Google puts flu tracker to work on swine flu

Using a new tracking tool, search engine giant Google said on Wednesday it saw a spike in searches for information about flu among people in Mexico last week even before news of the outbreak became widely known.

Google said it has put together a flu trends tracking system for Mexico based on the U.S. Google Flu tool launched last fall that is used by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to figure out where influenza is heating up.

It is based on Google's observation that people who are sick with flu tend to search for the same types of information on the Internet, and these searches can be used to predict where an outbreak may be occurring.

"We have seen evidence in Mexico that Google users also search flu-related topics when they are experiencing flu-related symptoms," Jeremy Ginsberg, lead engineer for Flu Trends at Google, said in a telephone briefing.

Studies show that between 35 and 40 percent of all visits to the Internet are started by people looking for health information.

Ginsberg said the Mexican data have not been cross-checked with years of data on actual flu cases in Mexico like the U.S. flu tracker has, so the data may not be reliable.

But he said the company is optimistic that the system, which generates maps based on peaks in flu-related searches, "may reflect actual flu activity."

"We did see a small increase in many parts of Mexico before major news coverage began last week," he said.

Ginsberg said people search for different things when they are sick -- like the word thermometer -- than they do when they are looking for news about flu outbreaks.

Ginsberg said the group has also seen a spike in U.S.-related flu searches that correspond with increases in U.S. cases being reported.

He said the hope is that the tool might offer one more way to predict hot spots in an outbreak as they happen.

"If it spreads quickly, it may give public health officials the chance to respond quickly," he said.

Google's flu tool for Mexico can be found at http://www.google.org/flutrends/intl/en_mx/

Benioff Calls for 'the End of Maintenance'

CEO Marc Benioff is well-known for brash pronouncements and on Tuesday delivered his latest, calling for "the end" of traditional software maintenance fees.

In an internal e-mail to his management team Tuesday, Benioff described a conversation he had with an Oracle Siebel CRM (customer relationship management) user at a recent event.

"This customer currently uses Siebel software to run her call center. She pays more than $15 million a year for the privilege of having to implement the updates that Siebel sends her," he wrote in the e-mail, which was seen by IDG News Service. "That does not include backup. Or disaster recovery. And of course, it does not guarantee that she will be using the latest technology. The maintenance agreement only assures her that her outdated software will continue to work."

The unnamed Siebel customer, Benioff said, "is paying tolls on a road to nowhere."

Salesforce.com's on-demand CRM model can provide that customer and others "much more for a fraction of what they currently pay in maintenance," Benioff added.

While at heart, Benioff's remarks aren't radically different from Salesforce.com's long-time marketing mantra, "the end of software," the e-mail comes at a time when enterprises around the world are looking to pare back wherever possible on IT spending, with reducing maintenance costs a top priority.

Meanwhile, rival vendor Oracle and its customers are currently in the throes of end-of-fiscal year contract renewals. And SAP, which announced a richer-featured but more expensive maintenance service last year to outcry from many customers, has been working with user groups on a set of KPIs (key performance indicators) meant to document the new service's value.

In his e-mail, Benioff characterized traditional maintenance, paid as a percentage of total license costs, as far inferior to SaaS (software as a service) like Salesforce.com.

"Maintenance fees cover updates that are mostly patches and fixes, but they stop far short of the kind of innovation every that enterprise needs to survive," he wrote. "We sell our customers a service and every customer is able to use the latest. Innovations are included. Upgrades are automatic and invisible. ... The service gets better, not just less buggy."

Benioff's remarks may not contain many new talking points but they do signal Salesforce.com's intentions to attack on-premise vendors' enterprise installed bases, according to 451 Group analyst China Martens.

"How do they grow to the next billion [in revenue], that's what everyone keeps asking. I don't know if he thinks this kind of grandstanding is one way to do it," Martens said.

And Benioff's critiques should be taken in the proper context, said Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang.

First of all, Salesforce.com's prices take the cost of customer support into account, he said. Second, while in some cases, SaaS may be cheaper for customers than on-premise software, it may not be in all, according to Wang. "It depends on how much you use it, how many people are using it."

SaaS is "really a lifestyle decision" for companies that don't want to deal with the hassle of maintaining infrastructure, he added.

Also, while SaaS vendors have been able to deliver on the promise of easier upgrades and faster innovation, there's no guarantee that this will be the case uniformly or forever, according to Wang. "We could be in the same boat one day, where SaaS vendors' margins are squeezed, and instead of doing four releases a year, they do one."

Overall, however, companies like Salesforce.com ought to offer compelling savings over on-premise software because of their built-in cost advantage, said Frank Scavo, managing partner of the Irvine, California, consulting firm Strativa, via e-mail.

"A large part of the so-called investment that traditional on-premise software vendors, such as SAP and Oracle, make in product development does not go toward new products or new functionality," he said. "Rather, it goes into porting and regression testing every product change against myriad combinations of databases, versions, server and desktop OS releases, middleware, and third-party products."

SaaS vendors can avoid many of these costs because they only need to write to their own platforms, and "therefore, they ought to be able to deliver the same functionality for lower cost," he said.

Sun Micro loss deepens prior to acquisition

Computer server maker Sun Microsystems Inc reported a wider quarterly loss as sales fell because of lower technology spending and uncertainty over the company's future.

Analysts said Sun's business was hurt in the last few weeks of the quarter by news that it was in talks to be acquired by IBM (IBM.N), prompting some customers to hold off on making purchases until they knew the outcome.

Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) later swooped in and agreed to buy Sun for more than $7 billion, a deal that was announced April 2.

Revenue fell 20 percent to $2.61 billion in Sun's fiscal third quarter ended March 29, compared with the average analyst forecast of $2.85 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

Businesses were hesitant to buy Sun's computers out of concern that it might not be around to service that equipment if the unprofitable company failed to sell itself, analysts said.

"There was probably some pressure from the IBM saga that impacted the top line," said Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross. "It would have made it hard to close the quarter."

Excluding restructuring charges and related impairment of long-lived assets, Sun lost 21 cents per share in the quarter, compared with the loss of 19 cents a share expected by analysts, according to Reuters Estimates.

Computer sales dropped 29 percent to $1 billion, while storage equipment sales fell 20 percent to $425 million. Software sales rose 27 percent to $187 million, while services revenue fell 13 percent to $1.1 billion.

Gross margin shrank 2.2 percentage points from a year earlier to 42.7 percent.

Sun reported a net loss of $201 million, or 27 cents per share, versus a year-earlier loss of $34 million, or 4 cents.

The shares of the Santa Clara, California-based company were quoted at $9.14 in extended trade, down slightly from their Nasdaq close of $9.16.

Shares of Redwood City, California-based Oracle were quoted at $19.66 in extended trade, down from their Nasdaq close of $19.74.

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger declined comment on Sun's results. The company is not holding a conference call with analysts.

Company pulls plug on `Fallujah' war video game

The publisher behind a video game based on one of the Iraq war's fiercest battles has pulled the plug on the title, called "Six Days in Fallujah."

A spokeswoman for Japanese game company Konami Corp. confirmed Tuesday the company is no longer publishing the game, which was set to go on sale early next year.

The game, which was still in development, sought to re-create the November 2004 Fallujah battle from the perspective of a U.S. Marine fighting against insurgents. Fallujah had been an insurgent holdout until U.S. forces stormed it in one of the war's most intense ground battles.

"Six Days" was developed by another company, Atomic Games, with input from more than three dozen Marines. Before deciding not to publish the game, Konami had advertised it as a realistic shooting game "unlike any other," combining "authentic weaponry, missions and combat set against the gripping story of the U.S. Marines on the ground."

But the game was criticized by some veterans, victims' families and others who called it inappropriate.

Konami did not give a reason for its decision to cancel the game.

Atomic's president, Peter Tamte, said the company was surprised.

Video game publishers don't always shy from controversy, which can even boost sales, especially if the game is of high quality. The "Grand Theft Auto" series from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., for example, has long been under fire for its violent content, but it brings in the bulk of the company's sales. It is more common in the current economy for companies to pull the plug if the game is not going to be a hit.

Konami is known for other war games such as the popular "Metal Gear Solid" series, as well as "Dance Dance Revolution," in which players dance on a mat in synch with music.

Other titles by Atomic Games include the "Close Combat" and "World at War" series. The company also develops training systems for military and intelligence organizations

Twitter users not sticking around

More than 60 percent of Twitter users have stopped using the micro-blogging service a month after joining, according to Nielsen Online research released on Tuesday.

"Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty," said David Martin, Nielsen Online's vice president for primary research.

Martin, in a post on the company blog, said that more than 60 percent of Twitter users fail to return the following month.

"Or in other words, Twitter's audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month's users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent," he said.

"Let there be no doubt: Twitter has grown exponentially in the past few months with no small thanks to celebrity exposure," he said in a reference to new users such as US talk show host Oprah Winfrey and promoters such as actor Ashton Kutcher.

"People are signing up in droves, and Twitter's unique audience is up over 100 percent in March," Martin said.

"But despite the hockey-stick growth chart, Twitter faces an uphill battle in making sure these flocks of new users are enticed to return to the nest," he said.

"A retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site's growth to about a 10 percent reach figure," he said in a reference to the number of potential users.

Martin said that when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter their retention rates were twice as high and they now have retention rates of nearly 70 percent.

Martin did say that Twitter's current 40 percent retention rate was better than the 30 percent it enjoyed pre-Oprah.

Companies mine Web clues for signs of pandemics

Weeks before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization alerted the public to a growing number of swine flu cases, a startup based in Seattle's suburbs already had a hunch something was up.

Veratect Inc., a 2-year-old company with fewer than 50 employees, combines computer algorithms with human analysts to monitor online and off-line sources for hints of disease outbreaks and civil unrest worldwide. It tracks thousands of "events" each month — an odd case of respiratory illness, or a run on over-the-counter medicines, for example — then ranks them for severity and posts them on a subscription-only Web portal for clients who want early warnings.

Internet abuzz with swine flu chatter

Swine flu chatter has been criss-crossing the Internet as the global spread of the virus became the hottest subject at micro-blogging service Twitter.

By Tuesday afternoon, Google's trend-tracking website rated swine flu a "spicy" Internet search topic due to a sudden spike in interest that earned it a spot in a Top 10 online Hot Trends list.

Meanwhile, a Google Flu website designed to use search query data to map the spread of influenza virus in the United States indicated the respiratory illness did not appear to be spreading rampantly there.

"Current estimates of flu activity are still generally low across the United States, as is expected given the confirmed swine flu case count," Google.org said in a message atop its Flu Trends home page.

Google's Flu Trends map indicated that influenza activity was "low" in all US states except Hawaii, where activity was rated as "high."

"Hawaii is a challenging model, but we aren't terribly surprised that it's marked 'high' on Flu Trends," Google.org said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"The state government says they tend to see flu year-round because of the tropical climate and tourist populations."

Swine flu chatter was rife on Twitter, as people shared news stories, headlines, fears, perceptions and misperceptions.

"Overheard in a bar: Swine flu is the new Susan Boyle. Still chuckling but I'm not sure why," tweeted a Twitter user by the online name CBCType."

Scottish singer Susan Boyle, who became a sensation after appearing on a television program "Britain's Got Talent," was the hottest topic on Twitter before being bumped from the throne by swine flu.

The US Centers for Disease Control is using Twitter to send real-time alerts and updates regarding swine flu. CDC Emergency had 37,431 followers on Twitter as of early evening.

The United States cautioned it may soon see its first deaths from the virus, which thus far has proved fatal only in Mexico, where more than 150 people are believed to have died from the flu.

"Yikes!" wrote Twitter user xenon21. "They are expecting people to die of swine flu in America."

Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing

The Cloud Security Alliance has released it's inaugural whitepaper called "Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing". The whitepaper is being presented today at RSA, outlines key issues and provides advice for both Cloud Computing customers and providers within 15 strategic domains.  It is now available on the Cloud Security Alliance website at www.cloudsecurityalliance.org/guidance.

Qualcomm to pay Broadcom $891 million to settle litigation

Wireless chip supplier Qualcomm Inc agreed to pay smaller rival Broadcom Corp $891 million over four years to settle long-standing and increasingly bitter legal battles over technology patents.

Qualcomm, which has lost several key battles in patent infringement cases with Irvine, California based Broadcom in the last few years, said on Sunday it would make its first payment of $200 million to Broadcom in the current quarter.

On Thursday, Qualcomm had rescheduled its quarterly earnings call at the last minute saying it was in advanced settlement talks with Broadcom, with which it had been fighting since 2005 in a battle spanning three continents.

Charter Equity Research analyst Ed Snyder said it made sense for Qualcomm to end the legal uncertainty even though this was a big payout for Qualcomm, which analysts expect to report quarterly revenue of $2.35 billion on April 27.

"It's clearly costing Qualcomm a lot but it's best for both companies to move on." said Snyder. "It's a win for Broadcom."

The settlement will result in the dismissal of all litigation between the companies, including patent infringement claims Broadcom brought against Qualcomm at the International Trade Commission and a court in Santa Ana, California.

The companies also agreed not to assert patents against each other for their respective chip products and certain other products and services. And Broadcom said it will withdraw its complaints against Qualcomm to the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission as part of the deal.

The settlement does not necessarily mean that the Korean and European regulators drop their investigations. But Qualcomm general counsel Donald Rosenberg told Reuters in a interview he hoped they would look favorably on the Broadcom deal and on Qualcomm's settlement last year with leading cellphone maker Nokia after their drawn out legal fight.

Telstra launches T-Suite without Salesforce

Aimed at small to medium sized businesses low on cash reserves, T-Suite will offer a range of software-as-a-service (SAAS) products, such as email, customer relationship management, collaboration, financial applications and security products, as well as online storage, for a subscription fee starting from $4 a month.

Telstra has been trialling T-Suite since late last year with select customers but is now ready with the full launch which will see the telco offer nine online applications including Microsoft's Exchange Mail and Sharepoint programs, security products from MessageLabs and McAfee and Workforce Guardian , an industrial relations tool to help manage human resources.

Although SaaS-style software has been around for a while in Australia from outlets such as Salesforce.com, SAP and local operators such as PK Business Advantage, it has yet achieved mass penetration.

But as the global financial crisis continues to wreak havoc on financial markets, the tide for SaaS has started to turn as businesses look to cut capital costs in favour of relying more on outsourced computer and telecommunications services.

Leading the charge in SaaS popularity has been Salesforce.com which was surprisingly absent from Telstra's raft of T-Suite launch partners.

Although Telstra has been in discussions with Salesforce since October last year, but no deal has yet emerged from the talks.

A Telstra spokesperson said there was no plan to include Salesforce products into T-Suite but that discussions were continuing with the company.

Telstra Business group managing director Deena Shiff also said Telstra was in discussions with more than 50 local and multinational software developers who could offer their technology through T-Suite.

Ms Shiff said Telstra was positioning T-Suite as an affordable service for businesses eager to avoid laying down big investments for new hardware and upfront software licensing fees.

"It's something that can help you stay in front without burning your balance sheet ," Ms Shiff said.

"In the current economic climate, those small businesses are looking for ways to improve cash flow and better manage risks and compliance obligations and we believe the T-Suite service provides a cost effective answer at the right time.

"We didn't foresee the global economic crisis and now is a difficult time for all business owners specifically and especially small business. It's become terribly relevant to use tools with no or very low up front costs."

Telstra said it would be engaging in a revenue sharing model with its T-Suite partners

Traders Atwitter Over New Apps

QUITE A FEW BROKERAGE FIRMS ARE PUSHING THEIR OWN social-media applications in an effort to get new customers -- and to keep current customers engaged.

TradeKing (www.tradeking.com) and Zecco (www.zecco.com) have integrated electronic conversations between customers into their trading platforms, and Charles Schwab now allows its high-asset clients to talk among themselves. But several firms now offer customer service -- and customer-to-customer communication -- via San Francisco-based Twitter (www.twitter.com), the ubiquitous service that lets anyone broadcast messages ("tweets") of up to 140 characters over the Web and via registered cellphones.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, appearing on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report this month, said that the service started as a side project. "It's the messaging service we didn't know we needed -- until we had it," Stone told host Stephen Colbert. The outside world first got to Twitter in 2007. Twitter is free now, but won't be forever.

AS IT TURNS OUT, FREQUENT TRADERS are engaging more and more with one another by using Twitter in various ways. The benefits of Twittering run from gossip-sharing and info-sharing among customers to on-the-spot guidance from the brokers' customer-support Twitterers. The service can provide information on bargains, too. Scottrade customers, for example, got a tweet about a 30% discount on TurboTax.

As new as the Twitter phenomenon is, there are already conventions focused on Twittering about trading. For Twitters on stocks and options, you place a dollar sign in front of the ticker symbol. You can then filter the Twitter feed to display only entries with dollar signs in them, or specific tickers you want to follow.

The newest broker on the block, tradeMonster (www.trademonster.com), decided to implement a Twitter integration rather than launch its own social-networking site just for its customers. Smart move. The customer base at tradeMonster isn't very large right now, as the site just launched last fall -- but having a presence on a very popular medium gets the name out there for others to see.

TradeMonster customers, as well as those who have signed up for a tradeMonster "paper trading" account -- a trading simulator -- can quickly tweet a stock or option they are following. The Twitter integration places a small lowercase "t" that resembles the Twitter logo in quote, chart, and position displays within the platform on your personal computer. To tweet what you are looking at right now, you just point your mouse at the "t" and click on it.

A Twitter window displays the price of the item you are looking at -- say, Goldman Sachs stock, or an option position -- or even a multi-leg position that you are considering trading. You can edit the generated tweet, or add to it, up to the 140-character limit.

It is clear that, when the chatter around a certain trade is significant, this form of communication can add significantly to price pressure.

Skip Shean, vice president of marketing and business development at tradeMonster, said the firm decided to implement a Twitter integration -- rather than build a social-networking platform that only its customers could access -- in order to generate responses quickly. "We decided to go where the audience already is, rather than trying to draw it off of there and bring it to our house," says Shean.

Especially for a new firm, I think, that is a good call.

Speed of response is particularly important to an online trader. A private network might give you interesting replies, because they will come from (by definition) members of your own network. But the replies might be slow and shallow if the community is small.

TradeMonster's Twitter integration provides its customers with a wider discussion arena, and also shows off the firm's offerings to the huge Twitter audience.

Getting started on Twitter is easy; the hard part is keeping up with the huge number of messages posted. The challenge is to filter out the junk (Is it really important to know what celebrity Ashton Kutcher is doing right now?) and find something interesting.

ONE SERVICE THAT IS AIMED RIGHT at traders is StockTwits (www.stocktwits.com), which lets you enter tickers on the "Portfolio" page, and thus filter the incessant stream of incoming posts.

There are quite a few other Twitter-filtering programs out there. My two current favorites are TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com, obtainable by downloading and installing a small application) and Twitterfall (www.twitterfall.com), which runs on a Web browser.

TweetDeck organizes the tweets into columns, so it is easier for you to see responses sent directly to your user name, or to filter a variety of topics and have those posts show up in separate places. If you really are interested in hearing everything Ashton Kutcher has to say, you can put his tweets in a column separate from those that pertain to your investments.

Twitterfall also has a powerful filtering engine; the tweets drop onto your screen as small illustrated boxes. You can control the flow of the posts; those that meet your criteria are queued up and displayed at an interval that you set. I have Twitterfall set up to show me messages aimed at customer-support representatives of various online brokers. Scottrade, tradeMonster, Fidelity and several others have customer-support reps who are Twittering away all day.

While interviewing Biz Stone, Stephen Colbert uttered and Twittered this investing tip: "Note to self: Send robot to past to invent Twitter before this guy."

Great idea, but tough to put into action. By the way, my Twitter address is twitter.com/twcarey.

EBay works to improve its focus on key areas

EBay Inc. said Thursday that it is focusing its efforts on business areas "where we can win," which include the company's core electronic commerce market but not the Internet telephony business the company paid a large sum to enter less than four years ago.

In a conference call with analysts, eBay also cautioned that it will face plenty of strong competition in the e-commerce market, where the company competes with dozens of smaller players as well as sector giant Amazon.com , which has been able to gain market share against eBay of late.

"We will continue to be one of the winners in a changing e-commerce landscape. It is not a winner-take-all," CEO John Donahoe said on the call, adding that the industry "will have multiple winners, each focused on target segments."

The call on Thursday morning came after the company announced plans to make a tender offer to buy a majority stake in Gmarket  , a Korean company that operates a large, fixed-price e-commerce site in that country. The purchase price could reach $1.2 billion if all the company's outstanding shares are tendered; eBay says it has already reached agreement with holders of 67% of the shares. 

Donahoe said the Gmarket purchase will strengthen the companies' presence in Korea and Asia. This, in turn, will help broaden the market for the company's PayPal business -- on which eBay is banking heavily for future growth.

"This business has tremendous potential, and we expect PayPal to approximately double over the next three years," Donahoe said.

EBay shares were trading up 0.4% to $14.38 by early Thursday afternoon.

Analysts liked the deal, overall. Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets called the move "a positive step" for eBay in establishing itself in the South Korean market and could be a stepping stone in the broader region.

"Historically, eBay had limited success in gaining a foothold in Asia, where local players tend to dominate online shopping," Sebastian wrote in a note to clients.

Justin Post of Bank of America said the deal will give eBay nearly 40% of the e-commerce market in South Korea. But he added that the deal looked expensive, with eBay paying about four times Gmarket's 2010 revenue estimate compared to its own current valuation of about two-times projected revenues.

"Despite synergies, it's possible deep value shareholders may have preferred cash repatriation and buybacks," Post wrote in his report.

Shedding Skype

The move to buy Gmarket came just a day after the company announced plans to eventually shed itself of Skype, the Internet telephony provider eBay acquired in 2005 for $2.6 billion.

EBay has struggled to fit Skype into its overall business. The unit brought in revenue of $551 million last year -- about 6% of eBay's total revenue base. Analysts have worried that running Skype distracts eBay from focusing on its core business, which has suffered over the past couple of years from slowing growth and heavier competition.

Late Tuesday, eBay announced that it plans to commence an initial public offering for sometime over the next 14 months or so, depending on market conditions. On the call Thursday, Donahoe left the door open to considering another type of deal, but maintained that the company eventually plans to completely separate Skype from the rest of the business.

"If we were to receive an unsolicited offer, naturally we would evaluate against what we believe can be achieved through a public offering," Donahoe said. "And we believe that an IPO during the first half of 2010 is very feasible, contingent upon market conditions."

Heath Terry of Friedman Billings Ramsey said a Skype IPO could fetch a valuation between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion. In a report, he added that separating Skype "should allow management to resume returning capital to shareholders and focus on stabilizing the Marketplaces business."

In a much smaller deal, eBay also recently sold back StumbleUpon, a Web-based tool for locating media content, back to its original founders. Financial terms of that deal were not disclosed.

Microsoft backtracks, says Office 2010 beta will be public

Microsoft Thursday promised that it would provide at least one public beta to Office 2010, saying that its assertion to the contrary Wednesday was "the wrong impression."

"Although we are not disclosing a date for the public beta, there definitely will be one," a company spokesman said Thursday morning. "This development cycle for Office is no different than years past; technical preview is usually invite-only, but still goes out to hundreds of thousands of people, and there is a public beta cycle where millions can download and try Office."

On Wednesday, a different company spokesperson said that Microsoft had no plans to distribute a beta to the general public -- as it had done with Office 2007 -- but said that a closed test involving "thousands" would begin during the third quarter of 2009.

The spokesman Thursday declined to outline a timetable for Office 2010's public beta, to specify the number of betas Microsoft will produce and to say what it will be called. "We have not locked on that yet," he said, referring to the last of the three questions.

Microsoft delivered two public betas for Office 2007, the first in March 2006 and the second in September, dubbing the latter "Beta 2 Technical Refresh." In between the two dates, it let users try out the suite from within their browsers and charged US$1.50 to download the preview. The latter move, Microsoft said in July 2006, was because "the beta 2 downloads have exceeded our goals," prompting it to "implement a cost-recovery measure."

The spokesman Thursday said Microsoft had not decided whether it would mimic that for-a-fee scheme with Office 2010. "We are still working out the delivery options and will share additional details later this year," he said in a follow-up e-mail.

Microsoft first seeded a group of invitation-only testers with Office 2007 Beta 1 in November 2005.

If the company runs Office 2010 through testing at the same pace as it did Office 2007, it wouldn't release the new suite to manufacturing until the third quarter of 2010, with the first public beta in the November 2009-January 2010 time frame.

However, since Microsoft has pegged a final release of Office 2010 in the first half of 2010, assuming the same kind of schedule as three years ago and a ship date at the end of the six-month window, it could issue a beta as early as November 2009 and as late as April 2010.

DataSphere Launches SaaS Solutions

DataSphere, a Software as a Service (SaaS) Web technology company, today announced the availability of the DataSphere Web Suite (http://www.datasphere.com). Designed to provide companies of all sizes with the most functional, cost effective and rapidly deployable solutions to create and run Web sites based on extensive catalogs, media or other data, the DataSphere Web Suite is built on an infinitely scalable, multi-tenant SaaS platform.

The DataSphere Web Suite is already powering several Web sites including LandWatch.com, http://search.komonews.com and http://www.newhomelistings.com.

 

"We believe there is a tremendous opportunity in providing an affordable, world class consumer experience for Web sites," said DataSphere CEO Satbir Khanuja. "The DataSphere Web Suite is designed to enable Web sites with extensive product, media or other data catalogs to benefit from the latest advances in Internet technology. By reducing the cost and complexity, improving the user experience and speeding up deployment of these new technologies, we can help Web site owners to increase revenues and reduce expenses within weeks."

The DataSphere Web Suite is a comprehensive site creation, hosting and management solution that gives Web site owners access to a range of best in class capabilities for automatically attracting traffic from across the Web and delivering an outstanding in-site consumer experience. Based on decades of driving traffic and user experience at some of the world's foremost Web sites including Amazon.com and MSN.com, the DataSphere team has created a service that fuses the latest technologies with the best in user experience design and unlimited scalability.

The suite is comprised of a number of different services, each designed to satisfy the specific requirements of individual customers.

Google profit up but revenue drops for first time

Google reported a 9.2 percent rise in quarterly net profit, but the Internet search giant said revenue declined for the first time ever in consecutive quarters.

The Mountain View, California-based company reported a net profit for the first quarter of the year of 1.42 billion dollars compared with 1.31 billion dollars in the corresponding quarter last year.

Revenue was 5.51 billion dollars for the first quarter, up six percent from the same quarter a year ago but down three percent compared with the fourth quarter of last year, Google said in a statement.

Google, which makes 98 percent of its revenue from Web search advertising, reported earnings per share of 5.16 dollars, considerably better than the 4.93 dollars expected by Wall Street analysts.

The decline in revenue was the first ever for Google from one quarter to the next, but it did not appear to damage the confidence of investors.

Google shares were up 4.31 percent to 405.50 dollars in electronic after-hours trading in New York after gaining 2.43 percent during the day.

"Google had a good quarter given the depth of the recession -- while revenues were down quarter over quarter, they grew six percent year over year thanks to continued strong query growth," chief executive Eric Schmidt said.

"These results underline both the resilience of our business model and the ongoing potential of the Web as users and advertisers shift online," he said.

"Going forward, our priority remains investing for the long term to drive future growth in our core and emerging businesses," Schmidt said.

Speaking to analysts in a conference call following the release of the quarterly earnings figures, Schmidt said the economy was "basically still in unchartered territory."

"The economic environment remains tough," he said.

New chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said Google, which recently announced it was laying off 200 sales and marketing employees, was "still hiring but only in the critical areas."

Schmidt declined to comment on reports that Google had reached agreement with major Hollywood studios to show full-length films and television shows on YouTube, which Google purchased for 1.65 billion dollars in 2006.

Several leading technology blogs said Thursday that Google-owned YouTube had reached agreement with Sony Pictures and several other Hollywood studios to show full-length movies and television shows on the video-sharing website.

Google-owned sites brought in revenue of 3.70 billion dollars in the first quarter, up nine percent over a year ago but down three percent from the fourth quarter of 2008, the company said.

Partner sites generated revenue of 1.64 billion dollars, down three percent from both the first and fourth quarters of 2008.

Google, which controls 63.7 percent of the US search market according to the latest figures from comScore, said that revenue from outside the United States totaled 2.88 billion dollars in the first quarter, 52 percent of total revenue.

Google also said that "paid clicks" -- clicks by Internet users related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of its AdSense partners -- increased 17 percent in the first quarter over the same quarter of last year.

Google also announced on Thursday that Omid Kordestani, who has been responsible for global sales and partnership operations, had been named a "senior advisor" to Schmidt and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

He was replaced by Nikesh Arora, currently president of international operations, and will take on the title of president, global sales operations and business development.

Twitter Growth Surges 131% In March

Twitter's popularity is surging, thanks in part to constant news stories about Twitter's surging popularity, stories not unlike this one.

According to ComScore Media Metrix data for March, the number of visitors to Twitter.com reached 9.3 million, an increase of more than 5 million visitors, or 131%, from February.

India looks to broadband connectivity and fiber optic cable projects as major engines for economic development as it prepares for a huge uptick in demand for online access from consumers and businesses.

In a blog post on Wednesday, ComScore's Andrew Lipsman agrees that there appears to be some truth to the belief that media attention is fueling Twitter's growth. "[T]here may certainly be some merit to that," he said. "It seems you can't get through a typical newscast anymore without some mention of Twitter."

He points to Newt Gingrich's use of Twitter to criticize President Obama's handling of the Somali pirate crisis, to the use of Twitter by CNN's Rick Sanchez, and to the role Twitter played in recent national and international news stories as signs that the service has become an important mode of mass communication.

Lipsman observes that Twitter users are news junkies, visiting top online news sites two to three times more often than the average person. And he suggests that Twitter's attractiveness to avid news consumers is driving its growth in conjunction with the news media's use of and focus on Twitter.

"Like it or not, Twitter is quickly revolutionizing the way our entire news ecosystem operates, from journalist to consumer, and blurring the lines in between," he said.

However, such popularity isn't without its downside. Aside from the challenge faced by Twitter to make sure its infrastructure can handle stardom, the site also must endure increasing attention from cybercriminals, who see profit in Twitter's timeliness, reach, and viral nature.

Over the weekend, a computer worm spread on Twitter, generating almost 10,000 spam tweets and compromising at least 190 accounts. And other such incidents have disrupted Twitter in recent months as well.

Ebay to buy stake in S. Korean online marketplace

EBay Inc. said Thursday it plans to pay as much as $1.2 billion to purchase a majority stake in South Korea's top online marketplace in a bid to expand its presence in Asia.

San Jose, Calif.-based eBay and Gmarket Inc. said that eBay will make a cash tender offer of $24 a share to purchase all outstanding common shares and American Depository shares in the South Korean company. If successful, eBay said it would take a stake of at least 67 percent in Gmarket.

"Asia is a very fast moving market, fast growing market," John Pluhowski, an eBay vice president said in Seoul. The acquisition "also allows us to build a platform for growth in Korea but also in regions throughout Asia and beyond."

Pluhowski said the acquisition is "one of the largest since the company has been acquiring companies throughout the decade."

News of the deal comes two days after eBay said it plans to spin off its Internet communications service Skype through an initial public offering, undoing a $2.6 billion acquisition that puzzled analysts and which eBay struggled to justify.

EBay and Gmarket made the announcement in a statement handed out Thursday in South Korea and released late Wednesday in the U.S. It said the agreement calls for eBay to combine Gmarket with eBay's existing online marketplace in South Korea, Internet Auction Company.

"The combination of Gmarket and IAC establishes an exceptionally strong leadership position for eBay in one of the world's largest, most dynamic and innovative e-commerce markets," John Donahoe, eBay's president and chief executive officer, said in the release.

Park Joo-man, South Korean country manager for eBay, said that Gmarket and Internet Auction had a combined market share of about 36 percent in South Korea as of last year.

Separately, Yahoo Inc. announced that it has agreed to sell its approximate 10 percent share in Gmarket to eBay as part of eBay's announced tender offer. Yahoo said it would maintain its other operations in South Korea following the sale.

EBay said in September it received preliminary conditional approval from South Korean regulators for its potential purchase of a stake in Gmarket, though at the time the proposed stake size was far smaller.

Former Google.org chief joining new Skoll venture

Larry Brilliant, the founding executive director of Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Internet search giant, is leaving the company to head a venture backed by the Skoll Foundation.

Brilliant, 64, who stepped down as head of Google.org in February and was named Google's "Chief Philanthropic Evangelist," announced his departure in a post on the Google.org blog late Tuesday.

"It's with a grateful heart that I leave full-time work with Google to begin a new chapter in my life," he said.

Brilliant, a leading epidemiologist who played a key role in the World Health Organization's efforts to eradicate smallpox from Asia, said he was leaving Google to become president of the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund.

The fund is an initiative of the Skoll Foundation founded 10 years ago by billionaire Jeff Skoll.

Skoll is the founding president of online auction giant eBay and the chairman of Participant Media, producer of such films as "An Inconvenient Truth," a movie about climate change featuring former vice president Al Gore.

In a statement, the Skoll Foundation said the Urgent Threats Fund would support "innovative high-impact initiatives to combat climate change, water scarcity, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and Middle East conflict."

The fund would have an initial budget of 100 million dollars "with additional funds available over time," it said.

Brilliant said he would leave Google on May 5 but would continue to serve as an adviser to Google.org.

EBay planning spin-off of Skype through IPO

EBay Inc plans to spin off its Skype unit, acknowledging that the Web telephone service does not fit with the rest of the company, in an indictment of former CEO Meg Whitman's acquisition strategy.

EBay, whose shares rose 3 percent in after-hours trade, said on Tuesday it was planning an initial public offering for Skype by the first half of 2010, a move widely seen as putting a 'for sale' sign on the unit to fetch potential buyers.

Two people familiar with eBay's thinking said the online auction company could seek substantially more than $2 billion for Skype. But some analysts doubted that it could fetch so much in current markets.

The San Jose-based eBay bought Skype in 2005 for $2.6 billion, in what was its biggest ever acquisition. John Donahoe, who became eBay chief executive a year ago, has vowed to evaluate whether the telephone service was a good fit with the rest of the company, which includes Web payments service PayPal along with its core auctions business.

"We believe operating Skype as a stand-alone publicly traded company is the best path for maximizing its potential," Donahoe said in a statement on Tuesday.

Many on Wall Street raised eyebrows when Whitman purchased Skype, skeptical of the high price and eBay's claims that its customer base of buyers and sellers would embrace Web phone calls.

"That Skype didn't fit into the rest of the business was apparent from day one," said RBC analyst Stephen Ju.

"The book value of this asset is about $1.7 billion. It wouldn't surprise me if they would try to get something like $2 billion," he said. That implies a roughly 10 times EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) multiple based on Skype's 2011 revenue target of $1 billion and its current operating margins of 20 percent, he added.

Ju noted it was hard to put a value on a Skype IPO given the uncertainty over the state of the market in 2010.

Microsoft Brands Office 2010, Releases Exchange Beta

Microsoft will release a beta of Exchange Server 2010 on Wednesday, the first product that enterprise customers will see from the next version of Office.

Microsoft is also going public with the official branding of its next productivity suite -- Office 2010. Until now Microsoft had been referring to it as Office 14, but the new name had been widely expected.

Exchange Server should be in full release by the end of the year, but the rest of the products in the suite won't be out until early 2010, said Julia White, director of the Exchange product management team.

Microsoft will release technical previews of other products in the suite, including Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010, in the third calendar quarter. A technical preview is tested by hundreds of thousands of users, while millions of people will have access to the Exchange 2010 beta, White said.

Another of the Office System products, Office Communications Server (OCS), is on a different schedule. The latest version, OCS R2, was released only in February, and Microsoft has not discussed plans yet for the next big upgrade.

Microsoft will begin the process of upgrading its hosted version of Exchange, Exchange Online, at the same time it ships the Exchange 2010 on-premise product. Exchange Online customers will have the ability to determine when their users are upgraded to the new Exchange 2010 capabilities in Exchange Online, starting in the first half of 2010.

Now that Microsoft offers Exchange as both a service and an on-premise product, it is beginning to align the features of the two offerings more closely, White said. When the company makes architectural decisions about the server product, it thinks about the service as well, she said. "We're thinking about them in a unified way."

It made it easy in Exchange 2010 to automatically configure access for certain employee roles, such as a compliance officer or human-resources manager, White said. "You can set it up [for people] to just have access to the mail boxes they need to search, and can turn that access on and off very quickly," she said.

Lindsay Lohan looks for love on the Web

Lindsay Lohan is looking for a lover who does not mind her alleged alcoholism or electronic monitoring bracelet, or so the famously troubled Hollywood actress said in a mock Internet dating profile.

Lohan, whose recent breakup with Samantha Ronson has been covered by the media, stars in an a dating profile posted online on Monday at FunnyOrDie.com that parodies similar videos created for matchmaking company eHarmony.

"I would define my personality as creative, a bit of a night owl," Lohan says in the video.

"I'm a workaholic, a shopaholic and according to the state of California, an alcoholic as well as a threat to all security guards if they work at hotels," she says, with a perky smile.

Lohan, who is on probation, was briefly jailed in 2007 for a drunken driving and cocaine possession conviction. She had been arrested the previous May after wrecking her car in Beverly Hills and again in July following a car chase in the Los Angeles beach community of Santa Monica.

She was made to wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, a fact that the actress jokingly mentions in her video, which features the jumpy camera work characteristic of eHarmony dating profiles.

"We'll crash a few parties, a car or two, but at the end of the day I promise you, I never lose my Google hits, just my underwear," the actress says in the video.

Cisco Buys Tidal Software

Buttressing its move into servers in search of a new revenue stream, network equipment maven Cisco is buying privately held Tidal Software for roughly $105 million in cash and retention incentives, hardly a rounding error for the wealthy Cisco.

Cisco says Tidal's intelligent application management and automation solutions will advance its data center aspirations and let it dangle operating savings in front of customers.

Tidal manages SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle E-Business Suite, .NET and Java applications and schedules database and CRM workloads. Tidal's recent development deal with SAP to integrate Tidal with SAP's Solution Manager lifecycle management is evidently important.

Cisco says Tidal will let it follow transaction flow, which it can already analyze on the network, into the application and ultimately optimize solutions by determining if hiccups are network-, system- or application-related.

Tidal has a boutique-set of specialized or edgy skills that are nowhere near the systems management abilities of a BMC, which is partnering with Cisco on its newfangled Unified Computing System (UCS) or, come to think of it, a CA or IBM Tivoli, all of which can be integrated with Tidal.

In a statement the company said, "Tidal Software's intelligent solutions will bolster Cisco's data center strategy by providing timely, accurate and cost-efficient management and automation of application performance across entire business operations, from the server through the network to the desktop."

Google releases Android 1.5 SDK preview

Though Google's Android platform for mobile devices is widely considered to be the most significant competitor to the iPhone, my review of January 2009 concluded that Android was promising but in need of a hefty coat of polish. On Tuesday, Google announced a preview version of the Software Development Kit for Android's first major update, 1.5.

Based on a branch of the Android Open Source Project code-named "cupcake," version 1.5 aims to smooth many of the rough edges in Android's inaugural release. The update not only polishes existing functionality, but also adds a number of new features, including major additions like support for stereo Bluetooth using the A2DP profile, an on-screen software keyboard, and video recording and playback.

The Android 1.5 update clearly positions the platform as a solid competitor to Apple's iPhone. Though some of the new features—video playback and an on-screen keyboard, for example—are capabilities the iPhone has sported since launch, others, such as stereo Bluetooth, are due to arrive on Apple's platform in the forthcoming iPhone 3.0 update. But some, such as video recording and the ability for users to add third-party keyboards, are capabilities that Apple has made no mention of adding to its device.

In addition to beefing up what Android can do, it appears that Google has spent some time correcting many of Android 1.0's niggling deficiencies. For example, Android now supports rotating the screen into landscape mode using an accelerometer (the G1 only flipped its screen into landscape when you slid the screen out to reveal the device's physical keyboard). Google also says it has added a layer of polish to many of the included applications and has fixed some performance issues, such as the atrociously slow camera load-time and slow scrolling in the Web browser. There are also under-the-hood improvements, like the latest versions of WebKit and JavaScript engine Squirrelfish, and an updated Linux kernel at the heart of the OS.

Google warns that the SDK is not yet finalized and that APIs could still be subject to change, so developers shouldnot release applications for distribution on 1.5 as of yet; the company says that the final release of the Android 1.5 SDK is due out at the end of the month, but it as unknown when the software update will reach consumers.

The increased functionality and polish offered by Android 1.5 could turn it into a serious competitor for the iPhone, especially if it ends up being released prior to the iPhone OS 3.0 update, which is expected sometime this summer. The release of another major iPhone competitor, the Palm Pre, is also due sometime in the next few months, suggesting that this summer could be a very contentious time for the smart phone market, indeed.

Blogger Fights Big Bank Goldman Sachs Over Threat

A blogger in the U.S. filed a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs on Monday to prevent the big investment bank from taking his domain names.

Blogger Mike Morgan hopes to protect anti-Goldman Web sites, including www.goldmansachs666.com and www.goldmansachs13, from trademark action threatened by the powerful bank.

He filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida after receiving a letter accusing him of violating Goldman's intellectual property rights by using its trademark, attached as Exhibit A in the lawsuit.

"David didn't beat Goliath by waiting till Goliath threw the first punch," Morgan wrote on his blog.

Opened early last month, Goldmansachs666 carries a host of anti-Goldman stories including "Is Goldman Sachs Manipulating the Stock Market? - It Sure Looks Like It"; "Did Goldman Sachs Scam the System with AIG?"; and "Did [Goldman CEO] Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs Lie to Congress?"

Most of the articles criticize Goldman Sachs in relation to the disaster that has hit the U.S. financial sector, which Goldman appears to be weathering better than most of its peers.

Its stock price has risen over 54 percent so far this year to close Monday at $130.15.

The company has faced criticism for the US$12.9 billion in cash and collateral it received from insurer American International Group (AIG), which only made the payments due to the estimated $173 billion it got from the U.S. government.

But Goldman has proposed paying back the $10 billion in direct bailout money the government handed it last year as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The champion of TARP was former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who previously ran Goldman Sachs as its chairman and CEO.

Morgan says in a disclaimer on his blog that he is betting in the stock market against Goldman Sachs, and holds a short selling position.

The Goldman versus Morgan fight looks similar to a problem Wal-Mart Stores faced over Web sites devoted to hating the retailer.

A judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia last month rejected Wal-Mart's request to take over the domain names "Walocaust.com" and "Walqueda.com" saying there was no way to mistake that the content on the sites, mostly anti-Wal-Mart opinions and products such as Walocaust T-shirts, were meant to criticize the company, not profit from the use of its name.

The legal wrangling did cause Walocaust.com to post a disclaimer at the top of the site saying it has no affiliation with Wal-Mart, a step that Morgan has already taken at Goldmansachs666.com.

A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs declined to comment on the lawsuit but said the letter was sent to Morgan to protect the Goldman Sachs trademark.

"We don't have an issue with his comments, those are his views," she said.

She indicated that the prior lack of a disclaimer at the top of Morgan's Web sites to say that the site and owner had no affiliation with Goldman Sachs played a part in the letter, but declined to comment on whether the inclusion of a disclaimer, which is now there, would mean Goldman Sachs will not proceed with legal action.

Disclaimers are not often used by Web sites that criticize companies and products, nor by sites professing undying devotion, such as iPhonefreak.com and iPhonebuzz.com.

Goldman Sachs has won court cases against similarly-named Web sites in the past. The company took down Netherlands-based Goldmansex.com after filing suit three years ago.

But a quick search on Google reveals other uses of the name Goldman in domains that do not carry disclaimers nor appear to not have been challenged, including Goldmanfund.org and Goldmanprize.org, a philanthropy Web site and environmental prize, respectively.

By law, a company holding a patent or trademark that wishes to protect their right to that intellectual property has to go after every perceived misuse, or risks losing their rights. The Internet has been a battleground for intellectual property disputes for a long time.

Arvind Krishnamurthy Launches Comodo Encryption Journal on Ulitzer

Comodo's range of solutions gives businesses the ability to create online trust through proprietary technology that help e-businesses convert more customers, retain more customers and increase lifetime value.

Arvind Krishnamurthy is the media relations manager for the Comodo companies. Comodo provides the infrastructure that is essential in enabling e-merchants, other Internet-connected companies, software companies, and individual consumers to interact and conduct business via the Internet safely and securely.

The Comodo companies offer PKI SSL, Code Signing, Content Verification and E-Mail Certificates; award winning PC security software; vulnerability scanning services for PCI Compliance; secure e-mail and fax services. Continual innovation, a core competence in PKI, and a commitment to reversing the growth of Internet-crime distinguish the Comodo companies as vital players in the Internet's ongoing development.

Comodo secures and authenticates online transactions and communications for over 200,000 business customers and has over 10,000,000 installations of desktop security products.

About Ulitzer.com
Initiating content coverage on any topic or launching a magazine at Ulitzer.com  is designed to be as easy as boiling an egg and doesn't take much longer. To become a Ulitzer author, anyone can fill out a simple author profile and submit for editorial review and approval. Once you've been handed the keys, you will be able to associate your future Web presence to whichever topic or topics suit you best.

The full list of topics and magazines being brought on stream via Ulitzer, and a list of more than 6,000 Ulitzer published authors at beta launch can be viewed at www.ulitzer.com.

Within the next five years, TIME Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American, Condé Nast Traveler, and Wikipedia will be replaced by Ulitzer.

Ulitzer authors can add their Google AdSense account numbers to their profile pages to start earning 100% AdSense cash immediately. Topic editors should obtain a new AdSense account from Google to be used strictly on their Ulitzer story pages. Ulitzer will match their AdSense revenues 100% and payment will be made to their PayPal accounts.

Salesforce To Tweet

Despairing of getting an answer from just about anybody's customer service these days, people are turning instead to Twitter to solve their product problems.

And seeing an opportunity to monetize that fact Salesforce.com has promised an extension of its two-month-old Service Cloud called Salesforce CRM for Twitter. It should be ready by summer.

It's supposed to let companies to find, monitor and join relevant Twitter micro-blogs in the Service Cloud, which is already connected to Facebook and Google.

Dell and Comcast have signed up for the new service.

With CRM for Twitter a company will be able to capture and monitor conversations by creating a record in the Service Cloud that tracks the original post and all subsequent replies. They can then funnel solutions from the Service Cloud knowledge base into a Twitter post.

There are reportedly eight million Twitter users but the free service still hasn't figured out how to monetize its popularity. Perhaps it'll go the way of sponsored tweets since Salesforce claims 50% of all service conversations take place in the cloud.

Salesforce CRM for Twitter will start at $995 a month for five agents and five business partners with support for 250 customers

Microsoft, Yahoo Ponder a Display-Advertising Deal

In the deal that refuses to die, Microsoft and Yahoo are reportedly in talks once again about joining forces in search advertising.

This time, it's not a merger or a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo's search assets. Rather, Yahoo might take over Microsoft's display-advertising business, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Yahoo's stock rose 6.5 percent in early trading on the news.

According to the Journal, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz have discussed what a potential partnership might look like. A variety of ideas are being explored, but a full acquisition of Yahoo is reportedly not on the table.

"We have to take all these rumors with a grain of salt. We've heard all of this before. What's different this time is the personnel change at the top of Yahoo. That makes it possible for the two companies to talk and consider how they might work together in a less emotional way," said Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. "In a way, it would be irresponsible for Carol Bartz not to have a conversation with Microsoft."

Targeting King Google

Yahoo is the leader in display advertising, and the Journal reports Microsoft may turn over some of its display-advertising operations to Yahoo as part of a larger collaboration that includes the overall search-advertising market.

It appears that the companies are looking for ways to leverage their combined strengths against rival Google. Microsoft has a small percentage of the search- and display-advertising markets, but has resources to use in a Google battle. Yahoo has seen a slight uptick in its market share and offers Microsoft the ability to reach a broader audience.

"It would make sense for Yahoo and Microsoft to form sort of a partnership because they are the number-two and number-three players in search advertising," Sterling said. "The issue is going to be how much of its search assets Yahoo is willing to give up to Microsoft. What Microsoft really wants is the reach that Yahoo can provide. Marketers are generally happy with the performance of [Microsoft] adCenter. The issue is the lack of volume that Microsoft offers comparatively."

Microsoft's Discovery Win

People don't think Microsoft is going to give up its display business to Yahoo, either, at least not in large part. One reason is because Microsoft Advertising just inked a deal for simultaneous three-screen ad campaigns for the Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch television series. The advertising campaign spans MSN, MSN Mobile, Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft Live Search, and Xbox Live, and marks a major display-advertising win for Microsoft.

Ultimately, display advertising represents less than one-fifth of the $23.6 billion market for Internet advertising. But the Journal speculates that a display deal, in whatever form it might take, could open the door for a larger partnership.

"If there's enough financial incentive for Yahoo, the company might take some sort of a deal. But I don't think Yahoo is going to sell search or totally outsource it to Microsoft," Sterling said. "I am sure the companies are talking and exploring a range of scenarios. It's all sort of meaningless until something gets announced."

Netsuite targets SAP and Oracle

NetSuite Inc has developed programs targeted at large corporations, a person familiar with the strategy said, in an effort to move the software maker beyond the small- to mid-sized business market.

The person, who requested anonymity since the products have not been announced, said NetSuite wants to sell the software to divisions of large corporations that use software from SAP AG and Oracle Corp.

To date, the company has focused on products for small- to medium-sized companies (SMBs). But NetSuite is eager to get a slice of the enterprise market as corporations account for the bulk of sales of business application software, which researcher Gartner estimates at about $89 billion a year.

The new programs -- dubbed "SuiteCloud Connect" -- allow corporate divisions to run their businesses on a high-end version of NetSuite's Web-based software, then easily roll up financial data into their parent companies' SAP and Oracle systems, the person said.

Shares of NetSuite rose 2.54 percent to close at $12.10 on the New York Stock Exchange.

A spokeswoman for NetSuite, which is majority-owned by Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, declined to comment.

SAP and Oracle sell traditional software, which companies buy and run in their own data centers. The bulk of the world's biggest corporations either use SAP or Oracle.

That approach can be more expensive than buying a subscription to NetSuite's hosted, Web-based software, said Rebecca Wettemann, an analyst with Nucleus Research, who had not been briefed by the company on the new product line.

Analysts said they expect the new product will be well received by corporate technology managers looking at NetSuite's software-as-a-service offering as a low-cost alternative to installing an SAP or Oracle system.

"It is clearly making it easier for customers that might need to do something, but are unable to do something given the capital constraints," said Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Nemeroff, who had not been briefed on the new product.

He added that corporations have more money to spend on technology these days than NetSuite's traditional customer base.

"If you are going after deals, it makes sense going after customers that have cash, as opposed to SMBs that are cash strapped these days," Nemeroff said.

Analysts expect 11-year-old NetSuite to post its first profitable year in 2009 as the San Mateo, California-based company's revenue grows 15 percent to $176 million, according to Reuters Estimates. By comparison, they expect SAP to post revenue of 11.8 billion euros ($15.8 billion) and Oracle to report full-year revenue of $23 billion.

The source said NetSuite would soon announce the connection software for SAP, but hold off on unveiling the product that works with Oracle. NetSuite may choose to downplay its efforts to take business away from Oracle due to the Ellison connection.

While Ellison and his family own about 61 percent of NetSuite, his influence over operations is limited. Prior to NetSuite's December 2007 initial public offering, Ellison put the 52 percent stake in NetSuite that he directly owns in a "lockbox" company, effectively stripping him of voting powers, and thereby reducing concerns that his involvement with Oracle could create a conflict of interest.

NetSuite developed SuiteCloud Connect using tools known as application program interfaces, or APIs, that are already built into SAP and Oracle programs, as well as software from most vendors.

Those APIs are open to all programmers and have previously allowed NetSuite customers to develop their own integration software for rolling up financial data into the parent company's computer systems.

Twitter tormented by nettlesome computer program

An obnoxious computer program that barged into Twitter Inc.'s mishmash of Internet chatter served as another reminder of the challenges facing the rapidly growing service.

The nettlesome program, known as a worm, targeted Twitter's network with four different attacks starting early Saturday and ending early Monday, according to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

The worm was set up to promote a Twitter knockoff, StalkDaily.com. It displayed unwanted messages on infected Twitter accounts, urging people to visit the Web site.

The worm was designed to automatically reproduce itself once its links were clicked on, but it didn't filch any personal information from the more than 6 million people with Twitter accounts, Stone wrote in a posting about the incident. Nearly 10,000 Twitter messages, known as "tweets," had to be deleted to contain the potential damage.

"We are still reviewing all the details, cleaning up and we remain alert," Stone reassured Twitter's audience.

Michael "Mikeyy" Mooney, a 17-year-old high school student who created StalkDaily, acknowledged unleashing the worm in a Monday interview with The Associated Press. Besides wanting to promote his Web site, Mooney said he wanted to expose Twitter's weaknesses.

"I really didn't think it was going to get that much attention, but then I started to see all these stories about it and thought, 'Oh my God,' " said Mooney, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. He first confessed his responsibility for the worm to BNONews.com.

Mooney began having second thoughts about what he had done after reading a part of Stone's posting indicating that Twitter might pursue legal action against its tormenter. In a Monday e-mail sent to the AP, Stone said he didn't know whether Twitter will go after Mooney.

"If I get hit with a lawsuit, I am going to have major regrets and a big brick on my back," Mooney said. "I am backing off now. Twitter ignored its vulnerability (to worms) so I am hoping they can just ignore me now."

In the mean time, Mooney is retooling StalkDaily.com to accommodate more users. He has temporarily closed the site after getting swamped by the traffic triggered by his worm.

The trouble with Mooney represents another rite of passage for San Francisco-based Twitter, which has emerged a popular way to communicate on the Web and mobile phones since its debut three years ago.

Twitter's system, which limits messages to 140 characters, is used to broadcast both mundane and tantalizing information by a diverse group of users that include teenagers, celebrities, news agencies, politicians, police departments and companies.

Twitter's broadening reach makes it an inviting target for mischief makers and scam artists. Two of the Internet's biggest online hangouts, Facebook and MySpace, both have had to grapple with similar threats.

The widening usage also occasionally overwhelms the free service, whose 30 employees have been subsisting on about $55 million in venture capital until Stone and fellow co-founder Evan Williams come up with a way to generate revenue.

Although it doesn't break down as frequently as it did in its early days, Twitter periodically remains inaccessible because its computer servers can't handle all the traffic.

Such challenges have spurred speculation that Twitter eventually will be sold to a larger Internet company. Twitter already spurned a $500 million buyout offer from Facebook Inc. There also have been unsubstantiated reports that Internet search leader Google Inc. is eyeing a possible bid for Twitter.

StumbleUpon's founders buy service back from eBay

Two founders of Web content recommendation service StumbleUpon said Monday they bought the company back from online auction house eBay Inc., just two years after eBay purchased the startup for $75 million.

The founders, Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith, bought the company back with the help of investors including Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital, they said. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Camp will be chief executive of the company.

"We realized there were few long-term synergies between the two businesses," Camp said in a release. "It is best for us to part ways and focus on our respective strengths."

StumbleUpon, founded in 2001, has more than 7.4 million users and issues 425 million recommendations per month. The company suggests Web sites based on reader reviews and personal preferences of its members.

When eBay purchased the company two years ago, the startup was considered a pioneer of the so-called "Web 3.0" niche. The term refers to technology which pairs up general Internet search capability with a user's personal data and aggregated community data, in an effort to deliver more relevant results than a standard search engine such as Google Inc.

But San Jose, Calif.-based eBay itself has stumbled, acknowledging last month that it still has a long way to go in improving its online marketplace. Chief Executive John Donahoe, echoing investors, said at the time that the marketplace business has not kept up with the changing competitive landscape and customers' needs.

Ebay shares fell 39 cents, or 2.6 percent, to close at $14.63 on Monday. Shares gained 25 cents to $14.88 in after-hours electronic trade.

Tech Mahindra wins bid for Satyam

Tech Mahindra has won the bid for Satyam Computer Services.

Reports say that the tech firm will pay Rs 1,757 crore to buy out 31 per cent Satyam stake.

Details awaited.

The majority stake sale process in Satyam Computer Services opened on Monday, and software firm Tech Mahindra submitted its bid. Engineering major L&T had also put in its bid to acquire control of the Hyderabad-based company.

"We have submitted the bid for Satyam Computer," Tech Mahindra's vice chairman, managing director and CEO Vineet Nayar told PTI.

BK Modi's Spice Corp has not submitted a bid for Satyam.

"We have not submitted bid for Satyam. Our board wanted e-auction and since there is no e-auction, so we decided not to participate in the process," Spice Corp Chairman B K Modi said.

According to sources, Cognizant Technologies has not put in its bid to acquire stake in the firm.

When contacted the company spokesperson declined to comment saying "it (Cognizant) doesn't comment on speculation."

The participation of private equity major Wilbur Ross could not be ascertained.

Satyam Computer is selling a 51 per cent stake (31 per cent through bidding, 20 per cent through open offer) after its founder B Ramalinga Raju admitted to fraud in January.

Conficker, IBM-Sun Redux, Italy Quakes

Security researchers have found that the Conficker worm has been updated to make it harder to fight, and it is also aiming to invade more PCs (3 million to 12 million not being enough, obviously). While security vendors work to fend off the worm, analysts say that Sun is not likely to fend off other suitors now that it has rejected IBM. A major earthquake in central Italy underscored once again how important mobile communications and the Internet are in helping survivors appeal for help and in getting out information.

1. Conficker, Internet's No. 1 threat, gets update: Conficker has been altered to make it stronger and the worm is also trying to invade more systems. Thus far, it has infected at least 3 million PCs worldwide and perhaps as many as 12 million, creating an enormous botnet and a serious security concern.

2. Collapse of IBM-Sun deal could leave Sun without a suitor, analysts say: Sun might have blown its best shot at being acquired when it rebuffed an offer from IBM that it deemed too low, analysts say.

3. After a year of bad blood, Microsoft, Yahoo talking again: Microsoft and Yahoo are once again exploring a possible business deal, according to a Wall Street Journal blog posting. The two companies are supposedly considering a search and advertising partnership. These talks come nearly a year after Microsoft's efforts to buy Yahoo ended in naught.

4. Quake has Italians reaching to YouTube, mobile services and Italian earthquake spotlights early warning systems: After a magnitude 6.3 earthquake rocked central Italy Monday, survivors turned to mobile devices to make emergency contact, and those in the region as well as outside of it turned to Facebook and YouTube for appeals for help and information. Seismologist Giampaolo Giuliani had posted a video warning on YouTube last week, predicting that an earthquake with a magnitude of at least 4.0 was imminent. He took down the video after authorities criticized him for creating panic. The earthquake was centered at L'Aquila, the region's capital, and left thousands homeless and injured, with the death toll at at least 275 by week's end. The quake sparked discussions about the need for early warning systems.

 

EBay buys Korean rival's stake for $413 million

EBay Inc has agreed to buy a controlling stake in South Korean online retailer Gmarket Inc for $413 million, at a 32.5 percent premium, news service eDaily reported on Monday.

The long-discussed deal would help U.S. online auctioneer eBay emerge as a dominant player in South Korea's customer-to-customer online market by taking control of its key competitor.

EBay would buy a 34.2 percent stake in Gmarket from its current top shareholder Interpark and the Korean firm's chairman, at $24 a share, eDaily reported, citing unidentified sources.

Spokesmen at Gmarket and Interpark could not confirm the report.

The reported price compares with Gmarket's latest closing of $18.12 a share. The final contract would be signed on Wednesday, eDaily said.

Nasdaq-listed Gmarket runs customer-to-customer marketplaces and has more than 10 million registered users in South Korea. It competes with eBay's South Korean unit, Internet Auction Co.

EBay has won conditional approval from South Korea's antitrust watchdog on the Gmarket deal. When combined, Gmarket and Internet Auction would have 87 percent of the country's online customer-to-customer market.

Shares of Interpark had risen 4.8 percent as of 0129 GMT, leading the junior Kosdaq market's 2.6 percent rise.

Conficker worm hits University of Utah computers

University of Utah officials say a computer virus has infected more than 700 campus computers, including those at the school's three hospitals.

University health sciences spokesman Chris Nelson said the outbreak of the Conficker worm, which can slow computers and steal personal information, was first detected Thursday. By Friday, the virus had infiltrated computers at the hospitals, medical school, and colleges of nursing, pharmacy and health.

Nelson says patient data and medical records have not been compromised.

"That's secured in a much deeper way because of the implications," he said.

Nelson said the virus is mainly attacking personal computers and could be siphoning login and password data, credit card numbers and banking information.

Directions for purging the virus from personal computers and equipment like thumb drives, digital cameras and smart phones has been distributed to staff and students.

Information technology staff shut of Internet access for up to six hours at some campus locations Friday so they could isolate the virus. They were expected to work through the weekend to eradicate it from the system.

Mindy Tueller of the university's office of information technology said all faculty and students should take steps to make sure they are protected. The virus does not infect Macs.

"It can do a lot of bad things," Tueller said. "Every university member should be concerned about this if they're using Windows-based devices."

Google Docs Can Doodle

Google Docs has a new feature called Insert Drawing that can be used to create and insert four-color drawings into documents, presentations and spreadsheets.

Google's talking about line drawings, freehand scribbles and text labels and is offering a bunch of shapes that that can be resized, rotated and adjusted. It says users can customize the shapes and fiddle with line widths, fill color, arrowheads and font sizes.

The widgetry initially came from the start-up Tonic Systems that Google acquired in 2007 but Google says the feature actually relies on a relatively new capability in browsers - the ability to render vector graphics - and uses the SVG (scalable vector graphics) standard.

It says "only recently has the performance and ubiquity of such technology enabled us to deliver what we hope is a delightful feature."

Top game designer leaving EA

US videogame publisher Electronic Arts announced that top game designer Will Wright, superstar creator of "The Sims," "SimCity" and "Spore," was leaving the company.

EA said Wright was quitting EA to run "Stupid Fan Club," an entertainment think tank developing properties for videogames, movies, television, the Web and toys.

The Redwood City, California-based EA said in a statement that it will make an equity investment in Stupid Fun Club but declined to specify the amount.

"The entertainment industry is moving rapidly into an era of revolutionary change," said Wright. "Stupid Fun Club will explore new possibilities that are emerging from this sublime chaos and create new forms of entertainment on a variety of platforms.

"In my twelve years at EA, I've had the pleasure to work alongside some of the brightest and most talented game developers in the industry and I look forward to working with them again in the near future," he said.

"Will is a great designer and he's been part of a great legacy of globally recognized game franchises," said EA chief executive John Riccitiello.

The departure of Wright is the latest bad news for EA. The former industry leader has reported a net loss for eight quarters in a row.

EA, which has lost its spot as the world's top videogame maker to Activision Blizzard, recently announced plans to cut 11 percent of its workforce, or 1,100 jobs, and close 12 facilities.