Online game maker Zynga prices IPO at $10 a share (AP) : Technet

Online game maker Zynga prices IPO at $10 a share (AP)
Full ban on driver calls could be tough to enforce (AP)
TV companies have a year to pipe down loud ads (AP)
Kelp-like structure sways underwater to harness energy from the ocean’s waves (Yahoo! News)
Watch a life-size Mobile Suit Gundam robot statue get assembled in time-lapse footage (Yahoo! News)
Cheezburger Launches 'Meme Animals' Websitevar NREUMQ=NREUMQ||[];NREUMQ.push(["mark","firstbyte",new Date().getTime()]); (Mashable)
Zynga prices IPO at top end of range (Reuters)
Chinese Internet video firms tussle over copyright (Reuters)
Chrome 15 Takes Top Spot for Browsers (NewsFactor)
FBI contacted phone monitoring firm about software (AP)
RIP Trolling as Social Critique (The Atlantic Wire)
RIM delays QNX phones, offers dismal outlook (Reuters)
Save tasty memories through Evernote Food (Appolicious)
Tests show LightSquared still disrupts GPS (Reuters)
Rebecca Black crowned top search term in Google Zeitgeist 2011 (Digital Trends)
A look at troubles for BlackBerry and its maker (AP)
Salesforce.com enters HR software business (Reuters)
IBM Acquires Emptoris in Smarter Commerce Move (NewsFactor)

Online game maker Zynga prices IPO at $10 a share (AP)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 05:16 PM PST

By BARBARA ORTUTAY and RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writers Barbara Ortutay And Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writers – Thu Dec 15, 8:16 pm ET

NEW YORK – Zynga is poised to harvest some cold hard cash in its initial public offering. Who knew that selling virtual cows and digital corn on Facebook would create a $7 billion company?

The online game developer best known for "FarmVille" priced its initial public offering late Thursday at $10 per share.

That's at the top of its expected range of $8.50 to $10, a sign that investors are eager to get a piece of the latest in a series of high-profile tech IPOs this year. Zynga is selling 100 million shares and giving its underwriters the right to buy another 15 million shares. The company stands to raise slightly more than $1 billion from the offering, before subtracting for expenses.

Thursday's pricing gives San Francisco-based Zynga a market value of about $7 billion.

Zynga will begin trading Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol "ZNGA." That's when "Main Street" investors will get a chance to buy the stock. The offering rounds out a busy week for IPOs, the likes of which the market hasn't seen since before the 2008 financial meltdown.

Founded in 2007 and named after CEO Mark Pincus' dog, Zynga Inc. follows online deals site Groupon Inc. and professional network LinkedIn Corp. in going public. A bevy of smaller Internet startups, such as reviews site Angie's List Inc. and Pandora Media Inc., have also taken the plunge. They're the soup, salad and appetizer to the main course: Facebook's public debut, expected sometime after April. The social network could rake in as much as $10 billion.

Pincus and Zynga's 2,300 employees have built a business charging small amounts of money — a few cents, sometimes a couple of dollars — for virtual items in online games. The games themselves free to play. These items range from crops in "Farmville" to buildings in "CityVille," its most popular Facebook game. This so-called "free-to-play" business model assumes that most people won't want to pay anything to build virtual castles in "CastleVille" or take down rival mob bosses in "Mafia Wars."

But with a large enough player base and a few loyal spenders, Zynga was able to earn a net income of $90.6 million in 2010. Though not unheard of, it's unusual for a tech startup to turn a profit before going public.

Zynga has been criticized for being too dependent on Facebook and its 800 million users. Facebook takes 30 percent cut from what people spend on outside applications through its site. In the July-September period, 93 percent of Zynga's revenue was generated through the world's largest online social network.

That said, there's no denying that Facebook's vast user base and widespread popularity are directly responsible for Zynga's meteoric rise. As of Thursday, Zynga's games had more than 223 million monthly users on Facebook. If those gamers could form their own nation, its population would be roughly on par with Indonesia and Brazil.

Zynga's growth has also been helped by the simple fact that its games are addictive. Just last week, actor Alec Baldwin got booted off a plane because he wouldn't stop playing "Words With Friends," Zynga's Scrabble-inspired mobile phone game. Zynga is focusing on mobile gaming as a way to expand beyond Facebook.

Baldwin's flight fiasco offers proof that mobile games present the biggest growth opportunity for Zynga, according to Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter. International expansion and getting people who already play Zynga games to spend money are other ways the company can grow.

Zynga is not without rivals. Its main competitor on Facebook is Electronic Arts Inc., the more old-school video game publisher best known for console games such as "Madden" and "The Sims." Recently, EA has been focusing on its mobile and online business. Its Facebook version of "The Sims" has created a healthy rivalry with Zynga.

Though not a direct competitor, another similar company is Japan's Nexon Co., which went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange this week, raising $1.2 billion. Originally from South Korea, Nexon pioneered the free-to-play revenue model that has led to Zynga's success. But where Zynga caters to the Facebooked masses, Nexon's focus is on more complicated games that can take hours, not minutes to crack. Valued at $7.2 billion after Wedneday's IPO, Nexon has about 77 million monthly active users.

Owen Mahoney, chief financial officer of Nexon and a former EA executive, believes several trends are contributing to the popularity of gaming companies like Nexon and Zynga. Namely, higher broadband Internet speeds are making it easier to download games; consumers are looking to try before they buy; and they are spending money in smaller amounts per purchase — not unlike when music fans began buying individual digital songs, as opposed to entire albums.

"The same forces that affected the entertainment business are affecting the video game business," Mahoney said.

Not everyone is big on Zynga, though. "FarmVille" and its ilk annoy some Facebook users who get tired of their crop-harvesting friends asking for help with their virtual farms.

There are naysayers on Wall Street too. Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia took the unusual step of putting an "Underperform" rating on Zynga this week, days before the company was scheduled to go public. The analyst set a price target of $7 for Zynga's yet-to-be traded stock, below even the low end of its expected IPO pricing range, citing concerns about the company's growth rate. Bhatia said he wanted to provide an "independent view" of Zynga at a time when its bankers and the company will be selling the deal to clients.

"It's not to say the stock can't do well initially," he said.

Wedbush's Pachter, meanwhile, said it's "really premature" to call the death of a four-year-old industry.

"No one has enough data to say growth is stalled," he said.

___

Nakashima reported from Los Angeles.

Full ban on driver calls could be tough to enforce (AP)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 04:10 PM PST

By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Matt Sedensky, Associated Press – Thu Dec 15, 7:10 pm ET

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – A driver in the next lane is moving his lips. Is he on a hands-free cellphone? Talking to someone in the car? To himself? Singing along to the radio?

If lawmakers follow the advice of a federal board, police officers will have to start figuring that out — somehow.

The National Transportation Safety Board said this week that drivers should not only be barred from using hand-held cellphones, as they are in several states, but also from using hands-free devices. No more "Sorry, I'm stuck in traffic" calls, or virtually any other cellphone chatter behind the wheel.

Though no state has yet implemented such restrictive rules, the NTSB's recommendations carry weight that could place such language into future laws, or motivate the federal government to cut funding to states that don't follow suit.

Many of the men and women patrolling the nation's streets and highways wonder how they would sort the criminally chatty from the legally chatty.

"It would be almost impossible to determine if someone was talking on a phone or exercising their vocal cords," said Capt. Donald Melanson of the West Hartford, Conn., police department, which took part in a national pilot program aimed at cracking down on drivers' cellphone use. "That would be much more difficult to enforce, almost to the point where it would be impossible."

Officer Tom Nichols of the Port St. Lucie, Fla., police said a law written like the NTSB suggests would be difficult to enforce because so many variables would be at play.

"If you identify someone who has a hands-free set hooked up to their ear that doesn't mean they are talking on the phone," he said. "They could be talking to a passenger. They could be talking to a child in the back. They could be singing."

Police could end up turning to technology for help. They might even end up with the cellphone equivalent of a radar speed gun.

Fred Mannering, a Purdue University civil engineering professor who is associate director of the Center for Road Safety, said that since all cellphones emit signals, a simple Bluetooth detection device could spot them.

Computers are already common in patrol cars, and Mannering said a relatively cheap add-on could fit them to track cellphone signals.

"It would be really easy for police to have a computer on board and pick up those signals," Mannering said, "but it is sort of Big Brother."

The NTSB's proposal, announced Tuesday as a unanimous recommendation of its five-member board, urges all states to impose total bans except for emergencies. It cited deadly crashes caused by distracted drivers across the country, and noted that many studies have shown that hands-free cellphones are often as unsafe as hand-held devices.

The recommendation poses an astounding number of questions. What about chauffeurs and traveling salesmen who spend their entire day on the road? And roadside Amber Alert and Silver Alert notifications that implore drivers to call in if they spot a specific vehicle? What comes of phone lines dedicated to those "How's My Driving?" signs on trucks? How will you let someone know you're stuck in traffic?

Joe Schwieterman, a DePaul University professor who studies people's use of technology while traveling, said he can't envision a law so restrictive ever hitting the books because phone use has become commonplace for drivers. He called such an approach "draconian" and said that if such a law were passed, the public would despise it as "imperial overreach," then ignore it.

"It's a little like speeding laws where it will become just culturally acceptable to violate," he said. He said a no-call law would be followed only if violations carried stiff penalties like those for drunken driving.

Lewis Katz, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, said a nationwide ban on using cellphones while driving would be wildly unpopular, and likely the target of legal challenges. But he believed such a law, and the methods police might use to enforce it, ultimately would be deemed as constitutional as seatbelt enforcement.

"I'm sure that it would be challenged on all sorts of constitutional grounds, including free speech," he said in a phone call from his car. "But it seems to me that it doesn't in any way infringe on any constitutional rights. It's a simple safety issue."

Whether the NTSB's recommendations will motivate decision-makers remains to be seen, but they have certainly caught their attention.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who has made combating distracted driving the signature issue of his tenure, stopped short of an endorsement. His department is separate from the NTSB.

"My focus is going to be on preaching to people: Take personal responsibility. Put your cellphone and your texting device in the glove compartment when you get behind the wheel of a car," LaHood told reporters at a news conference in Chicago. "You can't drive safely when you have your hand on a cellphone and are trying to drive a 4,000- 5,000 pound vehicle."

Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon, a Republican, said he was wary. His state is among those that have resisted passing laws restricting drivers' cellphone use.

Cannon said future technological advances may prove more effective than legislation at addressing driver distraction issues. As an example, he cited his new iPhone, which can make phone calls and send text messages via voice command.

"In these attempts to try and prevent every bad thing from happening," he said, "it's all too easy to overly restrict personal freedoms and individual rights and responsibilities."

Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, the top law enforcement official in Palm Beach County, Fla., said that if lawmakers take the NTSB's suggestions to heart, they should address all manner of distracted driving.

"I see women putting makeup on. I see a guy with an electric shaver. I see one woman with a newspaper. I see a guy with a dog in his hands. All of those are worse than texting," he said.

Monique Bond, a spokeswoman for the Illinois State Police, said training would be key to enforcing any ban. Officers are already looking for unbuckled seat belts and swerving drivers; they'd have to add to their mental checklists.

"It's something that is not insurmountable," Bond said. "How you're going to spot it, or how you're going to look for it — you have to acclimate the troops and acclimate the operations as to how to do this."

Chief Walter McNeil of Quincy, Fla., president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said enforcement of a total ban would be difficult, but that distracted driving needs to be addressed.

"We certainly need to deal with the overall problem with distracted drivers, and getting some level of uniformity in how we enforce that would be helpful," he said.

___

Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

TV companies have a year to pipe down loud ads (AP)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 01:51 PM PST

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writer – Thu Dec 15, 4:51 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Shush, already. That's the message the Federal Communications Commission is sending with new rules that force broadcast, cable and satellite companies to turn down the volume on blaring TV commercials.

On Tuesday, the FCC passed a set of regulations that will prevent commercials from being louder than the shows around them. It's all part of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (or CALM) Act, which President Obama signed into law last December. The rules go into effect a year from now. Companies that don't comply will face unspecified FCC action.

Thunderous television ads have annoyed viewers for years. The FCC says people have grumbled about the issue for at least a half century. But since 2002 — thanks in part to all those clangorous car commercials, earsplitting electronics ads and booming beer pitches — loud advertisements have been one of the top complaints the FCC receives.

Complaints grew in recent years, as ads became even louder. In the days of analog TV, louder ads took up more space on the airwaves. So broadcasters toned them down to avoid interfering with other channels. Since the conversion to digital TV broadcasts two years ago, loud ads no longer take up more airwave space than quiet ones. The change transformed the commercial break into a noisy arms race.

"Nobody wanted to be the quiet guy in the set of commercials," says David Unsworth, senior vice president of satellite and technical operations at DG, a company that distributes ads to broadcasters.

In a recent analysis, DG found that some ads were 10 times as loud as the programs they interrupted.

"Everybody's been trying to push the envelope using (digital) compression to make their spots as loud as they can," Unsworth says.

A few years ago, an annoying ad got to the ears of Rep. Anna Eshoo, the Democratic congresswoman whose district in California's Silicon Valley is home to Facebook and Hewlett-Packard Co. While watching a sporting event with family members, Eshoo was jarred by a "horribly loud" commercial. Her brother-in-law suggested she do something about it. She did — with what started as a simple, one-page legislative proposal.

The measure became one of the most popular bills she's ever sponsored.

"What I never dreamed of was what kind of chord it would strike with people," Eshoo says.

The FCC rules require TV distributors to set up equipment to monitor the average sound level of ads as they come in. If they're too loud, distributors must adjust the sound levels before they can be aired. It recommends practices set out in 2009 by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, a standards-setting body.

If compliance with the rules places a financial burden on a company, the FCC will give it extra time — up to December 2014 — to comply.

Those concessions have helped to reduce opposition.

"We think that the FCC struck the right balance," says National Association of Broadcasters spokesman Dennis Wharton.

In the months leading up to the FCC's release of the new rules, advertisers were already turning down the noise because many broadcasters are now rejecting loud ads. Since DG began monitoring sound levels this summer, the number of ads that were too loud has fallen from about 70 percent of all ads to roughly 30 percent, Unsworth says.

Already, hundreds of TV stations, cable and satellite companies have updated equipment to comply, says Tim Carroll, founder and president of Linear Acoustic Inc., a leading maker of the equipment.

For its part, ABC says it has installed equipment at its eight television stations. CBS has been operating under the guidelines for some time. NBC has sent specifications to its commercial suppliers and has installed equipment to reduce the volume of loud ads. Fox declined to comment, although Unsworth says the network has been rejecting ads that are too loud and getting advertisers to fix them.

Leading cable TV companies Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc. declined to comment.

Kelp-like structure sways underwater to harness energy from the ocean’s waves (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 07:54 PM PST

Watch a life-size Mobile Suit Gundam robot statue get assembled in time-lapse footage (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 07:39 PM PST

Cheezburger Launches 'Meme Animals' Websitevar NREUMQ=NREUMQ||[];NREUMQ.push(["mark","firstbyte",new Date().getTime()]); (Mashable)

Posted: 14 Dec 2011 05:21 PM PST

Brian Anthony Hernandez Brian Anthony Hernandez – Wed Dec 14, 8:21 pm ET

Like cartoon rabbits rapidly multiplying, the number of Cheezburger Network websites continues to grow with the addition of new humor blog Meme Animals. Cheezburger, which already runs more than 50 sites, will officially launch Meme Animals Thursday, but the company gave Mashable the inside scoop on the eve of the site's launch.

[More from Mashable: Ben Huh: What Saved His Life]

"We listen carefully to what our users are saying and we try to create early communities for specific memes," Cheezburger Editor Emily Huh told Mashable about why Meme Animals was created. "We think our users will love a meme-nagerie of famous Internet critters, from a Business Cat to a Socially Awkward Penguin."

The blog's visitors will see familiar faces such as Nyan Cat, Philosoraptor, Anti-Joke Chicken, Art Student Owl and Pickup Line Panda, among other meme-lover favorites. Users will generate all of the site's content.

Although other Cheezburger websites have showcased animal-based memes in the past, Meme Animals will provide fans of viral creatures a dedicated place to find them.

SEE ALSO: Best 10 Memes of 2011 [VIDEO] | Music Video References 40+ Memes

Meme Animals already features 70 pages of new and old posts, including content from the company's five popular parent sites I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, Know Your Meme, Memebase and The Daily What.

This new site likely will compete against Reddit's Advice Animals, which as the name implies focuses heavily on animal memes. More than 265,000 people subscribe to Advice Animals.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Zynga prices IPO at top end of range (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 08:48 PM PST

By Liana B. Baker and Alistair Barr Liana B. Baker And Alistair Barr – 26 mins ago

(Reuters) – Online games maker Zynga Inc is expected to make a strong debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday after it priced its initial public offering at the top end of a preliminary range but did not increase the size of the $1 billion deal.

Analysts and investors had expected Zynga to raise the price or boost the number of shares it was selling, since demand had seemed strong in recent weeks. The IPO, from the maker of "CityVille" and "FarmVille" games, has been highly anticipated because it is seen as a way for investors to get a slice of Facebook's growth before the social network goes public itself.

Zynga sold 100 million shares of Class A common stock at $10 per share in the IPO, the top end of the $8.50 to $10 indicative range.

In addition, certain of Zynga's stockholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 15 million shares to cover over-allotments, Zynga said in a statement late on Thursday. Zynga will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders.

Zynga publishes four of the top five games played on Facebook and has more than 200 million monthly users. Facebook, which takes a 30 percent cut of the revenue Zynga makes on its platform, is expected to go public next year.

"They could have easily raised the size and the price. I expect it to trade strongly when it opens," Scott Sweet, an analyst at IPO Boutique, said of Zynga.

The IPO, equivalent to about 11 percent of diluted shares, values Zynga at $8.9 billion. The company had been valued at roughly $14 billion in November, according to an internal estimate in a regulatory filing.

At $1 billion in proceeds, Zynga's IPO would still be the largest from a U.S. Internet company since Google Inc raised $1.9 billion in 2004.

Zynga and the lead underwriters on the deal, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, declined to comment.

Zynga, which is profitable, generates revenue from less than 3 percent of its players, who buy virtual items like trucks and poker chips in its free games.

Others said Zynga wanted to play it safe with the IPO given the volatile financial markets and what happened to another online game company, Nexon, whose shares fell on their first day of trade in Japan this week.

"The market's been pretty tough this past week, so they probably took a more conservative approach," said Dan Niles, chief investment officer of AlphaOne Capital Partners.

Groupon Inc, another closely watched Internet IPO this year, jumped on its first day of trading in November, but slumped below its $20 issue price about three weeks later.

But unlike Groupon, Zynga is profitable. It posted net income of $12 million during the third quarter and is on track to make $1 billion in revenue this year. But profit growth has been lumpy as the company invested in new games.

Greencrest Capital analyst Max Wolff said Zynga's shares on Friday "could easily go to $12 and change," before stabilizing.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

Zynga's near $9 billion valuation is less than videogame maker Activision Blizzard Inc's $13.6 billion market capitalization and higher than Electronic Arts Inc's $6.9 billion, even though they earn much more in revenue.

Zynga is valued at nine times its sales for the last 12 months, while Activision's multiple is three times its 12-month sales, reflecting the growth potential investors see in online social games.

While Zynga's exposure to Facebook could be enticing to some investors, it also poses a major risk. In the future, Zynga will have to show Wall Street that it can diversify and make money from mobile and other new ventures.

Zynga now generates 95 percent of its revenue from Mark Zuckerberg's social network. If Facebook's user growth slows, Zynga's growth is likely to lose momentum as well. Zynga's growth rate of bookings, which is the money it makes upfront when its users buy items, is also slowing, raising concerns among investors.

"It's not a trend that seems to be stabilizing yet. We believe investors will likely question Zynga's premium valuation," said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia in a research note.

Another concern analysts have cited is Zynga CEO Mark Pincus' influence over the company. He owns a special class of C shares that carry 70 times more voting power than regular A shares. This is high compared to many other companies. LinkedIn Corp, for example, has a 10-1 voting ratio.

Still, Greencrest Capital's Wolff said investors may look past Pincus' controlling stake because of the company's dominance on Facebook.

"While there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about the company, including Mr. Pincus' 70 (times) share class voting rights, the bottom line is they have five of the top six games (on Facebook)," he said.

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker in New York and Alistair Barr in San Francisco, Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York, Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Chinese Internet video firms tussle over copyright (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 07:48 PM PST

– 1 hr 26 mins ago

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese online video companies Tudou Holdings and Youku.com said they will sue each other for alleged copyright infringements of their videos.

Tudou said late on Monday that it would take legal action against Youku, China's top online video site, for allegedly reposting episodes of a popular variety program on Youku's platform.

Cti TV, the legal copyright holder of "Kangxi is Coming," signed an exclusive agreement with Tudou in November to distribute the episodes of the program on its platform, Tudou said in an emailed statement.

Tudou and Cti TV allege that the episodes were then copied by Youku and uploaded onto Youku's platform.

Youku subsequently countered on Friday that it would take legal action against Tudou, accusing Tudou of allegedly pirating more than 60 television serials from Youku.

Youku said in a statement that legal mediation between the two sides had failed.

The battle for content in China's online video space has heated up this year with costs for programs rising significantly as online video players scramble for eyeballs to lure advertisers.

Advertising revenue in the domestic online video market, which was virtually non-existent five years ago, is now estimated to be worth 1 billion yuan ($156.90 million). This is expected to grow at a double-digit rate.

Many online video players have also signed deals with Hollywood studios to boost viewership.

Shares of Tudou closed 2.51 percent lower on the Nasdaq on Thursday, while Youku fell 3.75 percent on the New York Stock Exchange.

($1 = 6.3735 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Matt Driskill)

Chrome 15 Takes Top Spot for Browsers (NewsFactor)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 04:28 PM PST

Barry Levine, newsfactor.com Barry Levine, newsfactor.com – Thu Dec 15, 7:28 pm ET

There's a new top dog among browser versions. Recent statistics show Google's latest Chrome browser has taken the No. 1 spot, bumping out the most popular version of Internet Explorer from Microsoft.

According to StatCounter.com data released Thursday, Chrome 15 now captures 24.55 percent of the world market, edging out IE8's 22.9 percent. Mozilla's Firefox 9.0 is at 14 percent, and IE9 is in fourth at 10.4 percent. Those rankings, covering the last half of November and the first week in December, are of particular release versions. \

When taken as a brand, with all versions combined, IE is still tops with 39.5 percent market share, Chrome is second at 26.5 percent, and Firefox takes a close third at 25.3 percent. As newer versions cycle in and older ones drop out, the brand rankings could begin to reflect the latest version rankings.

The Updating Mechanism

This is the first time since IE8 was released in early 2010 that it has not been in the top spot, and this is the first time any browser not developed by Microsoft has had the lead. In the U.S., IE8 still leads, at 27 percent for the week of December 5, compared with Chrome 15's 18.1 percent.

A key factor in the browser horse race appears to be the updating mechanism. Google released Chrome 16 Wednesday, which will automatically replace most users' Chrome 15 via the update mechanism. The auto-updating has been a feature of the browser since Chrome's introduction three years ago.

Mozilla has gotten some flak over its frequent update plan for Firefox, which involves user consent every six weeks to receive the latest incarnation. Firefox had previously had "silent updating," but that was dropped a year ago in favor of user notification and consent. Now, it will move back to automatic updating, expected to roll out in mid-2012.

"One of the negative side effects," wrote Mozilla developer Brian Bondy in October on his blog, "is that minor annoyances with software updates suddenly become much more noticeable. Most users don't want to think about software updates nor version numbers and now they are being forced to do so every six weeks."

'Update Fatigue'

On his blog, Mozilla Foundation Chairman Mitchell Baker wrote earlier this fall that users were alerted to Firefox updates "to make sure people are aware and in control of what's happening in their environment." But, he said, users are complaining of "update fatigue," because the "notifications are irritating."

The frequent updating has reportedly led to users of various browsers having to update browser-based apps on some cycle as well. But auto-upgrades are feeding the browser race, and Microsoft said Thursday it will start auto-upgrading IE in January, for users who have opted for auto-updates. Enterprises will still be able to control updates.

Previously, Microsoft had requested permission before updating, but now users will automatically receive the latest version available for that operating system version. The auto-updating for IE will start in Australia and Brazil first, and then roll out to other markets on a schedule to be announced.

FBI contacted phone monitoring firm about software (AP)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 03:22 PM PST

RICHARD LARDNER, Associated Press Richard Lardner, Associated Press – Thu Dec 15, 6:22 pm ET

WASHINGTON – A senior executive at a technology company that makes monitoring software secretly installed on 141 million cellphones said Thursday that the FBI approached the company about using its technology but was rebuffed. The disclosure came one day after FBI Director Robert Mueller assured Congress that agents "neither sought nor obtained any information" from the company, Carrier IQ.

The company's statement will likely inflame suspicion about the monitoring tool and its usefulness to the U.S. government.

Andrew Coward, vice president of marketing for Carrier IQ of Mountain View, Calif., told The Associated Press that the FBI is the only law enforcement agency that has contacted the company. Coward would not say when, why or how often the FBI has reached out to Carrier IQ, but he said the company is not working with the bureau. "There is no relationship between us and the FBI," Coward said.

During an oversight hearing Wednesday, Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI "neither sought nor obtained any information from Carrier IQ in any one of our investigations." Mueller was responding to a question by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., chairman of the committee's privacy and technology panel, who has said collecting personal information from people's cellphones could violate federal law.

FBI spokesman Michael Kortan said in an emailed statement that the bureau's technical staff "communicates routinely with many technology companies, including Carrier IQ, relative to new and emerging technologies and capabilities."

The company's technology is designed as a diagnostic tool that gives mobile telephone companies the ability to gather and analyze information that helps them improve the performance of devices that operate on their networks, Carrier IQ said. The software is typically installed by the phone company or the manufacturer of the handset.

Most cellphone users were unaware the company or its software existed until last month when a security researcher, Trevor Eckhart, posted online a video he made showing how keystrokes and messages from his smartphone were logged by the Carrier IQ software.

Eckhart said the software is hard to detect and difficult to turn off. Other researchers who subsequently studied Carrier IQ's software said it does not appear to transmit the contents of emails or text messages but captures detailed information about recipients or destinations of messages, the physical location from where messages were sent or received and details such as the phone's battery level.

Even before Thursday's disclosure by Carrier IQ about the FBI contacting the company, the FBI had fueled questions about whether it sought to use the monitoring software in federal investigations or even whether it was investigating Carrier IQ. The FBI denied a request the AP made on Dec. 2 for internal documents about its interactions with Carrier IQ, citing a provision in the Freedom of Information Act that excludes from disclosure any documents relevant to a "pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding." The FBI also told the AP that releasing the records that it sought could "reasonably be expected to interfere with the enforcement proceedings."

The AP had asked for copies of correspondence from FBI officials requesting access to information stored on Carrier IQ's servers or asking questions about such information. The AP also requested copies of records indicating visits by FBI officials to Carrier IQ's offices and the results of any testing performed by the FBI on Carrier IQ's technology.

Eckhart's online video sparked concerns among privacy advocates about which information Carrier IQ's software is recording and who can view it. In late November, Franken wrote to Carrier IQ's president and asked him to answer a series of questions by Dec. 14 about the kind of data that the software can collect, how long the data is stored and whether any of this information is shared with third parties.

"These actions may violate federal privacy laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," Franken wrote. "This is potentially a very serious matter."

A few days later, Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, co-chairman of the Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, asked the Federal Trade Commission whether it was investigating "the installation of software that secretly tracks and reports back the activities of cellphone users."

Earlier this week, Carrier IQ sought to contain the damage by organizing meetings with officials at the FTC, the Federal Communications Commission and several Senate offices, including Franken's, to explain what the software is intended to do. The company said it is not aware of an official investigation into its products or practices.

"Our data is not designed for law enforcement agencies and to our knowledge has never been used by law enforcement agencies," the company said in a statement. "Carrier IQ have no rights to the data gathered and have not passed data to third parties. Should a law enforcement agency request data from us, we would refer them to the network operators. To date and to our knowledge we have received no such requests."

The company posted a 19-page statement on its website that explains what its software does. It said the only data collected is to help solve common problems, such as batteries that drain too quickly or calls that fail to connect.

The software, called IQ Agent, typically transmits 200 kilobytes of diagnostic data — the equivalent of 50 typed pages — once each day when the phone is not being used, the company said, but decisions about what information to collect and how it is analyzed is determined by the phone companies and the agreements they have with their customers.

___

Online:

Carrier IQ: http://www.carrieriq.com/

RIP Trolling as Social Critique (The Atlantic Wire)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 03:53 PM PST

Rebecca Greenfield Rebecca Greenfield – Thu Dec 15, 6:53 pm ET

RIP trolls, anonymous Internet commenters that post nasty remarks on Facebook profiles, MySpace pages and other human personae of the deceased, claim the whole horrifying practice is a social critique on the way we live our Web lives, according to this new study by Whitney Philips. These characters see the outpouring of emotion on memorial Facebook pages as saccharine and disingenuous. "This isn’t grief," Paulie Socash, an infamous troll who went to jail for his behavior, told Philips. "This is boredom and a pathological need for attention masquerading as grief." But this commentary comes at a very large expense, offending not only the tangential friends of friends who post memorials, but also those close to the dead.

Let's see what kind of social critiquing these trolls are doing. Here are a few examples from the Facebook memorial page of Georgia Varley, who passed away last October. Media noticed after trolls littered her Facebook with nasty comments. The page has been cleaned up since the incident. But the following trollery remained.

Related: The Future of Facebook: The End of Privacy?

These appeared below a photo of Varley as an angel on her way to heaven:

Related: Mark Zuckerberg Changes His Tune on Kids Using Facebook

Another photo of Varley provoked this remark:

At the very bottom, troll Mitchell Villo leaves the trademark troll remark "lulz" at the very bottom of the page, letting the Internet know that he won.

Socash and others say social critique. We say horrifying and offensive, This isn't to say that some sort of commentary can't and shouldn't be made about the way the Internet responds to death. But RIP trolls aren't proving any points.

RIM delays QNX phones, offers dismal outlook (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 04:04 PM PST

By Alastair Sharp and Euan Rocha Alastair Sharp And Euan Rocha – Thu Dec 15, 7:04 pm ET

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion posted a sharp drop in profit on Thursday, offered a dismal outlook for BlackBerry shipments around Christmas and delayed the likely arrival of a make-or-break overhaul of its smartphones, sending its shares tumbling.

RIM's shares shed more than 7 percent after the company said it did not expect to release a line of BlackBerrys equipped with the new QNX operating system until late next year, long after its initial promise of a first-quarter delivery.

It was the latest in a long series of setbacks for a company that once dominated the smartphone market but, to the chagrin of investors, is now struggling to keep pace with the innovations of Apple Inc and other rivals.

To make matters worse, RIM said it would ship just 11 million to 12 million smartphones in the weeks around Christmas, a range that lines RIM up for the first quarter-to-quarter decline in six years during the crucial sales season.

The likely drop bodes poorly for RIM as it was banking on an improved BlackBerry 7 line, equipped with the legacy operating system, to stem defections until it could release the QNX line.

"The matter that they turned in a bad quarter shouldn't come as a shock to anybody," said John Jackson, an analyst at CCS Insight in Boston. "I think the more important issue for RIM is that it is highly unclear exactly when they're going to be able turn things around."

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company has been counting on the new operating system to make up ground lost to Apple's iPhone and iPad and the slew of devices that make use of Google's Android software.

RIM's market share, particularly in the United States, has steadily eroded and its share price, down about 73 percent this year, has followed suit.

During a conference call with analysts, RIM explained that the QNX delay was necessary so it could make use of more powerful and energy-efficient chipsets expected to arrive in mid-2012.

"By then the ecosystem runs the risk of being abandoned," said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners in New York.

"They've already got tepid developer support and then they're going to be rolling out these phones right smack in the (midst) of an iPhone 5 (launch) most likely," he said, referring to the next iteration of Apple's smartphone.

The dismal holiday outlook for between 11 million and 12 million smartphones compares with 14.1 million in the previous quarter and 14.8 million in the Christmas quarter last year.

"If consumer demand slows for their product the stuff is going to sit there and we could start seeing the ratcheting-down of units shipped and that's the big concern," Gillis said.

Even if RIM hits the high end of its Christmas quarter shipment target it will ship fewer BlackBerrys in this fiscal year than the previous one, the first ever such decline.

RIM's co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, in an apparent bid to cool investor anger at their leadership, said they agreed to take an immediate pay cut to $1. The pair are also RIM's two largest shareholders and share the chairmanship of the board.

BY THE NUMBERS

Most of the numbers posted by RIM on Thursday were in line with a warning made by the company on December 2, including a huge writedown on unsold inventory of its unloved PlayBook tablet or a charge for an embarrassing global service outage in October.

RIM turned in an adjusted profit at $667 million, or $1.27 a share, in its third quarter ended on November 26.

The Canadian company generated revenue of $5.17 billion, sliding from $5.5 billion a year earlier.

Analysts on average had expected RIM to earn $1.19 a share on sales of $5.27 billion after the company's warning.

In the third quarter a year earlier, RIM made $911.1 million, or $1.74 a share.

The intervening year has been mostly downhill for RIM, which made its name with secure, reliable communications for the world's business and government elites before branching out into a now-crowded consumer market.

For the current quarter, RIM expects to turn a profit of between 80 and 95 cents a share on revenue of between $4.6 billion and $4.9 billion.

SUBCRIPTIONS RISE

Including the $485 million pre-tax writedown on discounted PlayBook inventory and a $54 million charge related to the outage, RIM made a third-quarter profit of $265 million, or 51 cents a share.

It said it now has almost 75 million subscribers, up from the more than 70 million it reported at the end of its second quarter.

"They're still adding a lot of subscribers, but they're not selling enough phones," said Tavis McCourt, an analyst at Morgan Keegan. "Are customers just going to upgrade to the iPhone and Android or are they really that loyal where they're going to wait for a better BlackBerry?"

The stock fell to $14 in after-hours Nasdaq trade, after closing at $15.13. In February, just ahead of the PlayBook's launch, RIM shares changed hands for as much as $70.

(Additional reporting by Cameron French, Allison Martell, Jon Cook and Claire Sibonney; Editing by Frank McGurty)

Save tasty memories through Evernote Food (Appolicious)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 02:00 PM PST

Tests show LightSquared still disrupts GPS (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 05:28 PM PST

By Jasmin Melvin Jasmin Melvin – Thu Dec 15, 8:28 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – LightSquared's prospects for getting its wireless network off the ground were dealt another blow this week as U.S. government tests found that the signal of the telecom startup would cause "harmful interference" to a majority of GPS devices.

Preliminary analysis of testing of the company's planned network conducted last month showed the wireless network would not interfere with cell phones but would cause "harmful interference to the majority of other tested general purpose GPS receivers," the U.S. Defense and Transportation departments said in a joint statement late Wednesday.

LightSquared is owned by billionaire hedge fund manager Philip Falcone. The company in June revised its plan to deploy a high-speed wireless network serving roughly 260 million people after interference issues arose with GPS devices that are used by the military and in civilian applications ranging from aviation to agriculture.

Falcone, who could separately face civil fraud charges over alleged manipulative trading in debt securities from 2006 to 2008 and other trading violations, bet much of his Harbinger Capital Partners money on LightSquared.

Falcone's hedge fund empire has shrunk from $26 billion to around $5 billion, and roughly half of that money is tied up in LightSquared LP.

LightSquared's signals would also interfere "with a flight safety system designed to warn pilots of approaching terrain," the government statement said of a separate analysis performed by the Federal Aviation Administration.

LightSquared Chief Executive Sanjiv Ahuja said the company would work with the FAA on the terrain avoidance systems, but disagreed with the government's conclusions on general navigation devices.

"The testing further confirmed that the interference issues are not caused by LightSquared's spectrum, but by GPS devices looking into spectrum that is licensed to LightSquared," Ahuja said in a statement.

Some 500 million GPS receivers are estimated to be in use for government and commercial purposes in the United States.

The Coalition to Save Our GPS, whose membership spans several industries and includes Deere & Co, Delta Airlines, Garmin Ltd and Trimble Navigation Ltd, said the test results reveal substantial risks to everyday activities.

"It is clear that LightSquared simply refuses to accept the overwhelming technical evidence on the interference issue and continues to try to 'define away' devastating test results," said Dale Leibach, a spokesman for the group.

Deployment of LightSquared's network depends on regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission. The company has said its new deployment plan addresses many of the interference concerns and has partnered with GPS firms to develop solutions to the remaining problems.

"We have taken extraordinary measures - and at extraordinary expense - to solve a problem that is not of our making," Ahuja said, adding that the company will continue working with the federal government to allow LightSquared and GPS to coexist.

LightSquared intends to invest $14 billion over the next eight years to build its network, and aims to sell wholesale wireless services to companies which would then resell the service under their own brand names.

The national network would use satellites and land-based signals. The interference issues have arisen over the land-based portion of the network.

The FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Agency are still awaiting a final analysis and report on the testing, which will be completed over the next several weeks.

(Reporting By Jasmin Melvin, editing by Matthew Lewis and Carol Bishopric)

Rebecca Black crowned top search term in Google Zeitgeist 2011 (Digital Trends)

Posted: 15 Dec 2011 08:01 PM PST

Mike Flacy Mike Flacy – 1 hr 13 mins ago

Announced in an official blog post, Google rolled out the 11th annual version of the Google Zeitgeist earlier today. The Zeitgeist shows off the search terms that grew the fastest during the year as well as the most popular terms in various countries around the world. In the Fastest Rising category, YouTube star Rebecca Black took the top spot this year in regards to Google searches, both globally and within the United States. Black beat out Jackass star Ryan Dunn, Casey Anthony as well as Steve Jobs. She also topped Google Plus, Battlefield 3, iPhone 5, professional singer Adele and the iPad 2. Alternatively, a few terms on the fastest falling list include Myspace, social gaming site Hi5, Hotmail and Delta Airlines.

The Zeitgeist also breaks down terms into a variety of categories at the global level including food and drink, Google Maps, consumer electronics, sports, entertainment and Google News. Further categorization can be found within each countries top terms. On the Food and Drink list, several fast food locations topped the list including Wendys, Little Caesars, Chick Fil A and Popeyes. Recipe site Allrecipes also seemed to be a dominant term in addition to the term cupcakes. When searching on Google Maps within the United States, popular terms included airport, casinos, veterinarian, laundromat and Mexican restaurants. Businesses that made that list included Wells Fargo, Starbucks and Ikea.

Amazon's Kindle Fire beat out all other consumer electronic products to become the top term for global searches. The iPhone 4S took the number two spot and other Apple products on that list include the iPad 2 and the unreleased iPad 3. Other popular terms within the consumer electronics category included Sidekick 4G, HP Touchpad, HTC Sensation, Samsung Nexus Prime and the Sony NPG. Specific to the United States, Apple dominated searches with 8 out of the top 10 results in the technology category; only the terms Touchpad and Toshiba Tablet made it into the top ten.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

Technet

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Online game maker Zynga prices IPO at $10 a share (AP) : Technet

Online game maker Zynga prices IPO at $10 a share (AP) : Technet

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