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In response to Google’s foul cry over Microsoft’s Yahoo! bid, Microsoft has released a statement from Bard Smith, General Counsel:

REDMOND, Wash — Feb 03, `08 — The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising. The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet.

Today, Google is the dominant search engine and advertising company on the Web. Google has amassed about 75 percent of paid search revenues worldwide and its share continues to grow. According to published reports, Google currently has more than 65 percent search query share in the U.S. and more than 85 percent in Europe. Microsoft and Yahoo! on the other hand have roughly 30 percent combined in the U.S. and approximately 10 percent combined in Europe.

Microsoft is committed to openness, innovation, and the protection of privacy on the Internet. We believe that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will advance these goals. More at Microsoft.

Feb 03, `08 — In a statement released today on Google’s press center, Mr. David Drummond, Google’s Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer cries foul over Microsoft’s Yahoo! bid.

Mr. David Drummond in his rude and venomous language falsely accuses Microsoft of making ” hostile bid ”. He says, “So Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another.”

Now Mr. Drummond do you even know or have any remote idea how many take overs Google have made in last five years or so ??

He also says, “Users benefit from constant innovation. It’s what makes the Internet such an exciting place.”

Mr. Drummond do you actually mean supporting rampant piracy through YouTube, when you say “Users benefit from constant innovation” ??

Do you even have any remote idea of how many pirated videos of Movies, TV Shows, Dramas, Music Videos, etc are being hosted at any given moment ??

Mr. Drummond further goes on to say, “This hostile bid was announced on Friday so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed.”

Mr. Drummond when even Yahoo! in its official response refers to Microsoft’s proposal as “an unsolicited proposal”, who are you in the world to refer that proposal as “hostile” ??

And Mr. Drummond when you say, “It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation”, do you actually mean that buying DoubleClick despite the immense privacy concerns from within the US and from Europe ??

If Google were to believe in its well publicized but never implemented ideology of ” Do NO Evil ” then Mr. Drummond why in the world Google needed to buy YouTube or DoubleClick? Google was already making tons of millions anyway… Google could have let YouTube / DoubleClick make money for themselves or let some one else buy ‘em (of course you would have stopped Microsoft from buying any of ‘em either, right?)

So Mr. Drummond before making entirely false claims using rude and venomous language, it would have been better if you have just took a little look at Google’s own past 10 years.

Or may be fear of loosing monopoly and loosing world dominance makes you speak highly rude & venomous language along with highly exaggerated claims and false acquisitions ??

Google’s statement on Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo!

Feb 03, `08 — Nicki Dugan on Yahoo’s Corporate Blog ( Yodel Anecdotal ) said that, “process like this is fluid and can take quite a bit of time” to weigh its strategic options, including keeping the company independent, following Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer to buy the company.

Here is the complete posting:

Our response to Microsoft’s proposal

Posted February 1st, 2008 at 1:11 pm by Nicki Dugan, Blog Editor

Number of Comments 17 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Microsoft made an unsolicited proposal to acquire Yahoo! yesterday evening. Since then, we’ve gotten quite a number of questions about what this means for Yahoo!. Right now our board of directors is evaluating the proposal and looking at all of our strategic alternatives, including maintaining Yahoo! as an independent company.

A review process like this is fluid and can take quite a bit of time, so while there’s not much we can say right now, we did want to refer you to this brief FAQ for more information.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Tagged: microsoft, news

In a media response to a frequently asked question about whether Yahoo would seek proposals from other companies, Yahoo! press room said it was going to evaluate all options.

Yahoo!’s Media Response:

FAQ: Unsolicited Proposal From Microsoft

Q1. How is Yahoo! responding to Microsoft’s proposal?
The Yahoo! Board is undertaking a deliberate review process. They’re going to take time to thoroughly evaluate the proposal in the context of Yahoo!’s strategic plans. This will include evaluating all of the Company’s strategic alternatives – including maintaining Yahoo! as an independent company. That process will take some time, but the Board will ultimately pursue the option that it believes can best maximize value for our shareholders.

Q2. How long will the Board’s review process take?
A review process like this is fluid, and it can take quite a bit of time.

Q3. Will the Board seek proposals from any other companies?
The Board is going to evaluate all of Yahoo!’s strategic alternatives and pursue the option that it believes can best maximize value for our shareholders.

Q4. What would a deal like this mean for Yahoo!’s users, advertisers, publishers, partners and people?
Yahoo!’s Board is going to evaluate all aspects of this proposal carefully and promptly in the context of the company’s strategic plans and alternatives. So it wouldn’t be appropriate to speculate about the potential benefits or challenges of a deal. But the review process that’s underway won’t have any impact on our efforts to deliver value to all of our users, advertisers, publishers and partners – as well as new and exciting opportunities to our employees.

Citing analysts, Reuters reported that, “Comcast Corp, Viacom Inc and General Electric Co among possible bidders, although they also said few companies had the balance sheet to compete with Microsoft or were as natural a fit for Yahoo.”

More at Yahoo! here and here.

Below is the text of the letter that Microsoft sent to Yahoo!’s Board of Directors:

January 31, 2008

Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Attention: Roy Bostock, Chairman
Attention: Jerry Yang, Chief Executive Officer

Dear Members of the Board:

I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Microsoft to make a proposal for a business combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. Under our proposal, Microsoft would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 based on Microsoft’s closing share price on January 31, 2008, payable in the form of $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. Microsoft would provide each Yahoo! shareholder with the ability to choose whether to receive the consideration in cash or Microsoft common stock, subject to pro-ration so that in the aggregate one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be exchanged for shares of Microsoft common stock and one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be converted into the right to receive cash. Our proposal is not subject to any financing condition.

Our proposal represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock of $19.18 on January 31, 2008. The implied premium for the operating assets of the company clearly is considerably greater when adjusted for the minority, non-controlled assets and cash. By whatever financial measure you use - EBITDA, free cash flow, operating cash flow, net income, or analyst target prices - this proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders.

We believe that Microsoft common stock represents a very attractive investment opportunity for Yahoo!’s shareholders. Microsoft has generated revenue growth of 15%, earnings growth of 26%, and a return on equity of 35% on average for the last three years. Microsoft’s share price has generated shareholder returns of 8% during the last one year period and 28% during the last three year period, significantly outperforming the S&P 500. It is our view that Microsoft has significant potential upside given the continued solid growth in our core businesses, the recent launch of Windows Vista, and other strategic initiatives.

Microsoft’s consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing.

In February 2007, I received a letter from your Chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo! Board that “now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction.” According to that letter, the principal reason for this view was the Yahoo! Board’s confidence in the “potential upside” if management successfully executed on a reformulated strategy based on certain operational initiatives, such as Project Panama, and a significant organizational realignment. A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved.

While online advertising growth continues, there are significant benefits of scale in advertising platform economics, in capital costs for search index build-out, and in research and development, making this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers. Synergies of this combination fall into four areas:

Scale economics: This combination enables synergies related to scale economics of the advertising platform where today there is only one competitor at scale. This includes synergies across both search and non-search related advertising that will strengthen the value proposition to both advertisers and publishers. Additionally, the combination allows us to consolidate capital spending.

Expanded R&D capacity: The combined talent of our engineering resources can be focused on R&D priorities such as a single search index and single advertising platform. Together we can unleash new levels of innovation, delivering enhanced user experiences, breakthroughs in search, and new advertising platform capabilities. Many of these breakthroughs are a function of an engineering scale that today neither of our companies has on its own.

Operational efficiencies: Eliminating redundant infrastructure and duplicative operating costs will improve the financial performance of the combined entity.

Emerging user experiences: Our combined ability to focus engineering resources that drive innovation in emerging scenarios such as video, mobile services, online commerce, social media, and social platforms is greatly enhanced.

We would value the opportunity to further discuss with you how to optimize the integration of our respective businesses to create a leading global technology company with exceptional display and search advertising capabilities. You should also be aware that we intend to offer significant retention packages to your engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.

We have dedicated considerable time and resources to an analysis of a potential transaction and are confident that the combination will receive all necessary regulatory approvals. We look forward to discussing this with you, and both our internal legal team and outside counsel are available to meet with your counsel at their earliest convenience.

Our proposal is subject to the negotiation of a definitive merger agreement and our having the opportunity to conduct certain limited and confirmatory due diligence. In addition, because a portion of the aggregate merger consideration would consist of Microsoft common stock, we would provide Yahoo! the opportunity to conduct appropriate limited due diligence with respect to Microsoft. We are prepared to deliver a draft merger agreement to you and begin discussions immediately.

In light of the significance of this proposal to your shareholders and ours, as well as the potential for selective disclosures, our intention is to publicly release the text of this letter tomorrow morning.

Due to the importance of these discussions and the value represented by our proposal, we expect the Yahoo! Board to engage in a full review of our proposal. My leadership team and I would be happy to make ourselves available to meet with you and your Board at your earliest convenience. Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.

We believe this proposal represents a unique opportunity to create significant value for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees, and the combined company will be better positioned to provide an enhanced value proposition to users and advertisers. We hope that you and your Board share our enthusiasm, and we look forward to a prompt and favorable reply.

Sincerely yours,

/s/ Steven A. Ballmer

Steven A. Ballmer

Chief Executive Officer

Microsoft Corporation

More at Microsoft.

MySpace will open its doors to software developers allowing them to create games and media-sharing applications for the popular social network, reports the BBC.

MySpace will formally launch its “Developer Platform” next Tuesday but is already allowing people to sign up. The tools have been developed with Google and will allow programmers to create programs similar to those used by millions on rival site Facebook.

Facebook opened up its site to outside developers last year. It has since had great success, with nearly 15,000 applications written for the site.

These include photo-sharing and music recommendation tools as well as games such as scrabble. However, despite its popularity, Facebook still lags behind MySpace in terms of overall users. MySpace has around 200 million registered users, compared to 63 million who use Facebook.

Last October MySpace announced that it would join OpenSocial, Google’s platform designed to allow developers to build applications that will work on any website.

Other networks such as Bebo, LinkedIn and Orkut already use the tools.

The tools, available from 5 February, will allow developers to build applications that make use of MySpace member profile information and their connections with other users.More at BBC News.

WASHINGTON — Feb 01, `08 — US and European antitrust regulators aren’t likely to prevent Microsoft from buying Yahoo, analysts said Friday, though scrutiny of the deal could drag on for months, the AP reported.

A major factor weighing in Microsoft’s favor, analysts said, is Google’s dominance in the online search and advertising businesses — the two areas regulators are likely to focus on when weighing market power issues raised by the nearly $45 billion unsolicited bid.

The Justice Department said it is “interested” in reviewing competition issues raised by Microsoft’s surprise offer. The Federal Trade Commission and European Union officials declined to comment. If the deal goes through, analysts expect Congress and European regulators to review the combined company’s increased competitive edge.

“I don’t see this just sailing through, regulators will look at it,” Ted Henneberry of the London law firm Heller Ehrman said. But even after a review that could take up to six months, he said a Microsoft-Yahoo combination isn’t likely to be stopped because the new entity’s share of the online ad space would still be dwarfed by Google, which already controls nearly 60 percent of the U.S. search market.

“The fact that Google dominates this business will be a big factor in (Microsoft’s) favor in trying to get this approved by the regulators,” said Keith Hylton, a professor of antitrust law at Boston University. More at AP.

San Francisco, CA — Feb 01, `08 — Microsoft made an unsolicited $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo late Thursday, a deal that could shake up the competitive and lucrative market for online advertising.

The surprise offer of $31 per share, which represents a 62% premium from where Yahoo stock closed on Thursday, made late Thursday and announced Friday, seizes on Yahoo’s weakness while Microsoft tries to muscle up in a high-stakes battle with Google likely to define the technology landscape for years to come. Shares of Yahoo shot up 50% at the start of trading Friday, while shares of Dow component Microsoft tumbled about 5%.

In a statement Friday, Yahoo said it will “carefully and promptly” study Microsoft’s bid.

With its profits steadily sliding, Yahoo’s stock slipped to a four-year low earlier this week and a new management team has been trying to steer a turnaround but sees more turbulence through 2008.

In conference call Friday morning, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer indicated he won’t take no for an answer after Yahoo rebuffed takeover overtures a year ago.

“This is a decision we have — and I have — thought long and hard about,” Ballmer said. “We are confident it’s the right path for Microsoft and Yahoo.”

Besides the question of Yahoo’s acceptance, Microsoft’s bid also faces regulatory scrutiny in Washington and Europe. On Friday, the Justice Department said it is “interested” in reviewing antitrust issues. European Union officials declined to comment.

If the deal is consummated, it would be by far the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history, eclipsing last year’s $6 billion purchase of online ad service aQuantive.

Microsoft publicly disclosed its cash-and-stock offer in hopes of rallying support from Yahoo’s shareholders, making it more difficult for Yahoo’s board to turn down the bid.

Microsoft’s previous offer was rebuffed by Terry Semel, who stepped aside last year as chief executive under shareholder pressure.

Microsoft sent its latest takeover offer to Yahoo late Thursday, shortly after Semel resigned as the company’s chairman. The letter is addressed to Semel’s successors, new Chairman Roy Bostock and the current CEO, co-founder Jerry Yang, who is one of Yahoo’s largest shareholders.

In a prepared statement, Yahoo said its board “will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly in the context of Yahoo’s strategic plans and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders.”

“We are very, very confident this is the right path for Microsoft and for Yahoo,” he said.

Microsoft hopes to close the deal by the end of the year. Ballmer said that Microsoft has been in “off and on” talks with Yahoo for 18 months and said he called Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang Thursday night to tell him the bid was coming.

A Microsoft-Yahoo combination would create a powerful number two player in the online search business, which Google commands. The leading search engine reigns over 58.4% of the U.S. search market, while Yahoo has 22.9% and Microsoft’s share is just 9.8%, according to comScore, a research firm that tracks Internet traffic.

A Google spokesman, Matt Furman, declined to comment on Microsoft’s move on Yahoo. “It would be premature to comment at this point,” he said.

Dec 25, `07 — Slashdot reports on Google linking up Google Reader with Google Talk to make shared items visible to your contacts on Google Talk.

“One week ago Google Reader’s team decided to begin showing your private data to all your GMail contacts. No need to opt-in, NO way to opt-out. Complaints haven’t been answered. Some users share their problems, including one family who says they won’t be able to enjoy this Christmas because of this ‘feature.’ Will Google start doing this with all their products? You can browse the thread in Google Groups.”

Comments from Google Groups

User ‘banzaimonkey’ writes:
“I think the basic mistake here, as Modulo has noted, is that the people on my contact list are not necessarily my “friends”. I have business contacts, school contacts, family contacts, etc., and not only do I not really have any interest in seeing all of their feed information, I don’t want them seeing mine either. This is a major privacy problem.”

User ‘Paul Russell’ writes:
“Using my Gmail contacts as a friends list is a dangerous thing. Especially because a lot of the addresses in there were added automatically when people emailed me. I understand that sharing is a public activity, but to date Google reader shares were pseudo private by obscurity. In reality the only people that were going to see my share were people I told about it. I don’t like the idea of an opt out only mechanism. Facebook just took a bath on this concept. Granted Beacon was a complete disaster, but I think the lesson to be learned is when you change personal sharing to become more public it should be an opt in process.”

Chrix Finne at Official Google Reader Blog invites your feedback on Google Reader features here at Google Groups.

Dec 24, `07 — Badoo, a social networking website which offers users the chance to pay to be popular while banning all advertising, is set to launch into an increasingly crowded UK market, says Mark Sweney of Guardian Unlimited.

Sweney further writes, “At the moment, Badoo is a relatively unknown web brand. However, Google recently rated it number two on its “fastest rising” list - behind the iPhone and ahead of Facebook - in its annual report based on the most popular web searches.

The fledgling company positions itself as a “natural evolution of existing social network and blogging sites”.

Badoo’s unusual business model works against the received wisdom of the primarily advertising-led efforts of established firms such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

“We wanted to be advertising free in order to have a ‘clean’ site so our users weren’t subject to adverts which we know can be a turnoff,” said Neil Bryant, the managing director of Badoo.” More at Guardian Unlimited.

Armonk, NY — Dec 18, `07 — IBM today announced the availability of IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections, a corporate social networking visualization and analysis tool.

IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections is designed to help organizations maximize their investment in social software by answering questions such as who the key experts are on a given topic, how they are connected, and whom a user’s contacts know that they do not.

Developed by IBM Research, Atlas has four Web 2.0-based components — My Net, Find, Reach and Net. These components help users spot the important connections and the relationships between various groups and navigate their personal and corporate networks.

The Net component of Atlas provides a visual indication of the important hubs among topic experts and informal groups that have developed while working on similar projects.

My Net offers similar capabilities for a user’s personal network. For example, a salesperson can better manage and understand their social networks making sure they have connections across the right topic areas.

Reach, the social software dashboard feature in Atlas, helps users navigate the up to six degrees of separation that divide them from a colleague. The dashboard shows users the shortest path to reach an expert and ranks the expert based on the level of interaction across the network.

The Find component of Atlas builds upon core Lotus Connections expertise capabilities by taking searches beyond the corporate directory to include results based on social data such as reporting structures, blogs and communities.

Atlas is designed to work with IBM Lotus Connections, the industry’s first integrated enterprise social software platform. The latest version of Lotus Connections, version 1.02, is now available and features:

* Expanded support for operating systems such as SUSE Linux, browsers such as Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and directories such as Microsoft Active Directory, enabling businesses to deploy and integrate social software across their IT environment.
* Plug-ins for IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Explorer and IBM WebSphere Portal, enabling people to interact with their professional networks using their everyday productivity tools.
* A rich API based on the REST and Atom standards allow other applications to utilize the profiles, community, bookmarking, blogging and activity services of Lotus Connections.

More on IBM Atlas at IBM.

SAN JOSE, Calif — Dec 18, `07 — Pressured by a lawsuit, social networking giant Facebook will adopt new measures to prevent its 58 million members from sending text messages to recycled cell phone numbers, the AP reports.

The lawsuit filed by Lindsey Abrams of Patriot, Ind., said she received text messages with explicit comments and other upsetting content — and had to pay 10 cents each time. Facebook received a share of the fee, according to the complaint.

According to the complaint, which Abrams’s lawyers had hoped would be certified as a class action, Abrams started getting the unsolicited messages shortly after she got a new mobile number from Verizon in November 2006.

Her suit alleged thousands of other unauthorized text messages had been sent nationwide to other recycled phone numbers, including some used by young children.

Without admitting any wrongdoing, Facebook agreed to make it easier for recipients of text messages to block future messages originating from the social network, and also will work more closely with mobile phone carriers to monitor the lists of recycled numbers and reduce the frequency of unwanted text messages. More at AP.

Beware of the Love Bots!

So you think you’ve found Mr. or Ms. Right online in, of all places, a Chatroom. Beware! A Russian company has just come up with software that can simulate online flirting, genuinely fooling people into thinking they’re making overtures to a real person.

The program, so far available only in Russian, will go on sale around February 15, just after St Valentine’s Day, said the CyberLover.ru website.

San Francisco, Calif — PC Tools, on Dec 12, uncovered new software developed in Russia that flirts with females or males seeking relationships online in order to collect their personal data.

The software, CyberLover, can conduct fully automated flirtatious conversations with users of chat-rooms and dating sites to lure them into a set of dangerous actions such as sharing their identity or visiting web sites with malicious content.

According to its creators, CyberLover can establish a new relationship with up to ten partners in just 30 minutes and its victims cannot distinguish it from a human being.

PC Tools is concerned about the program’s ability to mimic human behavior during online interactions and urges internet users to beware of this new breed of software that can easily be used for malicious purposes. The concept behind this software could be the catalyst for a dangerous new trend in malware evolution.

“As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering,” says Sergei Shevchenko, Senior Malware Analyst at PC Tools. “It employs highly intelligent and customized dialogue to target users of social networking systems.”

“Internet users today are generally aware of the dangers of suspicious attachments and URLs they receive, the documents they open or the websites they visit, but CyberLover employs a new technique that is unheard of – and that’s what makes it particularly dangerous.”

“CyberLover has been designed as a bot [robot] that lures victims automatically, without human intervention. If it’s spawned in multiple instances on multiple servers, the number of potential victims could be very substantial,” says Shevchenko.

According to PC Tools researchers, the CyberLover software:

- offers a variety of profiles ranging from ‘romantic lover’ to ‘sexual predator;’

- uses a series of easily configurable “dialogue scenarios” with pre-programmed questions and discussion topics;

- is designed to recognize the responses of chat-room users to tailor its interaction accordingly;

- compiles a detailed report on every person it meets and submits then to a remote source – the reports contain confidential information that the victim has shared with the bot, which can include the victim’s name, contact details and personal photo(s);

- invites victims to visit a “personal” website or blog which could in fact be a fake page used to automatically infect visitors with malware.

Though Cyberlover is currently targeting Russian web sites, social networkers and online daters in the are urged to stay alert to unusual activity credited to programs like CyberLover.

To protect themselves, PC Tools recommends:

• Never give your personal details to anyone over the internet.
• Consider using aliases/fake names on social networking sites and when chatting online.
• Carefully monitor the online behavior of your family members and educate them of the dangers.
• Ensure you have up-to-date AntiVirus and Anti-Spyware installed, with real-time and behavioral protection.

PC Tools warns the security industry to prepare itself for this potential new trend of malware which uses “natural language dialogue systems” – already deployed within gaming technologies. PC Tools.

Part shopper, part geek, all penny-wise. All of us here at deal locker really truely love the rush of getting a great deal. Even more we love to help our friends do the same. Deal Locker is in its infancy, but is focused on building a suite of tools designed to help you and your friends save money. Says DealLocker.com.

Donna Fuscaldo of Fox Business writes about an entrepreneur turning his frustrations with Internet coupons into a business plan for a new Web site.

His plan turned into DealLocker.com, where users are told to type in a merchants’ name to find all the coupons associated with that retailer. You can also browse through different categories, giving you potentially more opportunities to save, the site boasts.

“The idea behind the Web site is a really easy place to find coupons to stores,’’ said Jonathan Lieberman, founder and chief executive of deallocker.com.

Deallocker.com was born out of Lieberman’s aggravation sparked by Internet coupons. Lieberman, a former Internet marketer, would spend hours paging through websites trying to find those ever elusive coupons.

“You’d get to that checkout page and the empty coupon box would mock you,’’ said Lieberman. “I was so frustrated that I never had that secret code.”

DealLocker.com, which went live in August, currently has 2,500 participating merchants. But consumers are encouraged to post any coupons they find on their own on the Web. All told, the website boasts about 5,000 stores with roughly 20,000 coupons being offered. Lieberman said the company sees hundreds of thousands of visitors each month. More at FoxBusiness.

On Wednesday, Dec 12, Google Mobile released new iPhone interface for Picasa. After you go to Picasa on your iPhone and log in, you can quickly see all your albums that you’ve uploaded to Picasa Web.

If you click on any of the albums, you can get a full view of your picture with comments from your friends. Or you can click on Slideshow, sit back and watch the pictures scroll. You can also search for photos in your album or through community photos. Finally, you can view your friends’ albums through favorites.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch go to http://picasaweb.google.com and check it out. More at Google Mobile Blog.

NEW YORK — Dec 13, `07 — Rupert Murdoch won control on Thursday of a long-coveted prize, The Wall Street Journal, as Shareholders of Dow Jones & Co. gave final approval Thursday to a $5 billion bid from Murdoch’s News Corp to acquire the media company, the final step needed before one of the world’s most influential newspapers, The WSJ, changes hands.

The controlling shareholders of Dow Jones, the far-flung Bancroft family, had initially rebuffed Murdoch’s approach this spring, but eventually enough of them agreed to accept his rich offer of $60 a share to ensure his bid would succeed.

Dow Jones held the shareholder vote in a hotel in the financial district of lower Manhattan, near its headquarters. The formal closing of the deal is expected to occur either later Thursday or Friday. The vote was 60.27 percent in favor.

Murdoch’s bid of $60 per share represented a massive premium of 65 percent over the price Dow Jones shares had been trading at before his offer became public.

With annual revenue of about $2 billion, Dow Jones is relatively small in an age of conglomerates. But it is one of the most influential forces in American media, especially in financial news, where Mr. Murdoch has placed some very big bets of late. The company includes The Journal, whose daily domestic circulation of more than 2 million ranks second only to USA Today, and Dow Jones Newswires, the Dow Jones indexes, the Factiva information and archive service, Marketwatch.com, and other properties.

Last week Murdoch named a longtime News Corp publishing executive Les Hinton to be CEO of Dow Jones, replacing Rich Zannino, who is leaving the company.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla –BUSINESS WIRE– Dec 13, ‘07 — MySpace and Sprint announced today that Sprint will be the first US wireless carrier to link to the free MySpace Mobile Web site once it officially launches in early 2008, at no additional charge to Sprint data subscribers.

This means that Sprint customers with enabled phones will be able to click to access MySpace from the Sprint portal. The new version of MySpace Mobile will feature rich graphical design, a revamped email interface and other new features. The site is currently in beta at http://mobile.myspace.com.

In addition to the new MySpace Mobile, Sprint customers will also be able to directly link to other leading mobile Web sites from Fox Interactive Media (FIM), including IGN, FOXSports.com on MSN, RottenTomatoes, AskMen, its network of MyFOX local affiliates and the newest addition Photobucket. The agreement was announced this morning by FIM President Peter Levinsohn at Sprint’s annual Application Developer Conference in Hollywood, FL.

NEW YORK — Dec 13, ‘07 — Rupert Murdoch is poised to fulfill his dream of taking over The Wall Street Journal as a hard-fought takeover of Dow Jones & Co is expected to be completed Thursday.

Dow Jones shareholders are scheduled to vote later today on Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp takeover offer and the acquisition “is expected to be completed shortly thereafter,” both companies said in a statement last week.

Dow Jones & Co shareholders holding more than 50 percent of the voting power of the company approved its $5.6 billion sale to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the Wall Street Journal Web site said on Wednesday.

A count of the proxy votes ahead of a Thursday shareholder meeting showed shareholders owning more than half of the company’s voting power threw their support behind the deal, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

Dow Jones’s board approved the deal in July after members of its controlling family, the Bancrofts, said they would support the sale.

Ahead of the deal’s closing, Murdoch appointed News Corp veteran Les Hinton as Dow Jones chief executive and named Times of London editor Robert Thomson as the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

As Murdoch, 76, closed in on his long-sought prize, The Wall Street Journal, he gave his son, James, an expanded role in the media empire, naming him to a position apparently aimed at grooming him to head the conglomerate.

News Corp announced Friday that James Murdoch, 34, the youngest of Murdoch’s four children, will be the boss of News Corp in Europe and Asia, effective immediately.

As chairman and chief executive of the company’s businesses in Europe and Asia, James Murdoch will also oversee the Wall Street Journal Europe, the British newspapers The Times and The Sun as well as Australian publications controlled by News Corp.

News Corporation is the umbrella company for an empire that also includes the Fox News Channel, the New York Post newspaper, the Fox Hollywood film studios and television network and the rapidly growing Internet social networking site MySpace.

Dec 07, ‘07 — Rupert Murdoch installed his own leadership team at Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. on Friday, a week before his acquisition of the company is expected to close. He also tapped his son James as heir apparent to his media empire News Corp.

Les Hinton, who has spent his career at News Corp.’s newspapers, will become CEO of Dow Jones next week, following a vote of the company’s shareholders on Dec 13. Hinton currently oversees News Corp’s papers in the United Kingdom, including The Times, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sun, and News of the World.

Robert Thomson, editor of The Times, will become publisher of the Journal. Dow Jones also owns Dow Jones Newswires, Barron’s and a news database business called Factiva.

James Murdoch was named boss of News Corporation in Europe and Asia on Friday in a move seen as putting him in line to succeed father and media mogul Rupert Murdoch as head of the sprawling empire.

The promotion of James Murdoch, the youngest of four children, marks a remarkable rise through the boardroom ranks for the only family heir inside News Corp, the US conglomerate chaired by his Australian-born father.

The younger Murdoch, who assumes his London-based post with immediate effect, is in charge of assets including News International UK, Sky Italia, the Asian-based Star TV and News Corporation Europe, the group said in a statement.

As chairman and chief executive of Europe and Asia, Murdoch will also oversee the Wall Street Journal Europe, The Times and The Sun as well as Australian publications controlled by News Corp.

The 34-year-old leaves his post as chief executive of British satellite television broadcaster BSkyB, in which News Corp is the leading shareholder, but will assume his father’s role as BSkyB non-executive chairman.

The reshuffle, which confirms what a source earlier told Reuters, appears to address the long-term speculation of who will eventually take over the media and communications conglomerate from the 76-year-old media mogul.

Rupert Murdoch’s older son, Lachlan, 36, had initially been seen as the leading contender during his time at News Corp but he left the group in 2005 to start a new venture.

Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, 39, has also been viewed as a dark horse candidate over the years. The former managing director of Sky Networks struck out on her own in 2000 and launched her own TV production company.

“This is grooming James for a larger role longer term at News Corp,” Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield said. “He has proved himself beyond a doubt over the last several years at BSkyB.”

James Murdoch joined Sky in November 2003 and has expanded the company from its pay-TV roots to add broadband and telephony services. News Corp owns 39 percent of the company.

But like his father, he has proved to be a risk taker. He has also drawn the attention of regulators, leaving the group engaged in three separate investigations and a law suit with fierce rival Virgin Media.

His most audacious move came in November 2006, when he purchased a 17.9 percent stake in Britain’s biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster ITV.

Murdoch said the purchase was a long-term investment but its rivals accused him of trying to prevent ITV from being bought by NTL — now renamed Virgin Media — and the deal is still being investigated by the UK Competition Commission.

Dec 07, ‘07 — UNICEF, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and Google today announced the launch of ” Our Stories “, a joint initiative to preserve and share the histories and identities of cultures around the world by making personal stories available online in many languages.

Using laptops, mobile phones and other recording devices, children will record, in their native languages, the stories of elders, family members and friends. These stories will be shared globally through the Our Stories website, where they can be found on a Google Map.

By making these stories accessible around the world, the Our Stories project hopes to contribute to a better understanding of our shared humanity across countries and cultures, across religious traditions, across languages, and across generations.

Low-cost XO laptops by One Laptop per Child will serve as a foundation to help build this digital archive of personal stories by providing children in developing countries with easy-to-use technology to record their stories and interviews.

The Our Stories website will initially include stories collected by Brazil’s Museum of the Person and stories recorded for UNICEF by young people in Ghana, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda.

Our Stories has taken inspiration from the StoryCorps project in the United States founded by MacArthur Fellow Dave Isay. “StoryCorps is proud to lend its experience in recording the conversations of nearly 30,000 Americans to this global undertaking,” said Isay. “These efforts teach us that the lives of everyone – whether they are in New York or Nairobi – matter, and that they will not be forgotten.”

More stories from more countries will be added to the site every month in an effort to preserve an oral history of humanity in the 21st Century.

Leading figures have already lent their voices to the project: Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan and UNICEF Eminent Advocate for Children, and Ishmael Beah, UNICEF Advocate for Children Affected by War and best-selling author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, have all recorded messages welcoming users to the site and encouraging them to share their stories.

Listen to a story today at OurStories.org.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Dec 07, ‘07 — Syrian authorities have blocked Facebook, the popular Internet hangout, over what seems to be fears of Israeli “infiltration” of Syrian social networks on the Net, according to residents and media reports, the Associated Press reports.

Residents of Damascus said that they have not been able to enter Facebook for more than two weeks. An Associated Press reporter got a blank page when he tried to open Facebook’s home page Friday from the Syrian capital.

Lebanon’s daily As-Safir reported that Facebook was blocked on Nov. 18. It said the authorities took the step because Israelis have been entering Syria-based groups.

Human rights groups have regularly criticized Syrian authorities for blocking opposition sites and Internet sites critical of President Bashar Assad’s government.

Former President Hafez Assad’s death in 2000 after three decades of authoritarian rule raised hopes of a freer society under his British-educated son and successor.

But the younger Assad cracked down on political opponents and human rights activists, putting many of them in jail. More at IHT.

AUSTIN, Texas — Dec 05, ‘07 — Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today took legal action against two Web sites that cater to children but fail to adequately protect their privacy and safety. Texas is the first state to file an enforcement action under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law that generally prohibits Web sites from unnecessarily collecting personal information from children under 13.

According to Attorney General investigators, TheDollPalace.com and Gamesradar.com unlawfully collect personal information such as names, ages, and home addresses from children. Investigators also discovered that the sites’ parental consent features were easily manipulated and circumvented. The lack of reasonable controls readily allow children to access the sites’ various features, including interactive chat rooms and forums, without their parents’ knowledge.

“These defendants are charged with operating child-oriented Web sites that violate the law by failing to protect young users,” Attorney General Abbott said. “Federal law provides important protections to prevent children from divulging sensitive personal information and to shield them from inappropriate sexual or violent content online. The Office of the Attorney General will continue aggressively enforcing laws to protect young Internet users.”

Both Web sites violate COPPA by failing to include necessary disclosures and failing to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children. TheDollPalace.com, for example, simply asks young users who are attempting to register, “Is a parent with you right now?” Children who click “Yes” are directed to a page that allows them to simply click “OK” to vague disclosures regarding information collection and use. Gamesradar.com similarly fails to properly obtain parental consent.

Under COPPA, these Web sites must make a greater effort to ensure that parents consent to their children providing personal information online. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offers several options for Web site operators to obtain verifiable parental consent. Among them, the FTC recommends that Web sites maintain a toll-free telephone number staffed by trained personnel for parents to call in their consent or provide a form for the parent to print, complete, sign, and mail or fax back to Web site operators.

On The Doll Palace Web site, kids who join a “friends” forum are encouraged to fill out a lengthy questionnaire and are given drop-down lists of possible answers. Under “smoking habits,” for example, kids can select answers such as “I occasionally smoke good cigars.” Among the choices for eye color are “sexy hazel” and “evening black.”

Children can also say, “I would like to meet someone older than myself” or “I like to talk about sexual issues.” One of the answers under “dress preference” allows kids to respond: “I prefer to be nude.”

More at AG,Texas.

San Francisco, Calif — Dec 05, ‘07 — Beacon, the online advertising system that was supposed to light Facebook’s way to riches, has created such a dark storm of controversy that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg today told users they could turn it off.

The dramatic reversal in the face of huge public outcry is an attempt to restore the company’s battered image with its more than 55 million users and the marketers trying to reach them.

Excerpts from Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Thoughts on Beacon’ on The Facebook Blog

About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web. We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.

While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I’d like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.

When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared.

But we missed the right balance. At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn’t have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends.

It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation an