Google Wallet Rings Up Visa, Amex, Discover as Partners

By: Clint Boulton

2011-09-20

Google Wallet makes its summer deadline, launching in New York and San Francisco to let consumers pay by phone from Sprint's Samsung Nexus S 4G handsets.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) met its self-imposed goal to launch its mobile payment service this summer, as Google Wallet rolled out Sept. 19 to allow consumers in New York and San Francisco pay retailers with their mobile phones.

The launch came with a surprise bonus: Visa, American Express and Discover have joined Citi and MasterCard as credit card partners.

Unveiled in Google's New York office in May, Google Wallet includes a mobile application that communicates with smartphones equipped with near field communications (NFC), a short distance wireless technology.

Sprint Nexus S 4G phone owners will receive access to the Wallet through an over-the-air update. Once they receive the app, Nexus S 4G owners can tap their phones against an NFC-enabled cash register to pay for goods at some 20 retailers and restaurants.

Google Wallet will initially support Citi MasterCard and a Google Prepaid Card,  which can be funded with existing plastic credit cards and used at any of the 300,000 stores worldwide that accept MasterCard PayPass. Google is offering a $10 bonus credit to users who set up the Google Prepaid Card in Google Wallet before the end of 2011.

Visa, American Express and Discover have also pledged to enable their cards to support the service in the future, Osama Bedier, Google's vice president of payments, said in a blog post.

Visa also said Google has licensed for payWave contactless payment software, the card provider's answer to MasterCard PayPass, at hundreds of thousands of cash registers all over the world. This deal will enable Visa account holders to make purchases using Wallet.

"Our goal is to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional wallets," Bedier said, adding the Wallet would be available on more phones in the future.

Read early reviews of Wallet from The Verge andGigaOm blogs.

Wallet stands at the vanguard of a number of emerging mobile payments solutions, including those from Square and PayPal, as well as Isis, the mobile payment triumvirate formed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile. Isis won't launch until 2012, but it will do so with support from all of the major credit card providers.

One of the challenges Wallet and all of its erstwhile rivals will have is selling the consumer on the notion of mobile payments via smartphones. There is no proof that consumers will embrace such technology after shoppers have spent the last several decades using plastic cards they simply swipe at checkout.

Moreover, Google developed its latest Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" operating system with NFC technology, the Nexus S 4G is currently the only equipped with a special NFC chip to securely store users' credit card data. And Google only has about 20 retail partners, including Macy's, CVS and American Eagle, where users can use Wallet.

Google believes it has the advantage of incentive with Google Offers, the company's Groupon clone service that entices consumers with discounts of 50 percent off or more for goods and services. Offers is live in three dozen cities around the country, including in San Francisco and New York, where Wallet is now available.

Deal aggregator Yipit claims Offers has suffered declines versus rivals Groupon and LivingSocial of late. However, a Google spokesperson said the company is pleased with Offers so far.

Facebook Teams up with Twitter; Danger for Google+?

By IB Times Staff Reporter | September 18, 2011 8:50 AM EDT

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” This is, currently, the motto of both Facebook and Twitter as both of them have joined forces for a better social networking experience. Could this spell doom for Google+?

Facebook, which currently has over 750 million active users, will now allow users to update Twitter accounts on their Facebook platform. This new feature will enable the Facebook user account to update the twitter account, which is linked, with every update from Facebook.

The new feature will allow users post updates on both Facebook and Twitter at the same time, and will provide more content to Twitter. Facebook, now, will also be updating Twitter feeds. To start, the user needs to go to facebook.com/twitter and link the profile page to the twitter account.

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This may or may not prove to be a danger sign for Google+ which is competing against both Facebook and Twitter, according to a PC Magazine report.

Twitter, currently, as compared to Facebook has only 100 million active users and many of the users rarely access Twitter.

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Google Details, and Defends, Its Use of Electricity

Google disclosed Thursday that it continuously uses enough electricity to power 200,000 homes, but it says that in doing so, it also makes the planet greener.

Every time a person runs a Google search, watches a YouTube video or sends a message through Gmail, the company’s data centers full of computers use electricity. Those data centers around the world continuously draw almost 260 million watts — about a quarter of the output of a nuclear power plant.

Up to now, the company has kept statistics about its energy use secret. Industry analysts speculate it was because the information was embarrassing and would also give competitors a clue to how Google runs its operations.

While the electricity figures may seem large, the company asserts that the world is a greener place because people use less energy as a result of the billions of operations carried out in Google data centers. Google says people should consider things like the amount of gasoline saved when someone conducts a Google search rather than, say, drives to the library. “They look big in the small context,” Urs Hoelzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure, said in an interview.

Google says that people conduct over a billion searches a day and numerous other downloads and queries. But when it calculates that average energy consumption on the level of a typical user the amount is small, about 180 watt-hours a month, or the equivalent of running a 60-watt light bulb for three hours. The overall electricity figure includes all Google operations worldwide, like the energy required to run its campuses and office parks, Mr. Hoelzle added. Data centers, however, account for most of it.

For years, Google maintained a wall of silence worthy of a government security agency on how much electricity the company used — a silence that experts speculated was used to cloak how quickly it was outstripping the competition in the scale and efficiency of its data centers.

The electricity figures are no longer seen as a key to decoding the company’s operations, Mr. Hoelzle said.

Unlike many data-driven companies, Google designs and builds most of its data centers from scratch, down to the servers using energy-saving chips and software.

Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco, applauded Google for releasing the figures but cautioned that despite the advent of increasingly powerful and energy-efficient computing tools, electricity use at data centers was still rising because every major corporation now relied on them. He said the figures did not include the electricity drawn by the personal computers, tablets and iPhones that use information from Google.

“When we hit the Google search button,” Mr. Horowitz said, “it’s not for free.”

Google also estimated that its total carbon emissions for 2010 were just under 1.5 million metric tons, with most of that attributable to carbon fuels that provide electricity for the data centers. In part because of special arrangements the company has made to buy electricity from wind farms, Google says that 25 percent of its energy was supplied by renewable fuels in 2010, and estimates that figure will reach 30 percent in 2011.

Google also released an estimate that an average search uses 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, a figure that may be difficult to understand intuitively. But when multiplied by Google’s estimate of more than a billion searches a day, the figure yields a somewhat surprising result: about 12.5 million watts of Google’s 260-million-watt total can be accounted for by searches, the company’s bread-and-butter service.

The rest is used by Google’s other services, including YouTube, whose power consumption the company also depicted as very small.

The announcement is likely to spur further competition in an industry where every company is already striving to appear “greener” than the next, said Dennis Symanski, a senior data center project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit organization. At professional conferences on the topic, Mr. Symanski said, “they’re all clamoring to get on the podium to claim that they have the most efficient data center.”

Regulators Raid Google Seoul Office

By KYONG-AE CHOI

SEOUL—The Korean Fair Trade Commission raided the Seoul office of Google Inc. in connection with allegations of unfair trade in South Korea's mobile-search-engine market, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said, the latest in a series of probes into Google's operations globally.

Tuesday's raid was part of an investigation by the antitrust regulator into accusations by Korean portal operators NHN Corp. and Daum Communications Corp. that Google is limiting their access to smartphones using the Android operating system.

The person familiar with the matter declined to provide further details of the raid.

Google has faced a series of investigations in South Korea in recent months that have mainly focused on allegations of the collection of private information. Regulators around the world and several U.S. state attorneys general are also investigating possible privacy breaches by Google. They are focusing on whether Google street-mapping teams collected and stored passwords, emails and other personal information collected from unprotected wireless Internet networks around the world.

The latest allegation in South Korea takes aim at the Google search engine on Android phones. Daum and NHN say the U.S. Internet company is restricting local mobile-service-providers and Android smartphone manufacturers from preloading some search portals on smartphones. The Korean search portals say this makes it inconvenient for users to switch to a different search window, and thus provides Google with a competitive advantage.

"It does not allow fair competition among search engines if Android-based smartphone users come across Google Search whenever they touch the search engine icon, whether they want it or not," a spokesman for NHN said.

Google declined to confirm the raid but said it would cooperate with the investigation.

"We will work with the KFTC to address any questions they may have about our business," a Google spokesman said in a statement.

"Android is an open platform, and carrier and OEM [original equipment manufacturer] partners are free to decide which applications and services to include on their Android phones. We do not require carriers or manufacturers to include Google Search or Google applications on Android-powered devices," the spokesman said.

NHN's Naver is South Korea's dominant Internet portal. As of January, Naver accounted for 52% of South Korea's mobile-search-engine market, followed by Google's 16% and Daum's 15%, according to South Korean market research company Matrix Mobile Index.

In May, South Korean police raided Google's Seoul office following allegations that Google's AdMob platform was used to illegally collect private data about users' geographical locations. In August 2010 the National Police Agency launched an investigation into whether Google collected and stored private information illegally while it prepared for the South Korean launch of its street-mapping service.

Both investigations remain open but the Korea Communications Commission told both Apple Inc. and Google's Korean units last month to prevent the saving of the locations of handset users without data encryption.

Separately, Chinese regulators renewed a key license for Google, suggesting that authorities continue to accept the way the company has restructured its local operations to stop censoring its own Chinese-language search results. Visitors to Google's Chinese search site in China are currently routed to the company's Hong Kong-based site.

—Loretta Chao in Beijing contributed to this article.

Apple Is Opening a Store in Hong Kong This Month

Apple is opening its first official store in Hong Kong this month, Bloomberg reports. The store will be in the International Finance Center Mall. Apple has said the store will open sometime this quarter; local news outlet Ming Pao Daily says more specifically that the 20,000-square-foot store will open on Sept. 24.

The shop will only be Apple’s fifth store in China. Out of the current four stores, two are in Beijing and two are in Shanghai. According to Ming Pao, which doesn’t cite any sources, Apple plans to open two more stores in Hong Kong in the future.

Apple has been rapidly expanding in China, although it was initially slow to move into the enormous Chinese market. It wasn’t until October 2010 that Apple opened its online store to Chinese customers. Lately, however, Apple’s push into Asia has paid off with dividends. In the second quarter of 2011, Apple’s sales in greater China (which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan) passed those of Lenovo for the first time.

In China, however, Apple has a lot of intellectual property headaches. Recently, Chinese authorities closed several fake Apple stores in the city of Kunming after a blog post exposed their existence to the media.

Google+ launch: search giant closes 10 products

By: Clint Boulton

2011-09-05

Google surprised many watchers in the high-tech world with its $12.5 billion acquisition bid for key Android phone maker Motorola Mobility on Aug. 15.

The $40-a-share, all-cash deal is a 63 percent premium. Google intends to run Motorola Mobility as a separate business should the deal close in 2011 or early 2012. Assuming the deal meets with the approval of federal regulators, the search engine would get a few things.

First is patent protection. Motorola has more than 17,000 patents, including those for 3G and 4G wireless technologies, as well as non-essential patents Google can use to defend itself in an increasingly litigious mobile market.

Second, like rival Apple, Google would own the hardware assets to build a closed, integrated system should it choose to do so. “They now have a mobile hardware business and they have tight integration into their software platform,” Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg told eWEEK.

Third, Google would gain Motorola’s set-top box business, which, in theory, it could use to fortify its less-than-stellar Google TV Web television service.

It’s easy to be swayed by the sexy allure of Google trying to beat Apple at its own proprietary game—or to imagine a world where the search engine was a major player in television services, using Motorola’s connections to make nice with broadcasters.

But this deal is fundamentally about patent protection. Google is being sued by Oracle for patent infringement over its use of the database software maker’s Java technology in Android.

In addition, Google’s Android OEMs (original equipment manufacturers)—including Motorola, Samsung and HTC—are being sued by Apple for using hardware and software in their Android phones that resemble technology used in the iPhone.

Microsoft and Motorola are also embroiled in a patent-infringement suit related to hardware and software used in their Android phones. This case is being overseen by the International Trade Commission.

So aggressive is the positioning against Google in the mobile sector that venerable foes Apple and Microsoft worked together to keep Nortel Networks’ 6,000-plus wireless, technology and other patents away from Google.

This led to Google publicly accusing Microsoft and Apple of setting up patent consortiums to seize control of valuable wireless patents. Twelve days later—boom!—Google dropped the Motorola bombshell. 

“Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies,” said Google CEO Larry Page in a corporate blog post.

Patent experts differ on just how much patent protection Motorola will afford Google and Android OEMs in the current lawsuits, but most agree they will at least serve as deterrents for future litigation.

Where Google’s 1,800 or so patents must appear to the opposition’s litigation teams as though the search engine was bringing knives to a gunfight, Motorola’s patents resemble so much heavy artillery.

Google may be buying patent protection, but it could also upset the delicate balance the company created by cultivating Android as open source. The company has maintained that Motorola will remain a licensee of Android, which will remain available to other OEMs under an open-source license.

Publicly, Samsung, HTC and others expressed support for the agreement, pointing to the obvious patent-protection angle. But most industry watchers aren’t buying the diplomatic responses, wondering whether these vendors fear Google will favor Motorola for new Android software builds.

These handset makers may not have to worry about Google-Motorola favoritism.

The Motorola merger is pending regulatory approval, which is far from assured considering the close antitrust scrutiny Google has come under by the Federal Trade Commission over its search and, allegedly, its Android software business.

No one saw this deal coming. As Gartner analyst Gartenberg said:  “A master magician always has you looking at their left hand while they try to get you to ignore what’s going on with their right.”

Google+ Gets Suggested User List

By: Clint Boulton

2011-09-04

Google+ has started offering suggested user lists, and already the complaints are rolling in after the model rankled users on Twitter two years ago.

Cribbing notes from Twitter's playbook, Google+ has begun offering a suggested user list and it's already causing quite a stir in social media circles.

Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product management for Google+, tipped his hand to the effort in a tweet on Twitter Sept. 2, noting: "We're about to pilot a 'suggested user'-like mechanism on Google+. If you've got more than 100k followers on Twitter, DM me - let's talk!"

And here is the link to get started cherry-picking from the list:

Huffington Post Senior Editor Craig Kanalley found this list of famous folks. It includes Dallas Mavericks owner and Web pundit Mark Cuban, actor/businessman Ashton Kutcher, singer Britney Spears and the indomitable actor/pitchman William Shatner.

When Twitter launched its list two years ago, it made life easier for users who wanted new people to follow but didn't know how to find them. It also jacked up follower rates for popular people such as the celebrities listed above.

The result was that it made Twitter noisier, and left others wanting more followers at a disadvantage. Suggested user lists, after all, don't contribute to a level playing field.

Already the skepticism is rolling in on Google+. Kanalley noted:

"I don't think this is a good idea. It's going to alienate people and lead to an inevitable followers war that can hurt the health of the social network and inflate people's egos. As the famous get more followers, the non-featured fall farther behind, and a giant gap is created between the two. This is what happened on Twitter."

The Blog Report Executive Producer Zennie 62, who is black, complained the list is "overwhelmingly white.":

"The Google Suggested User List reads like the typical San Francisco Bay Area tech firm's view of the World: most of the "interesting and famous people" are white, and if they're black, they're male rappers or athletes. Hello, Snoop Dog, Chamillionaire, 50 Cent, Dwight Howard, and Floyd Mayweather!"

Zennir 62 further wondered whether Google didn't believe black women were noteworthy enough to put on its suggested user list.

Horowitz posted this list of suggestions for leveraging the suggested user list on Google+, noting that users need to be interesting if they want to get followed.

He didn't address Zennie 62's complaints of racist actions by Google, but did addressed Kanalley's concern of favoritism, which is shared by many in the social media sector:

"Today's list isn't yet personalized. At first personalization will be "lite" - users in different regions and languages will get different recommendations. But per above, we intend to allow people to deeply personalize and connect with like-minded people that create great content around almost any topic they care about.

He added that popular people must retain their position on the list by creating compelling content.
The bigger story is how Google+ is becoming more official leaning. In addition to suggested user list, there are verified accounts and serious consequences for users who don't use their real names on the social network.

Google Interested in Motorola Brand, Not Just Patents: Schmidt

By IB Times Staff Reporter | September 3, 2011 5:12 AM EDT

Google’s acquisition of Motorola, in early August, generated reports stating Google’s interest in gaining access to the hardware company’s gamut of 17,000 patents.

Google had framed the $12.5 billion deal as a “genius patent arming” strategy to defend itself from its rivals like Apple and Microsoft, but how is it giving an edge to Motorola.

"We did it for more than just patents," Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, said at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco on Thursday. "We actually believe that the Motorola team has some amazing products coming...We're excited to have the product line, to use the Motorola brand, the product architecture, the engineers. These guys invented the RAZR. We know them well because they're Google Apps users….[We like] having at least one area where we can do integrated hardware and software," Schmidt said.

However, Schmidt also mentioned that Motorola’s expensive patents would help Google and its Android partners to protect defend the rivals.

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Gartner research vice president Carolina Milanesi tweeted, "Samsung HTC LG SEMC might be unhappy about Google/Moto but not much they can do when their smartphones sales are so dependent.”

When Android operating system is used by 40 percent of the U.S. smartphone users, many analysts suggest that Motorola rival HTC will not ditch Android after the company acquired Motorola.

Martin Cooper, who worked with Motorola for 30 years and developed the first hand-held cellphone said, “The combination might make Motorola successful — again.”

According to NDP, which tracks end-point purchases, Motorola’s influence on the Android segment has waned, with its share of the Android market declining from 44 percent in the second quarter of 2010 to 22 percent in the corresponding quarter of 2011.

Google Chairman Schmidt Says He 'Couldn't Stand' Apple's Board

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt said he remained on Apple Inc.'s board until he "couldn't stand" it any longer.

"I was on the board until I couldn't stand the board anymore," Schmidt said in a question-and-answer session with Salesforce.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff.

Schmidt also had praise for former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and said that he's "proud" of his stint as an Apple director.

"It's certainly the best performance of a CEO in 50 years," Schmidt said. "We've all benefited from the tremendous innovation at Apple. And I say this as a very proud former board member at Apple."

Schmidt was a director on Apple's board while he was CEO of Google. He exited the board as rivalry between the two companies accelerated.

Staring Down Microsoft, Google Launches Offline Gmail, Docs

In a direct challenge to Microsoft's Office Suite, Google announced on Wednesday that it would introduce offline versions of its Gmail, Calendar and Google Docs services that had previously been available only online. The ability to work offline is a "a key feature for making the company's cloud-computing vision more practical," wrote CNET's Stephen Shankland. Mashable's Ben Parr has details on what you'll be able to do with the offline apps:

"The HTML5 [Gmail] app looks and feels a lot like the Gmail app for tablets. That's because Gmail Offline is based off the tablet version, which was designed to function with or without Internet access. It focuses on the key features users need to access while offline, including organizing, starring, labeling, archiving and responding to email. It won't give you access to Gmail Labs features, but it will get the job done."

"In addition to the Gmail Offline app, Google is rolling out the ability to access Calendar and Docs offline. The feature, available by clicking the gear icon at the top of the page, lets you view events and RSVP to appointments in Calendar and view documents in Docs. Offline document editing isn't available yet, but Google promises to find a way to make it work. Part of the problem is finding a way to make sure document edits made offline don't override edits made by online collaborators."

Hack may have hit Google users in Iran

AMSTERDAM (AP) — Experts say the Iranian government may have been behind a hacking attack, allowing it to read Google email from dissidents who thought they were using secure connections.

Chicago-based Internet security firm Vasco said Wednesday its Dutch subsidiary, DigiNotar, detected the hack on July 19, compromising its security guarantees for "a number of domains, including Google.com." The company then quietly tried to fix the damage, but was alerted by the Dutch government Monday that it had missed Google, and perhaps others.

Google said in a post on its online security blog that "people affected were primarily located in Iran." It said that after consultation with Microsoft and Mozilla, users of the Chrome, Microsoft Explorer and Firefox browsers will receive warnings if they attempt to visit any website that uses DigiNotar certificates.

DigiNotar is one of the many firms that sells security certificates for the "SSL" cryptographic protocol — in effect, one of the digital notaries that guarantee the privacy of communications between a user's browser and a website.

The company said the hackers were able to get into its infrastructure and issue fake certificates.

Finnish security company F-Secure said such certificates can be used by a government or corrupt Internet service provider to reroute traffic intended for Google without being detected.

"We saw a similar attack in May," the company said in a note on the incident published on its website.

"It's likely the Government of Iran is using these techniques to monitor local dissidents."

DigiNotar did not quickly respond to requests for information about what other bogus certificates were issued or how many users may have been affected, and where.

Vasco said DigiNotar only accounts for a tiny fraction of its business, and "the vast majority" of DigiNotar's offerings — including its security certificates for communication with the Dutch tax authority — were not affected.

Google Says Gmail Attack Focused on Iranian Targets

By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News 

Google said late Sunday that an attack mounted against its Gmail service targeted users primarily located in Iran, although the company has taken steps to block further interception attempts.

Google discovered that attackers had acquired a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate valid for any website in the google.com domain. The SSL certificate is used to vouch for the authenticity of websites and protect against security threats such as "man-in-the-middle" attacks.

Private companies, known as certificate authorities (CAs), make money from issuing digital certificates, although experts have pointed out there are many weaknesses in how certificates are issued that could undermine security.

In this case a Dutch CA, DigiNotar, issued an SSL certificate for the google.com domain on July 10, without Google's knowledge. It has since revoked the certificate.

Using a fake certificate would allow attackers to capture the login details for a person's Gmail account without a warning coming from the browser that something suspicious is happening, allowing them access to the e-mail account.

Google said "the people affected were primarily located in Iran," although the company did not detail further if it believed their accounts were compromised.

To perform the attack, an attacker would need to "poison" a Domain Name System cache. DNS is used to lookup the IP address for where a domain is located, but many organizations run their own DNS servers that caches the information to speed the lookup process up, updating it periodically.

That tampering could allow a random IP address to appear as a "*google.com" site. Combined with the fraudulent certificate that fools the web browser's warning system, a person would not know they've been hacked.

Google uses a different CA, not DigiNotar, to issue certificates for its domains -- and as an additional security measure, it codes information about that issuer into its Chrome browser. This allowed a Chrome user to flag the DigiNotar-issued certificate for google.com as fake, even though it was technically valid. The additional protection won't work for certificates for other companies' domains, where Google can't know in advance who the issuing authority should be.

Google said on Sunday in a blog post that it had now configured its Chrome browser to revoke SSL certificates coming from DigiNotar while the company investigates.

Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox web browser, said in a blog post that it plans to issue soon new versions of Firefox along with its Thunderbird e-mail application and SeaMonkey application suite to revoke "trust in the DigiNotar root."

Microsoft said on Monday that it would remove DigiNotar from its trusted certificate providers within its Internet Explorer browser. Apple officials could not be immediately reached.

Facebook ending Deals product after four-month test

By Alistair Barr

(Reuters) - Facebook is getting out of the daily deals business after four months of testing, a move that may ease some competitive pressure on industry leaders Groupon and LivingSocial.

"After testing Deals for four months, we've decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks," the company said on Friday in a statement emailed to Reuters.

"We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses," Facebook added in the statement. "We've learned a lot from our test and we'll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses."

Facebook, the world's largest social network, launched Facebook Deals in April, bringing competition to daily deals leader Groupon and rival LivingSocial.

Facebook started making offers in five cities and had a small sales team arranging deals with local merchants. But the company also ran offers that were set up by 11 other daily deal companies, including ReachLocal, Gilt City and Zozi.

Facebook's exit means Groupon has one less major competitor as it prepares for a $750 million initial public offering later this year.

"It is surprising that Facebook ended their deals product after just four months," said Vinicius Vacanti, co-founder of Yipit.com, which aggregates daily deals and tracks the industry. "On the other hand, Facebook Deals had been an underwhelming product and experience."

However, Facebook's decision not to pursue the business may mean the company thinks the approach lacks merit.

"The Groupon group buying phenomenon is a commodity. There are no barriers to entry. It's just not going to work because everybody offers it and therefore the margins go down," said Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at research firm Altimeter Group.

The end of Facebook Deals is "certainly good" for Groupon and other daily deal services, Vacanti said.

"I don't believe this means daily deals are not a viable business," he added. "It more suggests that large media and tech companies can't just 'turn on' daily deals and expect them to work. It has to be more thoughtfully integrated into their existing product."

Facebook stressed on Friday that it is committed to developing other products, such as Ads, Pages and Sponsored Stories, which connect local businesses with potential customers.

The company also is sticking with its Check-in Deals offering. This lets Facebook users check in at local businesses and see offers from those merchants.

"Facebook is doing some major re-thinking around local," Vacanti said.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr and Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Carol Bishopric)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/26/us-facebook-deals-idUSTRE77P6Q820110826

Carats in the Milky Way – Discovery of the Diamond Planet

Aug 28, 2011 6:23 AM By Avi Krawitz

RAPAPORT... Don’t go counting your carats just yet, but the single largest diamond discovery has just been made. Where, you ask? About 4,000 light-years away, as part of the Milky Way’s plane of stars, about an eighth of the way towards the Galactic Center from the Earth.

If that sounds like something out of a far-fetched Star Trek episode, think again. Astronomers at the University of Manchester announced they have found a planet made of just that, diamonds.

The team first detected an unusual star called a pulsar - a small star about 20 kilometers in diameter that emits a beam of radio waves - and followed up to discover the gravitational pull of a small companion planet orbiting the pulsar. The pulsar in question, they explain, is a millisecond pulsar that spins at more than 10,000 times per minute.

The astronomers believe that the diamond planet is all that remains of a once massive star, most of whose matter was siphoned off towards the pulsar. Given the close proximity between the pulsar and its companion, the star would have lost its outer layers and over 99.9 percent of its original mass.

“This remnant is likely to be largely carbon and oxygen, because a star made of lighter elements like hydrogen and helium would be too big to fit the measured orbiting times,” said Dr Michael Keith (CSIRO), one of the research team members.

The density means that this material is certain to be crystalline: that is, a large part of the star may be similar to a diamond, the team explained.

Certainly, they believe the occurrence of such a phenomenon is as uncommon as a diamond, if not more.

“The rarity of millisecond pulsars with planet-mass companions means that producing such ‘exotic planets’ is the exception rather than the rule, and requires special circumstances,” said Dr Benjamin Stappers from The University of Manchester.

A gem of a discovery indeed, but one that is unlikely to excite gemologists as much as astronomers.

Google+ Lets Users Ignore, Block Other Users

Google follows new Facebook privacy controls with options to ignore and block users at a time when the social media noise is building on the nascent network.

A few days after Facebook added more granular privacy features for its vast network of nearly 800 million users, Google+ has added two more grains of private sharing: the "ignore" and "block" options.

Ignore means users will see less of what a person is sharing. The new block option limits the ways a person can interact with what a Google+ user is sharing, as Google+ software engineer Olga Wichrowska explained in this video. Both are designed to curb some of the social media clutter on Google+.

When users choose to ignore someone, they won't see any of those users' posts in their Google+ Stream, receive notifications about what they do on +, or even see them on their + Circles page.

Google+ users may ignore users in multiple ways, including by clicking ignore after notifications in the Google+ bar or notifications stream, from incoming messages and from the Circles page. Users will highlight those they want to ignore and click ignore.

Blocking a user is a different animal, the ultimate brush-off.

When users want to block someone, a control that is available from Circles, a user's + profile, anywhere the ignore option appears and from the notifications widget, that user is removed both from Circles and extended Circles.

This also means those who blocked someone won't see any of their new posts in the Stream or see anything the blocker shares with their Circles, and cannot comment on + posts a blocker makes.

To skirt the hurt-feelings issue, Google+ doesn't alert users who have been ignored or blocked. Some will undoubtedly find out anyway and get the idea, but the implementation is so subtle that it's doubtful it will lead to many big issues.

Moreover, users who want to stop ignoring or blocking other users can do so, said Wichrowska. To un-ignore a user, + users can navigate to the list of ignored users under "more actions" on their + Circles page. To unblock someone, simply access their profile and begin following them again.

These two tiny features have the potential to provide big timing savings for users weary of sifting through the clutter of their Google+ streams and notifications.

That's a big deal, particularly when Google+ is competing with Facebook and other social media Websites for user eyeballs and engagement.

The move also comes two days after Facebook spruced up its privacy-control features, making it easier to limit shared items to certain groups and see at a glance what people can see.

Moreover, Facebook profile elements from music and books to addresses and phone numbers can be individually checked on or off to display to everyone, or be limited to friends or to a customized list.

Meanwhile, privacy watchdogs are monitoring the Facebook-Google privacy one-upmanship with interest. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Information Privacy Center have taken both companies to task for perceived privacy intrusions.

Today is Chinese Valentine's Day

Today is Chinese Valentine's Day in the chinese lunar calendar. July 7 of Every year's lunar calendar commemorate the legend of the Cowhand and Weaver Maid.

Down from generation to generation,Weaver is one of Jade Emperor in Heaven's the seven daughters. She came down from Heaven to fall in love with Cowhand and gave birth to the child in once ,Jade Emperor in Heaven know the things to rage,He caught Weaver to went back Heaven and create "The Milky Way".

Through struggle,The Jade Emperor in Heaven's wife were they moved,She agree Cowhand's family to stay on Heaven and allowed to meet once through the bridge of magpies.

Andriod faces malicious software to threatens,Security market have large opportunity

"Fortune" magazine writing about said,With the Android systerm turn into popularity,Andriod apply security put on the agenda.

Germany say facial recognition technology of facebook break the law

AFDPIS said on wednesday,Facial recognition technology of facebook violate europe's and germany's data protection act.Facebook must deleted related data.

Chinese Writer rights union of china sent letters from lawyers:Baidu already delete links,Apple has not action

Author:HongJuanYuan

Executor of chinese Writer rights union is ChengZhiBei introduced yestoday,chinese Writer rights union sent letters form lawyers to Baidu Company and Apple Company.To data,The two companies contact union by phone,Baidu says they already delete links of tort,but Apple can't take any action about infiringing works.

ChengZhiBei says,July 20,Writer rights union sent letters from lawyers to apple,accusing it infringes transmission ritht of 23 of works for six writer in network,require they to stop tort and compensate for damage,close Apple Store before fix up question of tort."If unable to meet the requirements,we will be civil prosecution and assigning blame of Apple compeny illegal business with administration."

Sony group reported in the first of fiscal 2011 earings

Tokyo,July 28,2011-Sony grop reported in the first of fiscal 2011 earings.

  Consolidated operating income of 27.5 billion yen (340 million U.S. dollars) was recorded in the current
      quarter, despite year-on-year declines in sales and operating income due mainly to the negative impact
      of the Great East Japan Earthquake as well as the deterioration of the electronics business environment.
  Business operations that had been negatively affected by the Earthquake are recovering faster than
      anticipated in the May forecast.
  Despite lower projected annual LCD television unit sales compared to the May forecast and further
      unfavorable foreign exchange rates anticipated for the remainder of the fiscal year contributing to a
      lower consolidated sales forecast, the consolidated operating income forecast for the current fiscal year
      remains unchanged because the performance of most businesses is anticipated to exceed the May
      forecast.

Google will lauches service for webpage speed,browse pick up speed to 25%

According to media reports,Speed already chase after by google.All most product think about it.So this week lauches Page Speed Service,It is escrow of business page.

Google introduced security feature:2-step verification

This was introduced on earlier this year.Stay safe around the world in 40 languages.


By entering a one-time verification code from your phone after you type your password, you can make it much tougher for an unauthorized person to gain access to your account. People have told us how much they like the feature, which is why we're thrilled to offer 2-step verification in 40 languages and in more than 150 countries.

Google launches hotel search engine:Hotel Finder

The practical search engine for lives is being lauches by google today.It is Hotel Finder,You can use to find idear hotel.

Hotel Finder can search by user's selection stand.for example,Hotel's address,Average price per night,Stars for hotel,User's assessment.

When you search hotels,you draw a circle with mouse from surrouding.

Google+ is more stringent to get invitations

For those of you who can't being able to get invitations in google+ to be quite annoying.google+ chat even changs require exlipcit invitations.

 Let us see "google chat help":

"We wanted to offer more control over who you can chat with in Google Plus. So we've made a change that requires you to explicitly invite people for them to appear in your chat list. For Gmail, orkut, and iGoogle users, we'll continue to include the people you can already chat with in those properties."


Google+ is very promising to surpass twitter ro facebook.So We hoped shoren test times and open to the public.

Since LulzSec hacker gruop disbans,A 16 years old boy arrested yesturday

The boy is suspected of involvemt in cyber attacks.He arrested in London.

Delphi2CS.4.0.patch-SND.rar

Delphi2CS.4.0.patch-SND.rar

Delphi2CS 4.0

Delphi2CS is an assistant tool that converts Delphi 5,6,7 and Delphi 2010 to C#. Delphi2CS creates a new project, converts each file from the original project into the new project(.csproj), and generates a report detailing what was done. After your project is converted, Delphi2CS inserts comments into your C# code alerting you to statement that will need to be changed.

Releaser ............. CodeRipper Rls type .................. patch

Program name .......................................... Delphi2CS 4.0

URL ............................ http://www.netcoole.com/download.htm

Date ................. 2011 03 26 OS ....................... WinAll

download:

http://www.filesonic.com/file/1478877961/Delphi2CS.4.0.patch-SND.rar

Will you join google+ today?

    How to join google+? How to get invited to google+?These is hot question.Many people talking out the question on large's website.The facebook baned even ID about open talk it.Social Network Site is stiff now.microsift "accidentally" leaked its own Social Network Site.
   Will you join google+ today?

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