyber turf wars -AP

Turf wars between powerful federal departments, including intelligence agencies, the Pentagon and Homeland Security , have also long mired efforts to better coordinate, control and fund the nation's cyber security. Agencies do not want to cede authority to make decisions about what software or hardware they use, how they protect their networks or what new technologies they will research or pursue.

Slowdown, shortages in focus at Computex -Reuters

Mobility will be a key theme at the world's second biggest PC fair this year, and there is likely to be keen interest in super-thin, lightweight laptops designed to cut power consumption and save battery life.

Finding New Employees, via Social Networks -NYTimes

...while some may be disconcerted that software from an unknown company is searching their profiles, Ms. Stone says that most know that information on the Web can be used in ways that people don’t expect, and that LinkedIn, in particular, is built to make professional information available.

Japan university gives away iPhones to nab truants -AP

A prestigious Japanese university is giving away hundreds of iPhones, in part to use its Global Positioning System to nab students that skip class.

Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise. -NYTimes

This approach turns marketing “upside down,” says Ron Proleika, the vice president of marketing communications at Windstream Communications, an Internet service provider and a client of Mr. Herman’s. “It forces marketers to stay on their toes and think of thousands of small great ideas instead of one great big one."

Would you pay to upload videos to YouTube? -SFGate

As Jeffrey Lindsay, with Sanford Bernstein put it, charging users 5 cents per upload would "stop people from listing rubbish and cover at least some of the hosting cost."

Lights! Camera! Inaction! -NYTimes

As many problems as the Internet presents for traditional forms of representation, every serious journalist and filmmaker misses a big chance when he refuses to contend with it.

In Music, Apple’s Strength Becomes a Vulnerability -GigaOM

On-demand streaming isn’t a perfect science, and Apple’s user experience is still stronger than any application can provide. Nor is multitasking an option with most apps, never mind how much the ones that do can drain a device’s battery life. But as the trend toward streaming music rather than owning it

Cloud Computing: Enter the “Stacker” -GigaOM

The evolution of existing IT components toward the stacker and the separation of virtual and physical design forces provides the opportunity to incorporate these controls into the building blocks of the future service provider cloud.

As Web communication shrinks, so do links -AP

If you're not into the whole brevity thing, there are URL lengtheners, too. DickensURL will convert Web addresses into Charles Dickens passages. Of course, quotes from "Great Expectations" tend to be longer than 140 characters, so DickensURL also offers a compact link, which leaves plenty of room for tweeting.

Time Warner CEO hints at online fees for magazines -AP

Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes chimed in Friday with the chorus of publishers wondering how much longer newspapers and magazines can afford to keep giving away their stories on the Internet.

Recently, John Battelle, another co-founder said he would step down as CEO but remain on staff. These top level changes come during tough economic times but most ad networks seem to be growing and doing well. (Please see: Adify: Everything Is Hunky Dory In Online Advertising.) It is not clear if the changes at the top have anything to do with FM's performance since it is a private company.

Mr Edwards was considered by many in the industry to be FM's most valuable asset because of his long experience in online advertising markets, especially his work at CNET.

Here is his farewell note:

In the coming weeks I’ll be joining some old friends and business colleagues at Digg, to be its publisher and chief revenue officer.

Time for a New Adventure

RumorMill: Amazon to Open Web Services API's? _CloudComputing

From a legal standpoint this would help negate some of the concerns around API liability. Amazon is known to have an extensive patent portfolio and in past has not been afraid to enforce it. A clear policy regarding the use of their API's would certainly help companies that up until now have been reluctant to adopt them.

News Corp hopes for broader ad deal with Google -Reuters

According to recent media reports, Google is seeking to renegotiate the deal at a significant discount to the current terms, which popular IT blog Tech Crunch pegged at $300 million a year.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Bing! -AllThingsDigital

Does Bing mean that your interest in Yahoo (YHOO) is waning? Ballmer jokingly recites the standard bullet points. “I think there’s a lot that can make sense in terms of a search partnership, not an acquisition,” he says in a monotone. “Whether such a thing will happen I don’t know.”

Bloodied by Google, Microsoft Tries Again on Search -NYTimes

The stakes for Microsoft could not be higher. Search has become the central tool for navigating the Web, and ads tied to search results are becoming an ever more important piece of the advertising market.

Wired South Korea mourns ex-president online -Reuters

Online, many players and fans held their own ceremonies, dressing up their game characters in black and having them convene meetings instead of slaying the usual monsters.

HP chief cautious about return of pent-up demand -SFGate

Hurd said there is "a little more stability" in the market, particularly in China and U.S. consumer sales. That echoed his comments from HP's quarterly results last week, when the Palo Alto-based company reported a 17 percent drop in profit and a 3 percent decline in sales.

NBC’s Zucker on Hulu and iTunes -WSJ

The CEO of NBC Universal likes to point out, repeatedly, that his company boasts an array of cable channels, which make money from both advertising and subscriber fees. That dual income stream looks like the way of the future for big media companies (at least in the near term)

Startup banking on idea of air-powered cars -SFGate

Many of the specifications of ZPM's car are still speculative, but Vencat expects it to go about 20 miles on compressed air alone, and hundreds more after the engine kicks in, with a top speed of 96 mph.

Bing It Is: Microsoft Rolls Out Its New Search Engine -ReadWriteWeb

... a search engine that is only 'good enough' will not be enough to gain back any market share from Google, which now virtually controls the search engine market. Microsoft argues that this large amount of market share can make Google slow to innovate, but then, it remains to be seen if Bing can offer enough innovation to entice users to switch. Yahoo Search, after all, is also innovating furiously, but hasn't been able to capture any new market share lately.

New video cables will connect TVs to the Internet -AP

Devices with HDMI 1.4 ports could show up in small numbers before the holidays, and in larger volumes early next year, the group said. New cables will be needed to take advantage of the networking feature.

GigaOM Seeks Non-Ad Revenue -GigaOM

Om Malik, the founder of GigaOM Network, plans to sell in-depth research reports on technology sectors and shorter, timely reports on companies and news in those sectors to technology and business executive.

Google Showcases New Communication and Collaboration Tool -NYTimes

Google Wave is an application running in a Web browser that creates a shared online desktop where two or more users can interact easily. They can exchange messages like they would do in e-mail or instant messaging conversation. They can share and edit rich documents that include formatted text, images and graphics.

Music Labels Cut Friendlier Deals With Start-Ups -NYTimes

“There is an ongoing tension between what consumers want and what music labels want,” Mr. Partovi said. “It’s hard to know what model will satisfy both, and what will work over the long run.”

Free as in Android -TechCrunchIT

Streaming video servers will become the gas stations of the near future, parking enough bits to finesse the look-ahead of new video as it hits the network, perhaps caching your favorite sites or follows based on your and your affinity cloud’s behavior.

New Web site to amplify debate on Google book deal -AP

If the settlement wins federal court approval this fall, Google will emerge with the right to make digital copies of millions of copyright books no longer in print.

AT&T May Have Swayed ‘Idol’ Results -NYTimes

Representatives of AT&T helped fans of Mr. Allen at the two Arkansas events by providing instructions on how to send 10 or more text messages at the press of a single button, known as power texts. Power texts have an exponentially greater effect on voting than do single text messages or calls to the show’s toll-free phone lines.

Twitter co-founders are mum on revenue plans -AP

...after nearly one hour of questions from journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher and from the audience, the co-founders gave no clear picture of Twitter's business model.

Russian firm invests $200M in Facebook -SFGate

Both Milner and Zuckerberg spoke of Facebook's plans to review the ways that social-networking sites in Digital Sky's portfolio make money from online advertising and selling online gifts, and potentially adopt some of those strategies.

Mobile Data Growth Boosting Backhaul Demand -NYTimes

While data has been a good way for the wireless operators to scoop up easy cash, they’re all facing a future in which they’ll be spending a lot of money on infrastructure.

Intel says EU fine won't lead to dividend cut -Reuters

Intel has for now cornered the fast-growing market for inexpensive netbooks, made for simple functions such as surfing the Web, with its Atom processors. Many fear that that fast market growth may be at the expense of higher-priced laptops.

Iran lifts block on Facebook access -SiliconValley.com

Iran restored access to Facebook on Tuesday, after a block on the social-networking Web site last week generated accusations that the government was trying to muzzle one of the main presidential campaign tools of the reformist opposition.

Autonomy Tool Analyzes Data From Facebook, Social Networks -PCWorld

Companies can look at a dashboard in their content-management system that provides "visual information on the context of the chatter" about a company's product, he said, letting them know if it is positive or negative.

The Woz Says Jobs Sounds ‘Healthy, Energetic’ -WSJ

On the sidelines of the All Things D conference, Mr. Wozniak said Mr. Jobs “doesn’t sound like he’s sick,” nor did he seem to be in a health crisis. Mr. Wozniak said, however, he has never directly asked Mr. Jobs how he is.

Sony Pictures CEO: The Internet Is Still Bad -TechDirt

Markets change. They may cause trouble for dinosaurs unable or unwilling to adapt, but they have not harmed content creation or the content business. And it's not "the internet" that has harmed the "most talented creators of that content

AT&T announces plans to boost 3G network -SFGate

It's not official yet that Apple will be rolling out a new iPhone at the Worldwide Developers Conference next month. But what is official is that AT&T is preparing to boost its 3G network, effectively doubling the theoretical download ceiling.

What if the new name for Microsoft Live Search is ... Yahoo? -ZDNet

Microsoft quietly registered a limited liability company (LLC) last week, which points to the company being poised to make an acquisition or joint venture.

Online news fees: financial salvation or suicide? -AP

A recent study that the Newspaper Association of America conducted with media consultants supported the idea that online newspaper fees threaten to do more harm than good. The reason: The subscriptions probably won't generate enough additional revenue to justify driving away the majority of Internet readers who won't be willing to ante up.

Twitter eyes foray into TV -Reuters

The social-networking and micro-blogging service is developing the first TV series that incorporates Twitter into the action of the show.

Apple iTunes may hit more markets with French moves -Reuters

Acknowledging the difficulties faced by online stores, the executive European Commission said music licensing practices and the current copyright framework limited what consumers could buy on the Internet.

Music industry pushed to open up online rights across Europe -SiliconValley.com

Part of the problem in Europe is that music rights are sold separately in each country, which has prevented Apple's iTunes from setting up a single store to service all of Europe. Instead, it has to seek licenses from each EU member state where it wishes to sell and to set up separate national stores with different music selections.

Yahoo Image Search: Now With Creative Commons -ReadWriteWeb

Yahoo Image Search got a nice update today that allows users to filter search results by Creative Commons (CC) license.
For now, this search only includes CC-licensed images from Flickr, Yahoo's own photo sharing service.

Apple Softens Replacement Policy for Moisture-Damaged iPhones -GigaOm

...according to a recent report by a local Houston news station, many users are finding that even just the moisture from their hands are causing iPhones to malfunction, and the immersion sensors in the devices to trip, which means Apple wouldn’t replace the devices, even if they’re under warranty.

Intel’s Odd Role as a Lead Linux Promoter -NYTimes

“Our current desktop didn’t have the right design principles for mobile computing,” said Ron Hovsepian, the chief executive of Novell. “Moblin is a bottoms-up, fresh approach at trying to do something completely different.”

Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate -WashingtonPost

The report suggests that although it is a key government responsibility to help secure private-sector networks, regulation should be the last resort, the sources said.

Hints of a Tech Gold Mine in the Stimulus Package -NYTimes

The demand for project tracking technology, fueled by the stimulus package, extends beyond the companies cited in the CivicUS research note. A startup in San Francisco, Innotas, which offers Web-based technology-project software, has seen the effect.

Last.fm Denies Data-Sharing Accusations, Again -WSJ

TechCrunch is reporting that Last.fm is going beyond sharing aggregated statistics and into the realm of sharing individual user information. Earlier this year, a tipster claimed to TechCrunch that Last.fm had given the RIAA a list of its users and their IP addresses. Last.fm denied the allegations.

Facebook's $200M investment values co. at $10B -SFGate

The latest investment, in preferred stock, does not necessarily compare with what the company's common shares would be worth on the open market. That would be determined if the company were to go public, which is likely a ways off.

Garage's hybrid approach to fixing 'green' cars -SFGate

While there are other independent garages in the area that specialize in servicing hybrids along with regular cars, such as Art's Automotive in Berkeley and Pat's Garage in San Francisco, Luscious was the first to be designed from the ground up to concentrate on just hybrids.

Texting May Be Taking a Toll -NYTimes

“Based on our experiences with computer users, we know intensive repetitive use of the upper extremities can lead to musculoskeletal disorders, so we have some reason to be concerned that too much texting could lead to temporary or permanent damage to the thumbs.”

The Coming Superbrain -NYTimes

The concept of ultrasmart computers — machines with “greater than human intelligence” — was dubbed “The Singularity” in a 1993 paper by the computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge. He argued that the acceleration of technological progress had led to “the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.” This thesis has long struck a chord here in Silicon Valley.

Ad Revenue on the Web? No Sure Bet -NYTimes

“This is the ultimate debate: What is the nexus of what users want and what the economics will allow?” Mr. Westergren said. “Certain services offered too much and couldn’t afford it, and others charged too much for features people weren’t willing to pay for. There has to be a middle ground, and we’re still looking for it.”

With ex-Google exec, AOL seeks another fresh start -SFGate

Armstrong's ability to find the right formula could be especially put to the test if Time Warner formally separates itself from AOL by spinning the Internet division off into a standalone business, as the company is exploring.

Intel Adopts an Identity in Software -NYTimes

Intel tries to play down its competition with Microsoft. Since Moblin is open source, anyone can pick it up and use it

Yahoo eyes acquisitions, social media -Reuters

Yahoo's vast number of users give the company an extensive social networking backbone. That means Yahoo can quickly build-out its social infrastructure with "tuck-ins" of interesting products being developed by other companies, Balogh said.

O'Brien: Events provide ray of hope for valley economy -MercuryNews

But based on the purely anecdotal and unscientific survey of my e-mail, it feels like this region is experiencing a frenzy of meetings that I haven't seen since dot-com days. And if you're looking for at least one positive sign about the valley's innovative ecosystem, this may be it.

A Facial-Recognition-Based Playlist? WSJ

It may not work out for the strong silent types, but the premise of the technology is that a cellphone would take a photo of the user’s face, analyze his facial characteristics and tailor a playlist to suit his mood.

Judge Backs Craigslist in South Carolina Case -WSJ

A federal judge on Friday blocked South Carolina's attorney general from making any move to prosecute Craigslist Inc. executives for ads that lead to prostitution arrests while the company pursues a lawsuit against the state.

Online magazine tries to be a lab for media future -AP

"The idea isn't just to write a story and then add a video or an audio piece," explains Flyp senior editor Matthew Schaeffer. "It's to really figure out the best way to conceptualize these stories as multimedia pieces."

Facebook block ahead of Iran vote hampers youth -AP

"We are disappointed to learn of reports that users in Iran may not have access to Facebook, especially at a time when voters are turning to the Internet as a source of information about election candidates and their positions," Elizabeth Linder, a spokeswoman for Facebook, said in an e-mailed statement following questions from The Associated Press.

Recession suddenly humbles high-tech sector -AP

"We thought owning our own place would get us somewhere," he said. "But now we've got to stay. It's either stay, foreclose, or short sell."

Use of online classifieds skyrockets -SFGate

People older than 55 were less likely to use an online ad. But in an interview, Jones said one surprise was that people ages 18 to 24 also were less likely to use them.

Arguments end in case over right to DVD backups -SFGate

Attorneys for the major movie studios tried to slam the door Thursday on a software program aimed at allowing consumers to make backup copies of their DVDs.

Ray Ozzie Asserts Microsoft’s Position In The Cloud -TechCrunchIT

...every company, every ISV is going to have some blend of software that runs on-premises and some that runs in the cloud, and everyone wants tools that they can use to in essence deploy some apps to part of their organization that might be in the cloud, another part of their organization that might be on-premises, to do that on an application by application or region by region by region or program by program basis.”

Craigslist Founder Calls Social-Media Participation Patriotic -WSJ

“I view us all as customers of government, state and federal,” he said. “Part of the new normal needs to be civic engagement on all levels.”

Social MTV: Blip.fm Adds YouTube Videos -GigaOM

Social music site Blip.fm added YouTube videos to its music feed today, allowing users to turn its “Twitter for music” service into a social video playlisting site. The free service, which allows users to listen to songs and share them in playlists that resemble Twitter’s interface, now includes a window for watching videos as the songs play.

Researchers create DVDs with massive storage -Reuters

The researchers, who have signed a deal with Samsung Electronics, said the technique had allowed them to store 1.6 terabytes of data on a disc with the potential to one day store up to 10 terabytes.

I.B.M. Unveils Real-Time Software to Find Trends in Vast Data Sets -NYTimes

Instead of creating separate large databases to track things like currency movements, stock trading patterns and housing data, the System S software can meld all of that information together. In addition, it could theoretically then layer on databases that tracked current events, like news headlines on the Internet or weather fluctuations, to try to gauge how such factors interplay with the financial data.

France's Sarkozy adds flirty twist to Facebook site -Reuters

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, eager to show himself as a man of the people, has revamped his Facebook networking page with home videos of him flirting and discussing world politics with his wife, Carla.

Welcome Back, Sam Has 7 Friends! Um, So Where’d You Go? -NYTimes

is a two-year absence long enough for old fans to feel nostalgic? Will new audiences find the drama of Sam compelling in a much more cluttered landscape? And will Sam’s previous notoriety serve as a boost for Prom Queen’s return?

Facebook Finally Gives Apps Some Love -NYTimes

On Wednesday, Facebook is overhauling its application listings and rolling out its long-awaited “verified apps program.” Developers can pay $375 so their programs get prioritized placement on the site

Broadband Around the World -NYTimes

For broadband penetration, the United States is in the middle of the pack, slightly above average for O.E.C.D. member countries:

Germany to Google: Erase raw street-level images -AP

A data protection official for Germany said Wednesday that Google had yet to meet a key request that photos gathered for its panoramic mapping service be erased after they are sent to the United States for processing.

Cable: let us experiment with metered Internet -ars technica

According to McSlarrow, there's no particular rush to pick one business model, and the industry has no "grand plan" hashed out by cigar-smoking executives in clubby back rooms. In his view, though, cable needs to do the experiments to make sure that the Internet survives the coming bandwidth apocalypse.

Daimler buys stake in Tesla -SFGate

Tesla executives hope Daimler's investment will help the company achieve its ultimate goal - fine-tuning the technology to create zero-emission, all-electric vehicles with less astronomical prices. The firm is now working on a sedan, expected to come out in 2011, that will cost about $50,000.

NebuAd closing doors after Internet privacy woes -AP

Although individual Web sites routinely target advertising, privacy advocates argued that NebuAd's all-encompassing approach went too far, and said consumers' overall Web surfing should be tracked only if they opted into the system.

NetApp to buy Data Domain in $1.5 billion deal -AP

NetApp said it plans to operate Data Domain as a product line. The company said it has the "distribution channels and international reach to offer Data Domain products to more customers, accelerating growth and market adoption."

Is there any ‘turning it off’? -SiliconValley.com

Ironic that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, exhorted University of Pennsylvania graduates in a commencement speech yesterday to turn off their computers and phones to “discover all that is human around us.” Google has many of us so deeply invested into its offerings that some of us are practically paralyzed when we can’t access its services for a few hours.

Microsoft’s Linux Rivals Try to Head Off Acrimony -WSJ

Some backers of Linux and other forms of open-source software–which allows multiple contributors to modify and enhance software–think it’s likely that some of the developments in Android could find their way into Moblin for netbooks. If Ubuntu also agrees to cooperate, what could be three variants of Linux for netbooks could become one.

War against the 10 blue links at Yahoo -SFGate

Yahoo is hoping that expanding the shortcuts is the key to bolster its distant second place status in search to industry leader Google. Whether Yahoo's efforts will succeed any more than past initiatives remains an open question.

Cassidy: Democracy 2.0 -MercuryNews

"We have this open system," Cranston says, "so you can see the information that I think people find the most valuable: Who do I trust? And what do they recommend?"
Political debate today has been reduced to knee-jerk partisanship and is often manipulated by "special interests, money, nuts and criminals," Cranston says.

Dell aims bright new netbook at younger students -AP

The extent to which laptops improve academic performance remains debatable, but Dell Chief Executive Michael Dell, perhaps not surprisingly, argues that computers in classrooms are a key ingredient to better schooling.

What is Web 3.0? -sys-con

These gradual, almost superficial changes, have done little to change what the Internet actually does from a technological perspective, but have greatly altered our perception of the "Internet experience".

Microsoft confirms server vulnerability warning -ZDNet

Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a possible vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists in the way that the WebDAV extension for IIS handles HTTP requests.

H.P.’s Profit Falls 17% -NYTimes

“I just think we are going to need another quarter of data to really make a meaningful statement about any upturn or anything like that,” Mr. Hurd said in a conference call with analysts to discuss the second-quarter results. “Our guidance is meant to be a sort of ‘steady as she goes.’ ”

Stanford iTunes U class at 1 million downloads -SFGate

The appeal of the class illustrates the allure the iPhone has had on not just consumers but legions of developers and budding coders. Brent Izutsu, manager of Stanford on iTunes U, said the university has offered about 100 courses on iTunes U but none has come close to the iPhone course.

SanDisk CEO upbeat on 2009 -Reuters

SanDisk Corp Chief Executive Eli Harari said 2009 could turn out to be "significantly better" than anticipated at the start of the year as big cutbacks in flash memory production bring balance back to an industry stung by oversupply.

Google Threatened With Sanctions Over Photo Mapping Service in Germany -NYTimes

The data protection administrators of 16 German states, led by Hamburg and the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, have objected to Google’s plans for its Street View service. In Kiel, a city on the Baltic Sea, residents last year put stickers on their front doors warning Google not to film their property for the service.

LSI Sees Money in the Storage Shadowlands -NYTimes

Networking companies need to place more storage directly in their systems in order to make sure that bulky video and audio files reach people more quickly. In addition, it makes sense to scatter data around different parts of a country as consumers use location-based functions that require quick responses.

Google CEO urges grads: 'Turn off your computer' -AP

"Turn off your computer. You're actually going to have to turn off your phone and discover all that is human around us," Schmidt said. "Nothing beats holding the hand of your grandchild as he walks his first steps."

Baseball Tickets Too Much? Check Back Tomorrow -NYTimes

The Giants are the first major league team to test the software, which some industry analysts say could transform the way teams adjust to the ebb and flow of the season, not unlike how airlines, hotels and rental car companies — which also use dynamic pricing — adjust to changes in the travel industry.

The Swarms of Summer -TechCruchIT

A link to someone not followed from cross-talk with someone I do follow is a strong signal of potential value. The cross-talk may seem diffused, but users will migrate to tools that let them make the most efficient assessment of value.

Got an unusual name? Facebook may think it's fake -AP

As Facebook becomes a bigger part of the lives of its more than 200 million users, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is finding that the huge diversity and the vast size of its audience are making it increasingly difficult to enforce rules it set when its membership was smaller and more homogenous.

Twitter sees tools, not ads, for revenue -Reuters

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said on Monday that the company is developing various add-on tools and services for the businesses and professional users of Twitter, which could create a revenue stream for the company.

Antarctic team boosts medical care with 3D ultrasound -Reuters

The idea is for the images to be stored and then forwarded to specialists for analysis, aiming to free up the outpost doctor and provide an extra level of medical care.

Google Searches for Staffing Answers -WSJ

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Wolverton: Comcast's digital transition creates confusion -MercuryNews

Customers who called its main customer service line often got information that conflicted with the company's official plans. Some were told they'd have to pay for set-top boxes or installation services that Comcast officials said they'd get for free.

HP, Sun, Dell, and Microsoft Are Among Cloud Computing's Losers -Stanek

In his presentation, titled: "Building Great Companies in the Cloud," Stanek - a technology visionary who has spent the past fifteen years building world-class technology companies - talked about what it means to be 'born on the cloud.'

Blocked Ads, Clean Conscience -Slate

Some in the ad industry argue that eliminating only the intrusive ads would still be crippling, since stats show that, despite our whining, "annoying" ads work. We may think we hate ads that load pop-ups or intrude on a Web page's content, but these ads tend to get more clicks than ordinary ones. In fact, publishers are responding to the recent downturn in the ad market by devising ways to make ads even more intrusive.

New Mood in Antitrust May Target Google -NYTimes

The new antitrust leadership, legal experts say, is likely to scrutinize networks — technology platforms that become so dominant that everyone feels the need to plug into them. The advantages to the companies that control such networks snowball as they attract more users, advertisers or software developers.

Social Networks Eclipse E-Mail -NYTimes

Alongside the explosive growth of online video over the last six years, time spent on social networks surpassed that for e-mail for the first time in February, signaling a paradigm shift in consumer engagement with the Internet.

Craigslist CEO asks SC AG to apologize for threat -AP

"Many prominent companies, including AT&T, Microsoft, and Village Voice Media, not to mention major newspapers and other upstanding South Carolina businesses feature more 'adult services' ads than does craigslist, some of a very graphic nature," Jim Buckmaster wrote in a company blog.

Does social media increase SEO? -brafton

"[Social media sites] are part of a mix of social and non-social elements that help make up a search strategy - they're not a search strategy in themselves," Cowen says. "On that basis I suggest social media’s ability to drive SEO should not be a topic of excitement. We should not all down tools and get behind social media as the next best way to achieve killer SEO."

A want to break free -FT.com

Charging for consumer media content "may work for specific niches of content and consumers", Mr Lancefield argues, "but it can't be just repackaged and repurposed. To tip people into the fee-paying world, it will have to be distinctive and new". Yet making more distinctive content will be hard for companies simultaneously cutting costs in reaction to plunging revenues.

A Web That Speaks Your Language -NYTimes

A number of services, automated and human, are helping to translate what Mr. Zuckerman calls “the polyglot Internet.”

The Real-Time Local News -WSJ

Impending hurricanes and missing children make the local news, but what about smaller incidents — like senior citizens who wander from their care facility or nearby traffic accidents — that residents still want to know about?

Site Lets Writers Sell Digital Copies -NYTimes

In the new Scribd store, authors or publishers will be able to set their own price for their work and keep 80 percent of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with security software that will prevent their texts from being downloaded or freely copied.

South Korea tries recharging road to power vehicles -Reuters

Unlike electric lines used for trams, vehicles do not need to be in constant contact with the strips and a person can touch the lines without receiving a shock.

Major League Baseball awarded geolocation patent -Reuters

MLB said in the patent application that its technology could apply to promotions, sweepstakes, contests, fantasy games, sale of goods or services, and targeted advertising. However, Valdes said that type of wording was typical as companies seek to broaden the scope of a patent.

Is Facebook Working on a Recommendation Technology? -NYTimes

More likely is the explanation offered by AllFacebook readers, that this new feature is just a way to scrunch up items that are basically the same so users can't spam their friends' newsfeeds and so that newsfeeds are more pleasing to scan down. In other words, in the image above, the two-headed person on top probably posted about "besplatno-ing" like four times in a row.

Just Browsing? A Web Store May Follow You Out the Door -NYTimes

Instantaneous e-mail remarketing might appear to produce an increase in sales, which are easily measured, he said, but “you can’t see the negative effects on customers who are irritated and will never come back again.”

Frustration, distress over Google outage -SFGate

Andrew Kovacs, a Google spokesman, acknowledged outages like Thursday's attract a lot of attention. However, "cloud computing," as the online software is generically known, is more reliable than companies operating their own data centers.

Why Google's Outage Wasn't a Complete Failure -ComputerWorld

With a couple of hours, representatives offered a full explanation of what happened. And an apology. And an assurance that steps were being taken to prevent a meltdown like that from ever happening again.

Curating the Best of the Web: Video -NYTimes

On the Web, digital curators help you organize and manage the data deluge. Content may be still be king, but curated content, filtered through a sieve to help put it into context, may soon begin to reign supreme.

Apple sets tech conference date -Reuters

Apple has said it expects Jobs to return in late June, meaning investors and the media will be looking for any update to that timetable at the June 8 conference.

Guest Post: The 3 Major Barriers to Cloud Computing -Ulitzer

The nature and extent of how the tech leaders address, security, physical infrastructure and network management barriers will impact their market valuations and growth potentials.

A Ruling Against Intel, Unlikely to Drag It Down -NYTimes

As the world’s largest chip maker and the co-creator of the PC industry, Intel brings vast technological and business resources to a game whose rules change at Internet speed. A few minutes in the penalty box, while perhaps costly, will hardly have any impact on Intel’s position.

Intel’s Strategy Won’t Change Despite Antitrust Charges -NYTimes

The rival chip makers are not standing still. Over the next year, many of the companies that make chips for cellphones expect their wares to end up in the compact, cheap laptops known as netbooks.

Review: Flaws in Web's much-touted WolframAlpha -AP

Unlike search engines that deliver links that match keywords in your query, WolframAlpha is more of a black box. If you have it perform a calculation, it gives you an answer, along with a small link for "source information." Open that and you'll generally be told the data was "curated" - found and verified - by the company behind WolframAlpha. In other words, "trust us."

PG&E expands solar power plans -SFGate

California law requires the state's electrical utilities to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by the end of 2010, although they have three more years to comply if necessary. PG&E has been frantically signing contracts with solar and wind companies, even agreeing to buy power from a startup that wants to build large solar arrays in space.

Trouble right here in Twitter City -TechCrunchIT

As Twitter becomes more fundamental to the realtime revolution, the company is being forced to act like the common carrier utility it has inherited. Even though Twitter has lobotomized many of its realtime features, other services such as FriendFeed have picked up the ball and kept Twitter realtime operational for all intents and purposes.

Environmental alarms raised over home electronics -AP

In a report Wednesday, the Paris-based International Energy Agency estimates new electronic gadgets will triple their energy consumption by 2030 to 1,700 terawatt hours, the equivalent of today's home electricity consumption of the United States and Japan combined.

Hate goes viral on social network sites: group -Reuters

The report was based on "over 10,000 problematic Web sites, social networking groups, portals, blogs, chat rooms, videos and hate games on the Internet which promote racial violence, anti-semitism, homophobia, hate music and terrorism."

Google Apps Continues Push Into Enterprise: 30,000 New Users at Valeo -ReadWriteWeb

As Google continues to tap into the enterprise market - competing against the desktop office software monolith Microsoft - deals like the Valeo one show that its web office suite can scale for large businesses.

Real Networks Sues Studios on Antitrust Grounds -NYTimes

At issue is a Real program called RealDVD, which lets users make backup copies of the industry’s copy-protected DVDs on their hard drives. The software is central to Real’s more important goal of putting a hard drive inside every DVD player, turning the ubiquitous living room device into a home movie server.

Craigslist to drop 'erotic services' classifieds -SFGate

The announcement marked a significant policy change for Craigslist, which in the past has never pre-screened ads, choosing instead to remove them only after receiving complaints. The new adult services ads will also carry a fee.

What the Yahoo Ruling Means for Web-based Companies -GIGaom

The court’s ruling hints that there might be an easy way out of this mess. If a web-based company disclaims any intention to be bound by a monitoring policy and it never promises to take down offensive material from the web, then it can never be bound by such an agreement.

Sun Had Another Interested Suitor Besides IBM and Oracle -WSJ

Sun Microsystems wasn’t just courted by IBM and Oracle before the latter agreed to buy the computer maker. A new regulatory filing by Sun also describes a mysterious “Party B” that remained in the bidding–though an apparent longshot–until Friday, April 17, two days before Sun and Oracle signed the purchase agreement.

Unofficial Software Incurs Apple’s Wrath -NYTimes

“They’re worried about malware being distributed and third-party developers interfering with the stability of their product,” he said. “We just feel users should be able to decide for themselves if they want to deal with that.”

Google shows new search tools for computer, phone -Reuters

Google said it will search blogs and news sites, as well as the general information available online, to provide a fresher picture of certain subjects.

Intel CEO: `So far, so good' in 2Q -AP

Otellini said he stands by his remark last month that personal computer sales have "bottomed out" and are recovering from their worst slump in six years. He said he's convinced things are returning to normal seasonal patterns, and that Intel's results have been "so far, so good" in the second quarter.

What Is Google Squared? It Is How Google Will Crush Wolfram Alpha (Exclusive Video) -TechCrunchIT

Google Squared is an early attempt to take the messy data which exists on the Web and place it into simple tables. It is still very experimental and isn’t always on target, but you can see where this is going. Turning the Web into a giant database will crush any attempt to segregate the “best” information into a separate database so that it can be processed and searched more deeply.

SF Giants save big with new tech -ZDNet

He said that the iPhone debuted the same weekend as the Giants hosted the 2007 Major League Baseball All-Star Game and that since then, usage of the park's Wi-Fi network has gone up 537 percent.

Microsoft Swings at Wii With Videocam -WSJ

Unlike the Wii, the Microsoft camera won't require users to hold any hardware to control on-screen action, the people familiar with the matter said. The camera would sit near the television and capture when players move their hands, legs or head.

The Problem With Cable Is Television -NYTimes

There are two takeaways from all this. The broadband business is doing fine, as costs are coming down. Cable executives do worry that if costs rise as they expect because of surging online video use, they will need to find some way to get prices going up the way they are used to in their video business.

Google's Street View halted in Greece over privacy -SFGate

In rejecting Google's bid to roam Greek streets with cameras mounted on vehicles, Greece's Data Protection Authority, or DPA, said it wanted clarification from the U.S. Internet company on how it will store and process the original images and safeguard them from privacy abuses.

Make Room for the Wide Load Ads -NYTimes

“When you are getting robust photos or videos within the story itself, then you can afford to have large ad units because you are not totally hijacking the user experience,” Mr. Kim said. “It’s a value exchange.”

Facebook, Warner team on "Watchmen" promo -Reuters

The studio partnership with the social network Web site will use the BD-Live interactive feature on high-def discs, allowing "Watchmen" purchasers to view the film simultaneously and share comments with their Facebook friends.

Microsoft says hackers seek to attack PowerPoint users -Reuters

The world's No. 1 software maker said that a version of PowerPoint for Apple Inc's Mac computers is also vulnerable, though it has yet to find any evidence that hackers are actively seeking to exploit it.

Radio Tunes Out Google in Rare Miss for Web Titan -WSJ

...media-buying agencies, fearing Google's technology would put them out of business, were a tough audience. Google refused to create bundles of spots and negotiate prices ahead of time, which was how radio was generally sold, say people familiar with the discussions.

Tracking Cyberspies Through the Web Wilderness -NYTimes

The most vexing issue facing both law enforcement and other cyberspace investigators is this question of “attribution.” The famous New Yorker magazine cartoon in which a dog sits at a computer keyboard and points out to a companion, “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” is no joke for cyberdetectives.

A Meeting in New York? Can’t We Videoconference? -NYTimes

“The current generation of students and people entering business already use video in a core way,” Mr. Trachtenberg said. “It’s ingrained. I mean, these are people who get annoyed when they don’t get smooth motion on their iPhones.”

At Start-Ups, Boards Spar Over Cash Plans -WSJ

"Boards are asking hard questions, and everyone is being put to the test," said Jeffrey Kuhn, managing partner at FLG Partners LLC, a Palo Alto, Calif., firm that provides financial and operations expertise to start-ups.

Google Offering Training Services for Hyperlocal News in Europe -ReadWriteWeb

An Amsterdam based holding company called PPF and the Paris based World Association of Newspapers are funding a fascinating project that will launch 30 different websites covering hyperlocal news throughout the Czech Republic. Google will provide technical training and the sites will run AdSense in exchange.

Study finds software piracy growing -Reuters

While there was progress on piracy in some countries, with rates down in roughly half of the countries surveyed and flat in one-third, overall "the dollar figure is actually up," said Robert Holleyman, president and CEO of the BSA.

Tech firms could see fallout from antitrust shift -AP

It remains to be seen whether the Justice Department's different approach will lead to more court cases or more challenges to proposed business deals. But antitrust lawyers say a more aggressive antitrust philosophy likely would make the Obama administration resemble the Clinton years far more than the Bush years.

Clean tech sees less venture capital funds -SFGate

"The long-term trends are still there for clean energy," Ethan Zindler, head of North American research at New Energy Finance, told the Associated Press. The firm recorded 28 asset financings in the first quarter, worth $1.3 billion, and 10 private-equity deals.

Chip decline eases; AMD gains on Intel -cnet

IDC noted that demand from PC suppliers picked up towards the end of the quarter but the market researcher cautioned that the demand was due to PC manufacturers "replenishing their inventories rather than reflecting a return of solid end demand and return to market normalcy."

Video Services Consolidation: Multicast buys Veotag -NYTimes

In a small deal, but nonetheless a good outcome for the six members of the Veotag team who get to keep their jobs, video-tagging startup Veotag has been bought by Multicast.

Yahoo wins round in Oregon nude photo court battle -AP

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed that Internet service providers such as Yahoo are generally protected from liability for materials published or posted on their sites by outside parties.

EU to find Intel anti-competitive: sources -Reuters

The European Commission is set to decide on Wednesday to fine the world's largest chipmaker and order changes to its business practices for what the EU executive sees as "naked restrictions" to competition, the sources said.

CEO says Google will maintain a lower profile -SFGate

Gaining a dominant market share isn't necessarily a problem. What gets companies in trouble is engaging in what's known as "exclusionary conduct," or unfair competition, to maintain a monopoly or to add to it.

Data, Not Design, Is King in the Age of Google -NYTimes

Mr. Bowman’s main complaint is that in Google’s engineering-driven culture, data trumps everything else. When he would come up with a design decision, no matter how minute, he was asked to back it up with data.

Why Sync Is So Difficult -GIGaom

Sync so far has meant something different to everybody. Even the industry’s main players still sell byproducts of sync rather than sync itself, which then compete with backup, online storage, photo-sharing or music-streaming services.

Sun Micro: We may have broken US anti-bribery law -SFGate

Sun said in a regulatory filing that it found "potential violations" of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. companies and companies whose stock is traded in the U.S. from bribing foreign government officials to drum up business.

Hawaii lawmakers ease way for Internet sales tax -AP

Currently, companies that sell merchandise over the Internet do not have to collect state sales or excise taxes on purchases if they do not have a physical presence in the buyer's state.

New Palm Pre phone comes with wireless charger =SFGate

Wireless charging has been with us for years - think of electric toothbrushes that rest on chargers with no wires connecting them. The charging happens through magnetic induction.

Court reinstates Yahoo lawsuit over fake profiles -Reuters

The ruling could have a "big implications" for Internet companies that enjoy immunity from lawsuits involving user-posted content under the Communications Decency Act (CDA), said attorney Jeff Neuburger, co-chair of the Technology, Media and Communications practice group at Proskauer Rose LLP.

Microsoft says EU may boost Google dominance: report -Reuters

Microsoft says EU regulators will hand Google more dominance of the Internet search business if they go ahead with planned regulations on Microsoft's Windows operating system, the Financial Times reported.

Cassidy: Intel's new ad blitz pokes fun at valley's geek culture -Siliconvalley.com

The new commercials have something in common with the BunnyPeople campaign, says Heather Dixon, an Intel consumer marketing director. "The BunnyPeople were probably the closest thing to what resembled the essence of what Intel is about: funny, quirky, nutty, different."

Internet security problems have an upside for Silicon Valley -MercuryNews

"Malware" and "botnets" are as sinister as they sound, computer security experts say. As Internet evildoers grow more sophisticated, average Joes are falling victim to identity theft, major corporations are battling external and internal threats and cyberwarfare is driving a new kind of arms race.

Stanford's startup culture stronger than ever -MercuryNews

Stanford University's 100-year tradition of entrepreneurialism, which has spawned such tech giants as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems and Google, has been recognized as a catalyst to Silicon Valley's emergence as the globe's pre-eminent tech hub.

Google CEO doesn't see problem with his Apple role -SFGate

Walker told reporters that Google is "comfortable" that it doesn't generate enough revenue in the same markets as Apple for Schmidt's and Levinson's dual roles on the companies' boards to violate antitrust law.

Google’s Strength May Be Part of Microsoft Defense Strategy -NYTimes

Microsoft will argue that Internet browsing is inseparable from the Windows operating system. Microsoft will also emphasize that consumers can download and use any competing browser with Windows, and that Internet Explorer’s share of the browser market has been falling steadily.

Report: FBI Mishandles Terror Watch List -Wired

Neither the FBI or the inspector general knows how many people the FBI has put on the list, but the IG’s best estimate is the FBI has nominated between 68,000 and 130,000 known or suspected terrorist identities since 2003. Of the 68,669 known or suspected terrorist identities in the database the IG could attribute to the FBI, 35 percent were outdated or had no known link to terrorism cases.

Microsoft search to be powered by open source -cnet

Microsoft CEO Ballmer argues that Microsoft needs to be more disruptive in search, and open source is a way to start moving in that direction; prime rival Google embraces open source unreservedly.

Wireless Scorecard, We Heart Data Edition -GIGaom

It’s been a rough first three months of the year for the economy, but while overall subscriber growth at wireless carriers stayed pretty stable, wireless data revenue continued to climb.

Intel ads spotlight 'rock star' engineers -cnet

Intel's ads will try to convey the message that "gigantic advances of the digital age have been made possible by silicon...and the vast majority of this silicon has come from Intel. Our image, our brand are far too powerful to just be a microprocessor when, in fact, the greatest strength of the Intel brand will always be what is still to come," Intel said in a statement.

Who owns the facts? The AP and the "hot news" controversy -ars technica

The Court ruling created the "hot news" doctrine, in which groups like the AP are granted a pseudo-property right to breaking news stories. The right is quite limited, generally applying just in situations where another party rewrites the news "without independent investigation and verification."

Three Reasons Why Twitter Will NOT Index the Links You Share -ReadWriteWeb

Bit.ly's John Borthwick told us this morning that Bit.ly is working on part of this development but Twitter is too. Several other companies are testing some kind of API program already, so it may not be Bit.ly or just Bit.ly that becomes the center of this story long term.

Facebook’s E-mail Censorship is Legally Dubious, Experts Say -Wired

EFF lawyers suggested that the legality of Facebook’s censorship turns on Facebook’s Terms of Service, how and when the blocking takes place, and whether the messaging system affects interstate commerce (thus giving the federal government jurisdiction).

Successful SEM Means Original Thinking -search engine land

If you ever run into the limits of your industry and feel everything has already been done then all you need to do is pick up a book on another topic, read the news (outside your industry), or tie your other hobbies to your industry to find an interesting angle that has not yet been done.

Your Search Returned 12 Million Books -Slate

...the most objectionable part of the plan is the prize it grants to Google—as the only company in the world with digital access to most books. Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft, and groups like the Open Content Alliance would be shut out of the BRR scheme. Google and the publishing industry would have free reign to raise prices on all the works in their vast catalog.

Rest in Peace, RSS -TechCrunchIT

Today, RSS is a shell of its former self, casually subsumed as the transport for 140+ content into the social stream. There, RSS items are fed into aggregators and husked for their behavioral signals, packaged as Tweets and sold for pennies on the whuffie dollar. The mainstream media, once cowed by the fulltexters, now masquerades as blog sites and competes for shortened URLs alongside the bloggers they deride under their breath.

The future of virtualization: a view from the front lines -arstechnica

One worthwhile point that came up in our forum conversation was that any discussion of the future of virtualization is really about the future of the OS. Abstractly speaking, virtualization is just the latest development in the operating system's ongoing adaptation to different forms of multitenancy (protected memory and multiuser support being two earlier points on this trend).

Google and others urge inventory of national airwaves -siliconvalley.com

"Radio spectrum is a natural resource, something that here in the U.S. is owned by all of us American citizens," Richard Whitt, Google's counsel for telecom and media, wrote in a blog post earlier this week in support of the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act, which was recently introduced in Congress by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Olivia Snowe, R-Maine. "Most of us don't give it much thought — and yet use of these airwaves is precisely what makes many of our modern communication systems possible."

Microsoft CEO still sees chance to work with Yahoo -Reuters

Microsoft Corp CEO Steve Ballmer said he sees opportunities to work with Yahoo Inc to create a "better search product" but would not comment on discussions that the two may be engaged in.

Campaign Trail Leads to the Web -NYTimes

“If you look at the typical microtargeting approach, you have to be a very large national campaign to really afford it,” said Tim Ryan, the general manager of Sawyer Miller Advertising, which has handled public affairs campaigns for Microsoft. “For the public affairs context, I think we’re excited about this, and excited about the ability to better target our audiences at a lower cost point, and get better engagement, and that’s the goal,” he said.

Harris: IPO pipeline has turned into a sieve -MercuryNews

"We're seeing a rebuilding and stabilization of the IPO market, so that Silicon Valley firms will be able to participate." said Jeff Grabow of the accounting firm Ernst & Young's San Jose office, which issued its quarterly U.S. IPO Pipeline report Tuesday.

Google Analytics Adding Two Advanced Features -searchengineland

Against the backdrop of this week’s eMetrics conference, Google has announced a pair of advanced features that are coming soon to Google Analytics. And they’re specifically warning that these are for advanced users.

Hosted CRM, ERP: Another Microsoft and Oracle battleground in the making -zdnet

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is famous for blurting out potential product ideas even when they are nothing but a glimmer in his eye. But maybe in the case of offering hosted financials, CRM, HRM and other similar services, there’s a chance such Oracle-hosted entities could come to market sooner rather than later.

Cloud vs sand: Google vs Microsoft -zdnet

The study looked at four different configurations: 1) Google apps with a single network connection; 2) Google apps with two network connections for added availability; 3) Microsoft Office and Exchange with internal disk storage; and, 4) Office and Exchange with an external storage array.

Firefox Could Be the Real Facebook Challenger -ReadWriteWeb

How well could Facebook compete with social software that prioritizes multiple personas (work/friends seeing different sides of you) and breaks free from the walled gardens of standard social networking? Those are approaches that Facebook will no doubt be moving towards soon as well.

Twitter co-founder says company not for sale -Reuters

When host Barbara Walters -- mentioning rumors that Google Inc, Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc might be interested in acquiring the company -- asked whether Twitter is for sale, Stone answered, "no."

Cisco Earnings Fall 21% but Beat Expectations -NYTimes

Chief Executive John Chambers said customers are ''finally seeing something reasonably solid underneath their feet,'' and the company itself has seen order rates possibly bottom out.

Will iPhone Work Its Magic on Mobile Advertising? -iphone journal

The iPhone and devices that are following in its wake provide the best platform yet for enabling mobile advertising because they are optimised for rich media applications like video and also provide a genuinely good mobile browsing experience.

More cell phone users dropping landlines -SFGate

Further underscoring the public's diminishing reliance on landline phones, the federal survey found that 15 percent of households have both landlines and cells but take few or no calls on their landlines, often because they are wired into computers. Combined with wireless only homes, that means that 35 percent of households — more than one in three — are basically reachable only on cells.

ND Supreme Court upholds Internet provider probe -AP

North Dakota's Supreme Court says the attorney general may continue a probe into the marketing practices of an Internet service provider.

Not so Quiet on the Cyber Front -h+

One approach to preventing network intrusions is to simulate cyberattacks – essentially cyber war gaming. The National Cyber Range is a test environment for the Internet of the future, and it is being built to be attacked. Northrop Grumman Corporation recently won a contract for this Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) project, “which will provide an environment to test and analyze new concepts and technologies to protect against modern cyber threats.”

FAA's Air-Traffic Networks Breached by Hackers -WSJ

"The threat of hackers interfering with our air-traffic control systems is not just theoretical; it has already happened," said Republican Rep. Tom Petri of Wisconsin, one of the lawmakers who requested the report. "We must regard the strengthening of our air-traffic control security as an urgent matter."

Steve Ballmer Sees the Light Through the Clouds

In addition to general entrepreneurial optimism, Ballmer spoke of specific opportunities for “software-powered experiences.” He said Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, is a core project because it’s the future of Microsoft’s Windows Server and SQL businesses. But even while Ballmer pumped up the cloud and clients, he wasn’t willing to sign over existing businesses.

Intel, Microsoft, Dell band together for WiGig -SFGate

Computer and home entertainment industry leaders, including Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc. and Panasonic Corp., said Wednesday that they're forming a new association to create an even faster wireless technology for zipping large files around the home.

An Android Netbook From Dell? -WSJ

Dell and BSquare now say the announcement of Dell’s allegedly forthcoming Android netbook shouldn’t have been made. Dell spokesman Andrew Bowins said the press release was published “in error,” though he didn’t deny — or confirm — that the PC giant is working on such a device.

Disney looks beyond traditional studio model -Reuters

Disney said on Tuesday it will continue to reposition itself for a changing marketplace as industrywide DVD sales slump and as more and more consumers look online for content, even though a clear business model for online distribution has not yet emerged.

Few Match Google; Does That Make It a Monopoly? -WSJ

Google is indisputably a victim of its own success. Its market share of Internet search has continued to rise steadily, encompassing roughly two-thirds of total searches. At 76%, its share of search advertising is even higher, thanks to Google's technological prowess at matching ads to people's search queries.

A Tech Company’s Campaign to Burnish Its Brand -NYTimes

The campaign is Intel’s first that focuses on its brand rather than its products, Ms. Conrad said. It is Intel’s most expensive campaign since 2006, and the company wants it to run for at least three years. One of the company’s challenges is that people do not buy products from Intel directly

Tech Companies Are Still Hiring -WSJ

In a survey of 122 senior technology professionals, including 67 CEOs and company founders, 54% of respondents reported that their companies were currently hiring, or would be hiring new employees within the next three months.

The Rise of the Answerbots -h+

Here's the basic concept behind AI-completeness: Some problems are so hard that the only way to solve them is to create an artificial entity with human-level general intelligence. These problems are AI-complete. On the other hand, some problems --- even though they're hard for humans and seem to require great general intelligence --- are actually amenable to simple, specialized approaches. These problems are not AI-complete.

SOA to Reduce Complexity? -SOAWorld

In short, standards are essential, but standards aren't enough. They help systems talk to systems, but they don't do enough to help systems work well with other systems. They don't supply agreements on the meanings of terms, rules for data storage and format, or contracts that govern the interaction of organizations. And SOA does.

Digital Hollywood: Can The TV Industry Survive The Online Video Boom? -WashingtonPost

"We're spending too much time trying to figure out what model is going to work, when it's clear that we just need to be better at following consumers." said Jason Forbes, group SVP of strategy, new products & marketing at Time Warner

U.S. Cyber Infrastructure Vulnerable to Attacks -WSJ

Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, who is expected to lead the new command, called for a "partnership" between the government and the private sector. He acknowledged potential obstacles, including the difficulty of giving private companies access to classified intelligence on specific cyber attacks and possible corporate reluctance to spend the money necessary to better protect its networks.

Swedish Hacker Indicted in Cisco, NASA Attacks -WSJ

Hacking under the nom de guerre "Stakkato," Philip Gabriel Pettersson was a teenager when he penetrated the systems five years ago. He is now 21 years old and faces charges in a five-count indictment of illegally damaging computer networks and theft of trade secrets.

Measuring Social Media Optimization -clickz

The benefit of optimizing a site for social media is that it naturally inspires the creation of excellent, keyword-rich content that can, in turn, improve an online brand's overall visibility and continually increase high-quality inbound links over time. In that way, social media optimization reinforces what a site should be working toward through a natural SEO campaign: building a crawler-friendly Web site, creating compelling content, and building links.

Swedish Pirate Party may get seat in EU Parliament -Reuters

The jail sentences handed out last month to the four Swedish men behind The Pirate Bay, one of the world's biggest free file-sharing Web sites, have given a boost to the namesake party among young voters in Sweden, a recent opinion poll showed.

Obama riles high-tech exec over outsourcing -SFGate

Indeed, Obama's proposal to limit U.S. companies' ability to defer paying U.S. taxes on offshore earnings does put Bay Area companies doing a lot of business overseas directly in the crosshairs. "It would adversely impact our ability to invest and grow our business in the (United States) and to compete against our foreign competitors," said a spokesman for Cisco.

Microsoft lays off workers, more job cuts coming? -Reuters

"As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure, including additional job eliminations," Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer

Libraries eye stimulus money for their Web access -AP

The library association is trying to convince the federal agencies in charge of doling out stimulus grants that libraries are the best way to extend high-speed service to the most people.

EA posts smaller 4Q loss as costs decline -AP

Video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. posted a smaller net loss Tuesday for its fiscal fourth quarter as it further slashed costs in a quarter that had fewer hit game launches.

Flash activists use social media to drum up support -USAToday

The proof is in the numbers: 81% of members of online communities use the Internet to participate in social causes, up from 75% in 2007, finds a survey by the Center for the Digital Future at University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.

U.S. Rep. Frank to unveil online gambling bill -Reuters

The new bill would exempt operators that are licensed and regulated from the ban enacted in 2006, Frank said.

Authorities seek to crack down on Craigslist -msnbc

In a separate statement after the meeting, Craigslist said it was optimistic that the dispute could be resolved “without compromising the quintessentially American values of free speech embodied in our Constitution.”

A larger Kindle could upend textbooks, periodicals -AP

Up to now selling digital copies to portable devices like the Kindle mainly has been an experiment. Ken Doctor, a media analyst at Outsell Inc., said that a larger-screen Kindle would be another reason for publishers to hope for profitable electronic distribution. He added, however, that a lot will depend on how much of each page a reader can see on a device's screen, and how intuitive it is to navigate the content.

Scientists unveil chocolate-fueled race car -SFGate

The car runs on vegetable oils and chocolate waste that has been turned into biofuel. The steering wheel is made out of plant-based fibers derived from carrots and other root vegetables, and the seat is built of flax fibre and soybean oil foam. The body is also made of plant fibers.

Facebook's new Friendplex -SFGate

The new two-story headquarters, encompassing just under 150,000 square feet on 1601 S. California Ave., was previously an office of Agilent, the electronics measurement company spun off from Hewlett-Packard. A crane and safe - presumably for holding chemicals - will remain in the building and be incorporated into the decor.

Apple and Google Ties Investigated -NYTimes

Antitrust experts say that investigations of interlocking directorates rarely lead to major confrontations between companies and the government. Executives typically choose to resign from the board of a competitor if it poses a problem rather than face a lengthy investigation or a bruising legal fight.

E.U. to Hear Proposal for Cross-Border Net Copyright -NYTimes

Depending on how the commissioners seek to have the license granted, a single E.U. license would force collecting agencies to make themselves a more attractive place to do business or else lose the copyright fees to another country.

Google Aims to Woo the Enterprise With Its Cloud -GIGaom

The premise of these platforms is they take away the complexity of managing a bunch of actual machines (even if they are in the cloud), but still allow developers to build customized programs. However, with that simplicity comes a loss of control. Some developers dislike the way App Engine requires them to handle data and have complaints over the proprietary nature of the standards Google uses, which means that apps built in App Engine won’t easily port to another platform.

Tech companies object to Obama's plan to crack down on overseas tax havens -MercuryNews

While not eliminating deferral, Obama would change the law that lets companies take an immediate deduction on their U.S. income tax for business expenses tied to overseas operations, such as interest on a loan to build a foreign factory. According to a White House fact sheet, the proposal would raise $60 billion over nine years by requiring companies to defer those deductions until they pay U.S. taxes on the income from those operations.

Hulu and YouTube compete for online video audience -MercuryNews

"Generating revenue from user-generated content is very, very difficult, and that's probably being generous," said Josh Martin, a senior analyst at the Yankee Group, a technology research firm. "The reason Hulu's been successful is that it's providing the content that people want."

Little radiation from a wireless mouse -SFGate

When you're sitting in your home office, you're also getting minute doses of radiation from the computer screen and the wireless router, so what's a little more from the wireless mouse or keyboard.

Newspaper saving Kindle coming this Wednesday -SFGate

The new Kindle, said to be backed by the New York Times, is not the only device in the works. The Chronicle's parent company Hearst, News Corp. and Plastic Logic are also working on big-screen readers.

The Cost of a (Private) Cloud -cloud

Before you get your IT guys working on building your cloud, I’d suggest you to read this white-paper by Albert Greenberg, (ex Microsoft, working for Amazon) James Hamilton, David A. Maltz and Parveen Patel - “The Cost of a Cloud: Research Problems in Data Center Networks“. Remember, at the end of the day you’re building a data center.

Backing Up Virtual Machines -eclipse

Virtualization has the same single point of failure as some cluster technologies and services: shared disk. What happens to your virtual infrastructure if you lose connectivity to your primary storage unit? The entire virtual host becomes unavailable and that can put upwards of 8-10 production workloads at risk, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Publishers Nurture Rivals to Kindle -WSJ

Some publishers also are focusing their portable-reading efforts on devices people already use. The new iPhone applications store rolling out this summer will support subscription prices, spurring the Financial Times, Time Inc. and other publishers to tinker with ways to offer subscriptions on the iPhone. Last week, Amazon bought a small startup that makes free e-book reading application Stanza for the iPhone

EU hearing on Microsoft antitrust case in June -Reuters

European Union antitrust regulators have set a hearing next month for Microsoft to respond orally to EU charges that it sought to stymie rivals by tying the firm's Web browser to its Windows operating system.

Amazon to Launch Kindle for Textbooks -WSJ

Dozens of newspaper and magazines subscriptions for Kindle are sold through Amazon, but some publishers have concerns about the arrangement. Amazon controls the relationship with subscribers and dictates pricing. In addition, the current version of the Kindle doesn't display ads, which newspaper and magazine companies rely on for revenue.

Skyline Solar mixes old technology with new -SFGate

Despite the current gloom, most analysts say the solar industry will grow again. President Obama's economic stimulus package included $6 billion in loan guarantees for renewable power projects and tweaked existing programs to benefit solar and wind companies. Once the loan guarantees and grants start flowing, companies like Skyline should see their fortunes improve. If they make it that far.

Yahoo Video Gets “Streamlined” -NYTimes

Yahoo’s various video projects have not fared particularly well. Recently, it shut down live-streaming service Yahoo Live as well as web video-editing service Jumpcut, which it had acquired in 2006. Its original content initiatives have been stop-and-go. Flickr held off on adding video until only a year ago, and restricts video uploads to the point they can only be an afterthought to photos.

California judge blunts Internet false advertising law -Reuters

Adler ruled that Hypertouch's claims -- that its customers were barraged by 45,000 emails containing false claims -- were preempted by the federal CAN-SPAM Act because the company had not demonstrated actual fraud or deception by the defendants.

Do You Know Anyone Still on MySpace? -NYTimes

When I reread the article I wrote in 2006 about the high hopes News Corporation had for MySpace, I see a litany of ideas that didn’t pan out. The company wanted to make the site a portal for its own video; Hulu fills that need. It wanted to create a marketplace for person-to-person commerce, a more social eBay

Comments on news stories a double-edged sword -SFGate

The ability to comment on news stories at Web sites for established newspapers, such as The Chronicle, USA Today and the Washington Post, has invited a wave of input from would-be pundits, class clowns, provocateurs and regular Joes.

Live Streaming Coming to iPhone? Apple Submits New Spec to IETF -NYTimes

The big question is, what does this really mean? Is a future version of iTunes going to support streaming music and video from our PCs to our iPhones and iPods, or will we be streaming directly from an Apple server instead?

Intel’s Andy Grove Wades, Briefly, into Patent-Reform Debate -WSJ

Grove, stating that he had negotiated for three minutes of time, questioned whether the current environment would generate comparable innovations. “I’m dubious,”

An invention that could change the internet for ever -The Independent

Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet. Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, said that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as important as Google. "It is really impressive and significant," he wrote. "In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose.

Cyber chief needs to be in White House: experts -Reuters

Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said his group had urged that the task of ensuring cybersecurity be given to the Department of Homeland Security, not the National Security Agency, or NSA, which is responsible for breaking codes and electronic spying.

Microsoft's Windows 7 test implies holiday launch -AP

The software maker is counting on Windows 7 to win over businesses that put off upgrading to Vista, which got off to a rough start because it didn't work well with many existing programs and devices.

Tinker Away, Facebook Says -NYTimes

The company said it would provide a set of technology tools that will let other companies create programs that tap into the heart of the social network — the endless stream of photographs, status updates and comments that people post to the service. Saying it is unable to provide a range of access to the service from every possible gadget...

Old Japanese maps on Google Earth unveil secrets -AP

When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn't expect a backlash. The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another Web site, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn't caused any problems.

Google in dispute over book project -MercuryNews

At the heart of the controversy is the value of books that are no longer sold except occasionally in used-book stores and whose legal ownership is unclear. The vast majority of written work exists in this limbo in libraries around the world. Of the more than 7 million books Google has scanned since December 2004, only 1 million books were in the public domain, whose copyright has expired, and 1 million were still in copyright and also in print. The remaining 5 million books appear to be in copyright but out of print, and Google continues to scan more books each day.

Computer History Museum celebrates the semiconductor -SFGate

Fifteen scientists will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame Saturday in a ceremony at the Mountain View museum, and Intel co-founder Andy Grove will receive a lifetime achievement award.

The Man Who Made Gmail Says Real-Time Conversation is What's Next -NYTimes

Many social networking sites are moving towards real time information delivery instead of requiring page advancement or refreshing to find out what's new.

A Silver Ooze That Could Shrink the iPod -NYTimes

The start-up specializes in what semiconductor folks call 3-D stacking technology. Essentially, this means placing chips on top of each other and forming electrical connections between the products. The technique can lead to faster communications between the chips, takes advantage of vertical space inside products and can reduce the need for wires stretching across a device.

Why Tech Stocks Are on a Tear -WSJ

While there are many questions about the economic situation, analysts believe that technology shares will play a leading role in an eventual recovery.

What Startups in Amazon’s Ecosystem Should Learn From VMware -NYTimes

In many ways, this parallels what happened in the virtualization management space. As VMware’s hypervisor, ESX, penetrated the data center, IT administrators realized their existing data center management tools were ill suited for virtual environments. So startups emerged to fill the holes in VMware’s only management console, Virtual Center.

Controversial Web ‘Framing’ Makes a Comeback -WSJ

Facebook’s decision to start framing has prompted mixed reviews. When a user clicks to follow the link for an article or Web site that a friend posts to be shared on Facebook, that outside content is still framed within Facebook’s site, and the question of whether the publishers of those stories to lose credit for traffic directed there via Facebook comes into play.

Ex-Seagate CEO Watkins back with chip start-up -cnet

A few months after being ousted as chief executive of Seagate, Bill Watkins is back with a new start-up that's cooking up ways to pack high-density flash memory chips into small devices.

IPhone apps are even tempting 3-year-olds -SFGate

"Nowadays, you try to give a child a plastic phone and they're like, 'You think I'm stupid? I want the real thing!' " said Simonian, who runs a small toy company called Only Hearts Club. "All of this technology is going to be a huge part of their lives. They're starting young, and by the time they're my kids' ages - 7, 10 and 12 - it's totally second nature to them."

When the Cellphone Teaches Sex Education -NYTimes

Sex education in the classroom, say many epidemiologists and public health experts, is often ineffective or just insufficient. In many areas of the country, rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases remain constant or are even rising.

Pentagon uses Facebook, Twitter to spread message -SFGate

Earlier this year, the Army established an online and social media division within its public affairs office. The division's director, Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, said the search is on every day to find new avenues online to reach not only soldiers, but their families and the general public.

How Domino's responded to prank video -SFGate

The saga of the prank Domino's video could be a case study of how fast-moving social media can both giveth and taketh away.

Journalism 2.0: Don't Throw Out the Baby -ReadWriteWeb

Until we as an industry can do a better job at monetizing quality, at correlating quality with revenue, the sensible business decision is simply to go after page views, any page views.

Keeping the Grateful Dead Archive Trucking, with Technology -WSJ

The target is the Grateful Dead Archive, a repository of historic documents and other material that surviving members of the iconic rock band have donated to the University of California at Santa Cruz. That beach community and the university campus are not far from Seagate’s headquarters in Scotts Valley, Calif. Watkins had resolved to help raise money for the archive before his surprise ouster in January.

Apple building chip design capability: report -Reuters

An Apple spokesman confirmed the company has hired both Bob Drebin, former chief technology office of the graphics products group at chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices and Raja Koduri, who previously held the same position.

Google's Trojan Horse -Slate

Why would Google want a social network? To get to know you better—and, thus, to serve you more profitable ads. Google has long made gobs of money by running ads based on search keywords—if you search for "shoes," Google runs spots for Zappos and DSW, and it makes a few cents if you click on them. But last month Google announced that it would join many of its rival Web companies in adopting "behavioral targeting," a method of serving ads that relies on a much more extensive picture of your online activity.

Federal government cloud adoption will triple by 2013, report says -NetworkWorld

“This administration seems to be much more technology-savvy than the last one,” Peterson says.
The INPUT report divides cloud computing into three general areas: Web-based applications (software-as-a-service), storage and computing (infrastructure-as-a-service), and application development (platform-as-a-service).

Facebook eyes additional funding: report -Reuters

Facebook held "valuation discussions" with Providence Equity Partners, General Atlantic, Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, among others, the paper said, citing multiple sources close to or involved in the situation.

I Swear I Wasn't There (But I Was) -h+

This is a concept familiar with socially networked Internet users of services such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft or Second Life. Alts –- alternate identities –- give users the ability to experiment with alternate versions of themselves. Initial studies of patients with Asperger’s syndrome –- people with extreme difficulty in social settings –- show great promise for the use of alts as a way of learning social skills.

Cloud Standards Effort Could Turn into a Dustup -WSJ

“Everybody says what’s in it for me and who is trying to screw me,” says Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a longtime IBM employee who is still involved in the company’s standards efforts. “It takes time for people to trust each other and to realize that they don’t have a goddamn choice.”

Oracle to expand Web-based software offerings -Reuters

Oracle Corp, the world's No. 2 business software maker, plans to expand its small line of programs that companies access via the Web, said a person familiar with the strategy.

Venture capital group wants tax breaks and regulatory relief to spur growth -Siliconvalley.com

The proposals also include a review of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley that are said to raise costs and slow the pace toward an IPO. Two other "pillars" address problems in the private sector ecosystem that includes investment banks, accounting firms and institutional investors. These initiatives involve efforts to develop new banking models to foster IPOs and identify new institutional investors for small companies.

IDT reports fiscal 4th-qtr loss -AP

Calif.-based NetLogic Microsystems Inc. (NETL), which designs chips used in network equipment, said Thursday that it will buy IDT's network search engine assets for $90 million and the cost of inventory on hand when the deal closes.
When the deal is finalized, NetLogic also has the option of paying the total purchase price in cash or $60 million plus the cost of inventory in cash and issue IDT a $30 million secured promissory note that is payable in equal installments. Those installments would be due on the first and second anniversaries of the deal's closing date.

About-face: Microsoft disables Autorun -SFGate

Despite previous assertions by Microsoft that Autorun is not dangerous, the company said this week that the amount of malware now trying to spread through this feature has shot up since last fall -- due in part, perhaps, to the Conficker worm, which infected another 2.7 million PCs just today, according to the Conficker Working Group.

DOCSIS 3.0 Coming Soon to an ISP Near You -GIGaom

A lot has been written about the merits of Verizon’s fiber to the home vs. AT&T’s fiber to the node and U-verse services, but we haven’t spent a lot of time on DOCSIS 3.0 deployments. Sure, it will provide ultrafast broadband, such as the 101 Mbps services that Cablevision is offering or the 50 Mbps that Comcast boasts. But for providers, the upgrade makes a tremendous amount of sense for business reasons beyond happy customers — so much so, that 45 percent of the country will have access to D3 rollouts by the end of this year, according to data from research firm Pike & Fisher.

Tech giants to be honored at computer chip's 50th birthday party -MercuryNews

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit, the National Inventors Hall of Fame will honor 16 people who helped pioneer computer chip technology during a sold-out ceremony Saturday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

Face(book) Value -WebGuild

The NYT reports that people familiar with the matter said Facebook’s attempt to raise additional capital is creating friction with its existing investors, which include Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Microsoft and Founders Fund.

Texting delays mar popularity of $50 Boost plan -AP

"There's a huge deficiency in the text messaging and multimedia messaging," said John Kim, an independent dealer who has a Boost Mobile store in the Dallas area. He warns new customers about the problems, and tests the system by sending himself text messages.
"I got five text messages at 4 o'clock in the morning that I sent myself nine hours before," he said.
He's been signing up 10 to 12 new customers a day on the plan, three or four times the number that came in before the Boost Unlimited plan was introduced in January. But a lot of them come back, "very irritated" about the text messaging problems, he said.

The Sweet Sound of a Well-Targeted Ad -NYTimes

This is advertising at its best. The film’s producers were telling me about something I didn’t know about and giving me a chance to buy it.
Actually, the targeting here isn’t quite a bull’s-eye. The in-person appearances by Mr. Fleck were last weekend. But at least there is one more screening in New York. I’m not going to be able to go to it. But I did just pay to download the album related to the movie.

Disney climbs on board with Hulu -SFGate

The added partner should push Hulu into the number two online video spot soon. Fox Interactive Media is currently second after YouTube with 3 percent of the market while Hulu is in third with 2.6 percent.

U.S.A. Maintains Spam Lead -WSJ

It has the dubious distinction of being the top relayer — responsible for 15.8% of world-wide spam during the first three months of 2009 — for at least the last five years, said Dmitry Samosseiko, a manager of SophosLabs. “Russia or China would sometimes come close, but the U.S. would still be at No. 1.”

The $100 Million Mobile App Question -NYTimes

Apple just soared past a billion downloads, handsets are becoming more powerful and cellular networks and bandwidth is steadily improving, he said.
But from a venture capitalist’s perspective, Mr. Hazard wondered, is there a $100 million mobile application company out there or just lots of hobbyists?

Maru The Cat Teaches Us The Secret to Viral Success -NYTimes

In the world of online video, cat videos aren’t exactly considered high-brow entertainment, often ranked with punches to the groin and farting babies. But there is a lesson to be learned from their vast popularity — specifically, the lesson that a tightly paced piece of content with nearly universal appeal, a video that captures the essence of what makes for an engaging narrative, will always make a splash.

Clean Tech’s Future Dims as Financing Drops Off -NYTimes

The biggest venture capital deal of any technology sector in the fourth quarter of 2008 was for Solyndra, a company in Fremont, Calif., that makes photovoltaic rooftop systems. It raised $219 million in its fourth round of financing. CaliSolar, a solar cell manufacturer in Sunnyvale, Calif., raised $52 million in the tenth biggest deal of the quarter. In the first quarter of 2009, though, there were no clean-tech deals in the top 10 of all venture capital investments.

Time Warner Is Moving Closer to AOL Spinoff -NYTimes

In a regulatory filing Wednesday, Time Warner said it was nearing a decision to spin off America Online, and put an end to the travails that began with the merger in 2000 of the two companies, a deal that has resulted in the evaporation of more than $100 billion of shareholder value.

Twitter Doomed -WebGuild

Apparently more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month and pre-Oprah more than 70 percent of Twitter users failed to return to the site according to David Martin, Vice President, Nielsen Online.

In Major Shift, Apple Builds Its Own Team to Design Chips -WSJ

The new effort faces plenty of hurdles, and people familiar with Apple's plans don't expect internally designed chips to emerge until next year at the earliest. Still, Apple's aggressive hiring is another sign of how the company's recent success has allowed it to expand while other tech giants have trimmed their work forces in the recession.

Panel Warns U.S. on Cyberwar Plans -NYTimes

“The United States reserves the right to respond to intrusions into government, military and national infrastructure information systems and networks by nations, terrorist groups or other adversaries in a manner it deems appropriate,” said one senior Pentagon official.

Facebook executive considers Calif. AG campaign -AP

Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said he had formed an exploratory committee to consider a campaign to be the state's chief law enforcement official.

Boom or Blurst: A New Business Model for Videogames? -WSJ

The new business model is a real-world test of an essay published by Wired magazine founder and technologist Kevin Kelly entitled "1,000 True Fans." Mr. Kelly argues that artists could make a living with a small group of dedicated individuals who would fund their work. "A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce.

In Europe, Intel Faces a Large Antitrust Fine -NYTimes

The size of the penalty will be discussed by representatives from 27 European Union governments in early May. The decision would follow landmark rulings by the European Commission against Microsoft, which also is being investigated over its Internet Explorer browser, and a settlement with I.B.M., which is again the subject of a complaint.

Is RAID storage living on borrowed time? -cnet

Data continues to grow exponentially. Market researcher IDC estimated that the digital universe exceeded more than 281 exabytes in 2007 and will grow 10X by 2011. Enterprises in a number of industries, including media/entertainment, health care, and video surveillance, have already exceeded 100 terabytes of storage in use. Determining the appropriate long-term storage strategies for these industries will be a challenge as they realize the limitations of RAID.

Beautiful, but Dangerous -NYTimes

He assigns these things a quality and uses their appearance and frequency in the code as inputs that he feeds into art-generating algorithms and computer models that spit out three-dimensional shapes with vivid colors.

French lawmakers reconsider Internet piracy bill -AP

The measure would create a government agency to track and punish those who pirate music and film on the Internet. Users would receive e-mail warnings for their first two identified offenses, a certified letter for the next, and would have their Web connection severed, for as long as one year, for any subsequent illegal downloads.

Not Smart: Warner Music Issues DMCA Takedown On Larry Lessig Presentation -techdirt

Lessig has announced that Warner Music issued a DMCA takedown on one of Lessig's own presentations, in which his use is almost certainly fair use. Lessig, of course, is a lawyer, and a big supporter of fair use, so it's no surprise that he's also said he's going to be fighting this.

Microsoft Throws a Vine to Disaster Victims -WSJ

Microsoft just started testing a new service, Vine, which is something like a Twitter for emergencies. It allows users to quickly notify neighbors when, say, a local river is about to flood or a rash of burglaries have occurred on the block.

AT&T Continues to Adjust TOS to Limit 3G Video -NYTimes

The problem is, wireless networks are constrained by spectrum holdings, so they can’t just be beefed up to increase capacity like wired networks.

Ten greenest SF buildings named -SFGate

The selections showcase everything from a new corporate office tower, 555 Mission St., to the sumptuous Forest Hill Clubhouse designed by Bernard Maybeck in 1919. There's subsidized housing (the Plaza Apartments on Sixth Street) and the Orchard Garden Hotel near Chinatown, which bills itself as an "eco-friendly getaway."

Renewable Energy Emerging Markets conference -SFGate

"We're bringing California technology to the emerging markets," said organizer Richard Soyombo, a native of Nigeria who heads the Bay Area Center for International Trade Development. His organization, based at San Bruno's Skyline College, helps local firms do business abroad.

Google offers data charts from government agencies -SFGate

It is the first time that Google is creating and displaying charts in its search results. The new tool was spawned by Google's 2007 acquisition of Trendalyzer, software for illustrating data.

Cutest funding move ever? Adopt a line of Miro code -ars

Here's where the adoption program goes far beyond the efforts of other open source projects. Those who "adopt" one of Miro's thousands of lines of code will be able to see its unique name and face—yes, just like when you "adopt" a wild animal or impoverished child on the other side of the world—and show it to the world via blog widget. Additionally, adoptive parents will get their names published inside the source code itself and receive a credit in the about box of every copy of Miro.

Tellme voice services offers one-button search, communications -SFGate

The hope is that by corralling all the actions, making them accessible through voice, and dedicating a single button for the job, Microsoft can become the go-to provider of information on phones, both for its own Windows phones but also other devices. Instead of having users hunt through their phone menu and contacts list or fire up a browser, Microsoft can provide it quick using a very natural interface: your voice.

The Perfect Strategy for the Cloud -CloudComputing

With the evolution of the cloud, it's not hard to see why so many young startups are jumping into the arena. The key for many companies looking to implement effective cloud computing/storage solutions is how to differentiate one from another within a crowded space. A hot button topic within the market place is the debate of public vs. private clouds, which is better? Which is more cost-effective?

Forrester Backs Private Clouds — Will Others Follow Suit? -GIGaom

Rather than talk about cloud computing as an all-or-nothing proposition where the only options are the status quo or Amazon EC2, Staten actually recommends deploying an internal cloud, leveraging public clouds either as part of a virtual private (hybrid) cloud strategy or for cloud bursting.

Adobe Wants to Reshape Online Video -NYTimes

Today, the content within an online video cannot be searched. Unless someone manually inserts keyword metadata, there’s no way to find a particular part of a clip or to fast forward to a certain spot.
At the National Association of Broadcasters convention last week, Adobe showed a beta version of a tool that will automate that process.

Online Ad Effectiveness Depends on Time of Day -AdvertisingAge

A study by the U.K. Internet Advertising Bureau with Lightspeed Research found that online consumers of all ages believe they are more likely to pay attention to ads from the early evening onward. Younger audiences in particular showed more interest in commercial messages as the day progressed, while older age groups had distinct peaks in attention between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

IBM, Brocade boost ties as Cisco rivalry heats up -Reuters

International Business Machines Corp will rebrand ethernet switching and routing products made by Brocade as IBM products and sell them to mutual corporate customers, the companies said on Tuesday.

As Oracle readies takeover, Sun's loss widens -AP

The deal, announced last week, was a surprise because Oracle hasn't made hardware. More than half of Sun's sales come from its hardware division, primarily servers and data storage machines. And Sun's software properties, like the Java programming language and Solaris operating system, haven't been big moneymakers. Oracle thinks it can change that.

Personal E-Health Records: A Cautionary Tale -SFGate

All's well and good, but how many other hospitals are sending potentially inaccurate billing data to personal health records? And how many other patients could discover major errors in their electronic medical history? Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum in San Diego, doesn't think the Boston case is an isolated incident. ''There is a real trend to pull all of your data into one big melting pot, and this is just the tip of the iceberg,'' she said. That's the stuff e-health nightmares are made of.

State lets Prosper.com resume raising money -SFGate

Now the Department of Corporations, which had already authorized Prosper's bid-based lending process, has used its separate state authority over investments to let the company raise money in California. Prosper can loan money across state lines under previous agreements with other states.

Former eBay chief faces skeptical tech leaders -SFGate

Listing education as a top priority along with job creation and making government more efficient, Whitman said charter schools that are free of many state regulations are "the way forward," and said she would like to revisit Schwarzenegger's proposal to extend teacher tenure, which was part of his failed 2005 special election.

Google Hypes Cloud Computing Over Virtualization Alone -InformationWeek

The McKinsey study, Sheth argued, only considers hardware costs. He explains that Google's cloud not only offers economies of scale most companies can't match, but also lets companies adapt to service demand and innovate more easily.

Online gambling bill coming: Frank -Reuters

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, said on Tuesday he would introduce a bill next week to overturn a three-year-old U.S. ban on Internet gambling.

Nokia to tackle Apple with leaner services push -Reuters

To cope with slowing phone demand Nokia is building a new business from mobile Internet services -- like games or maps -- but is scaling back separate investment plans due to the slowdown, and focusing on merging the delivery of services.

U.S. Justice Department looks into Google books deal -Reuters

"There are legitimate antitrust issues related to Google's ability to solely commercialize this content," Brantley said, adding he hoped the settlement agreement would be rejected by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin.

'Harry Potter' among those missing from e-library -AP

No e-books are available from such living authors as Thomas Pynchon, Guenter Grass and Cynthia Ozick, or from the late Studs Terkel, Roberto Bolano and Saul Bellow. Only a handful, or less, have come out from Paul Bowles, Hunter S. Thompson and James Baldwin.
The reasons are legal, financial, technical and philosophical.

AOL Deploys Socialthing Across the Web -ReadWriteWeb

However, now that Facebook has opened up their data streams to developers, it's clear that the battle for conversation control is just getting started. Despite Socialthing's open nature, it's possible they'll still have a tough time competing considering the Facebook revolution currently underway.

Why We Don’t Believe Rumors of an Apple/Verizon Love Child -GIGaom

Apple and Verizon are in talks for the carrier to distribute an “iPhone-lite” device and a “media pad,” with one of the devices to be launched sometime this summer, BusinessWeek is reporting.

The Supreme Court Backs F.C.C. Procedures in Dirty-Words Case -NYTimes

The Supreme Court Tuesday backed Mr. Martin’s approach to procedures in a 5-4 vote. The case relates to a 2004 decision by the commission to toughen its policy against the TV networks broadcasting expletives before 10 p.m. It eliminated an exemption for the “fleeting” use of a single dirty word. Two years later, that policy was challenged in court by Fox Television Stations, with the backing of other media companies. A lower court said that the commission didn’t follow proper procedures.

U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses -NYTimes

Because so many aspects of the American effort to develop cyberweapons and define their proper use remain classified, many of those officials declined to speak on the record. The White House declined several requests for interviews or to say whether Mr. Obama as a matter of policy supports or opposes the use of American cyberweapons.

Apple and Verizon Wireless reportedly prepping two devices -SFGate

Apple has prototypes of two devices. The first is a smaller iPhone-like phone that is cheaper due to different architecture including a system-on-a-chip design. The second device is a media pad, somewhere between an iPod Touch and a Kindle ebook reader that could offer music listening, photo viewing, high-definition video and phone calls over Wi-Fi.

FTC says Internet firms near "last chance" -Reuters

Companies that track consumer behavior on the Web for targeted advertising without proper consent are near their "last chance" to self-regulate, the head of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Monday.

Singularity 101 with Vernor Vinge -hplus

The contemporary notion of the Singularity got started with legendary SF writer Vernor Vinge, whose 1981 novella True Names pictured a society on the verge of this “event.” In a 1993 essay, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” Vinge made his vision clear, writing that “within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

Obama promises major investment in science -SFGate

And he set forth a wish list including solar cells as cheap as paint; green buildings that produce all the energy they consume; learning software as effective as a personal tutor; prosthetics so advanced that you could play the piano again and "an expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge about ourselves and world the around us."

G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc -NYTimes

To date, holographic storage has not been on a path to mainstream use. The G.E. development, however, could be that pioneering step, according to analysts and experts. The G.E. researchers have used a different approach than past efforts. It relies on smaller, less complex holograms — a technique called microholographic storage.

Facebook Lets Others Tap Its Information Stream -NYTimes

The company announced the Facebook Open Stream API, a program that will allow third-party developers to create applications that pull in Facebook “streams” -– the current of status updates, photos and links that members see when they visit the service.

Verizon Says No News on iPhone, Netbooks -WSJ

...Denny Strigl, Verizon’s president and operating chief, said there are no announcements to make. “We have said in the past we are always open to discussions with any suppliers,” he said during the call. He added that Verizon “historically” has not been dependent on any one device, and that smart phones and PDA sales represented 41% of its direct device sales this quarter.

Posit Science raises $5.6M for brain fitness software -NYTimes

So far, it has two software packages on the market: Brain Fitness (see right), used to preserve cognitive function (memory, concentration, troubleshooting), andInSight , used to keep visual perception sharp so that seniors can continue to drive. With sales of both these products up for the first quarter, the company says the recent round of funding should be enough to put it in the black.

Bankruptcies soaring as tech workers join ranks of unemployed -MercuryNews

"It's not just Realtors and mortgage brokers" who are seeing their incomes shrink, said San Jose bankruptcy lawyer James Shulman. "We're seeing cutbacks in electronics and at Sun, Yahoo — large numbers of people are having their income cut, and for many it's making their house unaffordable," he said.

Scotts Valley company markets its first electric street motorcycle -MercuryNews

Zero is not the only maker of electric motorcycles, but it's the first to put a street model on the market. Brammo, of Ashland, Ore., has a slightly more expensive electric street motorcycle that is headed for sale at Best Buy, and Quantya, of Switzerland, is developing a dual street-dirt model. Closer to home, Mission Motors in San Francisco is preparing a limited edition of a high-performance electric street bike.

Konami cancels Fallujah battle recreation video game -SFGate

"After seeing the reaction to the videogame in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and e-mail, we decided several days ago not to sell it," a public relations official of Konami told Asahi. "We had intended to convey the reality of the battles to players so that they could feel what it was like to be there."

Amazon.com buys Stanza e-book app maker Lexcycle -AP

Kindle e-book retailer Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) (AMZN) has purchased Lexcycle, a year-old company that makes the iPhone e-book application Stanza, in a move that ratchets up Amazon's presence in the electronic book market.

Conficker adds new weapon: spam -AP

Researchers from Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) (CSCO) say some of the up to 12 million personal computers infected by Conficker are being used to send about 10,000 to 20,000 spam e-mails a day per computer, far less than they actually are capable of.

Apple Says No to Netbooks -NYTimes

Earlier this month, colleagues Ashlee Vance and Matt Richtel, in a Times business story, called netbooks “the next stage in the personal computer revolution,” with some expected to sell for less than $100 by the end of the year, and that the market shift would put pressure on companies like Intel and Microsoft.

Samsung plans first Android phone for Europe -Reuters

South Korea's Samsung follows Taiwan's HTC Corp, the first to launch a phone based on the Android system last year. HTC has an exclusive agreement to sell its next Generation Android phone via Vodafone Group Plc in four countries this Spring.

British government backs down over database plan -AP

The British government said Monday it wants communications companies to keep records of every phone call, e-mail and Web site visit made in the country. But it has decided not to set up a national database of the information, a proposal that had been condemned as a "Big Brother"-style invasion of privacy by civil liberties groups.

All-electric cars about to be resurrected -SFGate

"The electric car is clearly on its way back," said Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the magazine Green Car Journal, which covers the alternative energy auto industry. "Every automaker and battery company has been making incremental breakthroughs" in technology.

iPhone is Boosting Demand For Location-Based Services -GIGaom

“Thanks to the popularity of iPhone, we are seeing more and more apps using geo-data,” Morgan pointed out. For instance, game developers are using geolocation data to build location-based leader boards. “The iPhone has unleashed location-based creativity,” he said. Last year, I pointed out that “in order for LBS to be on mobile phones, we need applications, which is where I believe the iPhone plays a vital role.

Apple and Verizon consider iPhone deal -USAToday

The New York-based telecom entered into "high-level" discussions with Apple management a few months ago, when CEO Steve Jobs was overseeing day-to-day business, these sources say. They declined to be named because they aren't authorized to speak publicly.

Forget Fart Apps — the Sweet-Smelling Growth Is in LBS -NYTimes

What started with accessing data nearly anywhere as morphed into providing our social networks with text updates first, then real-time pics and videos and now with offering our location while we “fart” and Tweet all around the town.

In Developing Countries, Web Grows Without Profit -NYTimes

Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results.

Does H.P. Need a Dose of Anarchy? -NYTimes

Although H.P. is trying to expand its presence in businesses like personal computers and printers, some critics argue that those markets have little left to give. The company could also use more imaginative thinking to bolster its developing line of software products and services.

Charities see potential, risk with social networks-AP

It's yet another avenue for raising money and awareness, supplementing direct online contributions generated by running ads and sending e-mail to past donors. Social networks can potentially be more effective because they are cheaper and involve referrals from friends.

In downturn, an opportunity for Silicon Valley tech giants to get stronger _Siliconvalley.com

The business of building and supplying data centers — air-conditioned rooms packed with computers and related gear, which do everything from processing online purchases to tracking inventory, customer accounts and payroll information — is already worth hundreds of billions of dollars. It's expected to grow with the spread of "cloud computing," in which companies and consumers increasingly use PCs and mobile devices to access information and software that's stored in those centers instead of on their own hard drives.

Memory Chips Signal Sector Getting Set For Recovery -WSJ

Memory chips account for just 14% of the $260 billion global semiconductor industry. But they are a leading indicator of industry performance because of their commodity-like status as widely used products that are hard to differentiate. The memory downturn that began in early 2007 foreshadowed last year's broader industry troubles, which became worse after the financial-industry crisis led to a global downturn.

SAP and Teradata Punch Back at Oracle -WSJ

A growing number of vendors have begun offering servers that come bundled with particular programs, styling the combinations as appliances that are easier to install and manage than components sold separately. Oracle in October announced a joint effort with H-P to offer a “data warehouse” machine that was designed to better search through corporate information better than standalone hardware and software from the two companies.

Facebook to adopt new rules despite vote shortfall -SFGate

"We'd hoped to have a bigger turnout for this inaugural vote, but it is important to keep in mind that this vote was a first for users just like it was a first for Facebook," Ullyot said in a blog post, adding that the site will consider lowering that threshold for future votes.

Customer Service? Ask a Volunteer -NYTimes

The mentality of super-users in online customer-service communities is similar to that of devout gamers, according to Mr. Fong. Lithium’s customer service sites for companies, for example, offer elaborate rating systems for contributors, with ranks, badges and “kudos counts.”

Computer Program to Take On ‘Jeopardy!’ -NYTimes

Eric Nyberg, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, is collaborating with I.B.M. on research to devise computing systems capable of answering questions that are not limited to specific topics. The real difficulty, Dr. Nyberg said, is not searching a database but getting the computer to understand what it should be searching for.

Spider silk-metal combo makes for tough tool -msnbc

Spider silk is already tougher and lighter than steel, and now scientists have made it three times stronger by adding small amounts of metal.

Black-and-white printing goes green with soy toner -Siliconvalley.com

Early results suggest soy toners work as advertised. In a recent test involving identical documents from two identical printers — one with a new Hewlett-Packard cartridge and the other a soy cartridge — the printouts were indistinguishable, equally dark and smudge-proof.

First Day of DVD Trial Features Closed-Door Testimony -WSJ

Tech geeks hoping for juicy details from a closely watched trial involving RealNetworks are likely to find Friday’s proceedings a bit disappointing. U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel closed much of the first day’s action to the public after an attorney for the DVD Copy Control Association said questioning would reveal too many trade secrets.

The Green House of the Future -WSJ

A fresh look may be long overdue, given the amount of damage that homes can do to the environment. It's easy to envision a power plant spewing pollution or a highway full of cars burning billions of gallons of petroleum. But buildings -- silent and unmoving -- are the quiet users of much of our energy, through electricity, heating and water consumption. The U.S. Energy Department estimates buildings are responsible for 39% of our energy consumption and a similar percentage of greenhouse-gas emissions.

Avatars, attorneys in new world of virtual law -SFGate

The question on oral contracts isn't the only unanswered one in virtual law. Duranske expects future cases to confront intellectual property issues - as the sex bed dispute did - as well as employment law and tax law.

Craigslist founder isn't closing 'erotic' section -SFGate

The founder of Craigslist does not plan to close the "erotic services" section of the Web site despite criticism that has intensified after a medical student was accused of killing a Boston masseuse who advertised there.

Earlier this week, Ballmer said Microsoft was not interested in buying a hardware company following Oracle Corp's proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems.

The Online Divide Between Work and Play -NYTimes

Social networking is “all about establishing boundaries,” she says. “If you have something online that you wouldn’t share openly with people in the office, you probably want to think twice about inviting them in.”

High school hell is great fodder for games -msnbc

Believe it or not, a few savvy developers have discovered an even more hellish and heart-pounding backdrop in which to set their games: high school.

IBM plans cloud computing services for 2009 -Reuters

In addition to the service for developers, the company also plans to introduce clouds that allow businesses to run business applications and virtualize personal computer networks, Sims said.
Much of the technology was developed using know-how that IBM developed through a partnership with Google to develop cloud services for academic computing that dates back to 2007, she said.

MySpace co-founder DeWolfe to step down -SFGate

DeWolfe is expected to move onto a new startup, following the path of several executives who left MySpace last month including former Chief Operating Officer Amit Kapur.

Former Facebook Exec Van Natta Set to Take Over at MySpace, as Founder DeWolfe Prepares to Step Down -AllThings Digital

Van Natta is well known at News Corp. and was, at one point, the leading candidate to head up MySpace Music, which launched last fall, and the two sides held extensive conversations.

Employers Watching Workers Online Spurs Privacy Debate -WSJ

"The question is whether employees have a right to privacy in their non-work-created communications with each other. And I would think the answer is that they do," said Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment expert and partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York.

Cost cuts help tech giants ride out weak economy -Reuters

While a rally may prove difficult to sustain, analysts say the prospects are better for an IT recovery because tech products and services are integral to the day-to-day functioning of the global economy and people's lives.

Yahoo pulls the plug on GeoCities -Reuters

A posting on a Yahoo Help page for GeoCities on Thursday said the service was no longer accepting new customers and that it will be closing later this year, with more details about how individuals can save their data coming this summer.

Software That Copies DVDs to Players Is on Trial -NYTimes

That software, which the company refers to by its internal name, Facet, would allow companies like Sony, Samsung and Toshiba to sell DVD players capable of making digital copies of all discs, even movie DVDs that have anticopying software, called C.S.S.

Cloud Computing Surpasses Virtualization in Popularity -Virtualization Journal

For the first time the term "cloud computing" has surpassed "virtualization" in terms of search popularity. What is all the more interesting is it took cloud computing a little over a year and half compared to nearly 5 years for virtualization to see the same level of search volumes.

Gmail Hole Can't Be Closed By End Users, Says Windows Secrets -.NET

CSRF attacks use security holes in cookies, password requests, and other interactive Web components to intercept communications between browsers and a Web site's server. Gmail users can lose private data to hackers or find that their passwords have been changed, giving an intruder control of any other Google services the users customarily sign in to by using the same password, according to a proof of concept by ISA.

Typical lost or stolen laptop costs companies nearly $50,000, study finds -MercuryNews

"The faster the company learns that a laptop is lost, the lower the average cost," the study said. "If a company discovers the loss in the same day, the average cost is $8,950. If it takes more than one week, the average cost rises significantly to approximately $115,849."

Top E.D.S. Executives Leave H.P. -NYTimes

Mike Koehler, the head of the Americas region for E.D.S.; Tom Haubenstricker, the head of finance; and Mike Paolucci, the head of human resources, all plan to call it quits at H.P. by the end of May. And Bobby Grisham, the head of sales, will retire at the end of June.

Apple Profit Rises 15%, Driven by iPhone Sales -NYTimes

Despite a 3 percent slump in sales of the company’s Mac computers, Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, called the quarter “the best nonholiday earnings in the company’s history.”Apple reportedthat its net profit jumped 15 percent, to $1.21 billion, or $1.33 a share, from $1.05 billion, or $1.16 a share, in the same quarter a year ago.

Facebook users' vote ending way short of threshold -AP

Facebook invited the 200 million people who regularly use the site to vote on its governing documents. But it's unclear how much of a difference it will make.

German GEMA in talks with YouTube on video dispute -Reuters

On March 31, after the failure of negotiations to renew a contract under which Google paid a set fee per streamed music video to GEMA, YouTube said it would block access to music videos in Germany of artists who are members of GEMA.

AMD No Longer Feels the Need to Go “Native” -WSJ

Asked about the shift, Patrick Patla — a vice president and general manager in charge of AMD chips for servers — said the company never said packaging multiple chips together “is a bad idea,” as long as computing performance is not sacrificed in the process.

Lawmakers Examine Privacy Practices at Cable, Web Firms -WSJ

Lawmakers are concerned about consumer privacy as cable, phone and Internet companies experiment with Internet-based technologies that pinpoint advertising to consumers in new and more accurate ways. Legislation to impose tougher privacy rules could be coming later this summer.

EBay 1st-quarter profit falls - beats estimates -SFGate

Revenue from eBay's marketplaces segment - which includes eBay itself and e-commerce sites such as StubHub and Shopping.com - fell almost 18 percent to $1.22 billion. The company blamed the drop on the difficult economy and the strengthened dollar.

Bartz’s ‘Technical Difficulties’ Become ‘Expletive Deleted’ -WSJ

It’s not the first time an executive swore during a call (Enron’s Jeff Skilling famously did so in 2001), but it woke listeners up. Valleywag editor Owen Thomas posted a recording of the quip and a post titled “Yahoo CEO Lays Off Workers, Not Swear Words.”