Sponsoer by :

Monday, June 13, 2011

Google strikes deal to add Admeld to arsenal (AP) : Technet

Sponsored

Google strikes deal to add Admeld to arsenal (AP) : Technet

Google strikes deal to add Admeld to arsenal (AP)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:18 PM PDT

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke, Ap Technology Writer – Mon Jun 13, 6:18 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Google Inc. has struck a deal to buy Admeld, a service that helps websites make more money from online advertising.

The agreement announced Monday positions Google to add another potentially valuable weapon to its advertising arsenal. Google already sells the most advertising on the Internet. The company's total ad revenue is expected to surpass $30 billion this year — greater than the entire U.S. newspaper industry.

For that reason, the proposed acquisition of Admeld may face more regulatory scrutiny than most deals of its size do.

Financial terms of the Admeld agreement weren't disclosed, an indication that Google isn't paying a high enough price for the proposed acquisition to be considered a major financial event.

Founded three years ago, privately held Admeld employs about 100 workers at its New York headquarters and other offices in San Francisco, London, Berlin and Toronto.

Admeld's service is focused on marketing campaigns that promote brands and typically feature imagery. The format is known as display advertising, an area where Google Inc. has been gaining market share since its $3.2 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. in 2008.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission spent a year examining the DoubleClick deal, still the largest acquisition in Google's 13-year history.

Google has been building its display advertising business to supplement its dominance of Internet search and the text-based ads that run alongside search results as well as other Web content.

The diversification has been working out so well that the research firm IDC said Google surpassed the Internet's long-time display advertising leader, Yahoo Inc., during the first three months of this year. IDC estimated Google held 14.7 percent of the U.S. online display ad market in the first quarter, followed by Yahoo at 12.3 percent and Facebook at 8.8 percent.

"Together with Admeld, we hope to make display advertising simpler, more efficient and more valuable," Neal Mohan, Google's vice president of display advertising, wrote in a Monday post on Google's blog.

Admeld works with websites to help them figure out how to make the most money from the amount of space they have available to show display ads. Its list of customers includes News Corp., IAC/InterActiveCorp., Thomson Reuters Corp. and Pandora Media Inc., which is preparing to go public this week.

Google didn't specify a timetable for closing the Admeld acquisition. The company's executives have repeatedly said they expect regulators around the world to take more time poring over how Google's acquisitions might affect competition on the Internet.

The intensified scrutiny hasn't curbed Google's appetite for acquisitions. Since the end of 2009, Google has spent more than $2.6 billion buying more than 60 companies.

APNewsBreak: Study advised US on Libya hacking (AP)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 08:55 AM PDT

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press – Mon Jun 13, 11:55 am ET

LONDON – Private computer experts advised U.S. officials on how cyberattacks could damage Libya's oil and gas infrastructure and rob Moammar Gadhafi's regime of crucial oil revenue, according to a study obtained by hackers.

It remains unclear who commissioned "Project Cyber Dawn" and how much of a role the U.S. government played in it, but it shows the increasing amount of work being done by private companies in exposing foreign governments' vulnerabilities to cyber attack.

"For the private sector to be making recommendations ... that's a level of ambition that you would not have seen until very recently," said Eli Jellenc, a cyber security expert with VeriSign Inc. who is not linked to the study or its authors.

The study outlined ways to disable the coastal refinery at Ras Lanouf using a computer virus similar to the Stuxnet worm that led to a breakdown in Iran's enrichment program late last year. It catalogued several pieces of potentially exposed computer hardware used at the refinery.

The study was discussed in some of nearly 1,000 emails stolen by hacking group Lulz Security from Delaware-based Internet surveillance firm Unveillance, LLC as part of an effort to show how vulnerable data can be. Most of the emails detail the day-to-day trivia of running a small technology startup, but others concern an effort to scout out vulnerabilities in Gadhafi's electronic infrastructure.

Cyberwarfare has assumed an increasingly high profile following dramatic computer attacks on Google, Inc., U.S. defense contractors and the IMF. This month, the Pentagon is expected to release policy on whether some cyber attacks should be considered acts of war and when a U.S. cyber attack might be justified.

Project Cyber Dawn was put together by the Cyber Security Forum Initiative, a group whose membership includes military officials, academics and business leaders. Unveillance Chief Executive Karim Hijazi was one of the report's 21 co-authors, among them forum founder Paul de Souza and Jeffrey Bardin, a former NSA code breaker.

The group posted a redacted version of the study online on May 25, around the time that Hijazi realized his emails had been compromised, but by then the unredacted version was already online.

Bardin declined to answer specific questions about the unredacted version of the study. He acknowledged in a blog that it was circulated to "defense and intel types" but he refused to go into any further detail when contacted by email, saying only that he and his colleagues "are proud of the work we did."

Through a representative, Hijazi referred questions about the report to de Souza, who in a statement said it was aimed at "educating the international community" about the risks of an attack on the industrial control systems at oil refineries in Libya.

But the recommendations are apparently addressed to American officials and contain suggestions on how U.S. intelligence could best spy on the current or any future Libyan administration. Despite repeated emails, de Souza did not clarify how such advice would be useful to an international audience.

The authors of Cyber Dawn argued that something similar to the Stuxnet attack on Iran could be done in Libya, noting that German engineering conglomerate Siemens AG — whose software system was exploited by Stuxnet — has played an important role in projects across the North African country.

At Ras Lanouf, which has the capacity to handle 220,000 barrels of oil per day, the report identified the computers involved in running the refinery's power plant as vulnerable because some were the same Siemens-brand hardware as the kind used in Iran. A Germany-based spokesman for Siemens didn't return an email seeking comment.

Ras Lanouf remains under Gadhafi's control, and, as the Libyan civil war drags on, governments might see a cyberattack on such a facility as a discreet and bloodless way of cutting into Gadhafi's oil revenue.

It remains unclear who was briefed about Cyber Dawn, and whether any of its ideas were taken onboard.

Several of the leaked emails suggest that the report was circulated among Pentagon officials, presidential staffers, and a group at the ODNI, presumably the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"Our final report will make it to the White House," Bardin wrote in one of the emails.

But senior defense officials told The Associated Press they were unaware of the study. Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe internal discussions, said the Department of Defense gets unsolicited reports all the time, and that some of them may be reviewed by staff.

U.S. government cybersecurity experts would not comment on what, if any, hacking operations are being waged against the Gadhafi regime.

___

Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Officially released version of Project Cyber Dawn: http://ow.ly/5bSIj (.pdf)

Bardin's explanation of Cyber Dawn: http://ow.ly/5cPOO

Unveillance statement on the hack: http://ow.ly/5cPMJ

Cyber Security Forum Initiative: http://www.csfi.us/

___

Raphael G. Satter can be reached at: http://twitter.com/razhael

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Just Show Me: How to use Spaces on your MacBook (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 08:57 PM PDT

By Barb Dybwad, Tecca barb Dybwad, Tecca – 54 mins ago

Welcome to Just Show Me on Tecca TV, where we give you tips and tricks for getting the most out of the gadgets in your life. In today's episode we'll walk you through using Spaces on your MacBook.

Spaces is a great feature of Mac OS X that lets you have up to 16 virtual desktops on your computer. You can quickly switch between these desktops — letting you have one desktop for work stuff, one for browsing the internet, and even one for games.

As usual, if you have any requests for something you'd like Just Show Me to cover, we want to know about them! Please be sure to let us know what you want to know in the comments.

Just Show Me tech how-to videos

U.S. government building global “shadow internet” to undermine web censorship (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 07:05 PM PDT

By Taylor Hatmaker, Tecca taylor Hatmaker, Tecca – 2 hrs 47 mins ago

Shadow internet

The next time a dictatorial political leader flips a nation's internet "off switch", a full-fledged web blackout could be next to impossible. According to a stash of classified documents obtained by The New York Times, the Obama administration is actively building a network of covert, alternative internet sources to preserve open web channels around the globe for just such a case.

The U.S. effort will cobble together diverse technologies to create a so-called global "shadow internet", investing in both cutting-edge innovations — like an unassuming $2 million "internet in a suitcase" that could be smuggled across borders  — to decentralized homemade networks created by free speech-minded hackers.

During a political uprising in January, now-ousted former President Hosni Mubarak set a censorship precedent, turning off Egypt's web to hush protest efforts calling for his resignation. Since Mubarak's disruptive stunt, total web shutdowns have been enacted by the ruling governments in both Libya and Syria during similar political uprisings.

Robot videos

Obama steps up pressure on Weiner to resign (Reuters)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 05:48 PM PDT

By Thomas Ferraro Thomas Ferraro – Mon Jun 13, 8:48 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama ramped up pressure on Monday on Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner to step down, calling his Internet sex scandal a distraction from the work that Washington needs to get done.

"I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign," Obama told NBC News shortly before the House of Representatives, without opposition, granted Weiner a two-week leave of absence while the New York congressman gets professional treatment.

Weiner, 46, has defied mounting calls from other leaders of his own party to step down after his belated admission last week that he sent online messages and lewd photos of himself to at least a half dozen women and lied about it.

Weiner's refusal to resign has angered Democrats, who say his inappropriate online exchanges with women have hurt the party as it looks ahead toward next year's elections when it will seek to win back the House from Republicans.

The congressman said through an aide over the weekend that rather than immediately step down he would seek a leave of absence from the House and treatment at an undisclosed facility.

"We think this is a distraction obviously from the important business that this president needs to conduct and Congress needs to conduct," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One as Obama headed to North Carolina to talk to business leaders about invigorating the conomy.

Later Monday, Obama told NBC, when asked about Weiner, "Public service is exactly that, it's a service to the public."

"When you get to the point where -- because of various personal distractions, you can't serve as effectively as you need to at the time when people are worrying about jobs, and their mortgages, and paying the bills -- then you should probably step back," the president said in his first comments on the matter.

Obama's trip on Monday to North Carolina was part of a stepped-up effort by the White House to show voters that he remains focused on job creation.

WEINER'S DAYS NUMBERED?

With the White House accusing Weiner of being an unwarranted distraction for the president, the fiery liberal may find it difficult to stay on.

Weiner, who was re-elected last November with 61 percent of the vote in his congressional district, has said his behavior was wrong but that he violated no laws.

It is unclear what, if anything, Congress can do to force Weiner to step down. A poll last week showed that most of his constituents think he should remain in his job.

The full House could vote to expel Weiner. But such punishment would be highly unusual unless it is found that he violated criminal law, not just the chamber's rules.

The House returned on Monday from a week-long recess, and the chamber's Democrats were to meet on Tuesday, with Weiner likely a chief topic.

A Democratic aide said they could pass a resolution urging Weiner to resign. While it would not be binding, it would show that Weiner faces a solid wall of opposition in his own party.

The Democratic caucus could also strip Weiner of his committee assignments and even tell him that he is no longer welcome at their meetings, the aide said. He now serves on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has requested an ethics probe to determine what, if any, House rules Weiner may have broken. The probe could take months, even up to a year.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick; editing by Will Dunham)

Obama says he would resign if he were Weiner (AP)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 06:35 PM PDT

By LARRY MARGASAK and ANDREW MIGA, Associated Press Larry Margasak And Andrew Miga, Associated Press – Mon Jun 13, 9:35 pm ET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, increasing pressure on Rep. Anthony Weiner to quit, said Monday that "I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign."

In a rare foray into a congressman's ethical conduct, Obama told NBC's "Today" show that Weiner's sexually charged photos and messages online to several women were "highly inappropriate."

"I think he's embarrassed himself. He's acknowledged that. He's embarrassed his wife and his family. Ultimately, there's gonna be a decision for him and is constituents. I can tell you that, if it was me, I would resign," the president said in an interview to air Tuesday morning.

Obama said public service "is exactly that, it's a service to the public. And when you get to the point where, because of various personal distractions, you can't serve as effectively as you need to at the time when people are worrying about jobs, and their mortgages, and paying the bills, then you should probably step back."

Weiner spokeswoman Risa Heller had no comment on Obama's remarks.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has called for Weiner to quit, as have several other Democrats including party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The House Ethics Committee on Monday began a preliminary inquiry that could bloom into a full investigation if Weiner, a New York Democrat, ignores calls to resign.

House officials told The Associated Press that the ethics inquiry is not yet extensive, and committee leaders have not indicated whether they will order a more intensive staff investigation. The officials requested anonymity because the committee has not announced the staff inquiry.

If Weiner did resign, the committee would no longer have jurisdiction to investigate him. If he remained in Congress, Ethics Committee Chairman Jo Bonner of Alabama and ranking Democrat Linda Sanchez of California could name a four-member subcommittee to conduct a more thorough investigation. That could lead to an ethics trial.

The Ethics Committee is not designed as a quick-reaction force when a scandal erupts. An investigation could last months, even longer, if the case became legally complicated and Weiner decided to mount a full defense.

If the committee decides that a member violated the rules, its options include issuing a written rebuke, recommending the House vote to censure the lawmaker or recommending expelling the member by a two-thirds majority.

Congress returned to work Monday as Weiner began a leave of absence while seeking treatment for an undisclosed disorder at an undisclosed location. House members can seek leaves of absence, which are routinely granted, and the House approved without objection a two-week leave for Weiner at the close of legislative business Monday night.

The Weiner scandal, heading into its third week, has been a huge embarrassment to Democrats, who are eager to put the controversy behind them.

Weiner is expected to be a dominant topic when House Democrats meet Tuesday morning. They could try to oust Weiner from the caucus or try to strip him of his committee assignment on the Energy and Commerce panels.

Weiner's vow to seek treatment and to work to repair his tattered reputation did little to ease the furor.

Republicans suggested that Pelosi was not tough enough on Weiner. Michael Steel, a press aide to House Speaker John Boehner, said in an email that Weiner's intention to seek a leave of absence "puts the focus" on Pelosi.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., who has called for Weiner to resign, said if Weiner does not leave, Democrats should consider taking away his committee assignments.

Readers "jump into" classics in publishing venture (Reuters)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 04:06 PM PDT

G4 Android app a great source of information for gamers and tech fans (Appolicious)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 04:00 PM PDT

Facebook lost US users in May: website (AFP)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 07:18 PM PDT

– 2 hrs 33 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Facebook is approaching 700 million members but its growth is slowing and it lost users in the United States and Canada last month, the Inside Facebook website said.

Facebook had 687 million members at the start of June, said Inside Facebook, which closely tracks developments and trends at the Palo Alto, California-based social network.

Facebook itself does not regularly release membership figures except to announce milestones such as when it crossed 500 million users in July of last year.

Inside Facebook said overall growth at the social networking giant "has been lower than normal for the second month straight, which is unusual."

Facebook gained 11.8 million members in May and 13.9 million in April -- down from the usual 20 million new users a month seen in previous months, it said.

"While there have been a few months that have registered lower growth numbers, they have not been back to back," it said.

The United States lost nearly six million users in May, Inside Facebook said, falling from 155.2 million at the start of May to 149.4 million at the end of it.

Canadian users fell 1.52 million to 16.6 million during the month and Britain, Norway and Russia all posted losses of more than 100,000, Inside Facebook said.

Comcast to sell Skype box for video calls (AP)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:16 PM PDT

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson, Ap Technology Writer – Mon Jun 13, 6:16 pm ET

NEW YORK – Comcast subscribers: In the future, believing that the TV is talking to you might not be a sign of insanity. You may be getting a Skype video call.

Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable company, is set to announce Tuesday that it plans to bring Skype calls to TV sets later this year.

Subscribers will then be able to rent a kit from Comcast that includes a webcam and an adapter that plugs into the TV. A new cable box remote will include a keyboard on the back, for typing chat messages.

Philadelphia-based Comcast hasn't yet figured out what to charge for the kit, according to Catherine Avgiris, general manager of communications and data services.

Financial terms of the partnership between Comcast and Skype were not disclosed. Comcast wouldn't say whether Skype would get some of what Comcast charges for the kit.

Subscribers will get notifications of incoming calls on their TVs and will be able to answer calls with full-screen video or in a window while watching TV.

Comcast plans to start trials of the system in the next few months. It has 17.4 million Internet subscribers.

Many high-end TVs already come with the ability to conduct Skype calls. Buyers usually have to add a Webcam for $150, but neither the TV maker nor Skype charge a monthly fee.

"We've seen an explosion, already, in the use of Skype in the living room," said Neil Stevens, general manager of consumer services at Skype.

Cisco Systems Inc. launched a home videoconferencing device and service last year, but quickly had to cut the $599 price and $24.95 monthly fee, apparently because of weak demand. It later scaled back its marketing plans too, as part of a companywide shift away from consumer devices.

Comcast's Skype adapter won't work with Skype services that let users call phone numbers, or receive calls to a phone number. Instead, Comcast plans to bundle a limited version of Skype's offerings with its own phone service, for which it charges $20 per month and up, to the adapter, so subscribers can place and receive phone calls through the TV set. That's a feature it plans to add later, according to Comcast spokesman Peter Dobrow.

Skype, which is based in Luxembourg, has agreed to be bought by Microsoft Corp., the world's biggest software maker, for $8.5 billion in a deal expected to close by the end of the year.

___

Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

iPhone 5 rumor of the day: Apple in final testing stage for September release (Appolicious)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 02:01 PM PDT

Analysts help Boingo rebound (Investor's Business Daily)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 03:17 PM PDT

– Mon Jun 13, 6:17 pm ET

Boingo Wireless (NASDAQ:WIFI - News) leapt 32% to 10.11 on positive remarks by its chief executive and analysts. CEO Dave Hagan believes that within 5 years every fast-food restaurant, stadium and mall will have WiFi access, and told Dow Jones News that Boingo will provide 40% of that service. Separately, 4 underwriters of Boingo's May 4 IPO initiated coverage with their top ratings. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Pacific Crest set price targets of $13-$15. Boingo debuted at $13.50, but fell to $7.41 last week.

TiVo Revamps Set-Top Boxes, Unveils Quad-Tuner DVR (PC Magazine)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 10:35 AM PDT

Will Greenwald - PC Magazine Will Greenwald - Pc Magazine – Mon Jun 13, 1:35 pm ET

In a surprise announcement yesterday, TiVo revealed two new set-top boxes that both take the TiVo DVR concept to the next level. The TiVo Premiere Q stands as TiVo's first quad-tuner DVR, while the TiVo Preview is, surprisingly, the company's first non-DVR set-top box.

The TiVo Premiere Q features four cable tuners, allowing it to record up to four shows or movies at a time and still display up to three more HD video streams over a locally networked source. According to TiVo, it's the only set-top box currently available that bridges MoCA (multimedia over coaxial) and Ethernet networks, letting users watch media over both network types. This is a useful feature for users and installers planning to integrate a TiVo into a home that uses a MoCA network for media and Ethernet for computers (which often have their own library of media), and can easily fit into a home that uses either network type exclusively for their media.

The TiVo Preview drops the DVR feature in favor of portability and price. As an HD TiVo receiver, it can play content from a TiVo Premiere or TiVo Premiere Q over a network, and like the Premiere Q, supports both MoCA and Ethernet networking. It also supports cable providers' video-on-demand services, making it a functional set-top box for rooms outside of the main home theater room in a house.

TiVo will only offer the TiVo Premiere Q and TiVo Preview through certain cable providers, so pricing and availability has not been announced. As many cable and satellite providers offer their own DVR service, this seems like a natural evolution for TiVo: distribute its hardware through cable companies to directly compete with the set-top boxes already offered by these companies. If a user is unwilling to purchase a TiVo and pay a separate service charge beyond his cable or satellite service, he might be willing to pay a small premium with his service, as part of the same bill, for the TiVo brand and experience.

Apple to sell new Macbook Air late this month: report (Reuters)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 07:44 PM PDT

– 2 hrs 7 mins ago

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Apple Inc will start selling its latest Macbook Air in late June with 380,000 units as the first shipment, Taiwan's Economic Daily said on Tuesday quoting industry sources.

The newspaper said together with the existing model of Macbook Air, 460,000 units were expected to be shipped this month.

In Taiwan, Quanta Computer, the world's top PC contract maker who manufactures for Apple surged 2.5 percent by mid-session on Tuesday after the report. Catcher Technology which does casings for Apple, rose as much, jumping 1.9 percent.

The Economic Daily also reported that the iPad3 scheduled to be launched in the fourth quarter would have image resolution 5-6 times higher than iPad2.

(Reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

iOS 5 can export video in 1080p, suggests high-res camera for iPhone 5 (Appolicious)

Posted: 13 Jun 2011 10:33 AM PDT

Citigroup to close CVCI Japan office: sources (Reuters)

Posted: 12 Jun 2011 09:31 PM PDT

– Mon Jun 13, 12:31 am ET

TOKYO (Reuters) – Citigroup (C.N) will close its Japan office for Citi Venture Capital International as the high-growth focused fund management firm has failed to find any attractive investments, two people with direct knowledge of the closure said.

Citi Venture Capital International, which manages $7 billion in equity investments and committed capital, opened its Japan office in September 2006.

A Tokyo-based Citigroup spokeswoman declined to comment.

CVCI has been active in other parts of Asia and investments include India's BGR energy Systems (BGRE.NS), a power projects firm, and Belgium-based Hansen Transmissions International NV (HSNT.L) which also has operations in India, according to its website.

This month CVCI invested in Israel's Ness Technologies Inc (NSTC.TA) (NSTC.O), an information technology service provider, for about $307 million in cash.

(Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
at 10:02 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

My Blog List