Category: News

Renée Beaumont is joining Providence Equity Partners as an MD and Global Head of Business Development effective May 15. Beaumont joins Providence from Goldman, Sachs & Co. where she was most recently as an MD in the firm’s Merchant Banking Division.

PRESS RELEASE

Providence, RI – May 13, 2013 – Providence Equity Partners, a leading private equity firm with $28 billion in commitments, today announced that Renée Beaumont will join the firm as a Managing Director and Global Head of Business Development, effective May 15. She will oversee all business development, marketing and investor relations activities globally across the firm’s private equity and credit funds.

Ms. Beaumont joins Providence from Goldman, Sachs & Co., where since 2004 she has served in a variety of senior positions, including most recently as a Managing Director in the firm’s Merchant Banking Division. She led the bank’s institutional business development efforts in a wide variety of significant markets and managed its co-investment program across multiple funds.

“We regularly add top talent in every area of our business, and we are pleased to welcome such a seasoned leader to our business development team at Providence,” said Jonathan Nelson, Chief Executive Officer of Providence. “Renée’s track record of successful capital raising, strong network of relationships with institutional investors around the world, and her deep understanding of the private capital markets makes her an ideal candidate to lead our business development team. We look forward to her contributions as we continue to grow, expand our private equity and credit product offerings, and meet the rapidly evolving needs of our international base of investors over the long-term.”

Providence manages an array of private equity and credit investment funds, including its global private equity funds focused on growth capital and buyout opportunities in the media, communications, education and information sectors. The firm’s credit investment capabilities include high yield bonds, long-short credit, senior secured debt, private debt/direct lending and structured credit vehicles.

Prior to serving as a Managing Director in the Merchant Banking Division, Ms. Beaumont was Head of the Americas Utility/Power & Communications Investing for the Infrastructure Fund at Goldman Sachs, where she was responsible for sourcing, negotiating and financing infrastructure investments. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Ms. Beaumont was a Senior Corporate Associate at Shearman & Sterling LLP, the international law firm, where she represented and provided legal and business counsel to a wide range of clients, including Fortune 500, multinational and national companies, investment banks and private businesses throughout a range of industries. In addition, she led and negotiated financings, spin-offs, acquisitions, securities and private equity transactions.

Ms. Beaumont earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) and a Bachelor of Law from the University of New Brunswick (New Brunswick, Canada).

About Providence Equity Partners
Providence Equity Partners is the leading global private equity firm specializing in equity investments in media, communications, education, and information companies around the world. Providence’s credit investment arm also manages several credit funds and tailored separate accounts. In total, the firm’s principals manage funds with $28 billion in commitments and have invested in more than 130 companies globally since the firm’s inception in 1989. Visit www.provequity.com for more information.

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Remember that $99-down-for-an-iPhone-5 plan T-Mobile advertised as part of its game-changing new approach to the U.S. mobile market? Well, that’s over. As of Monday, if you walk into a T-Mobile store to buy a new iPhone 5, you’ll be paying $149 up front instead.

TMoNews first reported the price increase, and notes that nowhere did T-Mobile make it clear at the time that the $99 down payment was only a temporary or introductory pricing.

The iPhone 5 pricing was part of what made T-Mobile’s big new “no-contract” phones push so attractive. From our coverage in March:

T-Mobile will finance the iPhone 5 for a down payment of $99.99 and payments of $20 each month for 24 months. That works out to $580, which is actually cheaper than the unsubsidized, unlocked device price of $650 Apple charges today.

Part of that plan included “eliminating subsidies” that end up chaining U.S. wireless customers to carriers via expensive two-year plans. We don’t know how much T-Mobile has to pay Apple for each device. It’s possible the pricing change could have been planned all along, or it could be that T-Mobile realized after a month that it can’t afford to keep subsidizing smartphones that much.

T-Mobile clearly isn’t ready to clarify what its motivation was. When asked if this pricing hike was always planned, I received this statement from the carrier: “As America’s Un-carrier, T-Mobile is committed to introducing the hottest new smartphones at unbeatable promotional prices – but we all know promotions are temporary.”

As a result, the cheapest T-Mobile iPhone 5 won’t have a total cost of $579 anymore, but will jump up to $629, including the $20 monthly payments for 24 months. There’s nothing illegal about that. But if T-Mobile did intend that this was temporary pricing when it first advertised these prices, the fine print must have been really small. And that’s disappointing.

The carrier’s posture since it first announced changes to its business model has been concentrated on being different and to standing out from its fellow U.S. carriers. But this pricing change comes off like nothing more than an advertising bait and switch. And there’s nothing different about a U.S. wireless carrier that gives its customers reasons to complain.

This post was updated with a comment from T-Mobile at 2:05 p.m. PT.

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Dennis Rodman has been meeting a lot of interesting people lately. In addition to being fired in his latest Celebrity Apprentice appearance, the former NBA star has been cozying up to the current leader of North Korea.

Over the weekend, Rodman made an appearance that was, in some ways, stranger than his Kim Jong-un friendship. He stopped by a mall to introduce himself to the youngest members of the Kardashian reality TV show empire.

According to a report from E! News, Kendall and Kylie Jenner were at the Brea Mall PacSun this weekend, promoting their new line of clothing for the store. While signing autographs and posing for pictures with fans, the sisters were surprised to get a visit from “The Worm.” Kendall had a picture taken of the encounter, which she later posted to her Instagram account, saying, “lol surprise! Dennis Rodman everybody:”

Kendall and Kylie first found fame as the younger half-sisters of the Kardashian sisters (Kim, Kourtney, and Khloé). Kendall has recently begun a modeling career and last month appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar Arabia.

(Image courtesy Kendall Jenner/Instagram)

Beyonce and Jay-Z may have had the most popular and sought-after kid on the planet, but that doesn’t mean she’s quite ready to have another quite so soon.

With Blue Ivy turning one earlier this year came the inevitable question: will the uber-couple be having more kids? Beyonce says she’d love to, but a “source” close to the family says that despite rumors to the contrary, she’s not preggo right now.

“I know another kid is in the future, but it wouldn’t make sense for her right now while on tour,” the source said.

Indeed, Beyonce is right smack in the middle of a world tour, sponsored by Pepsi. She has said in the past that she definitely wants to add to her brood, however.

“I would like more children,” Beyonce said. “I think my daughter needs company. I definitely love being a big sister [to Solange, 26].”

The latest round of pregnancy rumors got touched off by a skin-tight catsuit the singer wore onstage recently which appears to show a tiny tummy. But as everyone should know by now, never ask a woman if she’s pregnant. Let her tell you.

Would you pay $325,000 for a burger? Probably not. It’s hard to get anybody to pay more than a dollar for a burger these days, but one researcher hopes that its $325,000 burger will one day be cheap enough for the mass market.

The New York Times has a fascinating report on Dr. Post, a researcher that is attempting to make the first in vitro hamburger. In other words, he is growing edible beef in a petri dish. It’s real beef too as it’s grown from actual beef cells collected from cows.

Dr. Post and his research team at Maastricht University in the Netherlands are almost ready to present the first lab grown burger to the world. It’s comprised of 20,000 strips of lab grown muscle tissue combined together to form a single burger. The cost of those 20,000 strips is the aforementioned $325,000 provided by an anonymous donor with the final result being prepared for an event in London.

So, why exactly are we creating “fake” meat? There’s beef made from cow that millions around the world enjoy every day, and then there’s soy-based burgers for vegetarians and vegans. What need could in vitro meat possibly fulfill? In short, it’s more of an environmental move as cows meant for slaughter consume untold amounts of grain and water every year. By reducing the amount of cows needed for meat production, we could increase the amount of water and grain that can go to impoverished countries instead.

It also has the potential to be a healthier alternative to beef cut from a cow. Although, the health benefits may be outright ignored as people come to grips with the idea of eating food that’s grown in a lab. Some would argue that it’s not much different than eating beef from cows that have been injected with artificial growth hormones, but it will take time for consumers to get used to the idea of eating in vitro meat.

That being said, the meat being prepared by Dr. Post and his team won’t be in supermarkets for quite some time. Somebody this year will get to eat the first lab grown hamburger, but they will have to pay $325,000 for the opportunity. Until that price can be reduced to less than $10 for a pack of eight patties, you’re not going to see meat labeled as lab grown.

How many times have we all been cooking something in the kitchen, using either your tablet or phone for the directions? Do you remember that on-edge feeling that something could spill on it? Well we can rest easier now, because Archos has got the answer for us in the way of their new tablet, the Archos ChefPad.

It doesn’t look like they are playing around either, as this thing comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and has an A9 dual-core processor clocked at 1.6 GHz, as well as a Quad-core GPU Mali 400 MP4 to go with it. It also has 1 GB RAM, and 8 GB internal memory, but that can be expanded up to 64 GB via a micro SD slot.

Even though they are selling this thing as a kitchen tablet, the hardware can still get down on some of the more processor heavy games as well. The tablet also comes pre-loaded with Chef Apps, OfficeSuite Viewer 6, and the Archos Media Center, and more. A protective case and stand also come with the tablet out-of-the-box.

No word on price for the device yet but that could change. We will keep an eye on this one and let you know as soon as we hear something worth sharing.

Source: Archos

Come comment on this article: Archos ChefPad appeals to the cook in us all

Wednesday of this week kicks off Google’s annual I/O developer event in San Francisco, where we’ll have a team providing plenty of coverage. While the conference is aimed at developers, it has often been the stage for Google to show off the latest Android releases, new tablets, Chromebooks and even the occasional clunker product: Anyone remember last year’s Nexus Q orb?

According to Google’s Sundar Pinchar — who is now in charge of Apps, Chrome and Android — this year’s I/O won’t focus on devices, but instead, feature tools for developers. Pinchar’s comments come from a Monday morning Wired interview, where he also notes it’s not a problem, or out of the ordinary, to have both the Android and Chrome platforms co-existing. To that end, Pinchar says “Very few people will ask you, ‘Hey, how come MacBooks are on Mac OS-X and iPhone and iPad are on iOS? Why is this?’ ” .

I agree with Pinchar’s latter statement although I had previously thought we’d see more of a Chrome – Android merger this year. Now I see more shared components but not two platforms becoming one. And I think Pinchar is setting up a bit of a smokescreen when it comes to devices. Here’s what I expect we’ll see for both Chrome and Android later this week:

• An updated Nexus 7 tablet. Google introduced the Nexus 7 at last year’s I/O event to help spotlight its then-new Android 4.1 software. The current slate is still a nice device but it makes sense to see a refresh. Look for a faster chip — likely a switch from Nvidia’s Tegra 3 to a current Qualcomm Snapdragon — more memory, possible LTE integration in a higher priced model and the chance of a full HD display. That could come in the form of a Nexus 7 HD tablet that would likely start at $249 or more.
• A new minor Android version. I could easily see the introduction of new Android software, but I’m not expecting Android 5.0. Instead, Google is more likely to provide a minor update with new features and developer APIs. Part of the issue is the pace of change: Google has iterated Android faster than handset makers and carriers want it to. They simply can’t (or choose not to) keep up. Android 4.0 arrived in October 2011, for example, and it took until last month before more than half of Android devices were running Android 4.0 or better.
• Google Play Games for Android. Apple’s iOS has Game Center and it’s a very safe bet Android will get Google Play Games. Enthusiast site Android Police dissected early code and found support for synchronized game progress, multiplayer matchups — through Google+ of course — achievements and more.
• A new Nexus phone? Probably not. Google’s latest smartphone, the Nexus 4, isn’t that old of a device, having launched in October of last year. It does lack official LTE support, so Google could have a new version of the same phone that adds faster mobile broadband service. But a completely new Nexus isn’t likely. It’s possible that a new Motorola-branded phone arrives — the X Fon — at I/O, but I think odds are against it. Instead that device will likely have a carrier launch event since Google’s hardware partners might be slighted by a non-Nexus phone launch on the I/O stage.
• A new Nexus tablet is a better bet. The Samsung-built Nexus 10 launched with the Nexus 4 phone in October, but there appears to be room for a larger model. A leaked Samsung road-map points to a Nexus 11 with upgraded internals, including Samsung’s latest chip that has two quad-core processors. I could see this device showcasing the latest version of Android; if not at Google I/O, then later this year. Or….
• What about a Chrome tablet? It’s not likely an 11-inch tablet would run Chrome, but that’s my moonshot prediction. Samsung already makes a Chromebook with its own ARM chip inside so it’s not a total stretch to see it make a Chrome tablet. Even if that’s not the case, I still expect to see some new Chromebook form-factors debut at Google I/O: If not a pure tablet, then a tablet with keyboard dock — something like Microsoft’s Windows Surface, perhaps? — or a Chromebook with a swiveling screen for tablet-like use. Why else would Google have added an on-screen keyboard and support for screen rotation in its Chrome OS?
• A heavy dose of real apps for Chrome. Expect demonstrations of rich applications in Chrome and on Chrome OS, including those that run offline. Google has been building momentum for what it calls Packaged Apps and for Native Client apps of late. I used a Native Client game last week, written in C, on my Chromebook Pixel with an Xbox 360 controller and while offline. Now I see where Google is going with its Chrome OS vision and it’s not “just a browser”. Between the new support for app notifications, more offline app support and these two types of applications, Chrome OS will be shown off as a true desktop replacement later this week.
• A mid-priced Chromebook could appear. It would be too early to sell, but Google could announced new Chromebooks coming soon that run on either Intel’s next-generation Haswell chip or its new Atom processor called Silvermont. Neither of these chips are in devices yet. However, both will be used in laptops and tablets before year-end and I could see Google making a related announcement. Chromebooks with either of these would offer more performance and better battery life. They would also fit the bill for Chromebook priced between the current low-end offerings ($199 to $549) and the Chromebook Pixel ($1299 to $1449).

The main keynote starts at 9am PT on Wednesday and we’ll be live-blogging it. Come back to check and see how many of these predictions were right — and wrong, for that matter. In the meantime, what else are you expecting for Chrome and Android at this year’s big Google event?

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A couple weeks ago, JC Penney put out an ad essentially begging customers to come back after alienating a third of them, and dropping holiday sales by 32%.

The ad, which has since been set to private on YouTube, said, “It’s no secret, recently JCPenney changed. Some changes you liked and some you didn’t, but what matters with mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing, to listen to you. To hear what you need, to make your life more beautiful. Come back to JCPenney, we heard you. Now, we’d love to see you.”

Now, they’re out with a new ad. Instead of “I’m Sorry,” the message this time is, “Thank you.” In fact, the title of the video is simply, “Thank You”.

“At JC Penney, we never stop being amazed by you,” the ad says. “How you work so hard without looking like you do, how you make every dollar stretch so far, and keep your family so close, so we brought back the things you liked about JC Penney, gave you new things to explore, and now, we’re happy to say, you’ve come back to us. We’re speechless, except for two little words.”

They’re still promoting the hashtag #jcpListens. You can see how they’ve been working social media here.

Private equity firm CVC Capital Partners has been given an extra 24 hours to commit to a firm bid for online gambling company Betfair, in what would be the biggest deal taking a British listed company private in more than a year, Reuters is reporting.

May 13 (Reuters) – Private equity firm CVC Capital Partners has been given an extra 24 hours to commit to a firm bid for online gambling company Betfair, in what would be the biggest deal taking a British listed company private in more than a year.

The extension, which required consent from Betfair’s board as well as Britain’s Takeover Panel, signals the two sides are working together on a mutually acceptable offer, instead of CVC pursuing a hostile bid.

“They are not ready to part but they have not reached an agreement yet,” a person familiar with the matter said.

Betfair stock, which was trading at 700 pence before CVC said on April 15 it was considering a bid, closed on Monday at 895 pence. CVC had previously been given 28 days to either make an offer, walk away or extend the deadline.

They now have until 1600 GMT on Tuesday, Betfair said in a statement, an unusually short extension.

“By this time either the co-offerors will announce that they do not intend to make an offer for Betfair or the company will seek a further extension of the deadline,” Betfair said in a statement.

On April 22, Betfair rejected a preliminary offer of 880 pence per share from CVC, saying the price was too low and had too many strings attached.

Betfair’s technology allows gamblers to bet online against one another at their own prices. It is also offering more conventional sports betting with odds set centrally to compete with rivals in an expanding yet highly competitive sector.

Deals in which a publicly listed company is taken over by a private entity, typically a private equity fund, helped drive a boom in private equity dealmaking in 2006-2007.

They accounted for around half of private equity-backed mergers and acquisitions in those years, according to Thomson Reuters data, but that fell to just 12 percent of the total last year.

The decline was partly a result of the financial crisis, which made it harder to find financing for such deals. Falling valuations also made it less appealing for company owners to sell.

Since Betfair listed in 2010, the stock has tumbled from its debut price of 13 pounds. Analysts said the company had failed to clearly identify whether it was a technology or gambling business.

Under Chief Executive Breon Corcoran, who joined from Irish bookmaker Paddy Power last year, Betfair has withdrawn from markets such as Greece and Germany, where regulations are not clear cut or tax rates are punitive, and has cut 500 jobs to help save 30 million pounds ($46.6 million) in costs.

Faced with the takeover approach, Betfair raised its profit forecast and cost savings targets earlier this month.

CVC, which is the largest shareholder in Formula One motor racing, believes it could turn Betfair around more quickly by taking it private.
CVC often leaves management in place at companies it has acquired. It has joined forces with Richard Koch and Antony Ball, who own 6.5 percent of Betfair.

The post CVC Given 24 Hours to Commit to Bid for Betfair appeared first on peHUB.

Twitter has just announced that data visualization company Lucky Sort has just joined the flocked. Terms of the deal have not be released.

Lucky sort is a two-year-old data analytics service that “makes huge document sets easier to analyze, summarize and visualize.” According to a post on their website, Lucky Sort says that several team members will be moving to San Francisco to join Twitter’s revenue engineering department. It appears that Lucky Sort will be shutting down.

“We’ll be helping current customers transition off our system in the coming months such that we can focus fully on our future at Twitter,” says Lucky Sort CEO Noah Pepper

Welcome aboard, @luckysort! luckysort.com

— Twitter (@twitter) May 13, 2013

“Two years ago I started Lucky Sort with several friends. Our goal was to make huge document sets easier to analyze, summarize and visualize by building elegant and user friendly tools for text analysis…in building Lucky Sort we had an enormous amount of support from friends, employees, advisors and investors. It has been uplifting to have so many people help us and it highlighted just how much business is a social endeavour,” says Pepper.

We know how painful the wait for the Galaxy S 4′s launch is for you Verizon customers out there, but it’s looking like you customers out there won’t need to wait too much longer to grab one of those puppies after all. The nation’s largest wireless carrier has confirmed by tweet that it is moving the official launch up one week to May 23rd— next Thursday. This means that those of you will finally have a chance to pay $199.99 for the 16GB version and sell your soul to Verizon for the next two years… or you could just suck it up and pay $649.99 and grab the flagship device outright. Either way, we’re sure that prospective customers must be more than happy at this exciting news.

source: @Verizon

Come comment on this article: Verizon Galaxy S 4 to launch in stores on May 23rd

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a former abortion doctor in Philadelphia, was found guilty of three out of four counts of first-degree murder today, and could face the death penalty. Gosnell was reportedly known for performing late-term abortions, and allegedly (alleged by prosecutors) delivered babies alive, then killed them by cutting their spinal cords with scissors.

Vince Lattanzio of NBC Philadelphia reports:

According to court observers, as the verdict was read by the jury forman, Gosnell didn’t react at first. Once the full charges had been announced, he shook his head from side-to-side, trying to make eye contact with members of the jury.

The jury of seven women and five men weighed a total of 263 crimes against Gosnell with the most serious being four counts of first-degree murder.

Gosnell was acquitted of the fourth first-degree murder charge, which involved an aborted fetus, and of a third-degree murder charge, but was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of former patient Karnamaya Mongar, who was 41. Mongar died after being given pain killers and anesthesia during an abortion procedure in 2009.

The entire jury reportedly consisted of people who either said they were pro-choice or had no opinion at all on a woman’s right to choose.

Sentencing is scheduled to place next Tuesday.

Data center developers provide the bricks, mortar, power and ping to support their tenants. But they’re increasingly finding the need to get into the software side of the data center business, offering tools to make management easier. The latest to do so is turnkey wholesale giant Digital Realty Trust, which today launched EnVision, a comprehensive data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution.

Digital Realty says EnVision is a DCIM solution built by a data center operator for data center operators. The software will provide increased visibility into data center operations through a user-friendly interface, offering access to historical data as well as predictive capabilities. The EnVision rollout will begin this month and take approximately 18 months to complete across Digital Realty’s global data center portfolio, which consists of 122 properties in 32 markets.

“Up until now, data has been collected, but it has not necessarily been easily accessed or arranged in an intuitive manner that is helpful to a data center operator,” said David Schirmacher, senior vice president of portfolio operations at Digital Realty. “The goal in rolling out EnVision across our global portfolio is to give our customers a common database that is structured around the specific needs of data center operators and can therefore manage the millions of data points that are found in today’s large-scale facilities.”

Diversifying its Capabilities

The announcement further blurs some of the traditional lines in the data center business, and reflects Digital Realty’s move to diversify its business to offer a broader set of capabilities. In recent years Digital Realty has expanded into colocation and dark fiber services. It’s not the first infrastructure provider to develop its own management software (one early example is IO, which entered the DCIM market in 2011), but as the world’s largest data center landlord, Digital Realty has the resources to be a player very quickly. To speed the process, last year Digital Realty hired Schirmacher, who previously worked at DCIM specialist Fieldview and helped automate infrastructure at Goldman Sachs.

The new product will let current and future Digital Realty customers analyze data located within specific racks, buildings, entire states and even up to the entire global portfolio, providing insight whether on a granular or high-level basis.

“EnVision links data center IT and infrastructure metrics in order to give our customers real-time, historical and predictive views into their operations,” said Michael Foust, chief executive officer at Digital Realty. “This will benefit our customers in a variety of ways. For example, it will provide improved efficiency analysis and help operations teams to support future planning. We are excited to bring EnVision to market and feel that it represents the next critical stage in the ongoing evolution of DCIM solutions.”

EnVision provides an organized view, not only saving time and adding efficiency, but it also addressing a key data management challenge by pulling together siloed, or stranded, data and presenting it in context, providing a complete real-time view into the environment rather than just a view into a portion of the environment over a “slice” of time.

Schirmacher will discuss Digital Realty’s DCIM initiative tomorrow in one of the afternoon keynote sessions at The Uptime Symposium in Santa Clara, Calif.

We’re here in sunny Orlando Florida for the BlackBerry Live conference. This is our biggest event of the year and promises to bring a lot of news, announcements, sessions and of course special guests. So, you’re probably wondering – “How can I stay on top of all the information?” Great news! There are a number of ways to stay connected and even follow the action live from wherever you’re tuning in.

We will be live streaming the General Session keynote on BlackBerryLive.com
Tuesday May, 14th 9:00am-11:00am

And the Keep Moving Experience produced by Alicia Keys
Tuesday May 14th, 7:30pm-8:30pm
The Keep Moving Experience produced by Alicia Keys promises an unprecedented night of musical and artistic collaboration with Miguel, Alabama Shakes, Maria Gadú, and Cedric Gervais!

Keep it locked to the Inside BlackBerry blogs because we’ll be bringing you all the action as it happens as well.

• Inside BlackBerry
• Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog
• Inside BlackBerry Developer Blog

Our social media properties are also a great set of resources for real-time information and updates. @BlackBerry will be live-tweeting providing news and updates as they happen. @BlackBerry4Biz will be a great resource for business related announcements and updates, and @BlackBerryDev will provide up-to-date information for developers.

We will also be posting updates throughout the day on our LinkedIn Company Page, and the BlackBerry for Business LinkedIn Group will be a great forum to join in on conversation.
You can also check out our blogs regularly for more in depth updates and information about the newest BlackBerry 10 features:

How to join the conversation

We also want to hear from you. Leave us your reaction BlackBerry Live in the comments below. If you’re tweeting, be sure to include the #BBLive and #BlackBerry10 hashtags. We’ll be back tomorrow with updates.

Time is running out if you want to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 30-minute coffee date with Apple CEO Tim Cook. Bidding on the charity auction that has drawn significant attention due to its astronomical price tag close tomorrow, Tuesday May 14th.

The current bid is $605,000, and you’ll have to fork up at least $610,000 to top it.

The date first appeared on online charity auction site Charitybuzz back in April, and quickly jumped from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands. Charitybuzz put an estimated price of $50,000 on the sit-down, which will take place at Apple HQ in Cupertino. It surpassed that suggested value in less than 24 hours.

In less than a week, the bids topped $600,000. Charitybuzz was forced to remove a top bid, however, after it was discovered that it was made using a stolen credit card.

In light of that, Charitybuzz has added an extra layer of authentication to placing a bid. Any new bids must now go through additional bank qualification, and you have to contact their customer service to make it happen.

So if you’re ready to top the current $605,000 bid, which has been the top bid for nearly two weeks now, you have about 24 hours to do so. The bidding closes at 4:08 pm ET on Tuesday.

Sales of Facebook’s HTC First phone have been disapointing so far, and not only has AT&T discounted the phone as we previously reported, the carrier has decided to discontinue the phone altogether, BGR reported Monday.

Facebook debuted both its Home on Android launcher and the HTC First about a month ago in early April, but by last week my colleauge Kevin Tofel reported that AT&T had dropped the price of the phone to 99 cents with a contract. Om’s full review of the HTC First can be found here.

While phone promotions are common, it didn’t seem like a vote of confidence for the HTC First sales, which have only totalled 15,000 so far, according to the report. Kevin wrote why it could be a challenge to get consumers to pick them up:

“It’s difficult enough for a high-end flagship phone to stand out from its peers, let alone a mid-range handset. Frankly, I can’t see how Facebook Home helps the HTC First differentiate itself enough; particularly when the software is already available for download on better phones and is expected to arrive on other handsets in the future. Sorry Facebook, I don’t think the market likes your attempt at a smartphone.”

Facebook declined to comment on the report and referred me to AT&T, which has not yet responded to requests for comment. BGR has uncorked some whoppers in the past, such as a 2012 report that Sprint would be getting the iPhone 5 exclusively, but this report makes sense given the lackluster interest in Facebook Home and this phone in particular.

Facebook’s Home on Android has also suffered from poor reviews, garnering only two stars in the Google Play store, although Facebook said last week that it was working on some improvements that would make the app more appealing for Android users.

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