Category: News

If you were the folks at Twitter and you are talking about offering commercial level services that are going to eventually generate the mythical revenue that everyone is yapping about wouldn’t hate to hear about enterprise unrest among the ranks? The issue of Twitter account squatting is nothing new. There has also been little mention of it in the news as of late. I actually made the mistake to think that maybe Twitter took control and really started to crack down on the practice.

Apparently not. AdAge is reporting that Twitter is in the process of ticking off more than a few of the hands that might feed them in the future. Of course, Twitter may now be in the position to tell anyone, paying now or possibly later, for their services that they will just have to wait until Twitter is good and ready. While the argument exists that they are truly that powerful it would be a shame that if they used that power as an excuse to ignore the needs of corporate clients.

AdAge reports

On Twitter’s @Hyundai page, there is a collection of 140-character blasts in English and Korean about oysters, cellphones and the Yankees. Clicking on a profile photo reveals a collage of scantily clad ladies bearing cleavage and more, and a caption saying, “Have a Lustful Day.”

This kind of stuff leaves the folks at Hyundai Motor America less than thrilled

After having contacted the social-media site’s headquarters repeatedly to evict the squatter without success, the frustrated automaker has gone so far as to contemplate legal action. “They simply haven’t responded to requests,” said Chris Hosford, VP-corporate communications at Hyundai Motor America. “Our brand name is extremely important to us. … We’re very disappointed that Twitter has shown no interest in protecting brand names.” Unable to use the handle, the company has resorted to sending out official company tweets from @HyundaiNews.

Ughh. The L word. No not that one you sick person but L for “legal”. Last thing any start up needs is the fun and games of legal issues to get in the way of putting together a better service and offering.

The article talks in greater detail about how celebrities have been afforded special badges but the corporate side of the ledger (you remember, the one that could make money) is left to fend for themselves for now. Twitter’s policies are there but there is no guarantee of remedy in a timely fashion so some companies are left to get creative. Of course, one could argue that a big brand being late to the game and not securing these names years ago is on the company. There are two sides to every coin, after all.

So what is Twitter doing, if anything?

Twitter’s head of commercial products, Anamitra Banerji, said, “We understand brands’ frustration when it comes to account verification. We are working on ways to make the process easier and faster …. Given the volume of requests we receive, sometimes it might take a little while to close requests but we are trying to improve that too.” The social-media service, he said, is “[working] with business owners extensively to ensure that they own their trademarks/brand names on Twitter as our terms of service doesn’t allow name-squatting or impersonation.”

Ahh yes. The old volume of requests complaint. That one might have worked when Twitter was the little start up that could but the recent influx of investment takes the air right out of that argument. HIRE SOME PEOPLE, TWITTER!

So it’s interesting to see that not everyone is bent out of shape on this issue

Not all marketers are ruffled, though. Pfizer doesn’t own the handle @Pfizer, and a mystery tweeter is regularity tweeting updates about the company. Ray Kerins, VP-worldwide communications at Pfizer, told Ad Age that the company isn’t planning to take any action. “We are obviously watching any site that discusses our company or our products,” Mr. Kerins said. “We’re going to continue to watch. These social communities are actually very self-policing.”

Wow, now there is either great confidence in the ability of people to keep the street clean or a level of naiveté that will end up badly when the next brand firestorm comes up for Pfizer and the fake account is at the center of it. Maybe the folks who make Viagra are suffering from one of those side effects than impair judgment. Just a thought.

What’s your experience with getting Twitter to help in these situations? Should Twitter care? Happy Monday Pilgrims, let’s hear it!

Comments

Geocachers, please don’t take offensive to this t-shirt, but sometimes the truth hurts. [Zazzle via reddit]

If there is a company that wants to jump into the netbook market and offer something unique and solid, it would be HTC. It has already produced some rock-solid handsets like the Hero, Eris, Touch Pro2 and HD2, so why not a netbook? HTC CEO Peter Chou mentioned that his company is still very much interested in building a netbook. We think that Mr. Chou may be onto something with the idea that HTC should put out something unique and not just another “me too” netbook. After all, it seems like the entire netbook market is one giant clone army. With the Nokia Booklet 3G coming very soon, HTC is probably thinking that if one major handset manufacturer can pull it off, why not take a crack at it? As long as HTC doesn’t bomb like it did with the Shift, we think it will be a hit.

Read

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The US Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments this afternoon in the case of a pair of inventors who produced a formula for enabling energy commodity companies to manage the costs of energy that is often both bought and sold at fixed prices as “hedges” against future fluctuations. If you’re thinking, what in the world has that to do with information technology, the outcome of this case — whatever it is — will have a tremendous impact on the IT industry, particularly with respect to companies that hold intellectual property portfolios.

The argument deals with whether a methodology that boils down to a mathematical formula for determining the safest hedge for a commodity that both buys and sells energy — basically a business method — is worthy of a patent. The decision the Supreme Court will render will determine whether simple formulaic concepts or principles that are case-specific deserve patents, and if they are not, whether existing patents granted in such situations may be canceled.

Currently, the score with regard to formula patentability is “no,” in a Federal Circuit Appeals Court decision in October 2008, which ruled against inventors Bernard Bilski and Rand Warsaw. After years of a back-and-forth tug-of-war with itself, the US Patent and Trademark Office finally decided to reject the inventors’ claims, and that rejection was upheld by the Appeals Court. Now, Bilski and Warsaw’s attorneys are arguing that the Appeals Court’s reasoning was flawed, by applying a test of patentability that they believe goes against the higher court’s precedent.

“Section 101 of the Patent Act provides patent eligibility for ‘any’ new and useful process. Consistent with its plain language, this Court has interpreted § 101 to be extremely broad,” reads the inventors’ merit brief before the Supreme Court (PDF available here). “Moreover, the courts should not place additional limits on patent-eligible subject matter that have not been expressed by Congress. To be sure, natural laws and phenomena can never qualify for patent protection because they cannot be invented at all. And abstract ideas are not eligible either because they are not ‘useful’ and they must be applied to a practical use before they can be patented. But the Federal Circuit has gone much further in limiting patents on processes, holding that the only patent-eligible processes are those that meet the court’s mandatory ‘machine-or-transformation’ test.”

That last test is practically an existential philosophy unto itself, a way of finding some concrete language — even if it exists in the clouds somewhere — for fundamentally explaining where the boundary line falls between an invention and an alteration. “Machine-or-transformation” does not mean one or the other; it’s a twofold approach for determining patent worthiness, outlined by the Federal Circuit. You might not want to read the explanation itself; it makes most software EULAs seem plainly spoken by comparison.

But the ideas are these: If somebody patents a method, and that method involves the use of a particular machine (like a computer) or other apparatus (like a sledgehammer), then the patent should not preclude someone from using that method for another purpose with another machine. And if the purpose of the method is to transform something from one state of being into another, then the patent shouldn’t preclude someone from using that same method to transform perhaps that same thing into something else. It’s a way of narrowing a patent down to something that makes a into b using c.

Math is not an apparatus, however, and there’s the problem. In some people’s minds, math merely serves as an observation of an existing fact, just as the universe was probably curved before Albert Einstein came up with e = mc². If the Federal Circuit’s interpretation holds (and the Supreme Court has followed that interpretation in recent cases), then it will not be enough for a method to simply “do something new,” such as, come up with the most reasonable price to charge a customer in advance for electricity.

“The term ‘process’ in Section 101 encompasses industrial and technological methods, broadly conceived, but does not extend to methods of organizing human activity,” reads the merit brief for the defendant — in this case, the US Commerce Dept. (PDF available here). “In identifying processes that ‘involve technology’ in the relevant sense, this Court has focused on whether a patent applicant’s claimed method either (1) concerns the operation of a particular machine or apparatus or (2) has the effect of transforming matter…That definition of ‘process’ provides an effective means of differentiating between the industrial and technological methods that have historically been eligible for patent protection, and human-activity methods that have not traditionally been viewed as patent-eligible. The machine-or-transformation definition, in other words, provides a framework for analyzing patent claims in every extant field of technology and industry.”

If the high court upholds the Federal Circuit decision, then the fight will be on to determine whether patents should be overturned for methods that use software. Though many have argued that such patents might be instantly invalid, the situation isn’t that black-and-white: Patent holders for software methods, such as Amazon’s method for changing a TV channel, could claim that such methods are bound to machines, as the machine-or-transformation test would stipulate. And they could, arguably, change the state of something, even if that state is somewhat virtual in nature — like the state of a set-top cable box to a new channel, or the state of an on-screen menu to “open.”

IP portfolios for software methods will not go down without a fight; and the outcome of this Supreme Court decision may simply set the time for the starting gun.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

LONDON (Reuters) – Private equity firm CVC dissolved a consortium with General Electric (GE.N) that had been planning a joint bid for the transmission and distribution (T&D) business of Areva (CEPFi.PA) , a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.

CVC was reluctant to be a minority shareholder and General Electric grew in confidence that it would be able to navigate a French takeover without the aid of CVC’s local team, the person said.

The withdrawal was earlier reported by French website Wansquare. CVC had no immediate comment.

(Reporting by Quentin Webb and Simon Meads; Editing by Douwe Miedema)

ShareThis

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Automobile parts maker Lear Corp (LEA_w.N) said on Monday that it had emerged from bankruptcy protection with less than $1 billion in debt.

The maker of seats, door panels and electrical distribution systems for cars also said its new common shares would trade on the New York Stock exchange under the symbol “LEA.”

Lear filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 7 and has worked to restructure debt and operations.

The company has cut its debt obligations by about $2.8 billion and emerges from bankruptcy with $1 billion in cash and no near-term debt maturities.

“Moving forward, we are committed to maintaining a disciplined financial profile and an investment grade focus that will enable us to continue investing in new products and technologies globally, as well as growth in emerging markets,” Chief Executive Officer Bob Rossiter said in a statement.

The current net sales backlog totals $1.4 billion for 2010 to 2012, Lear said.

The new common shares will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the historical LEA stock symbol. It will begin trading on a “when issued” basis on Monday, with shares to begin “regular way” trading within several days, Lear said. (Reporting by Chelsea Emery; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

ShareThis

Kohlberg Capital Corp (KCAP.O) said the filing of its third-quarter results would be delayed after its independent public accountants Deloitte & Touche LLP raised questions about the process of valuing certain loan portfolio investments.

The business development company said Deloitte issued an unqualified opinion on its financial statements for the fiscal ended Dec 31, 2008.

Because Kohlberg’s financial statements for the third quarter incorporate its balance sheet as of December 31, 2008, the finalization and filing of the company’s quarterly report will be delayed, Kohlberg said in a statement.

The company said net investment income for the third quarter was about $4.4 million, or 20 cents per share, which includes the impact of higher interest costs on its credit facility.

Kohlberg also said in addition to its regular fourth quarter dividend, a further incremental or special dividend would be declared once the company determined the amount of remaining undistributed taxable income for 2009.

Shares of the New York-based company closed at $5.52 on Friday on Nasdaq. (Reporting by Brenton Cordeiro in Bangalore; Editing by Jarshad Kakkrakandy)

ShareThis

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) – Bankrupt Six Flags Inc. has submitted a new reorganization plan that represents a victory for hedge fund Avenue Capital Management, which fought an initial proposal that gave little to bondholders.

The world’s largest regional theme park operator filed for bankruptcy in the middle of the year with a plan that transferred almost all of its stock to senior lenders, including JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), in return for cutting its debt.

The plan sparked immediate opposition, in part because it was far more favorable to bank lenders than what the company had proposed just prior to bankruptcy.

The company said it realized it had to modify its plan of reorganization after discussions with creditors, and as financial markets improved.

The “stabilization and loosening of the credit markets has created financing opportunities that did not exist at the times these cases were filed and the original plan was formulated,” the company said in a court filing.

The new plan, which was filed with the court on Saturday, is based on proposals by the Avenue Capital group of bondholders and includes selling $450 million in new stock to increase the money available for creditors.

Led by Chairman Marc Lasry, Avenue Capital invests in distressed companies such World Color Press Inc (WC.TO), which filed for bankruptcy as Quebecor World Inc, and MagnaChip Semiconductor, which recently emerged from Chapter 11.

The new plan does not change Six Flags senior management, which is headed by Mark Shapiro, a former ESPN executive. It also leaves in place some of the management bonuses Avenue Capital criticized in the first plan.

Bondholders are the biggest winners of the changes.

Holders of one class of unsecured bonds with claims of $420 million now stand to get up to 47.1 percent of the company under the new plan. Six Flags originally proposed giving them 7 percent.

Another class of unsecured bondholders with claims of $1.3 billion now stand to get as much as 4.8 percent of the company, compared to the original plan that offered 1 percent.

The plan may increase the recovery for the junior or holdco noteholders, but falls short of what might have been expected, judging by trading levels for the debt, according to Shawn Abboud, an executive director of trading at APS Financial Corp in Austin, Texas.

“I fully expect the holdco bondholders to fight this. This doesn’t mean it will be an easy fight,” said Abboud.

While the company said the plan had broad support, it was not negotiated with the official committee of creditors and will likely face challenges.

“While we’re reviewing the plan, we haven’t had the opportunity to speak with everyone on the committee to get their sense of what the next step should be,” said Steven Levine of Brown Rudnick, which is representing the committee.

Holders of preferred equity known as PIERS were also lining up against the plan.

“We think any plan that doesn’t provide some significant recovery for PIERS and some recovery for common shareholders is delusional and will be dead on arrival before the judge,” said Lance Laifer, the chief executive of Resilient Capital Management.

Resilient Capital Management has led a fight for its own plan that focused on raising capital through convertible debt and cutting expenses to provide a recovery for all creditors and some equity holders.

The company has also attracted the attention of former managers, who in August offered to run the company for a $1 salary and said they could increase its value.

The case is In re Premier International Holdings Inc. and Six Flags Inc., U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware, No. 09-12019.

By Tom Hals
(Editing by Maralikumar Anantharaman, Dave Zimmerman)

ShareThis

‘Coke Zero’ brings you Wayne Rooney’s Street Striker 09

24 players. 6 challenges. 3 shows. The ultimate goal to crown the new, undisputed ‘Coke Zero’ Street Striker 09.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Google today announced it will acquire mobile display advertising company AdMob for $750 million.

“For publishers of mobile Web sites and applications, this deal will mean better products and tools and more effective monetization of their content, allowing them to focus more on their users and less on how to generate revenue. For advertisers who want to reach users when they are engaged with mobile content, this deal will bring better, more relevant ads and greater reach. It will also mean more interesting, engaging ad formats. Last, but certainly not least, we believe users will benefit from this deal: through more mobile content and through better mobile ads that deliver useful information,” vice presidents of Product Management and Engineering at Google Susan Wojcicki and Vic Gundotra posted in Google’s Official Blog today.

AdMob gained a good deal of media exposure thanks to its continuous stream of market pseudo-statistics which were pulled exclusively from its mobile advertising network. While not indicative of the mobile market as a whole, the company at least provided frequent behavioral metrics on iPhone/iPod and Android, the platforms most widely supportive of AdMob’s in-app and mobile-formatted Web display ads.

“We launched the first iPhone ad units focused on the web and quickly added the capability to run ads in applications. Now with the addition of excellent devices from Palm, Nokia, RIM, and plethora of Android powered smartphones, we have all the preconditions necessary for what will be a tidal wave of mobile browsing and app usage. But let there be no mistake. Our business, and the mobile industry in general, owes Apple a debt of gratitude,” AdMob’s Founder Omar Hamoui said today.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

And we thought that perhaps — just perhaps — Rupert Murdoch was coming to his senses with the plan to delay putting up a paywall. Turns out that may have been wishful thinking. Mathew Ingram alerts us to the news that Murodch has suggested that News Corp. might actually remove its sites from Google. Of course, I won’t actually believe it until it happens, but he has had his minions going around slamming Google even as News Corp. offers its own aggregators. But actually following through and removing News Corp’s sites from Google would be a huge step to take — though one right off the side of a big cliff. Still, I’m sure it would make for a fun case study.

In the meantime, his explanation is really quite stunning. He claims that he believes fair use is a concept that the courts will reject:

“There’s a doctrine called fair use, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether…”

Wow. Of course, if that’s true, then (again) we need to point out that News Corp. has been making use of fair use for years with its own aggregators. In fact, most news organizations regularly make use of fair use. Perhaps News Corps’ lawyers who work in their news divisions might want to sit Murdoch down and explain the importance of fair use from a reporting perspective. They might also want to point him to the history of fair use within copyright law, in case he thinks it’s something that was just made up yesterday.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

We’ve already established that your favorite tech company, from Apple to HP to Nintendo, and everyone in between, is being pressured to go green. While some of the tactics may be a bit silly, I think it’s safe to say that you’d rather see these companies green than not green, right? It makes us feel good about ourselves, that even though we’re buying hunks of plastic and metal—Lord knows what chemicals are in these things—the company in question is trying to make everything as environmentally friendly as possible. In the spotlight today is IBM, which continues to develop technology that could, one day, lead to zero-emission data centers.

The key to such data centers lies in a new cooling technology that IBM is currently toying around with.

Says Bruno Michel, an IBM research manager:

High-performance liquid cooling allows data centers to operate with coolant temperatures above the free cooling limit in all climates, eliminating the need for chillers and allowing the thermal energy to be reused in cold climates. [In so doing, Michel] demonstrated the removal of 85 percent of the heat load from high-performance compute nodes at a temperature of 60 degrees Celsius and compared their energy and emission balance with a classical air-cooled data center, a data center with free cooling in a cold climate zone and a data center with chiller-mediated energy reuse.

In other words, thanks to this fancy new cooling technology, IBM has to use less energy than it otherwise would have it.

The whole system reuses about 75 percent of the energy initially put into it. It’s that loss of only around 25 percent that makes the whole thing so efficient.

In other news, I have a massive headache. Is there an App for that?

Nigeria is currently going through its own mini World Cup fiesta. After many months of doubt, deliberation and dubious ‘readiness reports’ the FIFA Under 17 World Cup is on and much of this football crazy nation are intensively following the super Eaglets quest for glory, to restore national pride and re-capture their 1999 Crown. 

It’s hard to pick a favourite as some of the squads were radically altered after FIFA introduced new imaging techniques of player’s wrists that accurately determine age: one nation withdrew completely!

At six locations around the nation large crowds are turning out to cheer on the teams, adding African style noise and intensity to make the occasion. I decided to make the effort and headed down to the home of our local team, Kano Pillars: the Sani Abacha Stadium in Kano.

Getting a match ticket was the easy part, getting past the baton wielding police, shut gates and crowds of disaffected ticket holders was not. Most of my friends gave up when a camera was pick-pocketed. Eventually though, a FIFA ‘risk assessment’ officer let me in.

Inside the atmosphere was electric as the 10-man Spanish team scored to go 2-1 up over the USA.  The quality of the play was a lot better than I expected and the crowd enthusiastic. Fans chatted with me about the stars of the Premiership and La Liga, giving sympathy for my home team Newcastle United. The stadium, complete with giant video screen was great, I really felt like I was at Old Trafford.  Only when the floodlights failed (twice) and 14 minutes of extra time added was I reminded of the problems that plague Nigeria’s quest to become one of the 20 most developed nations.

DFID has been supporting the international 1 GOAL! Campaign, in collaboration with FIFA, to use the World Cup competition to focus both public and political attention on getting all children into school – a lasting legacy, beyond stadiums and video scoreboards. Africa has most of the out of school children in the world, with Nigeria having the dubious distinction of topping this league table. 1GOAL was recently launched in Nigeria by a passionate football fan and governor of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola. Video messages promoting schooling are being broadcast together with all the U17 World cup games in Nigeria.

The healthy, literate Western teenagers on display in Kano have had the benefits of a well rounded education and great prospects lie ahead. Outside the stadium the Almajarai street boys scavenge for a living on Kano’s dusty streets and girls younger than the soccer stars on display die from maternal complications, following arranged marriages. Girl Effect, a Nike Foundation initiative eloquently illustrates the potential of adolescent girls – if they are given the opportunities of education and empowerment.

The Eaglets are now in the final knock out stages of the competition that will culminate in the capital Abuja on Nov 15^th. I hope both they and the other 30+ million school age children in Nigeria get the education and opportunities they all so richly deserve.

The President hosted a remarkable group of wounded veterans a few weeks ago on the White House basketbal court. These "Wounded Warriors" from Walter Reed Army Medical Center showed President Obama a thing or two about wheelchair basketball. Check out the impressive moves that can be performed on four wheels:

 

 

Google has agreed to buy AdMob, a San Mateo, Calif.-based mobile advertising marketplace, for $750 million in stock. AdMob has raised over $46 million in VC funding, from firms like Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and DFJ Growth Fund.

PRESS RELEASE

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AdMob, a mobile display ad technology provider, for $750 million in stock. This acquisition will enhance Google’s existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice in this growing new area.

“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” said Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management at Google. “AdMob is the quintessential Silicon Valley startup — generating impressive year on year revenue growth — and we’re excited to welcome this talented team to Google.”

“I think people underestimate how important ads have been to funding the development of innovative content on the Internet. Our goal all along at AdMob has been to make it possible for developers and publishers to bring their products and ideas to mobile with the same business model,” said Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO of AdMob. “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made towards accomplishing this goal, and joining Google will only accelerate this process, ultimately leading to very real benefits for end users around the world. As publishers and developers generate more revenue from their mobile products, they will invest more, and their mobile offerings will become richer, more creative and more robust.”

The deal will help Google in its efforts to develop more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats. As this ecosystem continues to grow, the company expects these new marketing media to offer significant benefits:

• Advertisers will be better able to engage mobile users with AdMob’s ad formats
• Publishers and developers will be able to monetize their content more effectively, which has benefits for the wider mobile ecosystem
• Users will see more relevant ads and ultimately get access to more ad-supported content and applications – improving their mobile experience

“Attracting the world’s top engineering talent and people with entrepreneurial vision to Google has always been crucial to our success. AdMob’s proven track record in innovating at speed will help maintain that culture – which is why we are so excited to be working with them,” added Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering at Google.

Both companies have approved the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top Web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall Web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

ShareThis

Nokia has recalled several mobile phone chargers, manufactured by third-parties for the company, because of the chance of electrical shock. There’s been no reports of any injuries, so consider this a precaution.