WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand consortium planning a trans-Pacific high-speed telecommunications cable has scrapped the venture after failing to find sufficient backing, dealing a blow to plans to bring more broadband competition to the country.
Pacific Fibre, backed by three high profile local businessmen, in 2010 launched the $400 million fibre optic cable venture linking New Zealand, Australia and the United States, aiming to break the dominance of the Southern Cross cable, half owned by the country's main telecom firm Telecom Corp Ltd.
'Despite getting some good investor support we have not been able to find the level of investment required in New Zealand initially and more broadly offshore,' Chairman Sam Morgan said in a statement on Wednesday, citing difficult capital markets.
New Zealand's biggest mobile phone operator, Vodafone, was an early backer of the 13,000 kilometer (8,125 mile) submarine cable.
As recently as April, Pacific Fibre had said it expected the cable to be operating by mid-July 2014.
Pacific Fibre said New Zealand businesses and consumers have been paying more than five times what Australians pay to connect to U.S. broadband networks, and their cable would have helped reduce the cost.
The New Zealand government is spending around NZ$1.5 billion over the next three years to establish a high speed internet network through most of the country.
(Reporting by Gyles Beckford; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Microsoft revamps Hotmail as social-friendly Outlook
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp unveiled a revamped, Facebook-friendly version of its free, online email service on Tuesday in an attempt to reverse market share losses to Google Inc's fast-growing Gmail.
The world's largest software company is renaming its Hotmail service Outlook, giving it a sharp new look, social network links and new features for handling the tide of junk and mass mail that swamps many users.
Hotmail was still the world's largest online mail service as of June, according to the latest comScore figures available, with 324 million users, or about 36 percent of the global market.
But it is losing customers to Google's Gmail, the fastest-growing rival, which now has about 31 percent of the market. Yahoo Mail is static with about 32 percent. (For a graphic showing webmail market share, click on http://link.reuters.com/ded79s)
In a bid to recapture growth, Microsoft is renaming the service Outlook, a name familiar to most corporate workers who use Microsoft's Office email application, and sprucing up the whole experience. Hotmail users will be prompted to switch over to the new service over the next few months.
Hotmail, launched in 1996, was one of the first online email services, but it has not been updated by Microsoft for eight years.
'A lot has changed in the last eight years, and we think it's time for a fresh look at email,' Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live, said in a blog post.
The new look is clean and uncluttered, featuring lots of white space, reminiscent of Google's recent makeover of Gmail. Relatively unobtrusive advertisements appear in a column to the right of the screen when looking at folders. They do not appear when a message is open.
Users can link up with their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts, to see the latest updates from friends and contacts. Online chat is available via Facebook.
Newsletters, offers, daily deals and social updates make up over 80 percent of a typical inbox, according to Microsoft's own research. To help combat that overflow, the new service automatically detects mass messages and puts them in separate folders. Users can customize the process to sort mail any way they want to.
The new mail service also allows easy use of Microsoft's Internet-based products, such as SkyDrive for storing documents, Office Web Apps for working away from a PC and will eventually have Skype video chat built in.
'This is about the battle of where people will make their communication home,' said Al Hilwa, an analyst at tech research firm IDC. 'The big online players are connecting their online assets together and hoping to provide convenience and functionality of a one-stop-shop of cloud services.'
The success of Microsoft's new service will depend on whether it can develop it quickly enough 'to keep up with a brutally fast Google and a potentially re-invigorated Yahoo,' said Hilwa.
Users can access the service at www.outlook.com. Microsoft said the service is currently a 'preview,' meaning more features will likely be added before the final version is fully launched.
Microsoft shares closed down 17 cents at $29.47 on Nasdaq.
(Reporting By Bill Rigby; editing by M.D. Golan, Richard Chang and Andre Grenon)
This news article is brought to you by INTERNET NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
The world's largest software company is renaming its Hotmail service Outlook, giving it a sharp new look, social network links and new features for handling the tide of junk and mass mail that swamps many users.
Hotmail was still the world's largest online mail service as of June, according to the latest comScore figures available, with 324 million users, or about 36 percent of the global market.
But it is losing customers to Google's Gmail, the fastest-growing rival, which now has about 31 percent of the market. Yahoo Mail is static with about 32 percent. (For a graphic showing webmail market share, click on http://link.reuters.com/ded79s)
In a bid to recapture growth, Microsoft is renaming the service Outlook, a name familiar to most corporate workers who use Microsoft's Office email application, and sprucing up the whole experience. Hotmail users will be prompted to switch over to the new service over the next few months.
Hotmail, launched in 1996, was one of the first online email services, but it has not been updated by Microsoft for eight years.
'A lot has changed in the last eight years, and we think it's time for a fresh look at email,' Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live, said in a blog post.
The new look is clean and uncluttered, featuring lots of white space, reminiscent of Google's recent makeover of Gmail. Relatively unobtrusive advertisements appear in a column to the right of the screen when looking at folders. They do not appear when a message is open.
Users can link up with their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts, to see the latest updates from friends and contacts. Online chat is available via Facebook.
Newsletters, offers, daily deals and social updates make up over 80 percent of a typical inbox, according to Microsoft's own research. To help combat that overflow, the new service automatically detects mass messages and puts them in separate folders. Users can customize the process to sort mail any way they want to.
The new mail service also allows easy use of Microsoft's Internet-based products, such as SkyDrive for storing documents, Office Web Apps for working away from a PC and will eventually have Skype video chat built in.
'This is about the battle of where people will make their communication home,' said Al Hilwa, an analyst at tech research firm IDC. 'The big online players are connecting their online assets together and hoping to provide convenience and functionality of a one-stop-shop of cloud services.'
The success of Microsoft's new service will depend on whether it can develop it quickly enough 'to keep up with a brutally fast Google and a potentially re-invigorated Yahoo,' said Hilwa.
Users can access the service at www.outlook.com. Microsoft said the service is currently a 'preview,' meaning more features will likely be added before the final version is fully launched.
Microsoft shares closed down 17 cents at $29.47 on Nasdaq.
(Reporting By Bill Rigby; editing by M.D. Golan, Richard Chang and Andre Grenon)
This news article is brought to you by INTERNET NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Online poker companies settle with U.S., two to combine
(Reuters) - U.S. authorities settled a massive fraud complaint against the world's most popular online poker company on Tuesday and allowed it to take control of a rival brand, setting the stage for the company to re-enter the burgeoning U.S. market.
Isle of Man-based PokerStars agreed to forfeit $731 million, including $547 million that could be used to reimburse U.S. customers of the rival, Full Tilt Poker. Full Tilt also agreed to settle and will cease independent operations.
PokerStars will be barred from employing Full Tilt Chief Executive Raymond Bitar, who is out on bail in a pending criminal case, as well as famed affiliated players Howard 'The Professor' Lederer and Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson, who were defendants in the civil case.
PokerStars and Full Tilt became the dominant sites for Web gamblers in the United States after Congress explicitly banned real-money gambling on online card games in 2006 and other companies withdrew from the market.
Federal officials in Manhattan filed the fraud and money-laundering suit last year and charged various part-owners and employees, including famous poker professionals at Full Tilt, with bank fraud and other criminal offenses.
But the Justice Department in Washington later decided that the Wire Act, one of the laws used in prosecuting gambling operations, should not apply to state-approved games--opening the door to the legalization of online poker.
Four weeks ago, Delaware joined Nevada in legalizing online poker among state residents, and California and several other states are considering similar measures.
Mark Scheinberg, PokerStars' chairman, said in a statement that the company was 'delighted' to resolve the case and that the it hoped to join its law-abiding rivals in seeking state licenses.
'The agreement explicitly permits PokerStars to apply to relevant U.S. gaming authorities, under both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker brands, to offer real money online poker when state or federal governments introduce a framework to regulate such activity,' Scheinberg said.
Nevada has already begun reviewing applications from some of the online sites that pulled out in 2006, including Bwin.Party and 888 Holdings. Those two companies declined to comment on the long-expected PokerStars deal, but people close to both previously told Reuters that executives were angry that PokerStars was set to cash in on the customer loyalty built up in violation of the law.
888 and Bwin.Party, owner of the former top U.S. site PartyPoker, 'left the country and lost their business, and now they may be the ones that are really hurt out of this,' said Robert 'Chipburner' Turner, a poker champion who advises other casinos.
PokerStars is expected to pursue deals with land-based casinos or Indian tribes before applying for online licenses. Bwin.Party has also teamed with MGM Resorts, while 888 has a contract with Caesars Entertainment Corp. The big casinos have greater clout and more trust built up with local regulators, but they lack the expertise, software and brand recognition of the offshore firms.
Even with two powerful brands, PokerStars does not have a lock on any state's approval, others in the industry said.
Each state has its own rules and standards for determining the 'suitability' of gambling industry applicants, and legal histories are a common concern given the historic role of organized crime, the potential for cheating, and the need to keep out minors. The online gaming sites also have the ability to prevent bettors, who are not in states where gambling is legal, off their sites.
'You can be exonerated in court and still face issues with regulators,' said Michael Pollack, a former adviser to the New Jersey Casino Conrol Commission chariman, who is now managing partner of consulting firm Spectrum Gaming Group.
'Department of Justice actions will educate and enlighten regulators at the state and tribal levels, but so will other factors, including those related to fairness. These will be among the toughest decisions in the history of regulated gaming.'
(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Basil Katz and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Martha Graybow, Maureen Bavdek, Tim Dobbyn and Leslie Gevirtz)
This article is brought to you by BUY A COMPUTER.
Isle of Man-based PokerStars agreed to forfeit $731 million, including $547 million that could be used to reimburse U.S. customers of the rival, Full Tilt Poker. Full Tilt also agreed to settle and will cease independent operations.
PokerStars will be barred from employing Full Tilt Chief Executive Raymond Bitar, who is out on bail in a pending criminal case, as well as famed affiliated players Howard 'The Professor' Lederer and Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson, who were defendants in the civil case.
PokerStars and Full Tilt became the dominant sites for Web gamblers in the United States after Congress explicitly banned real-money gambling on online card games in 2006 and other companies withdrew from the market.
Federal officials in Manhattan filed the fraud and money-laundering suit last year and charged various part-owners and employees, including famous poker professionals at Full Tilt, with bank fraud and other criminal offenses.
But the Justice Department in Washington later decided that the Wire Act, one of the laws used in prosecuting gambling operations, should not apply to state-approved games--opening the door to the legalization of online poker.
Four weeks ago, Delaware joined Nevada in legalizing online poker among state residents, and California and several other states are considering similar measures.
Mark Scheinberg, PokerStars' chairman, said in a statement that the company was 'delighted' to resolve the case and that the it hoped to join its law-abiding rivals in seeking state licenses.
'The agreement explicitly permits PokerStars to apply to relevant U.S. gaming authorities, under both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker brands, to offer real money online poker when state or federal governments introduce a framework to regulate such activity,' Scheinberg said.
Nevada has already begun reviewing applications from some of the online sites that pulled out in 2006, including Bwin.Party and 888 Holdings. Those two companies declined to comment on the long-expected PokerStars deal, but people close to both previously told Reuters that executives were angry that PokerStars was set to cash in on the customer loyalty built up in violation of the law.
888 and Bwin.Party, owner of the former top U.S. site PartyPoker, 'left the country and lost their business, and now they may be the ones that are really hurt out of this,' said Robert 'Chipburner' Turner, a poker champion who advises other casinos.
PokerStars is expected to pursue deals with land-based casinos or Indian tribes before applying for online licenses. Bwin.Party has also teamed with MGM Resorts, while 888 has a contract with Caesars Entertainment Corp. The big casinos have greater clout and more trust built up with local regulators, but they lack the expertise, software and brand recognition of the offshore firms.
Even with two powerful brands, PokerStars does not have a lock on any state's approval, others in the industry said.
Each state has its own rules and standards for determining the 'suitability' of gambling industry applicants, and legal histories are a common concern given the historic role of organized crime, the potential for cheating, and the need to keep out minors. The online gaming sites also have the ability to prevent bettors, who are not in states where gambling is legal, off their sites.
'You can be exonerated in court and still face issues with regulators,' said Michael Pollack, a former adviser to the New Jersey Casino Conrol Commission chariman, who is now managing partner of consulting firm Spectrum Gaming Group.
'Department of Justice actions will educate and enlighten regulators at the state and tribal levels, but so will other factors, including those related to fairness. These will be among the toughest decisions in the history of regulated gaming.'
(Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Basil Katz and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Martha Graybow, Maureen Bavdek, Tim Dobbyn and Leslie Gevirtz)
This article is brought to you by BUY A COMPUTER.
Microsoft relaunches Hotmail as social-friendly Outlook
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp unveiled a revamped, Facebook-friendly version of its free, online email service on Tuesday in an attempt to reverse market share losses to Google Inc's fast-growing Gmail.
The world's largest software company is renaming its Hotmail service Outlook, giving it a sharp new look, social network links, and new features for handling the tide of junk and mass mail that swamps many users.
Hotmail was still the world's largest online mail service as of June, according to the latest comScore figures available, with 324 million users, or about 36 percent of the global market.
But it is losing customers to Google's Gmail, the fastest-growing rival, which now has about 31 percent of the market. Yahoo Mail is static with about 32 percent. (For a graphic showing webmail market share, click on http://link.reuters.com/ded79s)
In a bid to recapture growth, Microsoft is renaming the service Outlook, a name familiar to most corporate workers who use Microsoft's Office email application, and sprucing up the whole experience. Hotmail users will be prompted to switch over to the new service over the next few months.
Hotmail, launched in 1996, was one of the first online email services, but it has not been updated by Microsoft for eight years.
'A lot has changed in the last eight years, and we think it's time for a fresh look at email,' Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live, said in a blog post.
The new look is clean and uncluttered, featuring lots of white space, reminiscent of Google's recent makeover of Gmail. Relatively unobtrusive advertisements appear in a column to the right of the screen when looking at folders. They do not appear when a message is open.
Users can link up with their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts, to see the latest updates from friends and contacts. Online chat is available via Facebook.
Newsletters, offers, daily deals and social updates make up over 80 percent of a typical inbox, according to Microsoft's own research. To help combat that overflow, the new service automatically detects mass messages and puts them in separate folders. Users can customize the process to sort mail any way they want to.
The new mail service also allows easy use of Microsoft's Internet-based products, such as SkyDrive for storing documents, Office Web Apps for working away from a PC, and will eventually have Skype video chat built in.
Users can access the service at www.outlook.com. Microsoft said the service is currently a 'preview,' meaning more features will likely be added before the final version is fully launched.
(Reporting By Bill Rigby; editing by M.D. Golan and Richard Chang)
This article is brought to you by BUY AFFORDABLE COMPUTERS.
The world's largest software company is renaming its Hotmail service Outlook, giving it a sharp new look, social network links, and new features for handling the tide of junk and mass mail that swamps many users.
Hotmail was still the world's largest online mail service as of June, according to the latest comScore figures available, with 324 million users, or about 36 percent of the global market.
But it is losing customers to Google's Gmail, the fastest-growing rival, which now has about 31 percent of the market. Yahoo Mail is static with about 32 percent. (For a graphic showing webmail market share, click on http://link.reuters.com/ded79s)
In a bid to recapture growth, Microsoft is renaming the service Outlook, a name familiar to most corporate workers who use Microsoft's Office email application, and sprucing up the whole experience. Hotmail users will be prompted to switch over to the new service over the next few months.
Hotmail, launched in 1996, was one of the first online email services, but it has not been updated by Microsoft for eight years.
'A lot has changed in the last eight years, and we think it's time for a fresh look at email,' Chris Jones, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Live, said in a blog post.
The new look is clean and uncluttered, featuring lots of white space, reminiscent of Google's recent makeover of Gmail. Relatively unobtrusive advertisements appear in a column to the right of the screen when looking at folders. They do not appear when a message is open.
Users can link up with their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts, to see the latest updates from friends and contacts. Online chat is available via Facebook.
Newsletters, offers, daily deals and social updates make up over 80 percent of a typical inbox, according to Microsoft's own research. To help combat that overflow, the new service automatically detects mass messages and puts them in separate folders. Users can customize the process to sort mail any way they want to.
The new mail service also allows easy use of Microsoft's Internet-based products, such as SkyDrive for storing documents, Office Web Apps for working away from a PC, and will eventually have Skype video chat built in.
Users can access the service at www.outlook.com. Microsoft said the service is currently a 'preview,' meaning more features will likely be added before the final version is fully launched.
(Reporting By Bill Rigby; editing by M.D. Golan and Richard Chang)
This article is brought to you by BUY AFFORDABLE COMPUTERS.
Def Con hackers go mainstream but still love to party
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - When Jeff Moss founded the Def Con hackers convention in 1993, he never imagined that two decades on, one of the key speakers at the annual Las Vegas event would be four-star General Keith Alexander, head of the U.S. National Security Agency.
Once known as an excuse for computer geeks and social misfits to drink cheap beer, create mischief and party all night Sin City-style, Def Con has transformed itself into a venue where elite and amateur hackers alike debate serious security issues with experts from the public and private sectors.
While there was still plenty of merrymaking for hackers at last weekend's conference, it also drew top corporate executives, military officers and intelligence agencies looking to recruit the brightest minds in the crowd.
'Hacking has gone from being a hobby to a profession,' said Moss, who was working as a messenger at a law firm when he founded Def Con to mark the shutdown of a Canadian hacking network known as Platinum Net.
Talented computer security experts are in high demand as government agencies and corporations grapple with increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.
About 100 hackers showed up at the first Def Con nearly 20 years ago. A record 15,000 people attended the latest meeting, including Alexander, who called on hackers to join U.S. government efforts to make the Web more secure.
The changes in Def Con reflect the influence of Moss and other hackers who now counsel government leaders and technology companies on how to protect their information networks.
Moss, known in hacking circles as 'The Dark Tangent' or just DT, is an advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and chief security officer of ICANN, an organization that manages some of the Internet's key infrastructure.
Def Con promotes 'white hat' hacking, which aims to identify security flaws so that software makers and other manufacturers can fix them before criminals use the vulnerabilities to launch attacks.
'Black hats' are felons, and 'gray hats' fall somewhere in the middle.
WHITE HATS
In its early years, Def Con had such a wild reputation -- even by Las Vegas standards -- that Moss had trouble finding major venues to host the meeting. The raucous attendees not only liked to hack into every computer network they came across, but also sometimes caused physical damage to facilities, organizers said.
Last year, the restaurant computer system crashed at the Rio Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, which has hosted the past two Def Cons. Long lines ensued, and servers had to take orders with pen and paper. This year, cellphone calls were mysteriously jammed for several hours.
Organizers routinely advise attendees to leave their ATM cards at home, turn off all wireless connections on their mobile devices and generally be on guard, describing Def Con as one of the most hostile hacking environments on the planet.
Nevertheless, there are fewer problems nowadays than in the early iterations of Def Con, and organizers say that mischief makers account for a small minority of attendees.
'Def Con has cleaned up,' said Brendon 'cstone' Creighton, a member of the 'Ninja' hacker crew, which hosted one of the conference's biggest parties over the weekend.
That calmer atmosphere may be partly due to an increased military presence at the conference.
'Everybody is trying to recruit you,' noted Creighton. 'There are Army guys handing out business cards.'
There were even investors scouting the crowd of teens and adult males, some of whom were tattooed and had colored hair and Mohawks. Some were dressed in kilts and exotic costumes, but most just wore T-shirts with shorts or jeans.
Nico Sell, an organizer who is also an angel investor, decided to help two college students build a company in 2004 after they showed up with a hacking 'gun' that could attack mobile phones from more than a mile away. It was dubbed 'Bluetooth Sniper.'
They eventually founded Lookout, now one of the biggest providers of software for mobile devices, with products available through major carriers including Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp and T-Mobile USA.
'The roots of our company are in Def Con,' said Lookout Chief Technology Officer Kevin Mahaffey.
'HACK ALL THE THINGS'
Moss calls Def Con a 'neutral zone' for feds and hackers to mingle. The conference's all-night parties have become increasingly lavish, with corporate sponsors including Facebook Inc, Zynga Inc and Qualcomm Inc.
One such event was organized by the Ninjas, who invited more than 1,200 hackers, security experts, federal agents, corporate executives and other 'cool people' to a pool party in the courtyard of a boutique hotel on Saturday night.
A rapper belted out songs with lyrics like 'Drink all the booze. Hack all the things.' The invitations were in the form of HTC One Android smartphones that could access a specially built GSM mobile wireless network that ran off a wireless antenna on top of a van filled with computer equipment.
Building that network -- and designing retro Ninja Tel phones -- took nearly a year and several hundreds of thousands of dollars, which the Ninjas got from Facebook, Zynga, Lookout and a unit of Qualcomm known as AllJoyn.
Why put in so much work for a party?
'Strippers aren't so interesting anymore, so build a phone company,' said Ninja crew member pinguino, a 34-year-old woman from Los Angeles. 'It's kids growing up.'
To be sure, the vast majority of Def Con attendees are not recruited by the feds or invited to a Ninja party. Most -- known in Def Con parlance as 'humans' -- hang out with friends, watch movies, learn to pick locks and enter hacking contests.
In one big room, 20 teams of geeks spent three days crouched over laptops, jamming out code at a feverish pace in Def Con's 'Capture the Flag' contest, considered one of the world's top hacking competitions. The goal was to attack the computers of other teams and defend your own.
Electronic music played in the background, and projectors showed videos of scantily clad young women and other footage on the walls. Irreverent organizers handed out finger condoms to promote 'safe hacking.'
By Saturday night, about thirty hours into the competition, the contestants looked dazed.
Jared Demott, the principal security researcher with Harris Corp, says he enters these contests to stay at the top of his game.
'It's fun,' he said, 'but not all that fun.'
(Editing by Tiffany Wu and Lisa Von Ahn)
This news article is brought to you by GAMING NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Once known as an excuse for computer geeks and social misfits to drink cheap beer, create mischief and party all night Sin City-style, Def Con has transformed itself into a venue where elite and amateur hackers alike debate serious security issues with experts from the public and private sectors.
While there was still plenty of merrymaking for hackers at last weekend's conference, it also drew top corporate executives, military officers and intelligence agencies looking to recruit the brightest minds in the crowd.
'Hacking has gone from being a hobby to a profession,' said Moss, who was working as a messenger at a law firm when he founded Def Con to mark the shutdown of a Canadian hacking network known as Platinum Net.
Talented computer security experts are in high demand as government agencies and corporations grapple with increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.
About 100 hackers showed up at the first Def Con nearly 20 years ago. A record 15,000 people attended the latest meeting, including Alexander, who called on hackers to join U.S. government efforts to make the Web more secure.
The changes in Def Con reflect the influence of Moss and other hackers who now counsel government leaders and technology companies on how to protect their information networks.
Moss, known in hacking circles as 'The Dark Tangent' or just DT, is an advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and chief security officer of ICANN, an organization that manages some of the Internet's key infrastructure.
Def Con promotes 'white hat' hacking, which aims to identify security flaws so that software makers and other manufacturers can fix them before criminals use the vulnerabilities to launch attacks.
'Black hats' are felons, and 'gray hats' fall somewhere in the middle.
WHITE HATS
In its early years, Def Con had such a wild reputation -- even by Las Vegas standards -- that Moss had trouble finding major venues to host the meeting. The raucous attendees not only liked to hack into every computer network they came across, but also sometimes caused physical damage to facilities, organizers said.
Last year, the restaurant computer system crashed at the Rio Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, which has hosted the past two Def Cons. Long lines ensued, and servers had to take orders with pen and paper. This year, cellphone calls were mysteriously jammed for several hours.
Organizers routinely advise attendees to leave their ATM cards at home, turn off all wireless connections on their mobile devices and generally be on guard, describing Def Con as one of the most hostile hacking environments on the planet.
Nevertheless, there are fewer problems nowadays than in the early iterations of Def Con, and organizers say that mischief makers account for a small minority of attendees.
'Def Con has cleaned up,' said Brendon 'cstone' Creighton, a member of the 'Ninja' hacker crew, which hosted one of the conference's biggest parties over the weekend.
That calmer atmosphere may be partly due to an increased military presence at the conference.
'Everybody is trying to recruit you,' noted Creighton. 'There are Army guys handing out business cards.'
There were even investors scouting the crowd of teens and adult males, some of whom were tattooed and had colored hair and Mohawks. Some were dressed in kilts and exotic costumes, but most just wore T-shirts with shorts or jeans.
Nico Sell, an organizer who is also an angel investor, decided to help two college students build a company in 2004 after they showed up with a hacking 'gun' that could attack mobile phones from more than a mile away. It was dubbed 'Bluetooth Sniper.'
They eventually founded Lookout, now one of the biggest providers of software for mobile devices, with products available through major carriers including Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp and T-Mobile USA.
'The roots of our company are in Def Con,' said Lookout Chief Technology Officer Kevin Mahaffey.
'HACK ALL THE THINGS'
Moss calls Def Con a 'neutral zone' for feds and hackers to mingle. The conference's all-night parties have become increasingly lavish, with corporate sponsors including Facebook Inc, Zynga Inc and Qualcomm Inc.
One such event was organized by the Ninjas, who invited more than 1,200 hackers, security experts, federal agents, corporate executives and other 'cool people' to a pool party in the courtyard of a boutique hotel on Saturday night.
A rapper belted out songs with lyrics like 'Drink all the booze. Hack all the things.' The invitations were in the form of HTC One Android smartphones that could access a specially built GSM mobile wireless network that ran off a wireless antenna on top of a van filled with computer equipment.
Building that network -- and designing retro Ninja Tel phones -- took nearly a year and several hundreds of thousands of dollars, which the Ninjas got from Facebook, Zynga, Lookout and a unit of Qualcomm known as AllJoyn.
Why put in so much work for a party?
'Strippers aren't so interesting anymore, so build a phone company,' said Ninja crew member pinguino, a 34-year-old woman from Los Angeles. 'It's kids growing up.'
To be sure, the vast majority of Def Con attendees are not recruited by the feds or invited to a Ninja party. Most -- known in Def Con parlance as 'humans' -- hang out with friends, watch movies, learn to pick locks and enter hacking contests.
In one big room, 20 teams of geeks spent three days crouched over laptops, jamming out code at a feverish pace in Def Con's 'Capture the Flag' contest, considered one of the world's top hacking competitions. The goal was to attack the computers of other teams and defend your own.
Electronic music played in the background, and projectors showed videos of scantily clad young women and other footage on the walls. Irreverent organizers handed out finger condoms to promote 'safe hacking.'
By Saturday night, about thirty hours into the competition, the contestants looked dazed.
Jared Demott, the principal security researcher with Harris Corp, says he enters these contests to stay at the top of his game.
'It's fun,' he said, 'but not all that fun.'
(Editing by Tiffany Wu and Lisa Von Ahn)
This news article is brought to you by GAMING NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Twitter clocks half-billion users: monitor
Over 500 million people are on micro-blogging site Twitter and Americans and Brazilians are the most connected, according to a study by social media monitor Semiocast released Monday.
Twitter surpassed the half-billion mark at the end of June, with the United States accounting for both the most users and largest number of 'tweets' or short messages of no more than 140 characters posted on the site.
The Paris-based monitor carried out the study by analysing data like time zone, geolocation and language available for the social networking site's total 517 million accounts.
The US accounted for more than 141 million of Twitter users, with Brazil ranking second with 41 million after seeing its number rise by 23 percent since the start of the year. Japan came in third with 35 million users.
Americans also posted the highest number of Twitter messages, with 25.8 percent of all tweets hailing from the US.
Japan came second accounting for 10.6 percent of all tweets, making Japanese the second most common language on Twitter after English.
The study found Jakarta to be the most active Twitter zone, with 2.4 percent of all tweets originating in the Indonesian capital.
The popularity of Twitter continued to soar in the Arab world following the site's key role in the 'Arab Spring' revolutions last year, with Arabic now the site's sixth most common language.
This news article is brought to you by WOMEN'S BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Twitter surpassed the half-billion mark at the end of June, with the United States accounting for both the most users and largest number of 'tweets' or short messages of no more than 140 characters posted on the site.
The Paris-based monitor carried out the study by analysing data like time zone, geolocation and language available for the social networking site's total 517 million accounts.
The US accounted for more than 141 million of Twitter users, with Brazil ranking second with 41 million after seeing its number rise by 23 percent since the start of the year. Japan came in third with 35 million users.
Americans also posted the highest number of Twitter messages, with 25.8 percent of all tweets hailing from the US.
Japan came second accounting for 10.6 percent of all tweets, making Japanese the second most common language on Twitter after English.
The study found Jakarta to be the most active Twitter zone, with 2.4 percent of all tweets originating in the Indonesian capital.
The popularity of Twitter continued to soar in the Arab world following the site's key role in the 'Arab Spring' revolutions last year, with Arabic now the site's sixth most common language.
This news article is brought to you by WOMEN'S BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Twitter suspends reporter's account for NBC tweet
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter Inc and NBC Universal's move to suppress a British reporter's tweets related to the network's Olympics coverage may have backfired after the incident became fodder for Twitter chatter around the world on Monday.
The microblogging service suspended Guy Adams, the Los Angeles correspondent for London-based daily The Independent, after he sent a tweet on Friday revealing NBC Olympics President Gary Zenkel's email address.
Adams was among a number of Twitter users in the United States who vented their frustration with NBC, a Comcast Corp subsidiary, for showing the London Olympics' opening ceremony on tape delay to coincide with evening prime-time in the United States.
'The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven't started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what u think! Email: Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com,' Adams tweeted.
As part of his suspension, Adams' account and his tweets were rendered invisible. But in a twist of irony, the incident went viral on Monday, as 'Guy Adams' became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter.
In an email to Adams, Twitter informed the reporter that he had violated 'Twitter Rules' by posting another user's private information such as 'private email address, physical address, telephone number, or financial documents.'
NBC confirmed that it had filed a complaint with Twitter.
'A user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives,' NBC Sports said. 'According to Twitter, this is a violation of their privacy policy. Twitter alone levies discipline.'
Adams, who estimated that he has about 4,500 Twitter followers, had been one of the more vocal critics of NBC's coverage. The Monday issue of The Independent carried an article by Adams that was broadly critical of NBC's Olympics coverage, including its commentary of the opening ceremonies, but made no mention of the Twitter incident.
'It's obviously somewhat sinister for a Twitter account to be shut down at the behest of an Olympic sponsor,' Adams told Reuters on Monday.
Twitter, which entered into a strategic, non-financial partnership with NBC to curate online content during the Olympics, declined to comment.
(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Richard Chang)
This news article is brought to you by MUSIC UNITED 1 - where latest news are our top priority.
The microblogging service suspended Guy Adams, the Los Angeles correspondent for London-based daily The Independent, after he sent a tweet on Friday revealing NBC Olympics President Gary Zenkel's email address.
Adams was among a number of Twitter users in the United States who vented their frustration with NBC, a Comcast Corp subsidiary, for showing the London Olympics' opening ceremony on tape delay to coincide with evening prime-time in the United States.
'The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven't started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what u think! Email: Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com,' Adams tweeted.
As part of his suspension, Adams' account and his tweets were rendered invisible. But in a twist of irony, the incident went viral on Monday, as 'Guy Adams' became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter.
In an email to Adams, Twitter informed the reporter that he had violated 'Twitter Rules' by posting another user's private information such as 'private email address, physical address, telephone number, or financial documents.'
NBC confirmed that it had filed a complaint with Twitter.
'A user tweeted the personal information of one of our executives,' NBC Sports said. 'According to Twitter, this is a violation of their privacy policy. Twitter alone levies discipline.'
Adams, who estimated that he has about 4,500 Twitter followers, had been one of the more vocal critics of NBC's coverage. The Monday issue of The Independent carried an article by Adams that was broadly critical of NBC's Olympics coverage, including its commentary of the opening ceremonies, but made no mention of the Twitter incident.
'It's obviously somewhat sinister for a Twitter account to be shut down at the behest of an Olympic sponsor,' Adams told Reuters on Monday.
Twitter, which entered into a strategic, non-financial partnership with NBC to curate online content during the Olympics, declined to comment.
(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Richard Chang)
This news article is brought to you by MUSIC UNITED 1 - where latest news are our top priority.
Kent State student charged with threatening school on Twitter
(Reuters) - A Kent State University sophomore accused of Tweeting a profanity-laced threat against the Ohio university and its president last week has been charged with inducing a panic and aggravated menacing, officials said on Monday.
William Koberna, 19, pleaded not guilty on Monday to aggravated menacing, a misdemeanor, in a brief hearing by video conference from the Portage County Jail, and a preliminary hearing was set for Friday on the felony charge of inducing panic, according to court records.
Judge Mark Fankhauser set bond on the charges at $50,000 and ordered that Koberna wear an electronic monitor and have no contact with Kent State President Lester Lefton or the campus if he posts 10 percent of the bond and is released.
Koberna is accused of posting on the public account of social networking site Twitter a threat on Wednesday 'laced with profanity, mentioned Kent State University by name (and) also mentioned our president by name and concluded with the expression that he was going to shoot up the campus,' said university spokesman Eric Mansfield.
A Kent State employee spotted the message on Friday and told university police, who contacted Twitter to determine the owner of the account, Mansfield said.
The account owner was identified as Koberna, who was living about 30 miles west of the campus in Brunswick, Ohio, with his parents for the summer break.
University police interviewed Koberna and people who knew him from campus on Saturday, Mansfield said. On Sunday morning, police and prosecutors determined that charges should be filed. He was taken into custody without incident later on Sunday.
Koberna, who was studying computer science in the university's school of the arts, also faces possible suspension or expulsion from the university, Mansfield said.
'It's very upsetting to the entire community to see a threat like this online in light of what has happened in Colorado, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois and locally in Chardon, Ohio,' Mansfield said.
Twelve people died in the mass-shooting incident in Aurora, Colorado last week. Another 58 were injured after a gunman opened fire in a crowded movie theater near Denver at a late night showing of the latest 'Batman' movie.
Prosecutors formally charged former graduate student James Holmes, 24, with 24 counts of first-degree murder and 116 count of attempted murder for the Colorado rampage.
In February, a student opened fire in a cafeteria at a high school in Chardon, Ohio, east of Cleveland, killing three students and wounding three others.
In the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, a mentally ill student killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007. Nearly a year later, a former graduate student killed five students at Northern Illinois University before killing himself.
Kent State was the site of the killing of four protesters by Ohio National Guardsmen during a demonstration against the Vietnam War in 1970. The shooting galvanized nationwide protests against the war.
(Reporting by David Bailey; Editing by Greg McCune and Todd Eastham)
This news article is brought to you by MOVIE GOSSIP NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
William Koberna, 19, pleaded not guilty on Monday to aggravated menacing, a misdemeanor, in a brief hearing by video conference from the Portage County Jail, and a preliminary hearing was set for Friday on the felony charge of inducing panic, according to court records.
Judge Mark Fankhauser set bond on the charges at $50,000 and ordered that Koberna wear an electronic monitor and have no contact with Kent State President Lester Lefton or the campus if he posts 10 percent of the bond and is released.
Koberna is accused of posting on the public account of social networking site Twitter a threat on Wednesday 'laced with profanity, mentioned Kent State University by name (and) also mentioned our president by name and concluded with the expression that he was going to shoot up the campus,' said university spokesman Eric Mansfield.
A Kent State employee spotted the message on Friday and told university police, who contacted Twitter to determine the owner of the account, Mansfield said.
The account owner was identified as Koberna, who was living about 30 miles west of the campus in Brunswick, Ohio, with his parents for the summer break.
University police interviewed Koberna and people who knew him from campus on Saturday, Mansfield said. On Sunday morning, police and prosecutors determined that charges should be filed. He was taken into custody without incident later on Sunday.
Koberna, who was studying computer science in the university's school of the arts, also faces possible suspension or expulsion from the university, Mansfield said.
'It's very upsetting to the entire community to see a threat like this online in light of what has happened in Colorado, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois and locally in Chardon, Ohio,' Mansfield said.
Twelve people died in the mass-shooting incident in Aurora, Colorado last week. Another 58 were injured after a gunman opened fire in a crowded movie theater near Denver at a late night showing of the latest 'Batman' movie.
Prosecutors formally charged former graduate student James Holmes, 24, with 24 counts of first-degree murder and 116 count of attempted murder for the Colorado rampage.
In February, a student opened fire in a cafeteria at a high school in Chardon, Ohio, east of Cleveland, killing three students and wounding three others.
In the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, a mentally ill student killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007. Nearly a year later, a former graduate student killed five students at Northern Illinois University before killing himself.
Kent State was the site of the killing of four protesters by Ohio National Guardsmen during a demonstration against the Vietnam War in 1970. The shooting galvanized nationwide protests against the war.
(Reporting by David Bailey; Editing by Greg McCune and Todd Eastham)
This news article is brought to you by MOVIE GOSSIP NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
'Dr. Horrible' comes to the CW
NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Joss Whedon's 'Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog' will make its television debut on the CW on October 9, the network announced.
Created as a three-part online musical in 2008 by the 'Avengers' director and 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' creator, the series stars Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, a fledgling super villain with girl trouble. He has a laundromat crush on Penny (Felicia Day, 'The Guild'), and his arch nemesis is Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion, 'Firefly,' 'Castle').
CW president Mark Pedowitz said the network would edit the web series into a 42-minute television show. He said he hoped the CW would also have the inside track if Whedon opts at some point to continue the series.
It was written by Maurissa Tancharden, Jed Whedon, Joss Whedon and Zack Whedon, with music by Jed Whedon and Joss Whedon.
This article is brought to you by CHEAP COMPUTERS.
Created as a three-part online musical in 2008 by the 'Avengers' director and 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' creator, the series stars Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, a fledgling super villain with girl trouble. He has a laundromat crush on Penny (Felicia Day, 'The Guild'), and his arch nemesis is Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion, 'Firefly,' 'Castle').
CW president Mark Pedowitz said the network would edit the web series into a 42-minute television show. He said he hoped the CW would also have the inside track if Whedon opts at some point to continue the series.
It was written by Maurissa Tancharden, Jed Whedon, Joss Whedon and Zack Whedon, with music by Jed Whedon and Joss Whedon.
This article is brought to you by CHEAP COMPUTERS.
Analysis: Critics assail 1980s-era hacking law as out of step
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 1984 U.S. anti-hacking law passed when computer crime was in its infancy is under fire for potentially going too far in criminalizing the actions of employees who violate workplace policies.
Judges across the country are divided on how the 28-year-old law, the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, can be applied. At the same time, the Justice Department has signaled it wants to ramp up prosecutions under the law, even as it has lost some cases.
Civil liberties advocates and some lawyers and judges are questioning whether the CFAA, intended to punish hackers and other trespassers who damage computer systems or steal customer information, can be used to prosecute people inside a company who download sensitive data without their employers' approval.
The debate is centered around a key phrase in the law: that it is illegal to 'intentionally access a computer without authorization or exceed authorized access.' Critics argue this language is too broad and vague and could turn ordinary people into criminals for things many do routinely, such as dabble in online shopping or scan an online matchmaking site at work.
'This statute has the potential to affect millions of Americans in the workplace who work at or use a computer to do their job,' said Brent Cossrow, a partner at law firm Fisher & Phillips in Radnor, Pennsylvania, which specializes in computer breach cases. 'Hopefully, it gets cleared up soon.'
BOUND FOR SUPREME COURT?
A split decision in April by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco could be the case that forces the U.S. Supreme Court to examine the law's reach.
In a 9-2 ruling, the appeals court threw out criminal charges brought under the law against David Nosal, a former managing director at executive search firm Korn/Ferry International. Nosal was indicted in 2008 for allegedly persuading colleagues to download confidential source lists and contact information from the firm to use at his new business.
Three co-defendants pleaded guilty to CFAA violations. But Nosal fought the charges, arguing that he and his colleagues had been authorized to access the company's database. The appeals court supported Nosal's argument, and threw out the CFAA charges against him, though he still faces separate charges of trade secrets theft in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
The 9th Circuit ruling was suspended to give the Justice Department time to consider petitioning the Supreme Court to review the case. If the Supreme Court were to hear the matter, it could potentially be on the docket for the upcoming term.
The Justice Department, which declined to comment on the case, has until August 8 to decide whether to seek Supreme Court review.
Nosal's lawyer, Steven Gruel, said his client wants to exonerate himself. 'He's always said he did nothing wrong.'
NEW SCENARIOS
If the high court does not take the Nosal case, legal experts say, little is likely to get settled in the near future over how and when the law can be applied.
The CFAA was crafted before the Internet was omnipresent in the workplace. Employees today have vastly more sensitive company information accessible on their computers, leading to scenarios that the writers of the law may never have envisioned.
Some companies, such as Oracle Corp, which filed a brief supporting the Justice Department against Nosal, say such criminal prosecutions are justified.
Oracle said Congress rooted the statute in common-law trespass doctrines.
'Among them is the concept of restricted authorization: a person commits trespass not only when he or she enters property or a portion of it when told not to; a person commits trespass also when he or she has authorization to enter for some purposes but enters for different ones,' the brief said.
Critics say the statute, which carries civil and criminal penalties, could be abused by employers.
The precedent that develops largely in the context of a private, workplace dispute 'becomes something that people can go to jail for, and that's really dangerous,' said Marcia Hoffman, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties organization.
Potential criminal penalties under the law range from one year to 10 years in prison, if the offense involves information relating to U.S. national security.
Prosecutors have brought about 550 federal criminal cases under the CFAA and related computer fraud laws in the past 5-1/2 years, according to court filings reviewed in Westlaw, a legal data division of Thomson Reuters. Over the same period, nearly 500 civil lawsuits were brought in private disputes citing the CFAA and related laws, the filings show.
The Justice Department wants to expand the penalties and prosecutions under the act, an Obama administration official told a hearing on Capitol Hill in November. Richard Downing, deputy section chief for computer crime and intellectual property, said it was important to retain the provisions of the law that apply to employee-use agreements.
Removing that section of the law 'could make it difficult or impossible to deter and punish serious threats from malicious insiders,' he told the Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.
If the Justice Department were to go to the Supreme Court and lose over the CFAA, it would remove an arrow in its quiver for prosecuting those 'insider' computer abuse cases.
Congress has partially addressed the issue while crafting new cyber security legislation. One possible amendment to a bill pending in the U.S. Senate would narrow criminal cases to exclude relatively innocuous violations of agreements governing the use of private computers, such as a social-network user signing up under a pseudonym.
MIXED RULINGS
In February, the U.S. government lost another case involving an employee who had accessed company data, a case that also raised questions about use of the hacking statute.
That case involved a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, who was accused of stealing code used in the bank's high-frequency trading system before leaving for a new company in Chicago.
Before Aleynikov went on trial, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote dismissed the charges brought under the CFAA, saying the government's interpretation 'could convert an ordinary violation of the duty of loyalty or of a confidential agreement into a federal offense.' But she let trade-secrets charges against him stand, and in December 2010 Aleynikov was found guilty.
That conviction was thrown out earlier this year by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Aleynikov was freed after serving one year of an eight-year prison term.
The Nosal and Aleynikov cases conflict with an earlier appeals court ruling. That case was a civil dispute between a real estate developer, Jacob Citrin, and his former employer, International Airport Centers LLC. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled in 2006 that Citrin violated the CFAA by installing a program that deleted files on a company laptop as he was departing for another job.
Citrin was not criminally charged and his case was settled on undisclosed terms, but a Justice Department guide for prosecutors on the CFAA points to the 7th Circuit ruling as 'the leading authority' for the position that when an employee is doing something disloyal to an employer, authorized access to the computer ends under the law.
Citrin's lawyers, Ronald Marmer and John Koch, of Jenner & Block in Chicago, had no comment. Citrin is now CEO of Cargo Ventures in Doral, Florida, according to his company's web site.
Unless the Supreme Court ultimately weighs in, the inconsistent decisions will continue, said lawyer John Dozier, of Dozier Internet Law, a Glen Allen, Virginia law firm.
Without clarity, he said, 'what is going to be illegal in one part of the country is not illegal in the other.'
The cases are USA v David Nosal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 10-10038 and International Airport Centers LLC v Jacob Citrin in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals No. 05-1522 and USA v Aleynikov, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York 10-00096.
(Editing by Martha Graybow, Edward Tobin and Leslie Gevirtz)
This news article is brought to you by RELATIONSHIPS ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
Judges across the country are divided on how the 28-year-old law, the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, can be applied. At the same time, the Justice Department has signaled it wants to ramp up prosecutions under the law, even as it has lost some cases.
Civil liberties advocates and some lawyers and judges are questioning whether the CFAA, intended to punish hackers and other trespassers who damage computer systems or steal customer information, can be used to prosecute people inside a company who download sensitive data without their employers' approval.
The debate is centered around a key phrase in the law: that it is illegal to 'intentionally access a computer without authorization or exceed authorized access.' Critics argue this language is too broad and vague and could turn ordinary people into criminals for things many do routinely, such as dabble in online shopping or scan an online matchmaking site at work.
'This statute has the potential to affect millions of Americans in the workplace who work at or use a computer to do their job,' said Brent Cossrow, a partner at law firm Fisher & Phillips in Radnor, Pennsylvania, which specializes in computer breach cases. 'Hopefully, it gets cleared up soon.'
BOUND FOR SUPREME COURT?
A split decision in April by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco could be the case that forces the U.S. Supreme Court to examine the law's reach.
In a 9-2 ruling, the appeals court threw out criminal charges brought under the law against David Nosal, a former managing director at executive search firm Korn/Ferry International. Nosal was indicted in 2008 for allegedly persuading colleagues to download confidential source lists and contact information from the firm to use at his new business.
Three co-defendants pleaded guilty to CFAA violations. But Nosal fought the charges, arguing that he and his colleagues had been authorized to access the company's database. The appeals court supported Nosal's argument, and threw out the CFAA charges against him, though he still faces separate charges of trade secrets theft in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
The 9th Circuit ruling was suspended to give the Justice Department time to consider petitioning the Supreme Court to review the case. If the Supreme Court were to hear the matter, it could potentially be on the docket for the upcoming term.
The Justice Department, which declined to comment on the case, has until August 8 to decide whether to seek Supreme Court review.
Nosal's lawyer, Steven Gruel, said his client wants to exonerate himself. 'He's always said he did nothing wrong.'
NEW SCENARIOS
If the high court does not take the Nosal case, legal experts say, little is likely to get settled in the near future over how and when the law can be applied.
The CFAA was crafted before the Internet was omnipresent in the workplace. Employees today have vastly more sensitive company information accessible on their computers, leading to scenarios that the writers of the law may never have envisioned.
Some companies, such as Oracle Corp, which filed a brief supporting the Justice Department against Nosal, say such criminal prosecutions are justified.
Oracle said Congress rooted the statute in common-law trespass doctrines.
'Among them is the concept of restricted authorization: a person commits trespass not only when he or she enters property or a portion of it when told not to; a person commits trespass also when he or she has authorization to enter for some purposes but enters for different ones,' the brief said.
Critics say the statute, which carries civil and criminal penalties, could be abused by employers.
The precedent that develops largely in the context of a private, workplace dispute 'becomes something that people can go to jail for, and that's really dangerous,' said Marcia Hoffman, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties organization.
Potential criminal penalties under the law range from one year to 10 years in prison, if the offense involves information relating to U.S. national security.
Prosecutors have brought about 550 federal criminal cases under the CFAA and related computer fraud laws in the past 5-1/2 years, according to court filings reviewed in Westlaw, a legal data division of Thomson Reuters. Over the same period, nearly 500 civil lawsuits were brought in private disputes citing the CFAA and related laws, the filings show.
The Justice Department wants to expand the penalties and prosecutions under the act, an Obama administration official told a hearing on Capitol Hill in November. Richard Downing, deputy section chief for computer crime and intellectual property, said it was important to retain the provisions of the law that apply to employee-use agreements.
Removing that section of the law 'could make it difficult or impossible to deter and punish serious threats from malicious insiders,' he told the Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.
If the Justice Department were to go to the Supreme Court and lose over the CFAA, it would remove an arrow in its quiver for prosecuting those 'insider' computer abuse cases.
Congress has partially addressed the issue while crafting new cyber security legislation. One possible amendment to a bill pending in the U.S. Senate would narrow criminal cases to exclude relatively innocuous violations of agreements governing the use of private computers, such as a social-network user signing up under a pseudonym.
MIXED RULINGS
In February, the U.S. government lost another case involving an employee who had accessed company data, a case that also raised questions about use of the hacking statute.
That case involved a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, who was accused of stealing code used in the bank's high-frequency trading system before leaving for a new company in Chicago.
Before Aleynikov went on trial, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote dismissed the charges brought under the CFAA, saying the government's interpretation 'could convert an ordinary violation of the duty of loyalty or of a confidential agreement into a federal offense.' But she let trade-secrets charges against him stand, and in December 2010 Aleynikov was found guilty.
That conviction was thrown out earlier this year by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Aleynikov was freed after serving one year of an eight-year prison term.
The Nosal and Aleynikov cases conflict with an earlier appeals court ruling. That case was a civil dispute between a real estate developer, Jacob Citrin, and his former employer, International Airport Centers LLC. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled in 2006 that Citrin violated the CFAA by installing a program that deleted files on a company laptop as he was departing for another job.
Citrin was not criminally charged and his case was settled on undisclosed terms, but a Justice Department guide for prosecutors on the CFAA points to the 7th Circuit ruling as 'the leading authority' for the position that when an employee is doing something disloyal to an employer, authorized access to the computer ends under the law.
Citrin's lawyers, Ronald Marmer and John Koch, of Jenner & Block in Chicago, had no comment. Citrin is now CEO of Cargo Ventures in Doral, Florida, according to his company's web site.
Unless the Supreme Court ultimately weighs in, the inconsistent decisions will continue, said lawyer John Dozier, of Dozier Internet Law, a Glen Allen, Virginia law firm.
Without clarity, he said, 'what is going to be illegal in one part of the country is not illegal in the other.'
The cases are USA v David Nosal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 10-10038 and International Airport Centers LLC v Jacob Citrin in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals No. 05-1522 and USA v Aleynikov, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York 10-00096.
(Editing by Martha Graybow, Edward Tobin and Leslie Gevirtz)
This news article is brought to you by RELATIONSHIPS ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
NBC gets Twitter backlash over Olympics, but record TV audience
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NBC on Sunday announced more record audiences for its prime-time TV coverage of the London Olympics, even as the Twitterverse erupted in complaints about the U.S. network's online streaming efforts and delays in broadcasting key competitions.
Contributions to the Twitter hashtags #NBCfail and #NBCsucks surged on Sunday, with many posters complaining about the quality of NBCUniversal's online platform, which promised to show every sporting contest live for those unwilling to wait hours for the network's main primetime coverage of the day's events.
'you suck! I can't stream anything because your website is broken. It even verified directtv account, just to tease me. #NBCFail' read a posting to #NBCfail on Sunday by Twitter user Beth Hodgson.
Others complained about the plethora of ads interrupting NBC's coverage across multiple broadcast and cable outlets, and commentary by some of the NBC anchors.
'Finally got @nbcolympics live stream working online only to find it full of ads & streaming issues,' Cindy Gallop said on Twitter.
NBC top sports executives were in London and could not be reached for comment on Sunday because of the time difference with the United States. But NBC Olympics producer Jim Bell took to Twitter to respond briefly to some of the gripes early on Sunday.
'Coverage on both net & cables a mix of tape and live events. Yesterday nearly 40 hours of live Oly sports on television btw,' Bell tweeted.
TV AUDIENCE SOARS, BEATS ATLANTA, BEIJING GAMES
Despite the grumbling, NBC said on Sunday that a record 28.7 million U.S. viewers watched its primetime coverage on Saturday's first day of competition, when popular swimmer Michael Phelps was shut out of the medals for the first time in years.
NBC said Saturday's evening audience was 2 million more than watched the first day of competition during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. An average 12.3 million U.S. viewers watched the Olympics on television on Saturday morning - a 56 percent increase over the Saturday daytime audience for Beijing in 2008, the network said.
NBCUniversal, which is majority owned by cable operator Comcast Corp, paid $1.18 billion for the U.S. rights to broadcast the London Games, and has won $1 billion in advertising for its Olympic broadcasts over the next three weeks.
It is planning an unprecedented 5,500 hours of cover across its cable and free-to-air outlets, and its NBCOlympics.com website - more than double the hours devoted to the Beijing Games.
NBC drew a record 40.7 million U.S. television audience for Friday's opening ceremony from London, despite complaints that Americans had to wait for up to seven hours to watch the ceremony.
Those wanting to watch online must have an account with a cable television or satellite provider, or download an app from NBC. According to the Nielsen company, about 90 percent of Americans subscribe to either cable or satellite services.
Not everyone was unhappy with NBC's efforts however.
'I'm watching tons of live events on NBC's Olympics app. I don't understand the #nbcfail nagging. Bonus: No commentary, just game sound!' Twitter user Mtolander posted on Sunday.
Brad Adgate, media analyst for Horizon Media in New York, told Reuters on Sunday: 'Whatever NBC does they will receive criticism, especially in the Social Media Olympics, you can't please everyone. TV though remains the big ad revenue producer and they paid 1.18 billion dollars, so what do you expect?'
Adgate said the strong ratings for the London games were surprising, especially for an Olympics outside the United States.
'It's one thing to run ahead of Beijing, but quite another to be running ahead of Atlanta,' Adgate said.
(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Additional reporting by Liana Baker; Editing by Stacey Joyce)
This news article is brought to you by RELATIONSHIPS ADVICE 201 - where latest news are our top priority.
Contributions to the Twitter hashtags #NBCfail and #NBCsucks surged on Sunday, with many posters complaining about the quality of NBCUniversal's online platform, which promised to show every sporting contest live for those unwilling to wait hours for the network's main primetime coverage of the day's events.
'you suck! I can't stream anything because your website is broken. It even verified directtv account, just to tease me. #NBCFail' read a posting to #NBCfail on Sunday by Twitter user Beth Hodgson.
Others complained about the plethora of ads interrupting NBC's coverage across multiple broadcast and cable outlets, and commentary by some of the NBC anchors.
'Finally got @nbcolympics live stream working online only to find it full of ads & streaming issues,' Cindy Gallop said on Twitter.
NBC top sports executives were in London and could not be reached for comment on Sunday because of the time difference with the United States. But NBC Olympics producer Jim Bell took to Twitter to respond briefly to some of the gripes early on Sunday.
'Coverage on both net & cables a mix of tape and live events. Yesterday nearly 40 hours of live Oly sports on television btw,' Bell tweeted.
TV AUDIENCE SOARS, BEATS ATLANTA, BEIJING GAMES
Despite the grumbling, NBC said on Sunday that a record 28.7 million U.S. viewers watched its primetime coverage on Saturday's first day of competition, when popular swimmer Michael Phelps was shut out of the medals for the first time in years.
NBC said Saturday's evening audience was 2 million more than watched the first day of competition during the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. An average 12.3 million U.S. viewers watched the Olympics on television on Saturday morning - a 56 percent increase over the Saturday daytime audience for Beijing in 2008, the network said.
NBCUniversal, which is majority owned by cable operator Comcast Corp, paid $1.18 billion for the U.S. rights to broadcast the London Games, and has won $1 billion in advertising for its Olympic broadcasts over the next three weeks.
It is planning an unprecedented 5,500 hours of cover across its cable and free-to-air outlets, and its NBCOlympics.com website - more than double the hours devoted to the Beijing Games.
NBC drew a record 40.7 million U.S. television audience for Friday's opening ceremony from London, despite complaints that Americans had to wait for up to seven hours to watch the ceremony.
Those wanting to watch online must have an account with a cable television or satellite provider, or download an app from NBC. According to the Nielsen company, about 90 percent of Americans subscribe to either cable or satellite services.
Not everyone was unhappy with NBC's efforts however.
'I'm watching tons of live events on NBC's Olympics app. I don't understand the #nbcfail nagging. Bonus: No commentary, just game sound!' Twitter user Mtolander posted on Sunday.
Brad Adgate, media analyst for Horizon Media in New York, told Reuters on Sunday: 'Whatever NBC does they will receive criticism, especially in the Social Media Olympics, you can't please everyone. TV though remains the big ad revenue producer and they paid 1.18 billion dollars, so what do you expect?'
Adgate said the strong ratings for the London games were surprising, especially for an Olympics outside the United States.
'It's one thing to run ahead of Beijing, but quite another to be running ahead of Atlanta,' Adgate said.
(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Additional reporting by Liana Baker; Editing by Stacey Joyce)
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Saturday, July 28, 2012
Data of 8.7 million KT subscribers hacked in South Korea
SEOUL (Reuters) - KT Corp., South Korea's No. 2 wireless service provider, apologized on Sunday after personal data of millions of mobile phone subscribers was hacked.
It is the latest in a string of large-scale personal information hacking cases in one of the world's most wired countries.
Police said two computer programmers had been arrested for hacking personal data of about 8.7 million KT subscribers. KT claims a mobile service subscription membership of 16 million.
Police were also investigating seven others suspected of having purchased and used the hacked KT data, which included names, resident registration numbers and phone numbers.
'We deeply apologize for worrying you,' KT said in a statement. The company said it had blocked any further illegal access to data. The hacking began in February.
In November, more than 13 million subscribers of Nexon Korea Corp, a leading game developer, fell victim to a hacking attack.
Months before the Nexon Korea case, information of up to 35 million users of an internet portal and blogging site operated by SK Comms, the country's top mobile service provider, was attacked by hackers from China.
(Reporting by Sung-won Shim; Editing by Nick Macfie)
This news article is brought to you by DATING AND RELATIONSHIP ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
It is the latest in a string of large-scale personal information hacking cases in one of the world's most wired countries.
Police said two computer programmers had been arrested for hacking personal data of about 8.7 million KT subscribers. KT claims a mobile service subscription membership of 16 million.
Police were also investigating seven others suspected of having purchased and used the hacked KT data, which included names, resident registration numbers and phone numbers.
'We deeply apologize for worrying you,' KT said in a statement. The company said it had blocked any further illegal access to data. The hacking began in February.
In November, more than 13 million subscribers of Nexon Korea Corp, a leading game developer, fell victim to a hacking attack.
Months before the Nexon Korea case, information of up to 35 million users of an internet portal and blogging site operated by SK Comms, the country's top mobile service provider, was attacked by hackers from China.
(Reporting by Sung-won Shim; Editing by Nick Macfie)
This news article is brought to you by DATING AND RELATIONSHIP ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Analysis: Internet stock collapse dents Silicon Valley
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Social media companies, once hailed by their Silicon Valley boosters as world-changing businesses with limitless potential, are instead proving a sobering reminder of how investors can be seduced by Internet hype.
With a few exceptions, the first wave of social media firms to trade on the public markets has delivered a disastrous performance that conjures memories of the dot-com bust of 2000.
'Farmville' publisher Zynga, which went public in December at a valuation of $7 billion, is trading around $3.15 a share, more than 68 percent off its $10 IPO price.
Daily deals site Groupon, touted as the firm that could reinvent local commerce, has fallen from its $20 IPO price to about $7.15 in nearly nine months. Music service Pandora Media has dropped from $16 at its June 2011 IPO to around $10 on Friday.
And on Thursday, the 800-pound gorilla of the group, Facebook Inc, reported tepid results that shaved some $10 billion off the company's market cap. The stock has gone straight down since its botched May initial public offering and now trades over a third below its $38 IPO price.
'The VCs, the private equity guys at the early stages, already cashed out and made their fortunes,' said Peter Schiff, chief executive of Euro Pacific Capital. 'Everybody else who ran to buy the stock at the IPO at a sky-high valuation ended up holding the bag.'
'A lot of these companies are going to make a quick buck and flame out,' he added. 'Just look at 10 years ago.'
If an investor had sunk $1,000 into any of the four erstwhile dotcom darlings, he would have anywhere from $317.50 to $706.45 left over. That same wad of cash in LinkedIn would have more than doubled, to about $2,200.
But many VC firms -- such as early Facebook backer Accel Partners -- made a killing on the IPOs by getting in the door first. Early backers in Pandora, for instance, may have picked up shares in the firm for as little as around 50 cents apiece.
Other early investors held on and got singed. Some of Wall Street's top names, from Fidelity and T. Rowe Price to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have watched paper losses pile up to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
It's true that a few companies with more of a business focus -- notably LinkedIn Corp -- have done much better. The jobs-networking site is trading at about $100, well above its $45 IPO price from May 2011. Yelp Inc, the local reviews company, is holding above its $15 IPO price from March.
Startups in areas like data analytics and enterprise software like Splunk Inc have also fared well.
But the wipe-out among consumer-oriented social media companies has raised concerns that the entire sector is fad-driven. While the public companies are profitable and showing strong growth -- unlike the class of 1999 and 2000 -- it is not clear how sustainable that is.
'People just can't figure out how these companies are going to make money and justify these huge valuations,' said Michael Yoshikami, founder of Destination Wealth Management.
The euphoria around Internet stocks, Yoshikami added, has faded. 'It's different from six months ago,' he said.
Venture capitalists fear the high-profile stock busts will take a toll on the next wave of companies trying to go public. To some extent, they say, they already have.
'It's going to have a chilling, sobering effect,' said Tim Chang, managing partner at Mayfield Fund. 'It's especially hard to make the argument of why a company should be valued at $1 billion or more.'
WINNERS AND LOSERS
One sign of Wall Street's skepticism: about 63 percent of the shares available for shorting in Facebook are currently getting shorted, well above the market average of about 16 percent, according to Markit data.
A hedge fund manager who has shorted its shares since the IPO argued it is still too richly valued.
'You may love your favorite candy but if they are going to charge you $1,000 for it, you're probably not going to buy it,' the manager said. 'It's a great company, clearly. But if you look at the business, you say: well a year ago the revenues grew 107 percent year-over-year, this most recent quarter it grew 32 percent. It's clearly decelerating.'
On Thursday, Facebook reported its first quarterly revenues of $1.18 billion. But executives warned a quickening shift to its underperforming mobile app was eating into results, and user and revenue growth slowed for the fifth consecutive quarter. The stock lost 11.7 percent in trading on Friday.
It has not helped pacify Wall Street that the tech firms' venture capital backers on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, have enjoyed big paydays via IPOs. In the case of Facebook, Accel Partners sold 49 million shares at $38 apiece, reaping enormous profits.
Insiders have sold large chunks of their holdings in Zynga and Groupon, though the top executives still maintain large stakes in their companies. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and other insiders netted some $500 million when they sold a portion of their stock in April at $12 a share.
Others were less fortunate. T. Rowe Price lost $61.4 million in its Facebook and Zynga holdings over two days. Fidelity, the largest U.S. fund, saw $126 million of its on-paper holdings evaporate over the past two days.
As Facebook has slid, Goldman Sachs' remaining holdings of 41.6 million shares -- according to its latest filings -- would have shed $624 million in value. Morgan Stanley, which now holds 11.34 million shares, would have seen its Facebook stock decline by $170.1 million since the public-market debut.
Crosslink Capital and Greylock Partners still hold all their Pandora shares as of the latest filings. That represents a loss of $210 million for Crosslink, which still holds 35 million shares, and $129 million for Greylock with 21.5 million shares. But both started investing years ago: for as little as 51 cents a share in Crosslink's case, and 77 cents a share in Greylock's.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers has stood firmly behind Zynga, choosing to hold onto 21 million shares though the stake would be worth $143.85 million less today.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who owns just north of half a billion shares, took his lumps as well, as more than $3 billion of his paper-wealth evaporate this week.
'DOESN'T JIVE'
Zynga's stock went into free-fall after it slashed its 2012 outlook from 23 to 29 cents to 4 to 9 cents, blaming weakness in existing Facebook games and a delay in its pipeline.
The results widely missed expectations set by company management at the end of last quarter, when Chief Operating Officer John Schappert said the company was 'excited and comfortable raising guidance for the year.'
On a conference call, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield took Zynga executives to task for not warning investors. Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner said it was company policy to only give guidance once a quarter.
But the earnings report 'doesn't jive' with executives' recently upbeat comments, Greenfield later told Reuters. A handful of plaintiffs' lawyers announced Thursday they had begun investigating Zynga for breach of fiduciary duty.
Meanwhile, Facebook's executives took a conservative approach on Thursday, declining to offer their own forward-looking predictions.
In light of Zynga's bad miss, Wall Street analysts said that the lack of forecasts sapped investor confidence.
'The entire social media space may seem like a disaster, but it's perhaps that public markets have yet to see the right stocks. Firms like Groupon, Facebook, and Zynga require very aggressive user acquisition and the Average Revenue Per User is much lower,' said Steve Place, a founder of options analytics firm investingwithoptions.com.
'However, if we look into different verticals of the social media space there are some decent ideas.'
He cited real-estate site Zillow Inc, now almost double its IPO price.
But on Sand Hill Road, the mood these days is decidedly more subdued, a focus on returning to fundamental value.
'We'll see more discipline on private investments,' with more focus on the sustainability of any competitive advantage a company has, said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital.
'There are private companies that we are investors in that have underlying defensibility and business models for which you do want to stretch on valuation,' Botha added.
At Bay Partners in Palo Alto, partners have already noticed a certain dialing-back of the swagger with which some entrepreneurs walk into their office.
'I feel a little bit of humility, a little bit of reality creep in,' said partner Salil Deshpande, whose investments include Buddy Media, which was sold to Salesforce.com for $689 million earlier this year. Early-stage entrepreneurs who a few months ago might have argued their nascent companies were worth $5 million might today accept a valuation of $1 million, he said.
Mayfield's Chang expects a hit to companies with what he calls 'lumpy' business models -- less predictable, consumer-oriented businesses that rely on advertising and virtual goods, like Facebook and Zynga. Those businesses, he says, are reliant on their popularity with the public, a fickle group.
'The scariest is easy-come, easy-go revenue, kind of like Groupon,' he said. 'It can ramp up quick, but disappear quickly too.'
(Additional reporting by Angela Moon, David Gaffen and Edward Krudy in New York; Editing By Edwin Chan, Jonathan Weber and Tim Dobbyn)
This article is brought to you by AFFORDABLE COMPUTERS.
With a few exceptions, the first wave of social media firms to trade on the public markets has delivered a disastrous performance that conjures memories of the dot-com bust of 2000.
'Farmville' publisher Zynga, which went public in December at a valuation of $7 billion, is trading around $3.15 a share, more than 68 percent off its $10 IPO price.
Daily deals site Groupon, touted as the firm that could reinvent local commerce, has fallen from its $20 IPO price to about $7.15 in nearly nine months. Music service Pandora Media has dropped from $16 at its June 2011 IPO to around $10 on Friday.
And on Thursday, the 800-pound gorilla of the group, Facebook Inc, reported tepid results that shaved some $10 billion off the company's market cap. The stock has gone straight down since its botched May initial public offering and now trades over a third below its $38 IPO price.
'The VCs, the private equity guys at the early stages, already cashed out and made their fortunes,' said Peter Schiff, chief executive of Euro Pacific Capital. 'Everybody else who ran to buy the stock at the IPO at a sky-high valuation ended up holding the bag.'
'A lot of these companies are going to make a quick buck and flame out,' he added. 'Just look at 10 years ago.'
If an investor had sunk $1,000 into any of the four erstwhile dotcom darlings, he would have anywhere from $317.50 to $706.45 left over. That same wad of cash in LinkedIn would have more than doubled, to about $2,200.
But many VC firms -- such as early Facebook backer Accel Partners -- made a killing on the IPOs by getting in the door first. Early backers in Pandora, for instance, may have picked up shares in the firm for as little as around 50 cents apiece.
Other early investors held on and got singed. Some of Wall Street's top names, from Fidelity and T. Rowe Price to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have watched paper losses pile up to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
It's true that a few companies with more of a business focus -- notably LinkedIn Corp -- have done much better. The jobs-networking site is trading at about $100, well above its $45 IPO price from May 2011. Yelp Inc, the local reviews company, is holding above its $15 IPO price from March.
Startups in areas like data analytics and enterprise software like Splunk Inc have also fared well.
But the wipe-out among consumer-oriented social media companies has raised concerns that the entire sector is fad-driven. While the public companies are profitable and showing strong growth -- unlike the class of 1999 and 2000 -- it is not clear how sustainable that is.
'People just can't figure out how these companies are going to make money and justify these huge valuations,' said Michael Yoshikami, founder of Destination Wealth Management.
The euphoria around Internet stocks, Yoshikami added, has faded. 'It's different from six months ago,' he said.
Venture capitalists fear the high-profile stock busts will take a toll on the next wave of companies trying to go public. To some extent, they say, they already have.
'It's going to have a chilling, sobering effect,' said Tim Chang, managing partner at Mayfield Fund. 'It's especially hard to make the argument of why a company should be valued at $1 billion or more.'
WINNERS AND LOSERS
One sign of Wall Street's skepticism: about 63 percent of the shares available for shorting in Facebook are currently getting shorted, well above the market average of about 16 percent, according to Markit data.
A hedge fund manager who has shorted its shares since the IPO argued it is still too richly valued.
'You may love your favorite candy but if they are going to charge you $1,000 for it, you're probably not going to buy it,' the manager said. 'It's a great company, clearly. But if you look at the business, you say: well a year ago the revenues grew 107 percent year-over-year, this most recent quarter it grew 32 percent. It's clearly decelerating.'
On Thursday, Facebook reported its first quarterly revenues of $1.18 billion. But executives warned a quickening shift to its underperforming mobile app was eating into results, and user and revenue growth slowed for the fifth consecutive quarter. The stock lost 11.7 percent in trading on Friday.
It has not helped pacify Wall Street that the tech firms' venture capital backers on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, have enjoyed big paydays via IPOs. In the case of Facebook, Accel Partners sold 49 million shares at $38 apiece, reaping enormous profits.
Insiders have sold large chunks of their holdings in Zynga and Groupon, though the top executives still maintain large stakes in their companies. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and other insiders netted some $500 million when they sold a portion of their stock in April at $12 a share.
Others were less fortunate. T. Rowe Price lost $61.4 million in its Facebook and Zynga holdings over two days. Fidelity, the largest U.S. fund, saw $126 million of its on-paper holdings evaporate over the past two days.
As Facebook has slid, Goldman Sachs' remaining holdings of 41.6 million shares -- according to its latest filings -- would have shed $624 million in value. Morgan Stanley, which now holds 11.34 million shares, would have seen its Facebook stock decline by $170.1 million since the public-market debut.
Crosslink Capital and Greylock Partners still hold all their Pandora shares as of the latest filings. That represents a loss of $210 million for Crosslink, which still holds 35 million shares, and $129 million for Greylock with 21.5 million shares. But both started investing years ago: for as little as 51 cents a share in Crosslink's case, and 77 cents a share in Greylock's.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers has stood firmly behind Zynga, choosing to hold onto 21 million shares though the stake would be worth $143.85 million less today.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who owns just north of half a billion shares, took his lumps as well, as more than $3 billion of his paper-wealth evaporate this week.
'DOESN'T JIVE'
Zynga's stock went into free-fall after it slashed its 2012 outlook from 23 to 29 cents to 4 to 9 cents, blaming weakness in existing Facebook games and a delay in its pipeline.
The results widely missed expectations set by company management at the end of last quarter, when Chief Operating Officer John Schappert said the company was 'excited and comfortable raising guidance for the year.'
On a conference call, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield took Zynga executives to task for not warning investors. Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner said it was company policy to only give guidance once a quarter.
But the earnings report 'doesn't jive' with executives' recently upbeat comments, Greenfield later told Reuters. A handful of plaintiffs' lawyers announced Thursday they had begun investigating Zynga for breach of fiduciary duty.
Meanwhile, Facebook's executives took a conservative approach on Thursday, declining to offer their own forward-looking predictions.
In light of Zynga's bad miss, Wall Street analysts said that the lack of forecasts sapped investor confidence.
'The entire social media space may seem like a disaster, but it's perhaps that public markets have yet to see the right stocks. Firms like Groupon, Facebook, and Zynga require very aggressive user acquisition and the Average Revenue Per User is much lower,' said Steve Place, a founder of options analytics firm investingwithoptions.com.
'However, if we look into different verticals of the social media space there are some decent ideas.'
He cited real-estate site Zillow Inc, now almost double its IPO price.
But on Sand Hill Road, the mood these days is decidedly more subdued, a focus on returning to fundamental value.
'We'll see more discipline on private investments,' with more focus on the sustainability of any competitive advantage a company has, said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital.
'There are private companies that we are investors in that have underlying defensibility and business models for which you do want to stretch on valuation,' Botha added.
At Bay Partners in Palo Alto, partners have already noticed a certain dialing-back of the swagger with which some entrepreneurs walk into their office.
'I feel a little bit of humility, a little bit of reality creep in,' said partner Salil Deshpande, whose investments include Buddy Media, which was sold to Salesforce.com for $689 million earlier this year. Early-stage entrepreneurs who a few months ago might have argued their nascent companies were worth $5 million might today accept a valuation of $1 million, he said.
Mayfield's Chang expects a hit to companies with what he calls 'lumpy' business models -- less predictable, consumer-oriented businesses that rely on advertising and virtual goods, like Facebook and Zynga. Those businesses, he says, are reliant on their popularity with the public, a fickle group.
'The scariest is easy-come, easy-go revenue, kind of like Groupon,' he said. 'It can ramp up quick, but disappear quickly too.'
(Additional reporting by Angela Moon, David Gaffen and Edward Krudy in New York; Editing By Edwin Chan, Jonathan Weber and Tim Dobbyn)
This article is brought to you by AFFORDABLE COMPUTERS.
Brightcove expects to post first profit in 2013
(Reuters) - Online video publisher Brightcove Inc expects to report its first quarterly profit next year, its chief executive said.
'We expect to start generating free cash flow on a positive basis in the fourth quarter of this year, and we expect net income on a positive basis in the second half of next year,' Chief Executive Jeremy Allaire told Reuters.
The company on Thursday reported a net loss of $4.3 million, or 16 cents per share, for the second quarter, compared with $6.9 million, or $1.42 per share, a year earlier.
Brightcove, which went public in February, posted a loss of $17.3 million in 2011 and expects to incur operating losses on an annualized basis through at least the end of 2012, according to a regulatory filing.
The eight-year-old Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company provides cloud-based solutions for publishing and distributing videos over the Internet to clients such as BBC Worldwide, The New York Times Co, Bank of America and General Motors.
Allaire expects to add more customers in the third quarter and improve revenue from existing customers. Brightcove added 443 customers in the second quarter, he said.
Brightcove on Thursday bought privately-held Zencoder, the creator of an open source HTML 5 video player, for $30 million in cash, to expand further into cloud services.
Allaire said he also expects the acquisition to add to the company's profit in the fourth quarter of 2013.
Brightcove, which named only Google's YouTube as its rival in its IPO filing, also competes with Ooyala, IAC's Vimeo and Comcast's Platform for a share in the fast-growing video cloud sector.
Brightcove, whose flagship product Video Cloud gives customers the ability to upload videos, manage advertising and track user viewership, gets its revenue by offering its products to customers on a subscription-based, software-as-a-service model.
Video Cloud was used to deliver an average of about 743 million video streams per month in 2011, the company said in the filing.
Brightcove, which made its debut in February at $11 per share, has since gained 37 percent in market value. Its shares were up 9 percent at $16.40 on the Nasdaq on Friday.
(Reporting by Chandni Doulatramani in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
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'We expect to start generating free cash flow on a positive basis in the fourth quarter of this year, and we expect net income on a positive basis in the second half of next year,' Chief Executive Jeremy Allaire told Reuters.
The company on Thursday reported a net loss of $4.3 million, or 16 cents per share, for the second quarter, compared with $6.9 million, or $1.42 per share, a year earlier.
Brightcove, which went public in February, posted a loss of $17.3 million in 2011 and expects to incur operating losses on an annualized basis through at least the end of 2012, according to a regulatory filing.
The eight-year-old Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company provides cloud-based solutions for publishing and distributing videos over the Internet to clients such as BBC Worldwide, The New York Times Co, Bank of America and General Motors.
Allaire expects to add more customers in the third quarter and improve revenue from existing customers. Brightcove added 443 customers in the second quarter, he said.
Brightcove on Thursday bought privately-held Zencoder, the creator of an open source HTML 5 video player, for $30 million in cash, to expand further into cloud services.
Allaire said he also expects the acquisition to add to the company's profit in the fourth quarter of 2013.
Brightcove, which named only Google's YouTube as its rival in its IPO filing, also competes with Ooyala, IAC's Vimeo and Comcast's Platform for a share in the fast-growing video cloud sector.
Brightcove, whose flagship product Video Cloud gives customers the ability to upload videos, manage advertising and track user viewership, gets its revenue by offering its products to customers on a subscription-based, software-as-a-service model.
Video Cloud was used to deliver an average of about 743 million video streams per month in 2011, the company said in the filing.
Brightcove, which made its debut in February at $11 per share, has since gained 37 percent in market value. Its shares were up 9 percent at $16.40 on the Nasdaq on Friday.
(Reporting by Chandni Doulatramani in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
This news article is brought to you by GLAMOROUS FASHION NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Google unveils ultrafast Internet/TV in Kansas City
KANSAS CITY, Mo./NEW YORK (Reuters) - Google Inc made its foray into the market for bundled Internet and television services on Thursday, promising access speeds more than 100 times faster than those of traditional U.S. cable and telecommunications companies.
The Web search leader unveiled its ultra-high speed Google Fiber service in Kansas City, Missouri, and could start installations in September, executives said. Google hopes to roll out the service to other cities later.
'Access is the next frontier that needs to be opened,' Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said. 'We're going to do it profitably. That is our plan.'
'We are at a crossroad,' he added, noting that Internet speeds had leveled out for broadband since around 2000. 'We at Google we believe there is no need to wait.'
Google Fiber's ultra high-speed connections and television offerings are aimed at surpassing those of current providers, allowing users to search live channels, Netflix, YouTube, recorded shows and tens of thousands of hours of on-demand programming. However, no phone service is available.
'The phone is really a 1940s thing. Why have a landline? It's sitting there, you use it once every two weeks,' Pichette said.
Google said it also intends to roll out product packages for businesses, but would not provide details.
Google Fiber includes more than 100 networks and costs $120 a month for a package of TV, 1 gigabit per second Internet speeds and 1 terabyte of cloud storage.
The package includes popular networks owned by major media companies such as Comcast Corp's NBC Universal, Discovery Communications and Viacom Inc. Premium movie networks are available from Liberty Media's Starz for an extra fee.
But it excludes several major TV names, such as News Corp's Fox cable channels; Time Warner networks like CNN, TNT and TBS, as well as Walt Disney Co cable channels like ESPN and Disney children networks.
Google executives said the company is still in negotiations to add more content.
'They need to be able to offer something that is everything people have now and more,' said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Research.
'People are going to have high expectations for this. The worst thing they can do is come out and disappoint.'
Google is also offering an Internet-only package priced at $70 a month. The download speeds would be around 1 gigabyte a second, according to Google executives.
Google is charging a $300 installation fee, saying consumers should treat it as a 'home improvement' cost.
The initial service area includes central Kansas City, Missouri and all of the city of neighboring Kansas City, Kansas.
This market is dominated by Time Warner Cable Inc, which charges $99.95 for its fastest Internet-only service there. Google Fiber would be 20 times faster.
Time Warner spokesman Justin Venech said the second largest U.S. cable operator had a 'robust and adaptable network' and welcomed the competition.
FEATURES AND FREEBIE
Google Fiber includes such features as the ability to record eight TV shows at a time and store up to 500 hours of high definition programming. Users can choose to use a tablet or smartphone as a voice-activated remote control.
Google is offering its Nexus 7 tablet with the Google TV app to early users of the service.
Google said it is setting up a 6-week 'rally' for consumers to vote on where the first fiber communities, or 'fiberhoods,' should be installed in the Kansas City area.
Consumers must pay $10 to register their household online for service. About 50 'neighbors' will need to register in order for their area to be eligible for installation services, according to Google executives.
Whether or not consumers will embrace the new offerings remains to be seen. But officials said they are confident Kansas City will be a showcase of success for a larger rollout.
'Google is a very different company,' said Kevin Lo, general manager of Google Access. 'And this is not a short-term project.'
(Corrects July 26 story in paragraph 8 to gigabit instead of byte)
(Reporting By Carey Gillam in Kansas City, Missouri, and Yinka Adegoke in New Yorkl additional reporting by Liana B. Baker; editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid and Richard Chang)
This news article is brought to you by CELEBRITY MUSIC NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
The Web search leader unveiled its ultra-high speed Google Fiber service in Kansas City, Missouri, and could start installations in September, executives said. Google hopes to roll out the service to other cities later.
'Access is the next frontier that needs to be opened,' Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said. 'We're going to do it profitably. That is our plan.'
'We are at a crossroad,' he added, noting that Internet speeds had leveled out for broadband since around 2000. 'We at Google we believe there is no need to wait.'
Google Fiber's ultra high-speed connections and television offerings are aimed at surpassing those of current providers, allowing users to search live channels, Netflix, YouTube, recorded shows and tens of thousands of hours of on-demand programming. However, no phone service is available.
'The phone is really a 1940s thing. Why have a landline? It's sitting there, you use it once every two weeks,' Pichette said.
Google said it also intends to roll out product packages for businesses, but would not provide details.
Google Fiber includes more than 100 networks and costs $120 a month for a package of TV, 1 gigabit per second Internet speeds and 1 terabyte of cloud storage.
The package includes popular networks owned by major media companies such as Comcast Corp's NBC Universal, Discovery Communications and Viacom Inc. Premium movie networks are available from Liberty Media's Starz for an extra fee.
But it excludes several major TV names, such as News Corp's Fox cable channels; Time Warner networks like CNN, TNT and TBS, as well as Walt Disney Co cable channels like ESPN and Disney children networks.
Google executives said the company is still in negotiations to add more content.
'They need to be able to offer something that is everything people have now and more,' said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Research.
'People are going to have high expectations for this. The worst thing they can do is come out and disappoint.'
Google is also offering an Internet-only package priced at $70 a month. The download speeds would be around 1 gigabyte a second, according to Google executives.
Google is charging a $300 installation fee, saying consumers should treat it as a 'home improvement' cost.
The initial service area includes central Kansas City, Missouri and all of the city of neighboring Kansas City, Kansas.
This market is dominated by Time Warner Cable Inc, which charges $99.95 for its fastest Internet-only service there. Google Fiber would be 20 times faster.
Time Warner spokesman Justin Venech said the second largest U.S. cable operator had a 'robust and adaptable network' and welcomed the competition.
FEATURES AND FREEBIE
Google Fiber includes such features as the ability to record eight TV shows at a time and store up to 500 hours of high definition programming. Users can choose to use a tablet or smartphone as a voice-activated remote control.
Google is offering its Nexus 7 tablet with the Google TV app to early users of the service.
Google said it is setting up a 6-week 'rally' for consumers to vote on where the first fiber communities, or 'fiberhoods,' should be installed in the Kansas City area.
Consumers must pay $10 to register their household online for service. About 50 'neighbors' will need to register in order for their area to be eligible for installation services, according to Google executives.
Whether or not consumers will embrace the new offerings remains to be seen. But officials said they are confident Kansas City will be a showcase of success for a larger rollout.
'Google is a very different company,' said Kevin Lo, general manager of Google Access. 'And this is not a short-term project.'
(Corrects July 26 story in paragraph 8 to gigabit instead of byte)
(Reporting By Carey Gillam in Kansas City, Missouri, and Yinka Adegoke in New Yorkl additional reporting by Liana B. Baker; editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid and Richard Chang)
This news article is brought to you by CELEBRITY MUSIC NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Google urges end to authors' digital book lawsuit
(Reuters) - Google Inc retook the offensive against thousands of authors claiming it copied their works without permission, and urged the dismissal of a class-action lawsuit arising from its ambitious plan to build the world's largest digital book library.
Friday's request by the world's largest search engine company followed a federal judge's March 2011 rejection of a sweeping $125 million settlement of the now seven-year-old case. Talks to revive an accord later broke down.
Google has scanned more than 15 million books since agreeing in 2004 with big research libraries, including the University of California and University of Michigan, to digitize current and out-of-print works for its Google Books website.
While the company planned to provide only snippets online to comply with copyright laws governing fair use, The Authors Guild and groups representing photographers and graphic artists complained that it amounted to 'massive copyright infringement.'
In a filing with the U.S. district court in Manhattan, Google said authors have shown no economic harm from its scanning and display of their works, and the creation of a searchable index to find them.
The company also said authors actually benefit because the database helps people find and buy their books, and that there is a 'significant public benefit' from providing access to information that might otherwise not be found.
'Google Books creates enormous transformative benefits without reducing the value of the authors' work,' it said. '(It) therefore passes with ease the ultimate test of fair use.'
Lawyers for The Authors Guild did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Novelist-lawyer Scott Turow, president of that group, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Responses to Google's filing are due on August 24.
In rejecting the $125 million accord, Judge Denny Chin had said it went too far because it gave Google a 'de facto monopoly' to copy books en masse without permission and served to 'further entrench' its market power in online searches.
The United States, Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp had been among those to raise antitrust concerns about the settlement.
Chin began overseeing the Google case as a trial judge and kept jurisdiction after he was elevated in 2010 to the federal appeals court in New York.
He granted class-action status to authors in May, and said groups representing photographers and graphic artists may also sue.
The case is The Authors Guild et al v. Google Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 05-08136.
(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
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Friday's request by the world's largest search engine company followed a federal judge's March 2011 rejection of a sweeping $125 million settlement of the now seven-year-old case. Talks to revive an accord later broke down.
Google has scanned more than 15 million books since agreeing in 2004 with big research libraries, including the University of California and University of Michigan, to digitize current and out-of-print works for its Google Books website.
While the company planned to provide only snippets online to comply with copyright laws governing fair use, The Authors Guild and groups representing photographers and graphic artists complained that it amounted to 'massive copyright infringement.'
In a filing with the U.S. district court in Manhattan, Google said authors have shown no economic harm from its scanning and display of their works, and the creation of a searchable index to find them.
The company also said authors actually benefit because the database helps people find and buy their books, and that there is a 'significant public benefit' from providing access to information that might otherwise not be found.
'Google Books creates enormous transformative benefits without reducing the value of the authors' work,' it said. '(It) therefore passes with ease the ultimate test of fair use.'
Lawyers for The Authors Guild did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Novelist-lawyer Scott Turow, president of that group, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Responses to Google's filing are due on August 24.
In rejecting the $125 million accord, Judge Denny Chin had said it went too far because it gave Google a 'de facto monopoly' to copy books en masse without permission and served to 'further entrench' its market power in online searches.
The United States, Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp had been among those to raise antitrust concerns about the settlement.
Chin began overseeing the Google case as a trial judge and kept jurisdiction after he was elevated in 2010 to the federal appeals court in New York.
He granted class-action status to authors in May, and said groups representing photographers and graphic artists may also sue.
The case is The Authors Guild et al v. Google Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 05-08136.
(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
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Google admits it did not delete Street View data
LONDON (Reuters) - Google Inc said on Friday it had not kept its promise to delete all the personal data, such as emails, its Street View cars collected in Britain and other countries in 2010.
The U.S. company admitted in May 2010 that its vehicles, which photograph neighborhoods to create street level images, had accidentally collected data from unsecured wireless networks used by residents in more than 30 countries.
The failure to comply with a promise to delete all the data was notified to Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which said the fact that the data still existed appeared to breach an undertaking signed by Google in November 2010.
'The ICO is clear that this information should never have been collected in the first place and the company's failure to secure its deletion as promised is a cause for concern,' the ICO said.
Google said the data came to light when it searched by hand its Street View disk inventory.
'Google has recently confirmed that it still has in its possession a small portion of ... data collected by our Street View vehicles in the UK,' Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel said in a letter published by the ICO.
'Google apologizes for this error.'
Google said it was in the process of notifying relevant authorities in other countries.
The ICO told Google it must supply the data immediately so it could be subjected to forensic analysis before the ICO decided on the necessary course of action.
The Web search leader was fined $25,000 in April for impeding a U.S. investigation into Street View data collection.
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by David Holmes)
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The U.S. company admitted in May 2010 that its vehicles, which photograph neighborhoods to create street level images, had accidentally collected data from unsecured wireless networks used by residents in more than 30 countries.
The failure to comply with a promise to delete all the data was notified to Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which said the fact that the data still existed appeared to breach an undertaking signed by Google in November 2010.
'The ICO is clear that this information should never have been collected in the first place and the company's failure to secure its deletion as promised is a cause for concern,' the ICO said.
Google said the data came to light when it searched by hand its Street View disk inventory.
'Google has recently confirmed that it still has in its possession a small portion of ... data collected by our Street View vehicles in the UK,' Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel said in a letter published by the ICO.
'Google apologizes for this error.'
Google said it was in the process of notifying relevant authorities in other countries.
The ICO told Google it must supply the data immediately so it could be subjected to forensic analysis before the ICO decided on the necessary course of action.
The Web search leader was fined $25,000 in April for impeding a U.S. investigation into Street View data collection.
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by David Holmes)
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Bomb joke tweeter wins landmark ruling
LONDON (Reuters) - A British man who joked on Twitter that he would blow up an airport after it closed because of snow has had his conviction for sending a 'menacing' message overturned in a landmark ruling for users of social media websites.
Paul Chambers, 28, had sent the message in what he called a moment of frustration at not being able to catch a flight from Doncaster Robin Hood airport.
He had later been arrested and sentenced but the High Court on Friday upheld his appeal against conviction.
Speaking outside the court afterwards, Chambers' lawyer John Cooper, who had argued it was wrong to associate the tweet with terrorism, said it was a milestone ruling.
'It's a very big decision both nationally and internationally for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who use Facebook and Twitter,' he told the BBC.
'It means that if you intend to make a joke and if what you do is a joke, however bad a joke that is, you cannot be prosecuted,' he added.
The case revolved around a tweet sent by Chambers to a friend in January 2010, which read: 'Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!'
Chambers said he sent the tweet to his 600 followers in a moment of frustration and never imagined it would be taken seriously.
'It was surreal. My world became something else,' he said when asked how he felt when he was arrested.
Of Friday's ruling he added: 'It's an important decision as far as social networks are concerned and as far as Twitter is concerned.
'It has established that there has to be an action that is menacing and is intended to be menacing.'
Chambers' case gained the attention and support of thousands of Twitter users and several high-profile British comedians.
In Friday's High Court ruling, three judges headed by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, allowed Chambers' appeal against a Crown Court judge's decision upholding the 2010 conviction.
They said: 'If the person or persons who receive or read it, (the message) or may reasonably be expected to receive, or read it, would brush it aside as a silly joke, or a joke in bad taste, or empty bombastic or ridiculous banter, then it would be a contradiction in terms to describe it as a message of a menacing character.'
(Reporting By Sophie Kirby)
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Paul Chambers, 28, had sent the message in what he called a moment of frustration at not being able to catch a flight from Doncaster Robin Hood airport.
He had later been arrested and sentenced but the High Court on Friday upheld his appeal against conviction.
Speaking outside the court afterwards, Chambers' lawyer John Cooper, who had argued it was wrong to associate the tweet with terrorism, said it was a milestone ruling.
'It's a very big decision both nationally and internationally for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who use Facebook and Twitter,' he told the BBC.
'It means that if you intend to make a joke and if what you do is a joke, however bad a joke that is, you cannot be prosecuted,' he added.
The case revolved around a tweet sent by Chambers to a friend in January 2010, which read: 'Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!'
Chambers said he sent the tweet to his 600 followers in a moment of frustration and never imagined it would be taken seriously.
'It was surreal. My world became something else,' he said when asked how he felt when he was arrested.
Of Friday's ruling he added: 'It's an important decision as far as social networks are concerned and as far as Twitter is concerned.
'It has established that there has to be an action that is menacing and is intended to be menacing.'
Chambers' case gained the attention and support of thousands of Twitter users and several high-profile British comedians.
In Friday's High Court ruling, three judges headed by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, allowed Chambers' appeal against a Crown Court judge's decision upholding the 2010 conviction.
They said: 'If the person or persons who receive or read it, (the message) or may reasonably be expected to receive, or read it, would brush it aside as a silly joke, or a joke in bad taste, or empty bombastic or ridiculous banter, then it would be a contradiction in terms to describe it as a message of a menacing character.'
(Reporting By Sophie Kirby)
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Twitter index: Big Ben chimes for start of Olympic Games, Facebook Phone
The ringing of bells could be heard through London this morning, marking the official start of the Olympic Games later in the day. People gathered at Big Ben, Parliament's clock tower, in London to celebrate and listen to the bells chime.
"It's 8.12am here in London. Start ringing those bells for 3 minutes to welcome the Games," say Tweeps, "Went down to Big Ben this morning at 8.12 to hear it strike 40 times. Got a bit repetitive so left after 20."
Google has announced that it plans to roll out super fast fiber internet in Kansas in the near future and revealed more information about the project. Google Fiber is said to be "100 times faster than today's average broadband." Prices for the service range from free up to $120 per month.
"Wow. Google Fiber looks brilliant," say Tweeps. "So theoretically, if google fiber would be installed worldwide, you'd pay 300 dollars and get free internet for the next 7+ years. Crazy."
Despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg's claim that Facebook isn't building a Facebook Phone during the company's second quarter earnings call, blogs are still convinced Facebook may have a mobile phone operating system in the works.
Tweeps are linking to a piece on technology blog Mashable which details a day in the life of a future Facebook Phone.
Microbloggers are transfixed by a live video feed of bears catching salmon in Brooks Falls, Alaska.
The top 10 most talked about topics on Twitter on July 27 at 8:30 AM GMT are:
This news article is brought to you by ECONOMY BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
"It's 8.12am here in London. Start ringing those bells for 3 minutes to welcome the Games," say Tweeps, "Went down to Big Ben this morning at 8.12 to hear it strike 40 times. Got a bit repetitive so left after 20."
Google has announced that it plans to roll out super fast fiber internet in Kansas in the near future and revealed more information about the project. Google Fiber is said to be "100 times faster than today's average broadband." Prices for the service range from free up to $120 per month.
"Wow. Google Fiber looks brilliant," say Tweeps. "So theoretically, if google fiber would be installed worldwide, you'd pay 300 dollars and get free internet for the next 7+ years. Crazy."
Despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg's claim that Facebook isn't building a Facebook Phone during the company's second quarter earnings call, blogs are still convinced Facebook may have a mobile phone operating system in the works.
Tweeps are linking to a piece on technology blog Mashable which details a day in the life of a future Facebook Phone.
Microbloggers are transfixed by a live video feed of bears catching salmon in Brooks Falls, Alaska.
The top 10 most talked about topics on Twitter on July 27 at 8:30 AM GMT are:
- Nike #findgreatness (Promoted)
- #allthebells
- Day in the Life of a Future Facebook Phone
- #bearcam
- #TheDontsInaRelationship
- Big Ben
- Google Fiber
- Machete Kills
- Gloriana
- Bath Salt
This news article is brought to you by ECONOMY BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Zynga takes axe to outlook, spooks Facebook investors
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Game provider Zynga Inc slashed its 2012 outlook and quarterly results badly missed Wall Street targets, sending its stock plunging 35 percent and casting a chill over Facebook Inc on the eve of the social network's inaugural results.
Investors now fear a larger-than-expected hit to Facebook's earnings, which relies on the 'FarmVille' creators for about 15 percent of its revenue. Shares in the No. 1 social network, which has yet to regain investor confidence since its botched May IPO, slid more than 7 percent to a new low of $27 in after-hours trading.
Blaming its poor performance on a steep drop-off in players for its core Facebook money-makers, Zynga took an axe to its earnings forecasts, predicting 4 to 9 cents a share, down from a previous 23 to 29 cents. Zynga shares tumbled to a record low of $3.00 after the bell.
That dim outlook highlights how dramatically the fortunes of consumer Internet stocks have turned in the past year.
Zynga was among a bevy of hot tech prospects going public in 2011 on the back of a renewed dot-com mania gripping Wall Street. But since its December IPO at $10 a share, Zynga has shed almost 70 percent of its value while peers like Groupon Inc and Facebook are down 65 percent and 29 percent, respectively.
'The quarter is a disaster,' said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia.
'It's looking more and more like this was a fad because they've introduced so many new games, yet EBITDA continues to come down,' he said, referring to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
The number of monthly paying players, which rose to 4.1 million from 3.5 million, would in fact have declined were it not for an infusion of new players to 'Draw Something', a game Zynga purchased in March and which Zynga executives now admit has not lived up to expectations.
FarmVille, which represented 29 percent of Zynga's second-quarter revenues, has shrunk to just 20 million users this month from a high of about 80 million in March, according to Appdata.com, a Facebook tracking service.
'The company has been saying for some time that declining traffic doesn't matter and clearly it does,' Bhatia said.
OMG, WHAT A MISS
The company on Wednesday reported a quarterly net loss of $22.8 million, or 3 cents a share, compared with a profit of $1.4 million a year ago. Excluding certain items, it reported a profit of 1 cent a share, below the 5 cents that Wall Street had expected.
Admitting that mobile titles failed to pick up the slack, it logged revenues of $332.4 million, below the average analyst estimate of $344.12 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The company said CEO Mark Pincus had taken control of the company on or around Wednesday, with a rise in his voting stake to around 50.15 percent.
The increase in his stake follows a $500 million-plus payday via a choreographed private stock sale at $12 a share in April for Pincus, a small circle of top Zynga executives and investors but which many employees were excluded from.
That deal, explained as an effort to stagger the timing of when stockholders may cash out to avert a simultaneous sell-off at the expiration of a post-IPO lock-up period, now seems especially well-timed.
The increase in Pincus' voting power to over 50 percent was due to sales or transfers by other holders of Class B shares.
Zynga said daily active users rose by 23 percent to 72 million in the second quarter, but the company earned less revenue per subscriber. Average daily bookings per user dwindled to 4.6 cents in the quarter, down about 10 percent.
Pincus said a recent change to Facebook's algorithm spurred users toward new games, rather than repeatedly playing existing Zynga offerings.
Last month, Zynga unveiled zynga.com, an independent game-publishing platform, specifically to lessen its dependence on Facebook. But that service remains in beta after a multi-year development process, and executives declined to break out revenue for the platform when asked by analysts.
EXECUTIVES GRILLED
For the first time, Zynga executives acknowledged its acquisition for Draw Something developer, OMGPOP -- its costliest purchase at $183 million -- has not unfolded ideally. The gaming sensation fizzled out almost as soon as it was acquired.
'Draw Something under-performed versus our early expectations,' Pincus said.
The results jolted analysts including BTIG's Richard Greenfield, who pointedly asked Zynga's leadership to explain comments made in recent weeks by top executives that the company's performance will pick up in the second half of the year.
Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner said the company's policy was to only revise its forecasts during quarterly earnings calls.
In an interview, Chief Operating Officer John Schappert told Reuters that the company's financial picture came into focus only late in the quarter.
'You see some data but it takes a while to collate that data together and paint the whole picture,' he said.
In a lone bright spot, Pincus said the company expects to launch its first, real-money gambling products in international markets in 2013. But Zynga will not likely pursue cash gambling in the United States, where gambling regulation remains an obstacle.
Zynga's results surprised investors especially because many analysts anticipated a bounce in its stock after expectations had been set low following a mediocre first quarter report.
'Everyone's going to reset their growth expectations to a far lower level,' said Mike Hickey, an analyst at National Alliance Capital Markets.
Shares in Zynga plummeted 35 percent to as low as $3.00 in after-hours trade, from a close of $5.08 on Nasdaq. Stock in Facebook slid almost 7 percent to $27.33, from a close on Nasdaq of $29.34.
(Additional reporting by Malathi Nayak and Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Edwin Chan and Edwina Gibbs)
This news article is brought to you by MOVIE CRITIC NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Investors now fear a larger-than-expected hit to Facebook's earnings, which relies on the 'FarmVille' creators for about 15 percent of its revenue. Shares in the No. 1 social network, which has yet to regain investor confidence since its botched May IPO, slid more than 7 percent to a new low of $27 in after-hours trading.
Blaming its poor performance on a steep drop-off in players for its core Facebook money-makers, Zynga took an axe to its earnings forecasts, predicting 4 to 9 cents a share, down from a previous 23 to 29 cents. Zynga shares tumbled to a record low of $3.00 after the bell.
That dim outlook highlights how dramatically the fortunes of consumer Internet stocks have turned in the past year.
Zynga was among a bevy of hot tech prospects going public in 2011 on the back of a renewed dot-com mania gripping Wall Street. But since its December IPO at $10 a share, Zynga has shed almost 70 percent of its value while peers like Groupon Inc and Facebook are down 65 percent and 29 percent, respectively.
'The quarter is a disaster,' said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia.
'It's looking more and more like this was a fad because they've introduced so many new games, yet EBITDA continues to come down,' he said, referring to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
The number of monthly paying players, which rose to 4.1 million from 3.5 million, would in fact have declined were it not for an infusion of new players to 'Draw Something', a game Zynga purchased in March and which Zynga executives now admit has not lived up to expectations.
FarmVille, which represented 29 percent of Zynga's second-quarter revenues, has shrunk to just 20 million users this month from a high of about 80 million in March, according to Appdata.com, a Facebook tracking service.
'The company has been saying for some time that declining traffic doesn't matter and clearly it does,' Bhatia said.
OMG, WHAT A MISS
The company on Wednesday reported a quarterly net loss of $22.8 million, or 3 cents a share, compared with a profit of $1.4 million a year ago. Excluding certain items, it reported a profit of 1 cent a share, below the 5 cents that Wall Street had expected.
Admitting that mobile titles failed to pick up the slack, it logged revenues of $332.4 million, below the average analyst estimate of $344.12 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The company said CEO Mark Pincus had taken control of the company on or around Wednesday, with a rise in his voting stake to around 50.15 percent.
The increase in his stake follows a $500 million-plus payday via a choreographed private stock sale at $12 a share in April for Pincus, a small circle of top Zynga executives and investors but which many employees were excluded from.
That deal, explained as an effort to stagger the timing of when stockholders may cash out to avert a simultaneous sell-off at the expiration of a post-IPO lock-up period, now seems especially well-timed.
The increase in Pincus' voting power to over 50 percent was due to sales or transfers by other holders of Class B shares.
Zynga said daily active users rose by 23 percent to 72 million in the second quarter, but the company earned less revenue per subscriber. Average daily bookings per user dwindled to 4.6 cents in the quarter, down about 10 percent.
Pincus said a recent change to Facebook's algorithm spurred users toward new games, rather than repeatedly playing existing Zynga offerings.
Last month, Zynga unveiled zynga.com, an independent game-publishing platform, specifically to lessen its dependence on Facebook. But that service remains in beta after a multi-year development process, and executives declined to break out revenue for the platform when asked by analysts.
EXECUTIVES GRILLED
For the first time, Zynga executives acknowledged its acquisition for Draw Something developer, OMGPOP -- its costliest purchase at $183 million -- has not unfolded ideally. The gaming sensation fizzled out almost as soon as it was acquired.
'Draw Something under-performed versus our early expectations,' Pincus said.
The results jolted analysts including BTIG's Richard Greenfield, who pointedly asked Zynga's leadership to explain comments made in recent weeks by top executives that the company's performance will pick up in the second half of the year.
Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner said the company's policy was to only revise its forecasts during quarterly earnings calls.
In an interview, Chief Operating Officer John Schappert told Reuters that the company's financial picture came into focus only late in the quarter.
'You see some data but it takes a while to collate that data together and paint the whole picture,' he said.
In a lone bright spot, Pincus said the company expects to launch its first, real-money gambling products in international markets in 2013. But Zynga will not likely pursue cash gambling in the United States, where gambling regulation remains an obstacle.
Zynga's results surprised investors especially because many analysts anticipated a bounce in its stock after expectations had been set low following a mediocre first quarter report.
'Everyone's going to reset their growth expectations to a far lower level,' said Mike Hickey, an analyst at National Alliance Capital Markets.
Shares in Zynga plummeted 35 percent to as low as $3.00 in after-hours trade, from a close of $5.08 on Nasdaq. Stock in Facebook slid almost 7 percent to $27.33, from a close on Nasdaq of $29.34.
(Additional reporting by Malathi Nayak and Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Edwin Chan and Edwina Gibbs)
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Akamai sees upbeat third quarter; shares rise
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Akamai posts strong quarter on higher demand, cost controls
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Google, eBay, Amazon, Facebook back new lobbying group
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc, eBay Inc, Facebook Inc and other big Internet companies are starting a trade association to handle political and regulatory issues in Washington, a person close to the group said on Wednesday.
The Internet Association, which will open its doors in September, will act as a unified voice for major Internet companies, said President Michael Beckerman, a former advisor to the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee.
Beckerman would not identify the association's members or discuss which issues the group will focus on. But the source confirmed that leading members were Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook.
Internet companies have been lobbying recently on issues as disparate as easing visa restrictions to hire overseas engineers, revenue repatriation, privacy, cybersecurity and sales taxes for Internet companies.
'We want to educate (lawmakers) about the impact of the Internet in their congressional districts,' said Beckerman. 'In September, we'll do a full rollout and announce companies and announce policy positions.'
Google and Facebook have been steadily ramping up federal lobbying spending.
Google, the world's No. 1 Web search engine, increased federal lobbying spending by 90 percent year-on-year, spending $3.92 million in the second quarter to lobby the U.S. Congress, the White House and various federal agencies, according to required filings disclosing lobbying.
The company, which is being investigated by antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe, lobbied officials at the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Commerce.
Facebook boosted its spending on federal lobbying by 200 percent in the second quarter, spending $960,000 on issues including online privacy and immigration reform.
The world's largest online social network with 900 million users, Facebook said it lobbied lawmakers on market structure and initial public offering issues during the quarter.
In May, Facebook became the first U.S. company to go public with a market valuation above $100 billion. But the market debut was marred by technological glitches on the Nasdaq exchange and criticism that the IPO was priced too high.
EBay spent $400,600 dollars on lobbying in the second quarter, up about 10 percent from the same quarter in 2011. Its lobbying efforts focused on piracy and counterfeiting, air pollution and revenue repatriation, according to disclosure filings.
Amazon spent $690,000 in the second quarter, up about 25 percent from the second quarter of 2011. Its lobbyists worked on issues including sales tax, privacy and advertising.
(Reporting By Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
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The Internet Association, which will open its doors in September, will act as a unified voice for major Internet companies, said President Michael Beckerman, a former advisor to the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee.
Beckerman would not identify the association's members or discuss which issues the group will focus on. But the source confirmed that leading members were Google, Amazon, eBay and Facebook.
Internet companies have been lobbying recently on issues as disparate as easing visa restrictions to hire overseas engineers, revenue repatriation, privacy, cybersecurity and sales taxes for Internet companies.
'We want to educate (lawmakers) about the impact of the Internet in their congressional districts,' said Beckerman. 'In September, we'll do a full rollout and announce companies and announce policy positions.'
Google and Facebook have been steadily ramping up federal lobbying spending.
Google, the world's No. 1 Web search engine, increased federal lobbying spending by 90 percent year-on-year, spending $3.92 million in the second quarter to lobby the U.S. Congress, the White House and various federal agencies, according to required filings disclosing lobbying.
The company, which is being investigated by antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe, lobbied officials at the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Commerce.
Facebook boosted its spending on federal lobbying by 200 percent in the second quarter, spending $960,000 on issues including online privacy and immigration reform.
The world's largest online social network with 900 million users, Facebook said it lobbied lawmakers on market structure and initial public offering issues during the quarter.
In May, Facebook became the first U.S. company to go public with a market valuation above $100 billion. But the market debut was marred by technological glitches on the Nasdaq exchange and criticism that the IPO was priced too high.
EBay spent $400,600 dollars on lobbying in the second quarter, up about 10 percent from the same quarter in 2011. Its lobbying efforts focused on piracy and counterfeiting, air pollution and revenue repatriation, according to disclosure filings.
Amazon spent $690,000 in the second quarter, up about 25 percent from the second quarter of 2011. Its lobbyists worked on issues including sales tax, privacy and advertising.
(Reporting By Diane Bartz; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
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Investors brace for wild ride when Facebook announces earnings
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors in Facebook stock are bracing themselves for something wild.
After dropping about 25 percent since its highly anticipated market debut in May, it is not surprising the market is bracing for big swings in Facebook Inc shares after the social media company reports earnings for the first time as a public company.
The options market is forecasting a 14 percent move up or down in Facebook shares following the earnings, which are due after the bell on Thursday. That means options investors expect the stock to rise around as much as $32 by Friday - or fall to a low of about $24.
But this is not entirely Facebook's fault. Investors tend to gird for big moves ahead of a company's first results, particularly when it come to social media.
'Investors tend to be more nervous about these social media companies when it comes to their first earnings because there is nothing to compare them to. These firms need to show the market whether their business work or not,' said JJ Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade.
An analysis by Credit Suisse showed derivatives markets overprice options ahead of the first earnings report from public companies in the sector, such as Zynga Inc and Groupon Inc.
In eight out of 11 instances, the options market forecast larger swings than the actual post-earnings moves. The average implied move was 14.4 percent - about what is expected in Facebook - when the actual post-earnings change has been only 8.5 percent.
'Especially for Facebook, because it was such a highly anticipated stock that disappointed (the market), the demand for protection is up ahead of earnings,' said Kinahan.
There is no doubt that Facebook's much-hyped IPO has been a disappointment. The stock closed down 1 percent at $28.45 on Tuesday, compared with $38 in its market debut on May 18 - the most anticipated tech IPO since Google Inc went public in Aug, 2004.
The expected 14 percent post-earnings move 'implies there is significant uncertainty embedded in the derivatives market,' said Terry Wilson, equity derivatives strategist at Credit Suisse.
'While historical skew data is limited, the one-month skew is at its highest point, suggesting investor demand for protection,' Terry added.
Skew measures the demand for downside put options versus upside call options.
Despite the steep decline in its share price, Facebook is still trading at around 70 times earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data. An analysis by Thomson Reuters StarMine puts the company's intrinsic value at a modest $9.72 a share, or about one-third its current value, based on estimates of the company's projected growth for the next decade.
Analysts, on average, expect revenue in the second quarter to grow 28 percent to $1.15 billion. During the same period a year ago, Facebook more than doubled its revenue.
With over 900 million users, Facebook is the world's largest social networking company, challenging established Web companies for consumers' online time and for advertising revenue.
As of Tuesday, 62,000 calls and 53,000 puts traded in Facebook stock, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert. Among the most actively traded contracts were the short-term options known as Weeklys that expire on Friday, a day after Facebook's earnings report. These include the Weekly $25 and $26 strike puts and the Weekly $25 and $31 strike calls.
Option flow has been picking up over the past two weeks to average 120,000 contracts per day, making Facebook the sixth most actively traded option on an individual stock, according to Trade Alert.
(Reporting By Angela Moon; additional reporting by Doris Frankel in Chicago; editing by Andre Grenon)
This news article is brought to you by DATING ADVICE 201 - where latest news are our top priority.
After dropping about 25 percent since its highly anticipated market debut in May, it is not surprising the market is bracing for big swings in Facebook Inc shares after the social media company reports earnings for the first time as a public company.
The options market is forecasting a 14 percent move up or down in Facebook shares following the earnings, which are due after the bell on Thursday. That means options investors expect the stock to rise around as much as $32 by Friday - or fall to a low of about $24.
But this is not entirely Facebook's fault. Investors tend to gird for big moves ahead of a company's first results, particularly when it come to social media.
'Investors tend to be more nervous about these social media companies when it comes to their first earnings because there is nothing to compare them to. These firms need to show the market whether their business work or not,' said JJ Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade.
An analysis by Credit Suisse showed derivatives markets overprice options ahead of the first earnings report from public companies in the sector, such as Zynga Inc and Groupon Inc.
In eight out of 11 instances, the options market forecast larger swings than the actual post-earnings moves. The average implied move was 14.4 percent - about what is expected in Facebook - when the actual post-earnings change has been only 8.5 percent.
'Especially for Facebook, because it was such a highly anticipated stock that disappointed (the market), the demand for protection is up ahead of earnings,' said Kinahan.
There is no doubt that Facebook's much-hyped IPO has been a disappointment. The stock closed down 1 percent at $28.45 on Tuesday, compared with $38 in its market debut on May 18 - the most anticipated tech IPO since Google Inc went public in Aug, 2004.
The expected 14 percent post-earnings move 'implies there is significant uncertainty embedded in the derivatives market,' said Terry Wilson, equity derivatives strategist at Credit Suisse.
'While historical skew data is limited, the one-month skew is at its highest point, suggesting investor demand for protection,' Terry added.
Skew measures the demand for downside put options versus upside call options.
Despite the steep decline in its share price, Facebook is still trading at around 70 times earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data. An analysis by Thomson Reuters StarMine puts the company's intrinsic value at a modest $9.72 a share, or about one-third its current value, based on estimates of the company's projected growth for the next decade.
Analysts, on average, expect revenue in the second quarter to grow 28 percent to $1.15 billion. During the same period a year ago, Facebook more than doubled its revenue.
With over 900 million users, Facebook is the world's largest social networking company, challenging established Web companies for consumers' online time and for advertising revenue.
As of Tuesday, 62,000 calls and 53,000 puts traded in Facebook stock, according to options analytics firm Trade Alert. Among the most actively traded contracts were the short-term options known as Weeklys that expire on Friday, a day after Facebook's earnings report. These include the Weekly $25 and $26 strike puts and the Weekly $25 and $31 strike calls.
Option flow has been picking up over the past two weeks to average 120,000 contracts per day, making Facebook the sixth most actively traded option on an individual stock, according to Trade Alert.
(Reporting By Angela Moon; additional reporting by Doris Frankel in Chicago; editing by Andre Grenon)
This news article is brought to you by DATING ADVICE 201 - where latest news are our top priority.
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