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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Time honor caps celebrity-making of Zuckerberg (AP) : Technet

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Time honor caps celebrity-making of Zuckerberg (AP) : Technet

Time honor caps celebrity-making of Zuckerberg (AP)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 08:49 PM PST

– 39 mins ago

NEW YORK – Before 2010, Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old co-founder and CEO of Facebook, was primarily known as a mysterious, sweatshirted figure, a Silicon Valley wunderkind familiar mainly to those in tech circles.

But this year, Zuckerberg has been thrust into pop culture ubiquity, appearing on screens of all shapes and sizes, from "Oprah" to one of the year's most acclaimed films.

On Wednesday, his public ascent was solidified by Time magazine, which named him its "Person of the Year." He's the youngest choice for the honor since the first one chosen, Charles Lindbergh in 1927.

In a posting — where else? — on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg said being named Time's "Person of the Year" was "a real honor and recognition of how our little team is building something that hundreds of millions of people want to use to make the world more open and connected. I'm happy to be a part of that."

It caps a remarkable year for Zuckerberg and Facebook, which has more than 500 million users worldwide and market valuations that go into double-digit billions. In countless redesigns and new features, Facebook has been pushing toward becoming not just a social media hangout, but also the underlying, connecting fabric of the Internet.

Time, which many expected to choose the news-making WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for "Person of the Year," cited Zuckerberg "for changing how we all live our lives."

"I'm trying to make the world a more open place," Zuckerberg says in the "bio" line of his own Facebook page.

Zuckerberg was perhaps prompted to expand his public persona because others were doing it for him. "The Social Network," David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's acclaimed drama of the contentious creation of Facebook, has supplied a narrative that in some ways is unkind to Zuckerberg and Facebook.

The film depicts Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) as a brilliant, power-hungry, back-stabbing hacker motivated by social acceptance and girls. Facebook has called the film (which Sorkin wrote based partly on Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires" and without Zuckerberg's cooperation) "fiction."

But that hasn't stopped it from becoming a sensation with critics and moviegoers, and arguably the most talked-about film of the year. It has established itself as an Oscar front-runner.

The New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review have all picked "The Social Network" as the best film of the year. On Tuesday, it received six Golden Globe nominations, including best picture, drama, going up against its chief rival, the British monarchy tale "The King's Speech," which led with seven nominations.

Zuckerberg countered the release of the film with a $100 million donation over five years to the Newark, N.J., school system. He appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to announce the donation. He's in the company of media titans Carl Icahn, Barry Diller and others who have joined Giving Pledge, an effort led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett to commit the country's wealthiest people to step up their charitable donations.

Ahead of the release of "The Social Network," Sorkin defended the movie's veracity.

"I have to believe that their PR people are every bit as good as our PR people, and they've decided just to say `fiction' as often as they can," Sorkin said. "They have not identified yet anything in the movie that's been fictionalized. They've nibbled around the edges a little bit that he was drinking a Manhattan when he was really drinking a martini, and that kind of thing. But they're not going to be able to. The movie's true."

Fincher, for his part, professed sympathy for Zuckerberg, and said he understood the pressure of being a young talent with little patience for those less intelligent. He said accuracy was important, but that it was worth remembering the stakes: "You're talking about people who had their feelings hurt."

For Zuckerberg, though, the film turned out to be less something to fear than to scoff at. He even took the whole company to see "The Social Network," buying out two theaters for the occasion.

"It's pretty interesting to see what parts they got right and what parts they got wrong," Zuckerberg said earlier this month in a "60 Minutes" interview. "They got every single T-shirt that they had the Mark Zuckerberg character wearing right. I think I actually own those T-shirts.

"But I mean, there are hugely basic things that they got wrong, too. I mean, they made it seem like my whole motivation for building Facebook was so I could get girls, right? And they completely left out the fact that my girlfriend, I've been dating since before I started Facebook, right?"

The film is sure to remain a hot topic until the Feb. 27 Academy Awards.

"It's a movie for its time," said Kevin Spacey, a producer of the film. "And yet I think it's a movie that's going to last."

But Facebook touches the lives of an enormous audience unimaginable to any Hollywood film. Zuckerberg, who grew up in the New York City suburb of Dobbs Ferry, the son of a computer-obsessed dentist, has built Facebook from a dorm room creation at Harvard into the largest social networking site in the world.

As it grew, he steadily turned down offers from companies like Yahoo and Microsoft, and has so far declined to take Facebook public. Asked about a Facebook IPO on "60 Minutes," Zuckerberg said, "Maybe."

"A lot of people who I think build startups or companies think that selling the company or going public is this endpoint," he said. "It's like you win when you go public. And that's just not how I see it."

Not everyone sees Facebook's rise as a good thing. Some question the depth of its social interaction, and many have raised questions over its attitudes about privacy. Facebook has continually urged its users to share more personal information, often prompting criticism from privacy groups and users.

But Zuckerberg, now a celebrity himself and one of the world's youngest billionaires, sees Facebook as a universal identity system that could challenge Google and even e-mail for the basis of Internet communication. In his book "The Facebook Effect," David Kirkpatrick wrote that Zuckerberg is less motivated by money than his vision for the Web and Facebook.

"The question I ask myself like almost every day is: `Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?'" Zuckerberg told him. "Unless I feel like I'm working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I'm not going to feel good about how I'm spending my time. And that's what this company is."

___

Online:

http://www.time.com/

No IPO soon: Twitter raises another $200 million (AP)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 05:50 PM PST

– Wed Dec 15, 8:50 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Don't expect Twitter to be tweeting about an initial public offering any time soon. The popular online communications service has raised another $200 million so it can keep growing without Wall Street's help.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley's best-known venture capital firms, is leading the investment announced Wednesday. Twitter also added two successful entrepreneurs, Mike McCue and David Rosenblatt, to its board of directors.

The funding was first reported by the technology blog, All Things Digital.

Twitter's association with Kleiner Perkins is likely to add to the intrigue about the moneymaking potential of a service that each day blasts out more than 65 million short messages, or "tweets," limited to 140 characters.

Kleiner Perkins' past Internet bets include investments in online search leader Google Inc., now worth about $190 billion, and leading Web merchant Amazon.com Inc., now worth about $80 billion.

The venture capital firm obviously thinks highly of Twitter, which started in 2007. The $200 million investment values Twitter at $3.7 billion, up from $1 billion 15 months ago when the company last raised money from ventures capitalist. Some of Twitter's previous financial backers upped their ante by joining Kleiner Perkins in the latest round.

Twitter has now raised about $360 million since its 2007 inception.

With so much cash being supplied by investors, Twitter's management has been able to focus on hiring more workers and adding more features instead of worrying about how to make money. The company, based in San Francisco, now employs about 350 people, more than tripling its payroll since the beginning of the year.

Most of Twitter's revenue so far has flowed from deals that have given Google, Microsoft Corp.'s Bing and other Internet services better access to its messaging stream. Over the past eight months, Twitter has gradually allowed ads to appear amid its service's chatter.

Twitter hasn't set a timetable for pursuing an IPO that would allow its current backers to cash out of their investments and give others a chance to buy the company's stock. Its executives, though, have repeatedly said they're in no hurry to take the company public.

Selling to a larger company remains a possibility, too.

The newest directors on Twitter's nine-member board both have experience with the sell option.

McCue sold TellMe, a company specializing in voice recognition software, to Microsoft for $800 million in 2007. He is now running another Kleiner Perkins-backed startup, Flipboard, which transforms links posted on Twitter and Facebook into a magazine format for the iPad. Apple Inc., the maker of the computer tablet, recently anointed Flipboard as its top iPad app of the year.

Rosenblatt was CEO of the online ad service DoubleClick Inc. when it was sold to Google for $3.2 billion in 2008. Twitter's current CEO, Dick Costolo, and previous CEO, co-founder Evan Williams, also previously sold startups to Google.

In a Wednesday tweet, Costolo said the new funding will "help grow Twitter to infinity and beyond."

This just in: Game consoles no longer just for gaming (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 03:41 PM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Wed Dec 15, 6:41 pm ET

News flash: Gamers have discovered the joys of video streaming, disc playing, and even social networking on their consoles — and indeed, the average console user (particularly those with the PlayStation 3) spends almost half their time on their turbocharged (and increasingly multi-talented) systems doing something other than gaming.

So says the Nielsen Co., which surveyed U.S. gamers 13 and up and found that Xbox 360 owners spent 62 percent of their time playing games, both online and offline, leaving 42 percent of their Xbox use for activities like watching on-demand videos, playing DVDs, and checking their Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Wii gamers spent a larger chuck of their console time gaming: 69 percent, to be exact, with the lion's share of gaming happening offline. That said, of the 31 percent of the time Wii users weren't gaming on their systems, 20 percent of it was devoted to on-demand videos from Netflix -- more than double the on-demand viewing in which Xbox and PS3 users indulged.

Speaking of the PS3, the Sony console turns out to be the most well-rounded in terms of overall use, according to Nielsen, with PlayStation 3 users gaming on their systems only about 49 percent of the time â€" meaning that the majority of their time their consoles are fired up, they're doing something other than blowing away baddies in Call of Duty or hugging the curves in Gran Turismo 5.

So, how are PS3 users whiling away their non-gaming hours? You guessed it: watching Blu-rays, with PS3 owners devoting a full 27 percent of their console time playing Blu-ray discs, just a few percentage points shy of the chunk of time they spend playing offline games (30 percent).

Xbox 360 users, on the other hand, spend only about 11 percent of the time watching DVDs on their consoles, and about the same amount of time streaming Netflix videos, 1080p movie rentals from Xbox Live, and other on-demand video as their PS3-owning counterparts (who can now stream movies and shows via Vudu and Hulu Plus). Indeed, only 43 percent of Xbox gamers say they've played a DVD on their consoles, versus a whopping 72 percent for PS3 owners.

Wii gamers, meanwhile, don't watch any DVDs on their consoles at all — not a huge shock, given that the Wii still can't handle DVD playback (not without a little hacking, anyway). That probably accounts for all the time Wii users spend streaming movies and TV shows via Netflix (20 percent, as noted above).

Game-console owners aren't just gaming and streaming, of course. They're also listening to music (4 to 5 percent for both the Xbox 360 and PS3, or 2 percent for the Wii), watching shows and movies they've downloaded (between 4 and 6 percent of the time for the Xbox and PS3), or browsing the Web, tweeting, or oversharing on Facebook (6 percent of use for the Wii, between 4 and 5 percent on the Xbox and PS3).

While the various usage "profiles" of each console differs depending on their relative strength and weaknesses, Nielsen gives the crown for most-used gaming system to the Xbox 360, which gets about 4.9 hours of use a week by its average owner (or 6.1 hours a week for guys 13 and older, 2.6 weekly hours for women). Up next is the PS3, which saw an average of 5.2 hours of weekly activity. Dead last: the Wii, with a mere 1.7 hours of use each week.

Nielsen's revelation that gamers are using their consoles for a variety of purposes other than gaming isn't much of a shock, of course â€" but the figures do underline the fact that systems like the PS3, the Xbox 360 and Wii pack in amazing value for the dollar.

Indeed, if I had to pick just one set-top box for my TV, I'd skip the Apple TV, Boxee Box and Roku (which, among those three choices, still makes for the best value) and go for a PS3 or the Xbox, which both perform all kinds of disc-based and streaming-video duties, home networking (via Windows Media Center or DLNA), music playback, and games — lots of games.

If I had to choose just one console, well … I rather wouldn't, and I haven't — I own both, in fact, and I pretty much split my time between them (the PS3 more for Blu-ray, the Xbox for Halo-type shooters and now, Kinect). As for the Wii, sorry — it's not my thing.

So, how often are you using your game console — and what are you using it for? Mostly games, or more for other activities?

Related: Game Consoles Edge Closer to Serving as Entertainment Hubs [Nielsen Wire]

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

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Could 4G replace your cable modem for home broadband? (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 10:54 AM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Wed Dec 15, 1:54 pm ET

Here's one of the biggest dilemmas faced by cord cutters: If you ditch your cable subscription, where will you get your speedy broadband?

Well, you could always lose your cable box and keep the modem — but you'd still be dealing with your cable provider. Or you could go the DSL way, but kiss those 10Mbps-and-up download speeds goodbye (unless you're ready to spend big bucks for an enterprise-level DSL account, that is).

Nowadays, though, there's another option: 4G — or at least, the next-generation data networks that the big U.S. wireless carriers have labeled as "4G." (What actually constitutes a 4G network is, of course, a matter of debate.)

Sprint's 4G WiMax network has been around for a couple of years now, with about 60 major cities bathed in WiMax coverage; T-Mobile, meanwhile, has more than 100 markets covered by its so-called "4G" HSPA+ network, and Verizon Wireless just launched its 4G LTE (short for "Long Term Evolution") network in close to 40 cities. AT&T's LTE network is set to go live next year, although it already offers HSPA+ service for about 80 percent of its coverage area.

Today's 4G networks aren't quite as speedy as the fastest wired broadband offerings — think anywhere from 2 to 21Mbps downstream, compared with 100Mbps and up for the various (and pricey) "extreme" plans offered by the biggest U.S. cable carriers. (For the record, the FCC defines anything faster than 4Mbps downstream as "broadband.")

And it's not just a question of speed; latency, or lag, is also an issue, with even the best 4G connection tending to be a little laggier than wired home broadband.

But we're just barely two years into the 4G wireless era here in the U.S. — in other words, this is only the beginning. Five years down the road, the big wireless carriers will probably offer coast-to-coast 4G coverage, with transfer speeds and latency rates that compete quite nicely with cable broadband.

That could be enticing for users looking to cut the cord once and for all — and since 4G is offered by wireless carriers, you'd be able to pick and choose rather than settle for the cable operator who happens to have franchise rights to your neighborhood.

Of course, there's another issue to consider: bandwidth caps, with Verizon capping its 4G LTE plans at 5GB a month (for $50) and 10GB (for $80 a month), while T-Mobile throttles HSPA+ download speeds for users who bust over 5GB of data a month.

Sprint, however, offers unlimited 4G WiMax access for $60 a month — and for now, at least, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse swears that isn't going to change. (Isn't $60 a month more than most of us pay for faster cable broadband service? For now, sure — but perhaps once 4G broadband becomes a serious threat to cable broadband, the competition will lead to lower overall prices.)

That's why I've decided to try a little home 4G experiment with Sprint. I just bought Sprint's portable Overdrive 4G hotspot (replacing my old 3G MiFi for Sprint) and for the next few days I plan on trying to use it as my primary home connection. (Sorry, Road Runner.)

I've already had a preview of what download speeds to expect courtesy of the PR reps at Clearwire, who lent me one of their WiMax USB modems for testing purposes. The results (here in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn): a consistent 3-4Mbps downstream, 1.5 to 3Mbps upstream (much better than my Road Runner connection, which caps upload speeds at 500Kbps), with latency rates of about 50-70 milliseconds — not bad for a wireless data connection. (Latency rates for my cable modem hover around 20 ms.)

Using the limited range and power of the portable Overdrive router isn't ideal for testing at home, of course; ultimately, I'd like to do a little testing with one of Clear's new desktop 4G wireless modems, which the New York Times recently tried.

Will the Sprint Overdrive be able to handle 1080p video streaming on Netflix, or fast-twitch gaming over Xbox Live? Probably not as nimbly as my Road Runner cable connection does, but I'm curious to see how close it comes.

I'm sure I'll go back (reluctantly) to Road Runner once I wrap up my at-home 4G experiment, but the point of my test isn't so much to scrutinize today's 4G performance as to get a taste of the future: wireless 4G broadband, no cable (or cable carrier) required.

I'll keep you posted.

What about you: Would you consider ditching your cable modem for 4G, now or later?

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

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U.S. seeks to build WikiLeaks conspiracy case: report (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 07:53 PM PST

– 1 hr 35 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors are looking for any evidence WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange conspired with a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking classified government documents, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

U.S. Justice Department officials were trying to determine whether Assange encouraged or helped Private Bradley Manning extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system, the newspaper said.

If he did, officials believe Assange could be charged as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the case.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the report.

The Justice Department has been looking into a range of criminal charges, including violations of the 1917 Espionage Act, that could used to prosecute the WikiLeaks case.

Prosecutors were studying an online chat log in which Manning is said to claim he had been directly communicating with Assange while downloading government files, The New York Times reported.

Manning bragged about his exploits to former hacker Adrian Lamo, who then turned him into the authorities, Lamo told Reuters.

Manning has been detained at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia after being charged in July with improperly obtaining a classified video showing a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists.

Assange has been held in a London jail after being arrested in connection with an unrelated investigation by Swedish authorities into alleged sex crimes in that country.

Some legal experts have said it would be difficult for the Obama administration to prosecute WikiLeaks or Assange, who is an Australian citizen, for espionage. Other parts of U.S. law, however, make it easier to prosecute people for unauthorized disclosure of certain classified information.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; Editing by Todd Eastham)

Remains of the Day: Money for nothing, tweets for free (Macworld)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 04:30 PM PST

Dan Moren Dan Moren – Wed Dec 15, 7:30 pm ET

Twitter keeps raking in the cash, a pretty iPad knockoff conceals an ugly secret, and yet another Apple Store has been the victim of a robbery. But there's one thing they can never take from you: the remainders for Wednesday, December 15, 2010.

Exclusive: Twitter raises $200 million at $3.7 billion valuation; adds McCue and Rosenblatt to board (All Things Digital)

As the old saying goes: 200 million here, 3.7 billion there and pretty soon you're talking about…Twitter? Yes, the social network that wasn't the topic of a critically acclaimed movie this year—maybe in 2011, Jack—has raised another round of funding and added a couple of new members to its board. Twitter seems to have perfected its machine for turning money into product—now if only they could throw that baby into reverse.

Android-powered iPad comes close (not really) (9 to 5 Mac)

Want to impress the ladies (or the gents) by toting around your very own iPad, but you're just a liiiiitle bit strapped for cash? Check out this $277 iPad wannabe made in China, with an 800MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of Flash storage, and running…Android? On second thought, maybe you're better off printing yourself out a paper one.

Apple Store robbed in Greenwich (Fox CT)

Five men robbed the Greenwich, Connecticut Apple Store on Tuesday, smashing in the front door and pilfering tens of thousands of dollars worth of Macs, iPhones, and whatever they could get their hands on. Man, those Greenwich kids sure have been running wild since the local yacht club closed.

Gmail pioneer: Chrome OS will die or join Android (Electronista)

Paul Buchheit, the creator and former lead developer of Gmail, has predicted that Chrome OS will probably be killed off in 2011, because it doesn't do anything that Android can't do. Boy, this just gave me a killer idea for a modern Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.

EBay acquires its mobile application developer (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 01:29 PM PST

– Wed Dec 15, 4:29 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Web commerce company eBay Inc said on Wednesday it acquired Critical Path Software, a mobile software application developer, as the company further embraces selling via mobile.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Critical Path Software, a Portland, Oregon, company, has worked with eBay for over two years, most importantly developing its app for Apple Inc's iPhone, which eBay says has been downloaded more than 14 million times.

Other apps that Critical Path worked on include those for eBay's ticket site StubHub, eBay Classified and shopping site Shopping.com.

EBay -- which is striving to revive growth in its main marketplaces division, where buyers meet sellers -- is increasingly focused on mobile commerce, which can allow consumers to browse in stores and price compare on eBay.

The value of all goods sold via mobile at eBay was more than $600 million in 2009, and is expected to rise to $1.5 billion this year.

The company owns PayPal, a web payments system, which also allows consumers to pay via mobile. PayPal expects more than $500 million in mobile payment volume around the world for 2010.

(Reporting by Alexandria Sage, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Facebook to suggest friends to tag in users photos (AP)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 06:49 PM PST

– 2 hrs 39 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook will try to make it easier to identify friends in photos uploaded to the social networking site by using facial recognition software to suggest people that users may want to tag.

In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook engineer Justin Mitchell said the new tag-suggestions feature will match new photos to others that people have already been tagged in. Similar photos will be grouped and the software will let users know who it thinks is in the shots.

Palo Alto-based Facebook already offers a way to tag one person in a group of photos, and it hopes this will add more simplicity to the process.

Tag suggestions will be rolled out in the U.S. in the coming weeks. Users who don't want their name suggested can use the site's privacy settings to turn the feature off.

Mitchell said over 100 million tags are linked to photos on Facebook daily.

YouTube wants Web show maker Next New Networks: report (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 03:43 PM PST

– Wed Dec 15, 6:43 pm ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Google Inc's YouTube is in talks to buy Web show maker Next New Networks in what would be the video sharing site's first foray into content production, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The proposed price has not been disclosed, according to the New York Times, which cited two people briefed on the discussions.

Buying Next New Networks would make sense for YouTube, said ThinkEquity analyst Aaron Kessler, especially because YouTube has run into copyright problems with some professionally produced videos that people have added to the site.

"They're basically looking for more content they can monetize, especially if they can produce the content themselves," he said. "You don't want to go full bore into becoming a media company, which Google is not, but if you can selectively acquire a few properties, it makes sense."

Representatives for YouTube and New York-based Next New Networks declined comment.

YouTube has sought to increase its share of professionally produced content as it faces competition from the likes of Hulu, a joint venture whose backers include media companies News Corp, Walt Disney Co's ABC, and NBC, controlled by General Electric.

Viacom Inc sued YouTube for $1 billion, accusing the video site of allowing copyrighted videos to play online without permission. Earlier this year, a New York federal judge threw out the lawsuit.

Fred Seibert, CEO and co-founder of Next New Networks, was a creative director at Viacom-owned MTV, but not when the company sued YouTube.

Next New Networks began in 2007 and is behind the Web comedy show Barely Political and the online cartoon network Channel Frederator.

During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Barely Political won millions of online views of its comedy videos featuring "Obama Girl," a singing and dancing devotee of then presidential candidate Barack Obama.

This year, Next New Networks scored another online video hit with its parody "Bed Intruder Song," which was the top viewed entry of 2010 at YouTube.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

New Event Ticketing Site Applies Priceline Model to Buying Tickets [INVITES] (Mashable)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 02:21 PM PST

Jennifer Van Grove Jennifer Van Grove – Wed Dec 15, 5:21 pm ET

New event ticketing site ScoreBig is launching out of private beta today to offer members a Priceline approach for buying tickets. The members-only site lets users bid on sporting, music and theater tickets for the opportunity to save up to 70% off retail prices.

At launch, ScoreBig's ticket inventory includes more than 600,000 tickets available in markets across the country, though major metropolitan hubs such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York are likely to have the highest concentration of tickets.

Users can search or browse for tickets, select an event and then name their own price for a general seat area, with regions highlighted based on one to five star ratings. Bids are processed in real time, and ticket purchases are fee-free and include free delivery.

ScoreBig does work to help guide the user's expectations around what offers may or may not be accepted. Events are marked with red, orange and yellow tags to denote what percentage other users are saving. Plus, should a user place an extremely low bid, the site will show a low bid alert and allow the user to adjust the price. Once a bid is placed, accepted bids are immediately billed to the user's credit card, while rejected bids present the user with alternative "buy it now" offers.

The startup works with venues, sports teams, promoters, artists, entertainment properties and others to come by its unsold seat inventory and shares a percentage of its revenue on tickets sold with partners.

The idea behind ScoreBig is rather obvious, explains CEO and founder Adam Kanner, who says that industry folks wrestle with unsold inventory that exceeds hundreds of millions of tickets each year. ScoreBig is an idea whose time has come. There's yet to be a value market in the ticketing business, whereas the travel and apparel industries have their own liquidation or aggregation outlets, says Kanner.

Kanner, as a former VP for the NBA, speaks from industry experience and has surrounded himself with a team of veteran industry professionals also familiar with live ticketing sales.

ScoreBig has already already scored big with angel investors and venture capitalists, raising $2.5 million in a seed round and $6 million in a Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures for a total of $8.5 million raised pre-launch.

ScoreBig plans to maintain its members-only status for the foreseeable future, but 200 Mashable readers can get insider access by signing up here.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, sjlocke

Latest iPhone rumors sound a little fishy (Appolicious)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 10:47 AM PST

US and China announce series of trade agreements (AP)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 06:04 PM PST

– Wed Dec 15, 9:04 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration said Wednesday that two days of talks with a high-level delegation from China produced results that should benefit U.S. companies ranging from manufacturers of computer software and wind turbines to beef producers.

The agreements touched on areas that have been the source of sharp discord between the two nations, and which a series of U.S. administrations have failed to resolve. Those areas include rampant piracy of U.S. intellectual property and China's continued barriers to American beef.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told reporters he hopes this week's deals will set the stage for even more extensive agreements when Chinese President Hu Jintao visits Washington in January.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that the Chinese had agreed to allow American beef exports back into China on a staged basis and he hoped the first shipments would be made in early 2011. A team from the Department of Agriculture will visit China in early January in an effort to clear up remaining inspection issues, he said.

China imposed a ban on all beef imports from the United States over concerns about mad cow disease a number of years ago. Beijing later lifted the outright ban but the United States has been unable to overcome continued barriers involving the inspection of the beef.

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan, speaking through a translator, said that during this week's talks China reaffirmed its desire to allow the resumption of American beef imports from animals under the age of 30 months.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said he was happy with China's commitments to boost government spending in the area of software purchases as a way to cut down on the use of pirated software.

The U.S. side said that significant agreements had also been reached that should boost export sales by American wind turbine manufacturers and heavy equipment. In one agreement, China agreed to revise a catalog governments use to purchase heavy machinery and industrial machinery to make sure it does not discriminate against foreign suppliers.

The two countries also signed seven new deals covering such areas as agricultural trade, including U.S. soybean exports to China, and the promotion of investment in the United States.

The talks took place as the 21st session of the Joint Committee on Commerce and Trade, which was established in 1983, to provide a channel for both countries to address trade disputes. The panel does not cover one major area of disagreement at the moment, China's currency policy.

American manufacturers contend China is keeping its currency undervalued by as much as 40 percent to make Chinese goods cheaper in the United States and American products more expensive in China.

While the JCCT discussions did not cover currency, the administration said that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner did cover the issue in a separate meeting Tuesday with Wang.

The administration has been pressing the Chinese to move more quickly to allow the yuan to appreciate in value against the dollar. But since Beijing pledged increase currency flexibility in June, the yuan has risen in value by only about 3 percent.

The U.S. House passed legislation in September that would give the government more powers to impose tariffs against products from China and other countries found to be manipulating their currencies. The Senate has yet to take up the legislation although supporters are vowing to get a vote on the issue before lawmakers adjourn for the year.

IT Controls Configure Chrome Browser for Enterprises (NewsFactor)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 02:03 PM PST

Mark Long, newsfactor.com Mark Long, newsfactor.com – Wed Dec 15, 5:03 pm ET

Google has introduced new controls for its Chrome browser that will enable IT administrators to configure, customize and deploy the company's latest release in the enterprise space. The goal is to help businesses take advantage of Chrome's increased security, speed and enhanced capabilities, such as HTML5, while meeting each organization's specific business requirements.

For example, Google now offers an MSI installer that will enable IT administrators to use standard deployment tools to install Chrome for all managed users, noted Google Product Manager Glenn Wilson and Google software engineer Daniel Clifford. "And we're working hard on polishing the next set of policies that will make Google Chrome even more customizable and useful to users in the future," they wrote in a blog.

Policies and Templates

Over the past few months, Google has been testing Chrome with IT administrators in large organizations, from Vanguard and Boise State University to Proctor & Gamble and Google itself. "We have already successfully deployed Chrome to thousands of users," Wilson and Clifford wrote. "They've provided us with excellent feedback, and we're continuing to work on the next set of features that they've requested."

Google now offers several managed group policy controls, including a blacklist and whitelist for extensions, default home page and search criteria, and a password manager. IT administrators also will be able to choose how to specify proxy server settings as well as enable a variety of Chrome functions such as autofill, JavaScript and safe browsing.

What's more, the Internet search giant is providing enterprises with Chrome policy templates showing which registry keys can be set to configure the browser, and what the acceptable values would be. According to Google, Chrome relies on the values set in these registry keys to determine how to act.

Additionally, Google is encouraging businesses to check out the Chrome browser as a preview of what they can expect from the Google Chrome OS, which is slated to become available in the first half of next year. "Since Google Chrome is the same as the browser on Chrome OS, admins considering Chrome OS for their organizations can start testing their mission-critical web applications by deploying the Google Chrome browser," Wilson and Clifford wrote.

Prepping for Chrome OS

Earlier this month, Google and Citrix Systems explained how business professionals will be able to remotely access enterprise data and applications via the cloud, beginning in the first half of 2011.

"The best thing about this partnership is that it was absolutely customer-driven," said Citrix Senior Vice President Gordon Payne. "These are CIOs and organizations where Google has been out talking with the organizations and they suggested that we should partner together."

Their goal is to help corporations save money even as they secure sensitive business data by running all of an enterprise's applications behind a firewall in the data center. To enable this, laptops running Chrome OS will function as remote clients and the cloud will be the delivery platform.

"The way they get access to these applications is through the use of something called Citrix Receiver, which works on PCs, Macs, on just about every tablet, and every smartphone," Payne said. "So we have been working with Google engineers to make Citrix Receiver work very well with Chrome."

Citrix has approximately 250,000 customers around the world centralizing and delivering applications within their organizations from banks, retail outlets, and hospitals, to governments and manufacturing centers, Payne observed. Once Chrome OS launches, business users will be able to enjoy the same fast, secure and responsive experience no matter which Chrome-enabled client device they may be using at any given moment, he added.

Oracle Angles MySQL for Web Apps (PC World)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 01:10 PM PST

Joab Jackson Joab Jackson – Wed Dec 15, 4:10 pm ET

With the release of MySQL version 5.5, Oracle is marketing the open-source database for Web application duties, while targeting its namesake Oracle database for enterprise applications.

"We see them as being very distinct for different use cases," said Monica Kumar, Oracle senior director of product marketing.

On Wednesday, the company released version 5.5 of the open-source MySQL database, the first major upgrade to the software since Oracle acquired it when it purchased Sun Microsystems in January. Now that Oracle stewards two general-use relational database systems, it must distinguish where each one should be deployed in the enterprise.

"MySQL is a great database for Web-based applications, for custom departmental applications and for embedded uses. And the Oracle database is the leading enterprise database for high-end packaged applications: enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, online transaction processing, large data warehouses and business intelligence applications," Kumar said.

"The two products complement each other and fill in a variety of use cases," Kumar said.

Which is not to say you couldn't use the Oracle database for Web applications, but historically MySQL has been mostly used with the Web, Kumar said. She mentioned how MySQL is part of the LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Python/Perl) stack, which is widely used for deploying websites and Web applications. "It's been very successful in the Web-based application space," she said.

Another consideration for choosing mySQL over Oracle in the Web space is personnel. In many cases, a LAMP administrator would be more familiar with MySQL than with the Oracle namesake database, said Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL engineering. "It makes it easier to run with MySQL if for no other reason than the actual developer is used to MySQL."

In addition to the usual round of bug fixes and general tweaks, the newly released 5.5 version of the software also features a number of significant features and capabilities. Chief among those is better scalability and improved replication.

In terms of performance, the software doesn't slow as dramatically as it once did when it handles a large number of concurrent connections. For Web servers that may accept up to 1,000 connections at once, this can be a welcome addition. The software can also offer additional performance gains when increasing the number of server cores beyond four, which previous versions were unable to do.

General performance has been improved as well. In internal benchmarks, Oracle showed that MySQL 5.5 showed a 360 percent improvement in reads and writes over version 5.1 running on Linux. On Windows Server machines, that performance gain jumped over 1,500 percent. "We get higher throughput in general with 5.5," Ulin said.

In terms of replication, the software now includes the ability to do semi-synchronous replications. Previous versions only offered asynchronous replications, meaning the backup copy of the database would not be updated as soon as new data was entered to the original.

"Once you've committed something on the master side, you couldn't be sure when it would get to the slave side," Ulin said. With semi-synchronous replication, the application committing data to the database doesn't receive confirmation that the data has been entered until it has also been copied to the backup database as well.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

New MapQuest site shows US maps for, by the people (AP)

Posted: 15 Dec 2010 09:02 PM PST

By CATHERINE TSAI, Associated Press Catherine Tsai, Associated Press – 26 mins ago

DENVER – MapQuest is diving farther into crowdsourcing, with online maps edited by the people, for the people.

The AOL Inc. subsidiary is launching a separate website Thursday where people can chime in with corrections and additions to MapQuest's U.S. maps and label previously unmarked destinations like specific rides at Disneyland or swing sets at their neighborhood parks.

The open-source mapping site lets users report errors, or they can register to be map contributors to suggest and make changes themselves. Maps at http://open.mapquest.com update every 15 minutes, and directions to newly marked spots are available within 24 hours. MapQuest says rogue editors would be policed by the community.

Denver-based MapQuest has been launching similar capabilities since July for maps of specific countries by using OpenStreetMap data and popular open-sourcing mapping software. OpenStreetMap is an editable world map with thousands of contributors. In one of OpenStreetMap's recent, high-profile efforts, volunteers in Haiti after the devastating earthquake in January mapped camps and downed bridges to help aid workers get help where it was needed.

The idea is to create richer mapping data for people who would like to develop location-based applications using MapQuest.

"We would like to 'out-open' Google," MapQuest general manager Christian Dwyer said.

Google Inc.'s Map Maker lets "citizen cartographers" sign in to draw and edit maps in more than 150 countries and territories, particularly in the developing world, but it hasn't launched those capabilities for the U.S. yet. Community-edited suggestions eventually can make their way onto Google Maps.

Everyday users of Google Maps also can report errors. It can sometimes take about a month for Google to vet suggestions.

Eventually, http://open.mapquest.com and MapQuest's main site might merge into one, but that could be at least a few years away, Dwyer said.

MapQuest is hoping to re-establish its relationship in the developer community, allow new applications to be built and attract the best engineers to the company at a time when Facebook, Google and Microsoft Corp. are all going after top talent, Dwyer said.

MapQuest claims about a 45 percent market share in online mapping, making it the No. 2 player behind Google. People visit MapQuest.com about 2.5 times a month, but MapQuest's goal is to become part of people's daily lives, Dwyer said.
at 9:38 PM

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