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Put a cork in the Internet bubble talk — for now (AP) : Technet |
- Put a cork in the Internet bubble talk — for now (AP)
- Internet braces for '.Vegas' and other not-coms (AP)
- Beyond '.com,' names for Antarctica, Urdu and more (AP)
- Spam epidemic has reached ebooks, shocking no one (Yahoo! News)
- Are search engines a spy’s best friend? (Yahoo! News)
- Revolutionary Mobile Search Queries Apps Instead of the Web (Mashable)
- Ceglia passed polygraph test in Facebook case: lawyers (Reuters)
- Netflix, Time Warner sued by deaf groups (Reuters)
- Spam storm clogs the Kindle self-publishing platform (Digital Trends)
- New Nexus Phone from Google Could Offer LTE (NewsFactor)
- Police say Colorado mom on Facebook when toddler died (Reuters)
- Netflix temporarily loses rights to Sony movies (Digital Trends)
- Photo apps finding plenty of competition from unlikely sources (Appolicious)
- Finding a photo-sharing platform for you (Digital Trends)
- Spotify finally making US debut (Digital Trends)
- Facebook Is Finally Preparing an App for Apple's iPad (NewsFactor)
- Oracle wants a big piece of Android’s ad revenue (Appolicious)
- LulzSec Explains Itself, Sort Of (The Atlantic Wire)
| Put a cork in the Internet bubble talk — for now (AP) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 02:01 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO – It's starting to feel like a 1999 flashback. Internet companies — some of them profitable, some not — sense a golden opportunity and are lining up to go public this year. But here's something to keep in mind as the latest case of Internet fever grips Wall Street: It's still nowhere close to the giddy days of the dot-com boom, when investors bought stocks as impulsively as lottery tickets. Technology stocks today are the cheapest in more than nine years, at least judging by one benchmark for appraising companies. This year could yield the most initial public offerings of technology stocks since 2000. But the venture capitalists who bankroll high-tech startups aren't pouring money into the Internet like they once did. And even rapidly growing Internet companies LinkedIn Corp. and Pandora Media Inc. have lost some of their luster after dazzling investors when they went public in recent weeks. All those factors signal that cooler heads are prevailing, especially with the global economy on shaky ground. So far this year, 28 of the 74 IPOs completed in the U.S. have been by technology companies, according to IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital. If, as expected, another 31 tech IPOs are completed by the end this year, it will be the most from the sector since 2000. The growing enthusiasm for Internet services reflects how far the Internet has come since the dot-com boom. An estimated 2 billion people worldwide have Web access now, about eight times as many as in 2000. High-speed Internet connections have become common, turning the Web into an entertainment center as well as an information hub. And mobile devices have made it possible to stay connected from almost anywhere at any time. "I don't see a bubble," venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, best known as founder of the pioneering Web browser Netscape, told The Associated Press in March. Andreessen has investments scattered all over the Internet, mostly in companies that are steadily increasing their revenue. Some of them are even profitable, virtually unheard of during the late 1990s. That's why he thinks it's logical for more money to be flowing into one of the most promising parts of the U.S. economy. "I think people are confusing success with a bubble," Andreessen said. "Maybe stuff is just working." But well-established technology companies, including many that helped build the Internet into what it is today, have fallen out of favor. To gauge just how far, consider the price-to-earnings, or P/E, ratio of technology stocks in the bellwether Standard & Poor's 500 index. The P/E number divides a company's stock price by its earnings per share. The higher the P/E, the more likely a stock is overvalued by the market. Based on earnings reported for the past year, the figure for S&P 500 tech stocks is 14.1, the lowest since March 2002. Before the Great Recession started in December 2007, it was 25.4. Before the Internet bubble blew up, it was 66.4. Even Google, the Internet's most profitable company, hasn't been getting any love of late. Though its earnings are still rising at a robust rate, the company's stock has fallen more than $100, or 18 percent, so far this year. LinkedIn, which runs a site for professional networking, triggered talk of another dot-com boom when its shares more than doubled in its stock market debut. LinkedIn was minted with a market value of $9 billion, the highest for an Internet company since Google went public in 2004. Then Pandora Media, an Internet radio station, doubled the target price for its IPO because of such intense demand. At the end of its first day of trading Wednesday, Pandora had a market value of $2.8 billion — more than AOL Inc., which had a market value of more than $160 billion in early 2000. Pandora stock fell below its IPO price of $16 in its second day on the market, suggesting investors were having second thoughts about a company that still hasn't turned a profit despite building an audience of 94 million. In another indication of sobriety, LinkedIn's stock has lost more than a quarter of its value since its first day of trading. The caution may be short-lived, though. Online coupon seller Groupon Inc. has filed plans for an IPO that has analysts wondering whether its market value will exceed $25 billion — even higher than Google on the day it went public. Groupon's revenue is growing at a much faster rate than Google's was when it went public. Unlike Google, though, Groupon has been losing money — $413 million last year. When Groupon executives start meeting with prospective IPO investors, they could face questions about why the company's insiders decided to sell so many shares of what is supposed to be a great stock. Since April 2010, the insiders sold $860 million of stock, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The sales generated windfalls of $382 million for Groupon co-founder Eric Lekofsky and $28 million for co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason. Both men remain among Groupon's largest shareholders. The company's IPO is expected in September or October. Other highly anticipated Internet IPOs on the horizon include Zynga, the maker of popular Web games such as "CityVille," and Facebook, which, with an audience of more than 500 million users, makes it the most likely candidate to turn the current Internet fever into delirium. Facebook, which was founded seven years ago in a Harvard University dorm room and could go public by next spring, has already been valued by private investors at $85 billion. ___ AP Business Writer Chip Cutter and AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report. |
| Internet braces for '.Vegas' and other not-coms (AP) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 03:38 PM PDT WASHINGTON – Coming soon to the Internet: website addresses that end in ".bank," ".Vegas" and ".Canon." The organization that oversees the Internet address system is preparing to open the floodgates to a nearly limitless selection of new website suffixes, including ones in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts. That could usher in the most sweeping transformation of the Domain Name System since its creation in the 1980s. More than 300 suffixes are available today, the bulk of them country-code domains, such as ".uk" for the United Kingdom and ".de" for Germany. Hundreds or even thousands more suffixes could be created, categorized by everything from industry to geography to ethnicity. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will meet Monday in Singapore (Sunday evening in the U.S.) to vote on its expansion plan for domain names. If ICANN approves the plan as expected, new domains could start appearing late next year. The new system could bring innovative branding opportunities and allow all sorts of niche communities to thrive online. But businesses worry that they'll have to grab their brand names before others do. New suffixes could also create confusion as consumers navigate a Web with unfamiliar labels. It's also possible that the new names won't make much difference because many people these days rely on search engines and mobile applications to find what they are looking for online. Consumers don't type Web addresses into browsers nearly as much as they did 15 years ago when talk of a domain name expansion began. "Most people don't pay a lot of attention to website addresses anyway these days," said Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land, a website that covers the search industry. From a technical standpoint, domain names tell computers on the Internet where to find a website or send an email message. Without them, people would have to remember clunky numerals such as "165.1.59.220" for "ap.org." The monikers have grown to mean much more, however. Amazon.com Inc. has built its brand on its website address, while bloggers take pride in running sites with their own domain names. ICANN has already allowed two major expansions of the addressing system. In 2000, it approved seven new domains, including ".info" and ".biz." It began accepting new bids again in 2004. It has approved and added seven from that round, including ".xxx" for pornography sites this past March. Under the expansion plan now before ICANN, future applications would be streamlined and open to all companies, organizations and individuals. That has set off a virtual land rush. Organizations that operate new suffixes will be able to collect registration fees from websites that want names. The fees could add up to millions of dollars a year if a website is popular enough. A group of entrepreneurs in Las Vegas is vying to operate a ".Vegas" suffix. They have the city's endorsement and consider ".Vegas" a way to unify local merchants, entertainment venues, residents and even businesses beyond Sin City. Former professional hockey player Ron Andruff is working with international sports federations to bid for ".sport." He expects sports leagues, teams, athletes, equipment makers and fans to want websites with a suffix that defines them better. Two groups — one backed by the Sierra Club and the other by Greenpeace and other environmental organization — are separately seeking the right to operate a ".eco" suffix. Big business will stake claims, too. Printer and camera maker Canon Inc. plans to apply for ".Canon". Trade groups for bankers and financial-services companies are working together to explore bids for ".bank", ".insure" and ".invest" for their member companies. New domains offer fresh branding possibilities for companies to identify themselves online in "a more relevant or a more localized" way, said Pat Kane, a senior vice president at VeriSign Inc., which operates ".com" and ".net." Although suffixes added over the past decade haven't been as popular as ".com," there has been demand for an expansion because nearly all of the most desirable ".com" addresses have been taken. There are more than 94 million registered under ".com." The thinking is that new businesses setting up shop online might prefer a simple name that ends in ".bank" rather than "TheBankDownTheStreetFromTheSupermarket.com." The expansion plan before ICANN had been delayed, however, largely because of concerns that new suffixes could infringe on trademarks and copyrights. There's also worry that new suffixes could deceive consumers, create new platforms for hate groups or lead to website addresses ending in obscenities. ICANN spent years crafting guidelines and creating procedures for objecting to applications. ICANN already has approved rules for some countries to claim suffixes that spell their names in languages other than English. The new plan opens that up to Chinese and Arabic versions of ".bank" and ".sport" as well. It won't be cheap to operate a domain name suffix. The application fee is $185,000, and winners will have to pay $25,000 annually after that. Disputes are likely as different groups go after the same domain. ICANN may auction off domains if multiple parties have legitimate claims. Legal fees could also pile up as trademark owners and governments file objections to certain applications. Trademark holders, in particular, fear they would have to register a lot of addresses they don't need or want simply to keep others from using them. Microsoft Corp., for instance, would not want websites addresses such as "Microsoft.software" and "Microsoft.computer" used to commit fraud or sell pirated goods. Copyright owners, too, worry they would have to devote more resources to fighting online piracy with a proliferation of websites ending in ".movies" and ".music" that distribute copyrighted content illegally. ICANN has crafted rules meant to give trademark owners a first shot at claiming their brands. It would also have a process to quickly disable addresses that are clear violations. But Steven Metalitz, a lawyer for a coalition of movie studios, recording labels and other copyright holders, fears ICANN won't be aggressive enough in enforcing the rules. Still, supporters of the expansion believe it will create opportunities. Juan Diego Calle, whose company operates the existing ".co" suffix, said that with more alternatives available, more businesses and groups will see that they can set up shop online with a catchy, easy-to-remember website that doesn't end in ".com." |
| Beyond '.com,' names for Antarctica, Urdu and more (AP) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 02:23 PM PDT Unless you're a Luddite, you're bound to know of ".com," the Internet's most common address suffix. You've also probably heard of ".gov," for U.S. government sites, and ".edu," for educational institutions. Did you know Antarctica has its own suffix, too? It's ".aq." The aviation industry has ".aero" and porn sites have ".xxx." There's ".asia" for the continent, plus suffixes for individual countries such as Thailand (".th") and South Korea (".kr"). Thailand and Korea also have addresses in Thai and Korean. There are currently 310 domain name suffixes — the ".com" part of Web and email addresses. Now, the organization that oversees the system is poised to accept hundreds or thousands more. Possibilities include ".invest" and ".Canon." In the early days of the Internet, each computer network simply had its own name. A hierarchical naming structure called the Domain Name System was created in the mid-1980s as the Internet grew. With such a system, Columbia University could have "Columbia.edu" and Columbia Sportsware Co. could have "Columbia.com." The Columbia Foundation could have "Columbia.org." The system began with scores of country-specific domains and a handful of generic ones, including ".com," ".gov" and ".mil." International organizations got ".int" a few years later, in 1988. That was largely the system in place until 2000. That was when the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, formed just two years earlier to oversee the address system, approved the creation of seven names, including ".info," ".aero" and ".museum." ICANN opened bidding again in 2004; seven have been added to the system from that round, including ".xxx." Meanwhile, ICANN approved ".ps" for the Palestinian territories (in 2000) and ".eu" for the European Union (in 2005). That's because those two were on a country-code list kept by the International Organization for Standards, which in turn takes information from the United Nations. More recently, ICANN approved country names in languages other than English — so India has ones for Hindi, Urdu and five others. An expansion plan before ICANN on Monday would streamline procedures for creating names and allow for an endless number. Just as names get added, names can disappear. Yugoslavia's ".yu" is gone, as is East Germany's ".dd." There's no longer an ".um" for the U.S. "minor outlying islands," which include the Midway Islands. Websites there can use ".us." Following East Timor's independence, ".tl" transitioning from ".tp." Others simply go unused. Great Britain has ".gb" but websites there use ".uk." Likewise, ".sj" for the Arctic territories of Svalbard and Jan Mayen is uninhabited; their Norwegian administrators want residents to use Norway's ".no" domain. Some legacies simply won't go away. ICANN has faced resistance in its efforts to get rid of the Soviet Union's ".su." |
| Spam epidemic has reached ebooks, shocking no one (Yahoo! News) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 05:18 PM PDT
There are a lot of truly excellent books available on e-readers. From current best sellers to the classics, you can broaden your intellectual horizons, learn new things, enjoy brilliant literature… and slog through that bane of our online existence: spam. Yes, spam has come to ebooks, in particular Amazon's Kindle e-reader. It was inevitable, really, especially given that the companies behind e-readers have gone out of their way to make the platforms accessible to independent authors and self-publishers. Using what's known as Private Label Rights or PLR, the literary infiltrators take cheap information and reformat it into something vaguely resembling a book. There are even kits you can buy that let you create "books" without actually writing a single word, which perpetuate the ebook spam. Other even less-scrupulous ebook creators are simply copying and pasting text from someone else's book and selling it as their own. Amazon is aware of the issue, but has yet to come up with a good way to keep the spammers off the Kindle. Interestingly, Barnes and Noble's Nook e-reader doesn't seem to have nearly as big a problem with spammers, presumably because their audience isn't quite as large and their system not quite as friendly to self-publishers. It should be noted that not all independent authors and publishers are creating this ebook spam; far from it. There are thousands of very well-written and produced independent books out there, and the industry should be applauded for enabling that functionality. Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of dross that must be sifted through to find the gold. Reuters via The Atlantic Post by Katherine Gray [Image credit: Kodomut] More from Tecca: |
| Are search engines a spy’s best friend? (Yahoo! News) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 02:28 PM PDT
A team of researchers at the Warsaw University of Technology have uncovered a way that spies (yes, actual spies) can communicate with one another using search engines like Yahoo and Google. And we're not talking about sending email messages back and forth; this method uses the search autocomplete feature, and is much more covert. According to Wojciech Mazurczyk, who heads the team, the random search options that appear as you type in your query could very well be used for nefarious purposes. Search engines often employ complex autocompletion algorithms to suggest possible queries before you've completed your typing. For example, when searching for "Tecca," the "T" prompts things like "Target" and "Twitter" to pop up. Adding the letter "e" changes the suggestions to things like "Tetris" and "Texas," and so on. Using a special malware program installed on a user's computer, the researchers were able to remotely modify what appears on these autocompletion lists to include additional words that wouldn't normally show up. The "spy" can then compile these words and convert them into numbered sequences in order to decode the message being sent. It's a complicated and somewhat time-consuming chore, but it would allow covert communications even in if the user's computer is being monitored. Unfortunately for the spies, the research team believes that the amount of data being modified would set off a few bells and whistles, ultimately putting the authorities hot on your trail. More from Tecca: |
| Revolutionary Mobile Search Queries Apps Instead of the Web (Mashable) Posted: 16 Jun 2011 05:29 PM PDT Mobile search startup Do@ is changing how we hunt for information on our phones. Typically, if you want to find something while you're out and about, you turn to the mobile web and spend a few minutes on a search engine's mobile website. Or you launch one of a dozen or more apps to help you find the specific thing you want -- you turn to your Yelp app to find a good restaurant nearby, and you open Fandango to find a theater showing that movie you want to see. [More from Mashable: See the World & Plan Your Next Trip With This iPhone App] Wouldn't it be easier to have a single utility that searched a slew of mobile apps and websites for the exact thing you need, returning just the pages most relevant to you? That's Do@'s premise and mission: to create a revolutionary mobile search experience. [More from Mashable: Pulse Passes 4 Million Users, Raises $9 Million for Visual News Reader] Here's how the app works: First, the user types in a keyword, subject or topic, including movies, music, foods, products and more. The app then recognizes what categories the keyword fits into. For example, if you start by typing "lady g," the app would predict "lady gaga @music" as a query, understanding that you might be looking for music from artist Lady Gaga. (The app will also offer up possible queries like "lady gaga @reference" for Wikipedia content.) You could also search for something like "sushi @restaurants," for example. Once you tap the query that fits your needs, Do@ loads your results, which will appear as mobile web apps from a carefully curated selection of the best publishers and app developers. You can quickly swipe from one app with relevant content to the next until you spot the exact tidbit of information or functionality you seek. Using the previous example, a search for "lady gaga @music" would bring up a slider of results from YouTube, iTunes, Pandora, Last.fm and more, allowing you to instantly listen, download or watch the exact content you wanted. Here's a quick demo video showing the Do@ app in action:
So far, Do@ covers almost everything you might want to find from your phone, including music, film, television, shopping, sports, cooking, and a lot more. Do@ co-founder Ami Ben David also revealed exclusively to Mashable that the search utility is adding a few interesting and valuable new categories to the product:
You can download the free Do@ iPhone app [iTunes link] now. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Ceglia passed polygraph test in Facebook case: lawyers (Reuters) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 06:41 PM PDT Bangalore (Reuters) – Paul Ceglia, who says a contract and emails entitle him to half of Facebook, has cleared a polygraph examination conducted to determine the veracity of the alleged contract with the online social network's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, his lawyers said in a court filing. The polygraph test results, which were filed with the U.S. District Court in Buffalo, New York, on Friday, are part of Ceglia's opposition to Facebook's request that he immediately turn over the alleged original contract and emails for inspection, without being asked to reciprocate. Ceglia's lawyers contend that the lie-detector testing proves that the agreement and emails are authentic and asked the court to allow both sides to inspect the evidence, instead of granting Facebook's request that only it should be allowed to do so. "Ceglia's lawsuit is a shell game, shifting and changing with every filing," said Orin Snyder a partner in the law firm of Gibson Dunn, which represents Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. "This latest court filing admits that the bogus emails are, literally, a cut-and-paste job, just like the so-called contract is a fraud." Ceglia, a wood pellet salesman from Wellsville, New York, is trying to show he contracted in 2003 for 50 percent of Zuckerberg's interest in what became Facebook. In his amended complaint filed on April 11, Ceglia had discussed the alleged Facebook contract and emails from 2003 and 2004. The case is Ceglia v. Zuckerberg et al, U.S. District Court, Western District of New York, No. 10-00569. (Reporting by Abhiram Nandakumar in Bangalore; Editing by Gary Hill and Carol Bishopric) |
| Netflix, Time Warner sued by deaf groups (Reuters) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 03:38 PM PDT |
| Spam storm clogs the Kindle self-publishing platform (Digital Trends) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 08:35 PM PDT
Spammers are exploiting something known as PLR content, or Private Label Rights. Though there is potential for this work to be of high quality, PLR allows someone to grab informational content for free or for very cheap on the internet and reformat it as a digital book. The form of PLR these spammers use tends to be poorly written, generic and lets them put anyone's name on it, slap a catchy title and churn it out for 99 cents. Amazon then pays out 30 to 70 percent of the revenue. Sometimes these ebooks will just be stolen content from actual work. Reuters points out a case concerning a New Zealander and her debut historical novel which she found being sold on the platform under a different author's name. The case was resolved by Amazon's British team, but it points to a larger issue. Reuters cited Internet marketer Paul Wolfe, who explained that the common tactic involves copying an bestselling ebook and repackaging it with a new title and cover. The problem has not been hitting Google eBooks or Barnes & Noble's Nook so far, but the Smashwords ebook publisher has been seeing a trickle of spam. The spam on Amazon's platform may become a more widespread problem. The increase in ebook sales over the past year has helped many people who couldn't publish their work traditionally, with an outlet to get their voice out there. Amazon needs to wake up and either manage it's submission more aggressively, require a fee or set up some sort of social networking weeding process in order to keep this platform untarnished. |
| New Nexus Phone from Google Could Offer LTE (NewsFactor) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 01:58 PM PDT Google's latest attempt at its own branded hardware may be in the pipeline, and this time the device may be part of the vanguard of LTE devices. A report said the latest Nexus phone is likely to be 4G LTE compatible, but didn't specify a carrier or a manufacturer. The phone, possibly called Nexus 4G, will have a "monster-size" (though unspecified) touchscreen with no mechanical buttons, a 720p high-definition display, and run Google's next Android update, 4.0, code-named Ice Cream Sandwich, according to information obtained by Boy Genius Report. Inside, the device is said to pack a dual-core 1.2- or 1.5-gigahertz Snapdragon processor with Qualcomm-designed Krait chips. Other leaked specs include a one-megapixel front camera and a five-megapixel rear camera as well as 1080p high-definition video capture and playback, the report said. If at First You Don't Succeed ... Attempt number one at a Google phone was the low-selling flagship Nexus One, with a 3.7-inch display, made by HTC and sold only via Google's online store beginning in March 2010 for $529 or subsidized via T-Mobile and AT&T. When the experiment went awry, Google shut the online store and offered the Nexus One through retail stores and to developers for use in making Android applications. Making matters worse, Apple sued HTC over the design of the phone, saying it infringed Apple's patents . The Nexus S, made by Samsung, also with a 3.7-inch display, came next in December after premiering at the Web 2.0 summit. Versions are now available via T-Mobile and Sprint. Spearheading AT&T's LTE? Boy Genius said the LTE Nexus could be available around Thanksgiving. AT&T expects to have its LTE network in place to serve serve 70 million people across the country by year's end, a spokesperson told us last month. That could mean heavy promotion by the carrier as part of its first generation of 4G devices. Only a handful of 4G phones are currently available, and Verizon Wireless offers only two LTE phones. Compatibility with Long Term Evolution high-speed data networks is a must for any up-and-coming device, said analyst Gerry Purdy of Mobiletrax. "It's getting to be a checklist item," said Purdy. "A year from now we'll be well into major production" of LTE phones. But as for the future of the Nexus brand, Purdy said Google appears to still be feeling its way around the market, with the Nexus phone as a way to test innovations and learn from them. "They still want to find ways to interact in the market, testing units with their own brand and testing units with partners," said Purdy. "The big discussion in my mind is, over the next year, how does Google find commonality in its code base to force the vendors to say 'How do I add value?' They are trying to put 20 versions of [Android] into 10 different vendors, which is a massive challenge for quality control." |
| Police say Colorado mom on Facebook when toddler died (Reuters) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 06:01 PM PDT DENVER (Reuters) – A Colorado mother who told police she was surfing Facebook when her 22-month-old daughter was struck and killed by a van was arrested on suspicion of child abuse, police said on Friday. Karen Pena, 30, was being held on a $50,000 bond in connection with the May 28 death of Laniece Fletcher, Detective Robert Friel of the Aurora, Colorado, police department said. Pena made her first court appearance on Friday, and prosecutors will decide next week what charges will be filed, a spokeswoman for Arapahoe County prosecutors said. According to an arrest warrant affidavit, the toddler was struck when the driver of a van that transports children with disabilities to a local hospital drove away after dropping off another child at the complex. The driver said she felt a "bump," and discovered that she had run over the child, who was transported to the hospital where she died a day later from a crushed skull. After interviewing witnesses and reconstructing the accident, police said Pena admitted she was in her condo checking messages on Facebook when the child was wandering the complex, the affidavit said. Investigators also described Pena's condo as filthy and said there were numerous hazards to children outside the residence, including a broken gate that wasn't secured, a can of lighter fluid in an area where children played, and a plastic swimming pool with five inches of water in it. When investigators asked Pena who should have been watching the child, Pena said, "Well. it was me, obviously," the affidavit said. The driver of the van was not cited because police do not believe she could have avoided hitting the little girl, Friel said. Pena is the second Colorado mother in less than a year to be arrested on child abuse charges for being on Facebook while a child died. In April, Shannon Johnson of Fort Lupton, Colorado was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to child abuse resulting in the death of her 13-month-old son, who drowned in a bathtub while she was playing a game on Facebook. (Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Peter Bohan) |
| Netflix temporarily loses rights to Sony movies (Digital Trends) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 04:03 PM PDT
Netflix VP of content acquisition Pauline Fischer addressed the issue straight on in a blog post, stressing that Sony movies will be back. "You may have noticed that Sony movies through StarzPlay are not currently available to watch instantly. This is the result of temporary contract issue between Sony and Starz and, while these two valued partners work through their differences, we hope you are enjoying the wide variety of new movies and TV shows added daily." A few years ago, Sony and Starz reached a long-term agreement allowing Starz access to more than 500 Sony movie titles as well as the rights to offer up the content on various platforms (including Netflix). The deal was supposed to last until 2014, but Deadline reports that Starz reached an IP distribution cap and now has to reevaluate the terms. And while Netflix is a victim in this debacle, its remarkable growth is possibly to blame here. If you were planning to watch Salt or The Social Network this weekend, you might want to make other plans. |
| Photo apps finding plenty of competition from unlikely sources (Appolicious) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 02:00 PM PDT |
| Finding a photo-sharing platform for you (Digital Trends) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 05:17 PM PDT
Interested in presenting and sharing your photos (even your smartphone pics) on a platform that is strictly devoted to mobile photography? Don't worry: Despite the camera phone's general position as designator food-picture-taker, you've got some options. Flickr is a veteran Web playground for serious photographers and while it's had its struggles, it's minimalist and a natural choice for desktop Flickr users. |
| Spotify finally making US debut (Digital Trends) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 12:03 PM PDT
Spotify has already struck agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony, and EMI Music Group. Getting its ducks in a row prior to an official launch has its benefits and consequences: Introducing a music streaming service without the advised prerequisite label support has proven to be a risky move, one that at the very least gets skeptics raising an eyebrow and the music industry turning a cold shoulder (right Google and Amazon?). The consequence is that the longer Spotify is absent, the more time consumers have to acclimate to their current subscription music model of choice. There's no shortage of options: Rdio, Mog, Slacker, Pandora, Rhapsody, and Sony Music Unlimited are just a few of the label-supported services out there. And Google Music, Amazon Cloud Player, and the coming iCloud are sure to attract ample attention and consumer interest as well. Spotify is top dog in Europe where there aren't as many affordable freemium streaming options, and there are various flat fees for unlimited music services in the US. Many of them have extremely similar pricing to Spotify, which is likely to be $10 a month for unlimited music. In Spotify's corner is the massive amount of positive hype it's received, as well as its eventual Facebook integration (which will be separate from the actual application as well as its official launch). Its impressive valuation and recent funding efforts also bode well for the site. If it can convince investors its worth that much in the face of such able competition in such a wide open market, then there must be some serious evidence of US success. |
| Facebook Is Finally Preparing an App for Apple's iPad (NewsFactor) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 01:58 PM PDT Facebook is preparing to launch an iPad app -- finally. So says The New York Times, citing people briefed on Facebook's plans. The app is indeed long overdue. Facebook has an iPhone application, but the iPad app has been elusive. Although many speculate as to why it has taken Facebook so long to develop an app for the larger form-factor device, the software appears to be coming this summer -- with some compelling features. "People who have seen the application said it has a slick design that has been tailored for the iPad and its touchscreen interface. Facebook developers and designers have also overhauled the Facebook Chat and Facebook Groups features for the application," the Times reported. "And the app will go beyond the features available on the Facebook web site by allowing users to shoot and upload photos and videos directly from the iPad's built-in cameras." (The iPad 2 has cameras, but the original iPad does not.) An App for That Jake Wengroff, global director of social media strategy at Frost & Sullivan, said it's strange it has taken Facebook this long to create and launch an app for the iPad. In the meantime, he noted, the Friendly, iFace, MyPad and Friend Screen apps for the iPad remain popular in Apple's App Store. "Some say it's politics between Facebook and Apple that have led to this delay. But this move signals a larger trend of the major social networks making calculated decisions to 'take back' control of their brand and user base," Wengroff said. "By launching native applications, they can control every aspect of the user experience -- as well as that of the advertiser. This was seen recently with Twitter buying TweetDeck and launching its own URL-shortener and photo-sharing service." Build or Buy? Indeed, social-media companies are often slow to respond. As Wengroff mentioned, Twitter just launched its own URL shortener last week to compete with the likes of bit.ly. Like the Facebook app for the iPhone, it seems social-media companies follow the better-late-than-never strategy to offer something users can't find in third-party services. Twitter's URL shortener, for example, works much the same way that competing URL shorteners like bit.ly do, but with the added convenience of link shortening right from the Tweet box on Twitter.com. Users can paste a link of any length into the Tweet box. After they have composed a message and hit the Tweet button, Twitter will automatically shorten the link so it only takes up 19 characters. Instead of reinventing the app wheel, Twitter acquired TweetDeck, a personalized browser for staying in touch with what's happening now, connecting with contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, in late May for more than $40 million. It lets users customize the Twitter experience with columns, groups, saved searches, and automatic updates. Users can also see what other people are saying about them, send tweets, and share photos, videos or links. |
| Oracle wants a big piece of Android’s ad revenue (Appolicious) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 08:15 AM PDT |
| LulzSec Explains Itself, Sort Of (The Atlantic Wire) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 08:59 AM PDT To mark their thousandth tweet, the prank-happy hackers at Lulz Security have posted a manifsto of sorts on Pastebin. Normally, we would give you a brief background on the group, but theirs is funnier:
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