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| 391 | Apple Inc. risks losing the right to use the iPad trademark in China, a senior official suggested Tuesday, as a Chinese court was seeking to mediate a settlement between the technology giant and a local company challenging its use of the iPad name.
Yan Xiaohong, deputy director of the National Copyright Administration, told reporters in Beijing that the government regards Shenzhen Proview Technology as the rightful owner of the trademark for the popular tablet computers. His remarks could add to pressure on Apple to find a solution to the standoff.
Yan's comments followed news that the Guangdong High Court in southern China is seeking to arrange a settlement in the case. In late February, the court began hearing Apple's appeal of a lower court ruling that favored Proview in the trademark dispute.
"The dispute between Apple and Shenzhen Proview concerning the iPad trademark is going through the judicial process," Yan said in a news conference carried on the Internet.
But he added that "according to our government's laws, Shenzhen Proview is still the lawful representative and user of the trademark."
China has sought to showcase its determination to protect trademarks and other intellectual property, but with hundreds of thousands employed in the assembly of Apple's iPhones and iPads is unlikely to want to disrupt the company's production and marketing in China.
Ma Dongxiao, a lawyer for Proview said the company had expected all along to settle with Apple, with the key sticking point being the amount of money involved.
"It is likely that we will settle out of court. The Guangdong High Court is helping to arrange it and the court also expects to do so," Ma said in a phone interview.
Court officials contacted by phone said they were not authorized to comment on the issue to foreign media.
"Given the wide implications of this case we need... newsfactor.com » | | 392 | Hidden in AT&T Inc.'s financial statements is a story that runs counter to its optimistic profit projections: The company is generating less revenue from each new smartphone subscriber.
Calculations by The Associated Press, based on AT&T's public statements, indicate that the average monthly bill for its smartphone subscribers has fallen from $88 to $80 in the space of a year.
That number should be of great concern to Dallas-based AT&T, because like most big phone companies, it is struggling with a slowdown in new subscribers. Nearly all adults -- and many kids -- in the U.S. already have cellphones. AT&T's executives have been touting smartphones as the solution, since the devices require consumers to pay for data use in addition to voice calls. Smartphone subscribers, therefore, pay more. So moving customers from regular phones to smartphones will keep boosting revenue, AT&T has said.
But an analysis of AT&T's own figures indicates that smartphone bills have shrunk by 9 percent over a year, challenging the company's picture of long-term revenue growth.
The AP's calculations are based on various figures AT&T makes public -- and a bit of basic algebra. The company doesn't disclose the average smartphone bill, but says it's 90 percent higher than the average non-smartphone bill. AT&T reveals the number of smartphone and non-smartphone subscribers, and the average monthly bill for a contract-based plan, which is $64.46. Together, these numbers allow for an approximate calculation of the average smartphone bill.
AT&T did not explicitly confirm the calculations, but its chief financial officer, John Stephens, said that the composition of new smartphone customers is changing. The early smartphone adopters were business people and others willing and able to pay high monthly fees. Now, AT&T and other phone companies are going after people who can't pay as much.
"We go after the biggest spenders at the start,... newsfactor.com » | | 393 | Apple CEO Tim Cook has long seen as the humorless and unemotional guy running the show from behind the scenes. But he is beginning to reveal a more assertive and eloquent side, hinting that he's learning to shoulder more of Steve Jobs' role as a front man and leader.
On a conference call with journalists and financial analysts late Tuesday, Cook showed some fire when talking about competitors, echoing the combative Jobs. He also spouted a vivid metaphor that spread like wildfire over Twitter before the call was over.
Most Apple watchers have sized up Cook as a competent caretaker of the machine that Apple founder and late CEO Steve Jobs created, but if Cook has latent charisma that can be thawed out further, he may turn into the kind of leader some people think is essential for the company.
In a blog post Wednesday, George Colony, the CEO of Forrester Research, predicted that Apple Inc. will go the way of Sony, fading away now that Jobs is not around to inspire.
"Without the arrival of a new charismatic leader it will move from being a great company to being a good company," he wrote.
Even while Jobs was alive, Cook handled appearances in front of Wall Street analysts. He spoke precisely and calmly, and his language wasn't very quotable. At a Goldman Sachs investors meeting in February, for instance, he said "our high order bit is we want to please customers." A "high order bit" is a computer science term for the most important piece of data in a set.
But on Tuesday, when asked if PCs and tablets might someday blend into one device, like rival PC manufacturers hope, Cook extemporized this response:
"I think anything can be forced to converge. The problem is that products are about tradeoffs, and you begin to make tradeoffs... newsfactor.com » | | 394 | It's the end of the week when Google Drive was unveiled, and potential users have now had a chance to look at the software giant's Terms of Service. The result: questions about privacy for a company that has had more than its share of privacy issues.
According to the TOS, Google retains the right to "use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute" anything that is uploaded to Google Drive.
User Retains Rights
That language, added to other concerns about public clouds and Google in particular, is raising questions about why Google should have such rights with your uploaded content. The TOS does note that the user retains the rights of "ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in the content."
To make certain that the TOS is clear, Google has issued a statement that "what belongs to you stays yours." It added that "you own your files and control their sharing, plain and simple," while the TOS enables the company "to give you the services you want -- so if you decide to share a document with someone, or open it on a different device, you can."
Some observers contend that the terms, which echo the ones on Google+ and on other competing services, are benign, and enable the company to share content and otherwise use the content within the services it provides.
In a posting on his company's CounterMeasures blog, cloud security firm Trend Micro's Rik Ferguson pointed out on Thursday that the Terms restrict Google's rights to "the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones," and that the license "continues even if you... newsfactor.com » | | 395 | After being spanked by the Federal Communications Commission, Google is scolding the agency for its handling of a recently concluded investigation into the company's collection of emails, passwords and other personal information transmitted over wireless networks.
The rebuke came in a Thursday letter that disputed the FCC's reasons for fining Google Inc. $25,000 earlier this month.
Despite its misgivings, the company isn't trying to overturn the fine. The 14-page letter instead tried to debunk the idea that Google did anything wrong -- a high priority for a company whose motto is "Don't Be Evil."
The FCC contends Google "deliberately impeded and delayed" a privacy probe focused on the company's collection of sensitive data sent through unsecured Wi-Fi systems while photographing for the Street View feature on its online mapping service.
In its letter, Google argues that the 17-month inquiry would have gone much more quickly if the FCC hadn't dawdled so much. In some instances, Google says the FCC took seven to 12 weeks to respond to information that the company had submitted to the agency.
The FCC's delays were so frequent and lengthy, according to Google, that the agency's legal window for completing the investigation would have closed if the company hadn't agreed to a seven-month extension.
"That is hardly the act of a party stonewalling an investigation," Google lawyer E. Ashton Johnston wrote in the letter to P. Michele Ellison, the chief of the FCC's enforcement bureau. "Rather, it is a demonstration of Google's interest in cooperating and allowing the FCC time to conduct a thorough investigation."
FCC spokeswoman Tammy Sun said the agency stands behind the work of its staff.
"In promising to pay the bureau's penalty, the company has rightly admitted wrongdoing," Sun said of Google.
As Google wrangled with the FCC, another regulator took a significant step in a broader investigation into allegations that... newsfactor.com » | | 396 | It's make-or-break time for BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion. On Tuesday, the Waterloo, Ontario-based company previewed key features of its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system, the success of which could determine the survival of the company.
At the BlackBerry World conference that opened Tuesday in Orlando, CEO Thorsten Heins demonstrated some of BB10's highlights. One of the features attracting attention is the touchscreen-only keyboard, meaning that the physical keyboard -- famous to countless BlackBerry owners' thumbs -- will not be available on the first BB10 devices.
Swipe Gestures, Camera Time Machine
The new virtual keyboard features larger-than-normal buttons, and new swipe gestures to facilitate keyboarding, such as backspacing by swiping the keyboard.
There are also new gestural functions in the camera app, where a user can move back in time in a photo just by highlighting an area, which calls up sections of stored images captured just before the main shot and leaves the rest of the image the same. The feature can be useful when one of the subjects in a group shot has their eyes closed in the main shot.
We asked Current Analysis' Avi Greengart, who attended Heins' keynote address, if it looks like BB10 will help return RIM to its competitive position.
Greengart said the demonstrated user interface included "a number of really interesting concepts," including the keyboard and such functions as "smoothly swiping between apps, either keeping to the stack of apps and documents you're in, or returning back to the main screen."
'Too Early to Tell'
He said that BB10 is clearly "designed for touchscreen interaction, and for personal productivity tools," the latter of which will be important for RIM to maintain or expand its focus on business markets.
But, Greengart noted, it's "too early to say" if BB10 is going to give RIM the hit the company needs.
"While the UI is... newsfactor.com » | | 397 | VMware is unveiling View 5.1 and other updated end-user solutions, as it moves forward with its effort to facilitate personal clouds for enterprises. The new releases are intended to simplify management for administrators, and to better position the company in its battle with Citrix Systems.
Boaz Chalamish, senior vice president and general manager, said in a statement that customers are looking for "services that can be accessed anywhere, on any device." He added that View 5.1, which updates the company's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, or VDI, solutions, allows companies to "simplify technology, manage more efficiently and better connect employees."
As Much as 50 Percent
VMware said that IT administration is streamlined in 5.1 by improvements in provisioning, configuration management, connection brokering, policy enforcement, performance monitoring and application assignment, all available via a single console.
There is also a feature to give administrators the ability, through a vCenter Operations add-on, to check desktop performance and maintain a watch for any problems in performance.
Additionally, 5.1 supports RADIUS, offering more choices for two-factor authentication, and there's support for PC-over-IP, or PCoIP, protocol, enabling smoothly rendered HD video to be transmitted over a LAN or WAN as if it were running on a PC.
VMWare said the new offerings allow operational costs to be reduced by as much as 50 percent. The company noted that the new storage capabilities in 5.1, enabled by Storage Accelerator, will reduce total cost of ownership by caching the most frequently used apps, and increasing the speed at which individual workspaces can be assembled.
View Composer Array Integration, now in Tech Preview, improves provisioning speeds by leveraging the ability of storage arrays to clone user workspaces for deployment. View Personal Management enables user data to be moved from physical to virtual machines, and kept in sync.
Project Octopus
Updated clients are available for Mac, Windows,... newsfactor.com » | | 398 | Facebook will go public on May 18, a published report says, in one of the most highly anticipated tech initial public offerings since Google went public in August 2004.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the social networking company is set to start its roadshow on Monday, according to people familiar with the matter. The roadshow, a series of meetings with prospective institutional investors, is designed to stir interest in the company's stock.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, will attend some of the meetings, The Journal reported.
The Menlo Park, California-based company is seeking to raise about $5 billion in the offering, giving the entire company a value of about $100 billion.
Officials for Facebook declined to comment.
Facebook last month announced it is buying Instagram, the company behind a popular mobile photo-sharing application with the same name, for $1 billion, its largest acquisition ever.
During the first quarter, Facebook's net income fell 12 percent, weighed down by higher expenses even as its revenue soared. Net income fell to $205 million in the three months that ended March 31, from $233 million a year earlier, while net income attributable to common shareholders fell to $137 million from $153 million. That amounts to earnings of 9 cents per share in the latest quarter, down from 11 cents a year earlier. Revenue rose 45 percent to $1.06 billion.
The company had 901 million monthly active users as of March 31, up from 845 million as of the end of 2011.
Facebook is listing its stock on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "FB." newsfactor.com » | | 399 | Facebook is going public and it's pricing itself at $96 billion. If the social-media darling actually pulls in that much cash at its initial public offering, it will make stock market history. But questions linger.
Facebook plans its IPO for May 18. If the company debuts at the near-$100 billion mark, it would be worth more than Hewlett-Packard, McDonald's and Amazon.com out of the gate even though it produces no products, has few physical assets and posts only a small percentage of its revenue as profit.
But Facebook's IPO could falter. The company has made some recent moves that are causing some to question the leadership. Then there are privacy concerns that could affect revenue, as well as questions about long-term revenue growth.
Red Flags Rising
We asked Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, to offer his take on Facebook's chances to meet analyst expectations at its IPO. Like others, he's keeping a close eye on how recent events, including the leadership style of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, might affect investor decisions.
"You certainly don't want to put a large investment into a company that is poorly led. Part of the problem is the Instagram acquisition," Enderle said. "Zuckerberg acquired a $1 billion company with 11 people without any board involvement or any help, really. So it creates the specter of an out-of-control CEO, and that's a problem."
Beyond the Instagram buy, Enderle also pointed to issues around revenue growth. Facebook revenue appears to be slowing. Others argue that consumers are growing tired of too many social networks. Will it put a damper on the IPO?
"It depends on what happens when Facebook finally goes public. Right now this is just a lot of noise but it's raising red flags and it doesn't take a lot for this market, which is pretty flighty any... newsfactor.com » | | 400 |  Хабы: Железо, Игровые приставки
Автомобильные гонки традиционно популярны. Популярны и игры, представляющие собой симулятор автогонок, симулятор стритрейсинга и прочие разновидности автомобильных «салочек». Сейчас многие компании создают достаточно реалистичные программные симуляторы гонок, некоторые занимаются созданием и аппаратных симуляторов, дающих ощущение присутствия в салоне гоночного (или обычного) автомобиля. Но симулятор, созданный Ariel Motor Company, вероятно, является одним из наиболее реалистичных, если не самым реалистичным.
Читать дальше → habrahabr.ru » | | 401 | Facebook, the company that turned the social Web into a cultural and business phenomenon, is worth as much as $95 billion, according to the price range for its upcoming initial public offering of stock.
Facebook's IPO, expected in a couple of weeks, would be the biggest ever for an Internet company. Facebook disclosed the price range of $28 to $35 per share in a regulatory filing Thursday.
At the high end, Facebook and its current shareholders could raise as much as $13.58 billion -- far more than the $1.9 billion raised in the 2004 offering for current Internet IPO record-holder Google Inc. The IPO valued the company at $23 billion. Google is now worth about $200 billion.
Facebook Inc.'s IPO has been highly anticipated, not just because of how much money it will raise but because Facebook itself is so popular. The world's largest online social network has more than 900 million users.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who turns 28 this month, has emerged as a wunderkind leader who's guided Facebook through unprecedented growth from its scrappy start as an online hangout for Harvard students.
Facebook's offering values the company at $76 billion to $95 billion, based on the expected number of Facebook shares following the IPO. That's about 2.74 billion, according to Renaissance Capital, an IPO investment adviser. The value is set by multiplying the number of shares by the expected stock price.
Facebook's next step is an "IPO road show," where executives talk to potential investors about why they should invest in the stock. On Thursday, Facebook posted a version of its road show online, with appearances from Zuckerberg; Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg; finance chief David Ebersman and other executives. The company said that putting the road show online was consistent with its focus on "authentic, engaging information."
"We think people's lives will be better... newsfactor.com » | | 402 | Nokia Corp.'s outgoing board chairman said Thursday the company made mistakes during his tenure at the helm of the cell phone maker that held the No. 1 spot for 14 years.
Jorma Ollila told angry shareholders at the Finnish firm's annual general meeting that Nokia's performance was below-par as it struggles in a transition after teaming up with Microsoft Corp. a year ago.
"The transformation period is truly painful. We cannot be satisfied with our economic performance or that so many Nokia workers have had to leave the company because of the changes," Ollila said.
Last year, Nokia announced more than 10,000 layoffs, aimed at cutting operating expenses by (EURO)1 billion ($1.31 billion) by 2013 and it has not ruled out more cutbacks.
Nokia's share price has more than halved in the past 12 months, dropping to a 15-year low of (EURO)2.98 ($3.91) in April after it announced huge first-quarter losses and a 30 percent drop in sales. Analysts said it had lost the spot as the world's biggest maker of mobile phones.
On Thursday, Nokia shares closed down 1 percent at (EURO)2.67 ($3.50) on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
Last week, Standard and Poor's downgraded Nokia's credit rating by one notch and warned that it may reduce it again unless the company's performance improves. The cut followed earlier recent downgrades by other ratings agencies, including Fitch which dropped it to junk status while Moody's cut it to near junk status.
Stephen Elop, the company's first-non Finnish CEO who was appointed in September 2010, described Nokia's situation at the time as being "a burning platform."
A former Microsoft executive who had earlier worked closely with Nokia, Elop said he would guide it through a period of "disruption," announcing the Microsoft deal five months later, in a move which will place the Windows operating system in Nokia's new phones, phasing... newsfactor.com » | | 403 | Demonstrating that IBM is not the only tech heavy hitter to make strategic investments in data analytics, Cisco is acquiring a privately held company that offers scalable, real-time network data analysis and reporting software.
Cisco will purchase Truviso for an undisclosed amount. Once integrated into Cisco's portfolio, the company promises its clients "instant access" and visibility into network use and services. And that instant access and visibility promises to help enterprises increase operational efficiencies and drive new revenue streams.
"Customers want to be able to tap into and better analyze the enormous volume of data traversing their networks to identify ways to enhance services and generate new revenue opportunities," said Jamie Lerner, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Network Management Technology Group. "Embedding Truviso's real-time business intelligence into the network will help customers unlock these capabilities at the speed of the network."
Cisco's Prime Play
Cisco is making this move based on needs its research uncovered. Specifically, Cisco points to the proliferation of end-user devices and growth in network-connected applications as factors that are increasing the amount of data on the network exponentially.
Cisco is betting that both service provider and enterprise customers are looking for ways to better understand this data and act upon it in real-time to improve operations, customer experiences, and service offering differentiation. How can Truviso help? The company owns what it calls "continuous query technology." With its analyze-first, store-later approach, Truviso offers enterprises detailed information and visibility of network use and services in real-time.
Cisco is integrating Truviso technology for its Cisco Prime platform. The company said Truviso's software analytics will strengthen its network management platform with the core technology to gather and analyze streaming data.
Cisco also noted that the acquisition reinforces its commitment to delivering intelligent networks and supports its five foundational priorities -- core, data center, virtualization,... newsfactor.com » | | 404 | Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is sorry for allowing an inaccuracy about his education to appear in his official biography, but not remorseful enough to heed calls for him to resign.
Thompson apologized for the uproar caused by the misinformation in a memo sent Monday to the troubled Internet company's employees. Yahoo Inc. provided a copy of the memo to The Associated Press.
The memo didn't offer any explanation why Thompson's bio has periodically listed a bachelor's degree in computer science that he never received. The exaggeration was most recently repeated in documents that Yahoo filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"We have all been working very hard to move the company forward, and this has had the opposite effect," Thompson wrote. "For that, I take full responsibility, and I want to apologize to you." He assured Yahoo employees that he remains focused on taking the steps that he believes are needed to revive Yahoo's revenue growth and boost its long-sagging stock, even with his own job imperiled.
Thompson's note of contrition came on the same day that an activist hedge fund that owns a 5.8 percent stake in Yahoo escalated its effort to oust the CEO for unethical conduct.
The fund, Third Point LLC, issued a legal demand to review internal Yahoo documents that may explain how much research the company's board did about Thompson's background before hiring him in January. Third Point contends it's entitled to the records under the laws of Delaware, where Yahoo is incorporated.
Yahoo didn't respond to requests for comments about Third Point's demand.
After initially brushing off the misinformation as an "inadvertent error," Yahoo's board opened an investigation into the circumstances that led to the computer science degree being included in Thompson's bio. Thompson told employees that he "respects the process" and will provide whatever information the board requests.
Besides... newsfactor.com » | | 405 | Problems persist for Internet giant Yahoo. Yahoo's board will probe the vetting process of recently hired CEO Scott Thompson, who has come under fire for a resume inaccurately stating that he holds a degree in computer science.
The move comes as pressure mounts from activist hedge fund Third Point, Yahoo's largest outside shareholder, to ax Thompson, who is in the midst of efforts to turn around the troubled company so it can better grow its core advertising business and gain greater traction with younger mobile users of social media.
Yahoo on Tuesday said it has formed a special committee of recently appointed board members -- Alfred Amoroso, John Hayes and Thomas McInerney -- to investigate Thompson's academic credentials and the review process in his hiring.
In a memo, Thompson late Monday apologized to Yahoo employees for the inaccuracy in his resume that claimed he had a computer science degree from Stonehill College, near Boston. He has a degree in accounting. The rsum claim appeared on the company's Web site as well as in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Patti Hart, who led the Yahoo search committee that hired Thompson in January, will not seek re-election to Yahoo's board, the company announced Tuesday.
Actions taken by the board "are standard and reasonable moves to take under these circumstances," says Steve Diamond, an associate professor of law at Santa Clara (Calif.) University School of Law.
Thompson was hired in January to revitalize the company. As part of his plan, he last month laid off 2,000 employees, or 14% of Yahoo's workforce. He is also looking to close or sell about 50 Yahoo services and is exploring selling part of Yahoo's roughly 40% stake in Alibaba Group, a thriving Chinese Internet company that investors view as Yahoo's most valuable asset.
Also happening: Third Point aims to gain... newsfactor.com » | | 406 | As it moves to better define its mobile strategy, Facebook is launching an app store. Dubbed the App Center, the idea is to give developers more ways to grow their app momentum while making it more convenient for consumers to find their favorite apps and discover new ones.
Within weeks, Facebook users will be able to access the App Center on the Web and on iOS and Android Facebook apps. All listed apps come with a detail page so consumers can see what makes it worth downloading.
"Success through the App Center is tied to the quality of an app," wrote Facebook developer Aaron Brady in the company's Developer Blog. "We use a variety of signals, such as user ratings and engagement, to determine if an app is listed in the App Center. To help you monitor user feedback, we are also introducing a new app ratings metric in Insights to report how users rate your app over time."
Facebook's Strategic Timing
We caught up with Jake Wengroff, global director of Social Media Strategy and Research at Frost & Sullivan, to get his take on Facebook's latest move. He told us the App Center launch couldn't come at a better time: the social networking giant has been struggling to present a story to investors for its coming initial public offering that it 'gets' mobile, or that it has a mobile monetization strategy.
"In Facebook's S-1 documents, the company listed mobile as a major risk factor, as Ads and Sponsored Stories currently do not render in the mobile versions of the social network," Wengroff said. "Facebook estimates that about half of its 900-million member audience currently access the platform on a mobile device, and the company cannot continue its growth trajectory without a clear mobile revenue strategy."
Of course, Wengroff noted, Facebook's new App Center is not... newsfactor.com » | | 407 | Nvidia reported robust first-quarter results on Friday -- driven by high demand for products based on the company's graphics processor unit offerings as well as strong sales of quad-core Tegra 3 chipsets for smartphones and tablets.
The big downside for Nvidia, which relies on overseas semiconductor plants to manufacture its products, is that its Taiwan-based partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is struggling to keep up with demand for new chips designed for production using TSMC's advanced 28-nanometer process technology.
"Supply is still constrained, and our manufacturers are working their hearts out to catch up to our demand," said Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang.
"But at the moment, demand still continues to exceed supply and we expect that to happen for throughout the year, Huang told investors on a conference call Friday. "Every chip that can come out of their fab is being shipped instantaneously."
Nvidia reported a profit for the quarter of $60.4 million, or 10 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $135.2 million, or 22 cents a share.
Strong Mobile-Chip Growth
Demand for Nvidia's new GPUs, based on Kepler architecture, for desktop PCs was so strong in the first quarter that it exceeded the company's supply. Moreover, NVidia's Kepler-based GeForce 600M offerings for notebooks racked up record revenue in the quarter on the strength of the ramp of the Intel Ivy Bridge platform.
Meanwhile, Nvidia's Kepler offerings are continuing to evolve. Two weeks ago, for example, the company unveiled a new computer graphics card powered by dual GeForce GTX 690 GPUs based on the company's Kepler architecture, which has been engineered to establish a new performance threshold for the gaming experience.
Revenue from the company's consumer products business -- which includes Tegra chipsets for smartphones and media tablets -- rose 20.8 percent from the prior quarter, to $132.6 million.
"The increase... newsfactor.com » | | 408 | He famously wears a hoodie, jeans and sneakers, and he was born the year Apple introduced the Macintosh. But Mark Zuckerberg is no boy-CEO.
Facebook's chief executive turned 28 on Monday, setting in motion the social network's biggest week ever. The company is expected to start selling stock to the public for the first time and begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday. The IPO could value Facebook at nearly $100 billion, making it worth more than such iconic companies as Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods.
At 28, Zuckerberg is exactly half the age of the average S&P 500 CEO, according to executive search firm Spencer Stuart. With eight years on the job, he's logged more time as leader than the average CEO, whose tenure is a little more than seven years, according to Spencer Stuart.
Even so, the pressures of running a public company will undoubtedly take some getting used to. Once Facebook begins selling stock, Zuckerberg will be expected to please a host of new stakeholders, including Wall Street investment firms, hedge funds and pension funds who will pressure him to keep the company growing.
Young as he may seem -- especially in that hooded sweatshirt -- Zuckerberg will be about the same age as Michael Dell and older than Steve Jobs when those two took their companies, Dell Inc. and Apple Inc., public. In his years as Facebook's CEO he's met world leaders, rode a bull in Vietnam while on vacation, started learning Mandarin Chinese and as a personal challenge, wore a tie for the better part of a year.
Facebook, of course, got its start in Zuckerberg's messy Harvard dorm room in early 2004. Known as Thefacebook.com in those days, the site was created to help Harvard students -- and later other college students -- connect with one another... newsfactor.com » | | 409 | With some 900 million user accounts, Facebook would seem to be the perfect venue for advertisers. The question is, despite the amount of time people spend logged on, posting updates, chatting with friends and sharing pictures, how much does the advertising that has made Facebook a multibillion-dollar concern in a short eight years really move products?
Not enough, the nation's leading automobile manufacturer has apparently concluded. In its case, paid advertising on the world's biggest social network hasn't justified the cost.
$10 Million Campaign
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that General Motors was pulling its ads for cars on Facebook, while continuing to use free pages to publicize its products. The paid advertising had reportedly amounted to $10 million.
The decision may reflect a mindset of "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" That could be troubling on some level for the Mark Zuckerberg-founded company as it heads toward an initial public stock offering Friday that hinges on future profitability and revenue growth. The company could be valued as high as $100 billion.
"GM's move is certainly likely to give other advertisers pause, especially given the company's heft, its reputation for advertising savvy and its remarkable return from the grave," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told us.
"There have also been numerous similar situations in the past, where an initially hot Internet property cooled swiftly -- in some cases, by Antarctic proportions -- when exposed to close scrutiny."
One example, King said, was Second Life, the virtual world created by Linden Research in 2003 that allows users to interact through avatars.
Virtual Showrooms Didn't Pay
"At one point, the site's fast growth and its popularity among the technology elite made it a go-to venue for numerous vendors and manufacturers, many of which built virtual 'showrooms' to market and advertise their goods," King... newsfactor.com » | | 410 | LightSquared Inc., which hoped to create an independent wireless broadband network in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday.
Regulators blocked its plan this winter because of concerns that its transmissions would interfere with GPS navigation.
LightSquared hasn't given up. Chief Financial Officer Marc Montagner said in a statement that the bankruptcy filing is intended to gain the company "breathing room" while it continues to work through its regulatory issues.
It has said that it has invested more than $4 billion in the network. LightSquared listed assets and liabilities of more than $1 billion each in the filing Monday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
The company, which is based in Reston, Virginia, is owned by Harbinger Capital Partners, a private-equity firm that made billions betting against subprime mortgages ahead of the collapse of the housing market.
Harbinger bought SkyTerra, a provider of satellite communications services to businesses, in 2010. It then lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to allow it to use the spectrum set aside for SkyTerra for ground-based communications -- essentially, a conventional wireless broadband network, rather than a satellite-based one.
But SkyTerra's licenses were for spectrum adjacent to a band used by GPS satellites. On the ground, GPS units had no problem filtering out transmissions from SkyTerra's satellites, but regulators determined that they could be disrupted by strong, ground-based signals.
LightSquared's CEO, telecom veteran Sanjiv Ahuja, resigned in February.
The company's largest creditors are Boeing Satellite Systems Inc., owed $7.5 million, and telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent, owed $7.3 million, according to the filing. newsfactor.com » | | 411 |  (Reuters) - Silicon Valley startup Pinterest raised $100 million from a group led by Japanese online retailer Rakuten Inc, valuing the company at about $1.5 billion and underscoring the huge investor appetite for social-networking companies.
Reuters: Internet News » | | 412 | Responding to extraordinary demand, Facebook said Wednesday that it would sell more stock in the company's initial public offering. But ahead of the IPO, a debate emerged between two of the nation's largest automakers: Does it pay to advertise on the social network?
General Motors, the nation's largest automaker, said it would abandon Facebook ads after concluding they were ineffective. At the same time, Ford reaffirmed its commitment to Facebook, saying their relationship was stronger than ever.
The direct financial impact of GM's move is minimal for Facebook, but the decision drew attention to the network's advertising system, which some observers regard as immature.
In a regulatory filing Wednesday, Facebook said it would add 84 million shares, worth up to $3.2 billion, to the IPO, which is shaping up to be the decade's hottest. The company's stock is expected to begin trading Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol "FB".
Almost half of the additional shares come from investment firms DST Global and Tiger Global. Goldman Sachs is doubling the number of shares it is selling. Facebook board members Peter Thiel and James Breyer are also selling more shares.
Since all of the additional shares come from insiders and early investors, the company won't benefit from their sale.
"It certainly does raise the question: How much higher could the stock go if institutions who know the company well think this is a good price to sell?" said Daniel Ernst, an analyst with Hudson Square Research.
On the other hand, he said, investment firms only make money by selling their stakes, and they have bills to pay. So the fact that they are selling more is only a limited indication of their confidence in the company.
The news comes a day after Facebook raised the expected price of the stock to a range of $34 to... newsfactor.com » | | 413 | It's official. Google has closed on its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility. But what does this mean for the merged company? There are still more questions than answers.
In a Tuesday morning blog post, Google CEO Larry Page opined about how the phones in our pockets have become supercomputers that are changing the way we live. He pointed out how it's now possible to do things we used to think were magic -- or only possible on Star Trek. Things like getting directions on the spot, watching a video on YouTube or taking a picture and sharing it instantly with friends all over the world.
"Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone," Page wrote. "We all remember Motorola's StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google."
Motorola Gets New CEO
Although Page didn't offer much insight on what Google will do with Motorola, he did announce that Sanjay Jha, who was responsible for building the company and placing that big bet on Android, has stepped down as CEO. Long-time Googler Dennis Woodside has taken the reins.
After extolling Woodside's virtues in the blog he turned his attention back to technology, indicating that Motorola would still make mobile phones, saying: "It's a well-known fact that people tend to overestimate the impact technology will have in the short term, but underestimate its significance in the longer term.
"Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition will be profound -- as will the ability to just... newsfactor.com » | | 414 | In ancient Greece, priests gathered at the Temple of Apollo on Mount Parnassus, the better to interpret the deity-inspired prophecies of Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi.
Google, for all its omnipresence, is no deity, yet legions practice search-engine optimization in an effort to divine the secret algorithms that move certain Web sites to the top of an online search.
Now comes candidate optimization, essentially the same idea applied to job seekers, with services that help them tweak their resumes so they end up at the top of a list generated by a company's computerized talent-management system.
Hurdle No. 1? Dazzling the computers, which these days are more likely than people to be frontline resume readers.
"Computers have a very specific way that they look at resumes," said Jon Ciampi, founder of California-based Preptel Corp. For a subscription of $25 a month, Ciampi's 2-year-old company will help a candidate reconfigure a resume so a computer can better spot the qualifications that make that candidate a good match for the job.
With the recession and its lingering aftermath, the number of resumes generated for any job opening is so overwhelming that human-resource staffs can't handle them all. The U.S. Labor Department reported that in February there were 3.5 million job openings and 12.8 million people unemployed.
No wonder recruiters turn to software created by companies such as Kenexa Inc., in Wayne, Pa., a leader in the field.
"The volume is just too high," said Jeffrey Weidner, director of sourcing science at Kenexa, whose Web site describes a case study in which one wireless-communications company received five million resumes, leading to 50 hires.
In 2011, companies worldwide spent $3 billion on talent-management systems that scan and sort resumes, schedule interviews, track follow-ups, and incorporate social media, according to Bersin & Associates L.L.C., a California consulting group that tracks the industry.
All this... newsfactor.com » | | 415 | "MONDEWHAAAAT?" The sarcasm was palpable in the one-word headline that appeared in The New York Post on the day after Kraft Foods revealed that it planned to name its new global snack business "Mondelez," an interpretation of a mash-up of the Latin words for "world" and "delicious." But that wasn't the only dig.
One blogger teased that she would've been "stifling giggles" if she'd been in meetings to determine the name. A Forbes contributor suggested a trick for remembering how to say it: "Just think Bush Administration Secretary of State. You know, Mon-de-leza Rice." Crain's Business Chicago tittered that it bears close resemblance to a vulgar Russian term for a sexual act.
Michael Mitchell, a Kraft spokesman, said executives took all the joking in stride, and he's quick to point out why the Crain's observation didn't alarm the company: "The name has to be mispronounced to get that unfortunate meaning."
The made-up moniker, pronounced "mon-dah-LEEZ," became a punch line after it was unveiled in March. On Wednesday, Kraft shareholders will decide whether to approve the name for the company's business that sells global snack brands such as Oreos, Fig Newton and Cadbury.
The four-month odyssey of how "Mondelez" was picked -- and how it was received -- illustrates the great pains companies take to come up with powerful names for their businesses, products and services. For them, it's akin to parents obsessing over a name for their newborn: it's a moniker that sticks for better or worse, so it better be good.
"You have to generate thousands of ideas, even if it's just for a cookie," said Nik Contis, the global director of naming at branding company Siegel+Gale.
That's just what Kraft did after it decided to split into two publicly-traded companies -- one for its North American grocery business that makes products like Oscar Mayer... newsfactor.com » |
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