Facebook, the behemoth social network with over 850 million users around the globe has finally filed to go public.The offering will be the largest ever, surpassing Google's in 2004. The company will go by the ticker "FB" later this year and the major banks Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the underwriters.In their S-1 document, the social network reveals it had revenue of $3.71 billion in 2011, up from $1.97 billion the year before. Net income was $1 billion, compared with $606 million the year before, making the site wildly profitable. However, using simple math, Facebook is averaging just over $1 profit per user, a very low number by any metric.Social gaming giant Zynga "accounted for approximately 12 percent of its revenue in 2011," showing how strongly the gaming company's fate is tied to Facebook.When the company goes public, it will raise $5 billion, with a company valuation over $75 billion. CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has a 28.4 percent stake in the company, making him one of the richest men in the world. The valuation will put Facebook squarely ahead of most major companies in the world.Permalink | Comments
torsdag 2 februari 2012
onsdag 1 februari 2012
Major tech companies form DMARC to fight phishing attacks
Major email providers Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL have teamed up with PayPal, Bank of America, Fidelity and other companies to create DMARC.org, a technical specification to fight off the ever-increasing amount of phishing attacks.To get even more technical, the site reads as follows: "DMARC, which stands for "Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance", is a technical specification created by a group of organizations that want to help reduce the potential for email-based abuse by solving a couple of long-standing operational, deployment, and reporting issues related to email authentication protocols.DMARC standardizes how email receivers perform email authentication using the well-known SPF and DKIM mechanisms. This means that senders will experience consistent authentication results for their messages at AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! and any other email receiver implementing DMARC. We hope this will encourage senders to more broadly authenticate their outbound email which can make email a more reliable way to communicate."The other companies involved are Comcast, Facebook, TDP, Agari, American Greetings, LinkedIn, Cloudmark and ReturnPath.PayPal says it blocks over 200,000 phishing emails every day, and Google says 15 percent of all messages delivered are protected by the authentication safeguards. it hopes to increase that number significantly.Visit the site here: Dmarc.orgPermalink | Comments
BlackBerry 7 theme and ringtone categories added to BlackBerry App World
A couple of interesting additions popped up in BlackBerry App World this week: categories for Ringtones and BlackBerry 7 themes. While there has always been a theme section, and there have been several themes for BB7 devices found in App World, until now they were not recognized in their own category. Now when you open App World on your BB7 device, you can see the Theme section and presumably find all sorts of free and paid themes for your BlackBerry. Does this mean that we are one step closer to Theme Builder being updated for Blackberry 7 devices? As soon as we know, you'll know. In the new Ringtone section of BlackBerry App World, you can find hundreds of ringtones in all sorts of genres, brought to App World by a company named Spintones. The majority of the ringtones are $2.99, with a few packs priced a bit higher. At this time, the ringtones are only available in Canada and the United States, but word has it that more countries will have access in the near future. The compatible device list seems to be pretty short, though the minimum OS is listed at 5.0, and there doesn't seem to be a way to preview the ringtone before purchasing. There are also specific rules stating that each ringtone can only be installed on one BlackBerry device, so if you switch devices you have to repurchase the ringtones. Also, you can only re-install the ringtones you purchase up to 2 times within 72 hours of the initial installation on the original device. While the new ringtone gallery isn't going to interest everyone, I'm sure there is a market for it, and it does seem they have a pretty varied selection of ringtones available. No word on whether you will be able to upload your own ringtones at any time in the future, though I'm guessing it's not going to be an option as there would likely be a lot of legal/copyright issues to deal with at that point. Don't forget, if you're looking for free ringtones, CrackBerry has a huge free ringtone gallery that's just a click away. (If you've never downloaded ringtones from our gallery before, make sure you scroll down the page at the link below and read the instructions.) Download free ringtones in the CrackBerry Ringtone Gallery CrackBerry.com's feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. BlackBerry 7 theme and ringtone categories added to BlackBerry App World
Leaked image may show Verizon's plans for shared data plans
Near the end of last year Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam suggested the company was working on simplifying data plans for customers with multiple devices.Shared data plans seem like an inevitable development in the current environment where a single account may have multiple smartphones and carriers are also hoping to sell hotspot and tablet access. Besides the potential advantage for customers, it also means lower costs for the carrier according to McAdam.Now Engadget has posted an image reportedly leaked from inside Verizon. It shows what appears to be an upcoming option for an account level data plan in their account management software. They say the image comes from Verizon training material.Image via Engadget Of course the bigger question is about price. In theory a shared data plan should be more economical unless every device on your account uses close to its limit on a regular basis. However, when Verizon CFO Francis Shammo commented on the possibility of shared data plans and indicated their goal was to maintain the current price levels.On the other hand, it may not matter what Verizon wants if consumers start getting bills with a single data charge which dwarfs what they pay for home Internet access.Permalink | Comments
T-Mobile Says It's Hip to Use Square
T-Mobile USA today announced that it will support the Square mobile payment service for its small business customers. With Square, small businesses can accept credit card payments nearly anywhere in the U.S. at any time. Square will allow small businesses to avoid setting up and/or paying for standard credit card payment systems and services. They need only be subscribed to one of T-Mobile USA's small business plans. T-Mobile believes that by supporting Square, it will give its customers a chance to grow their businesses by keeping operating costs low. T-Mobile USA is also part of the Isis joint venture with AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which will eventually bring near-field communications mobile payments to cell phones.
Amazon: Video Game Revenue Down, Physical Book Sales Up
Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak offered more details this afternoon during an analyst earnings call about the company's disappointing fourth quarter
When it comes to physical media, Szkutak said the biggest hit to revenue came in the area of video game sales, which includes both console and game sales (but not games sold digitally, say from Amazon's app store). Even though he didn't offer specific numbers on that front, he noted that video games sales are seasonal and normally take a big leap in the last quarter of the year ? and that did indeed happen this year, but not enough to match 2010 revenue. In part, that's because more of those sales are going to Amazon's third-party sellers, rather than Amazon itself. So video games units were up, while revenue was down.
When it comes to physical media, Szkutak said the biggest hit to revenue came in the area of video game sales, which includes both console and game sales (but not games sold digitally, say from Amazon's app store). Even though he didn't offer specific numbers on that front, he noted that video games sales are seasonal and normally take a big leap in the last quarter of the year ? and that did indeed happen this year, but not enough to match 2010 revenue. In part, that's because more of those sales are going to Amazon's third-party sellers, rather than Amazon itself. So video games units were up, while revenue was down.
Contest: win 1 of 25 copies of the BlackBerry smartphone voice assistant SayIt!
It seems as though voice controlled assistant applications are all the rage these days. BlackBerry 7 has its universal search voice prompt and we?ve also seen voice dialing for years. To date, the closest thing to Siri that BlackBerry users have seen is the popular application Vlingo. This past month, another application has appeared and has claimed that they are well on their way to being a top contender. SayIt is a voice recognition/assistant application for BlackBerry smartphones running OS 5 and higher that says it can answer any question you throw at it. Regardless if it?s a question about the weather, a message you want to dictate or a search you want to execute, SayIt will attempt to help you get what you are looking for. Here are some examples from the developer: Ask anything you want and SayIt will answer you. For example: "How old is the earth?", "Who is Justin Bieber?", "1 plus 1 equals?", "Tell me about your self?", "What's the weather like?",....and a lot more! You can compose new Email , new Message, open BlackBerry Map, task, calendar,.... using your voice You can Compose SMS, Email, BBM or any text typing use your own voice! You can convert Text to Speech and download the converted text as *.mp3 format You can convert Speech to Text and copy the text to send via BBM, SMS, MMS, Email, and so on. I did find that you had to be in a relatively quiet area in order to use SayIt .. We were in a children?s play center last weekend, sitting at the tables. I couldn?t get SayIt to understand what I was asking of it, no matter if I cupped the microphone and spoke loudly into it. It would only catch snippets of words. When performing basic searches (like weather), Say it uses Wolfram Alpha, known as an ?answer engine (rather than a search engine), to obtain results. Now while it does seem to allow you to ask more questions that Vlingo, it has yet to allow you to dial numbers. It also isn?t convenience key friendly; at best, it?s a 2 click process (one click of the convenience key and another to choose what you want to do). Rather than one virtual button to house everything, there are five buttons to choose from: Text to Voice, Voice to Text, Say a command, Options and Command List. If it adds voice dialing to the mix, I think that SayIt would be a great, fully functional, application. You can grab SayIt for $4.99 from BlackBerry App World. Contest: We have 25 copies of SayIt to give away! All you have to do is leave a comment to be entered. Contest ends this Sunday at midnight PST. More information/download SayIt for BlackBerry smartphones CrackBerry.com's feed sponsored by ShopCrackBerry.com. Contest: win 1 of 25 copies of the BlackBerry smartphone voice assistant SayIt!
Prenumerera på:
Inlägg (Atom)