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Cisco Systems and EMC are expanding a partnership to ensure the security of sensitive enterprise data.

The companies are already working together, but now plan to do more to combine network security technology from Cisco and data security tools from EMC's RSA division, executives said Monday at a press event held in conjunction with the RSA security conference in San Francisco.

Responding to the growing need to control sensitive data, Cisco and EMC plan to jointly develop integrated products, services and best practices, said Richard Palmer, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Security Technology Group. They initially will focus on data loss prevention, data center security, and data encryption and key management. By joining together, the companies can cover everything from data centers and servers to individual employees' PCs, plus the network that connects them, he said. However, details were scarce at the Monday announcement.

As sensitive data is shared more widely, concerns about customer privacy, company confidentiality, copyright and other issues are making it more important to treat data carefully, said Tom Corn, vice president of product marketing and product management in EMC's data security group.

“Threat defense, for years, was keeping bad things out. Now we have to be in the business of keeping good things in, as well,” said Robert Gleichauf, Cisco's chief technology officer for security.

RSA' s DLP (Data Loss Prevention) Suite can detect sensitive data based on a wide variety of requirements and legal standards around the world, RSA said. Cisco will integrate those classification capabilities with its own DLP tools in the network and on PCs and other endpoints; RSA's DLP Suite will take advantage of Cisco's policy enforcement capabilities.

First, Cisco will enhance its CSA (Cisco Security Agent) with the RSA classification technology, and customers will be able to manage the combined capabilities with either the Cisco Security Agent Management Center or the RSA DLP Enterprise Manager, the companies said. In addition, the companies will let enterprises integrate the Cisco MDS 9000's Storage Media Encryption technology with RSA Key Manager so they can encrypt data stored on tapes and virtual tapes. One other area of increased cooperation will be PCI (Payment Card Industry) security regulations, important in retail industries for customer credit-card information.

In a demonstration of the RSA classification technology working with Cisco's CSA, the companies simulated an employee accidentally trying to copy a document containing customer credit-card numbers onto an external storage device. CSA produced a pop-up warning to the employee that included a box where the employee could give a business justification for going ahead with the process. Another tool let the user clean out the sensitive information before copying the document over. Lessons learned from such incidents, if they happened frequently, could point to changes in business processes, the companies said.

NEW YORK - The online hangout MySpace is expanding its offerings for U.S. Hispanics, adding eight bilingual communities focused on Latino bands and celebrities, soccer and other interests.

The year-old MySpace Latino has largely been a translation of MySpace’s English site into Spanish. Beginning Tuesday, MySpace is unveiling content specific to one of the fastest growing groups online.

“It’s been something they’ve been asking for,” said Victor Kong, the Miami-based managing director for MySpace Latino. “We’re not just duplicating everything and having the same exact programs in Spanish.”

MySpace officials say that switching between English and Spanish should generally be seamless. The Los Angeles-based company, a unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., will continue to have separate sites aimed at Latinos abroad: MySpace Mexico and MySpace Latin America in Spanish, and MySpace Brazil in Portuguese.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, about three-quarters of English-speaking U.S. Hispanics are online, an increase from about half in 2002. But a joint study by that group and the Pew Hispanic Center found usage lower among Spanish-dominant Hispanics — 32 percent as of late 2006.

Sites targeting other groups, including blacks, are in the works, but MySpace is expanding the Latino site now because of its growth. The company said it has adding tens of thousands of Hispanic users each month with little promotion.

The new communities will offer a nationwide contest to identify four up and coming Latino acts, behind-the-scene interviews with bands and opportunities to attend live concerts offline — the first takes place Friday in Miami.

In a partnership with Spanish Broadcasting System Inc., MySpace is offering a channel featuring the latest on Latino celebrities and fashion.

Another community, En Tu Ciudad, offers recommendations on Latino events in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami. Features include information on art openings and reviews of movies with Hispanic actors.

A soccer community will cover both U.S. and Latin American soccer teams.

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On the Net:

http://latino.myspace.com

SAN FRANCISCO - Battered by product delays and acquisition costs, beleaguered chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said Monday that it will jettison 10 percent of its work force and warned investors that first-quarter sales were lower than expected across all business lines.

The Sunnyvale-based company’s job cuts, which amount to more than 1,600 workers out of 16,800 worldwide, were expected. The cuts are slated to start this month and finish by September.

But the sales miss surprised Wall Street. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial were expecting AMD to ring up $1.61 billion in sales; the company says sales for the three months ended March 29 were closer to $1.5 billion, a 15 percent drop from the year-ago period.

AMD shares fell 14 cents, or 2 percent, to $6.20 in after-hours trading. The stock had risen 11 cents to close at $6.34 before the layoffs and sales warning were released.

AMD has fallen on hard times as it confronts intensifying competition from Intel Corp., the world’s largest semiconductor company, and tries to digest the $5.6 billion acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI Technologies Inc., which AMD recently said is worth about 30 percent less than when it was acquired.

AMD views the acquisition as a key way to attack Intel and incorporate better graphics capabilities into its chips.

Graphics are now a key battleground for chip makers as more and more Internet surfing involves video and as the graphics requirements for computer games are heightened.

Lengthy product delays for its new Opteron server chip, a product critical to the company’s financial recovery, also hurt AMD’s competitiveness. Technical glitches pushed back the chip’s full release for months after the official launch in September.

Intel has endured its own financial hardships as a result of the battle with AMD, whose restructuring is the latest in a series of aggressive cost-cutting maneuvers by both the No. 1 and No. 2 makers of microprocessors, which act as the brains of personal computers.

Last year, Santa Clara-based Intel cut about 10,500 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force, in a move to save about $3 billion annually.

The restructuring was triggered by Intel’s sharply sliding profits, the result of losing customers to AMD and furiously cutting prices to keep older chips competitive.

AMD’s losses in 2007 were staggering, capping a brutal two-year stretch in which the company’s market value plunged from more than $20 billion to $3.84 billion today.

In 2007, AMD lost $3.38 billion, $2 billion of which were non-cash charges. Revenues were $6 billion.

The stock has fallen from over $40 a share in early 2006.

San Francisco - Amazon's cloud computing service was down on Monday morning for more than an hour, following

Facebook is reportedly preparing to settle a lawsuit that could have turned the popular social-networking site on its head. The suit by ConnectU alleges Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, swiped trade secrets, source code, and intellectual property from his fellow Harvard University students, brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and their friend Divya Narenda.

The March 2007 lawsuit claims that Zuckerberg, now Facebook's CEO, was hired to develop a Web site for the Harvard students. That Web site was to be called ConnectU, an online social-networking site similar to Facebook. Zuckerberg promised to keep the plans a secret, but registered the Facebook.com domain name shortly after he began work on the ConnectU project, the court filings indicate.

The Winklevoss brothers and Narenda are asking the court to shut down Facebook, give them control of the property, and award them profits from the popular social-networking site. Facebook has about 30 million members.

Suit Countersuit

The suit claims that Zuckerberg, who was a computer-science major at Harvard for two years before launching Facebook and moving to California in 2004, began working on ConnectU a year earlier. A judge already threw out the first lawsuit the Harvard students filed against Facebook, citing a legal technicality.

The parties involved in the lawsuit were not immediately available for comment, but The New York Times is reporting that Facebook is finalizing a settlement with ConnectU's founders. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The Times' source was cited as a person briefed on the status of the case.

The report has merit. Facebook filed a countersuit against ConnectU last year, accusing the site of unfair business practices. Now ll motions in the case against ConnectU have been terminated.

Who Really Cares?

In order to win the suit, the plaintiffs would need to demonstrate that Facebook is very similar to the pitch they made to Zuckerberg. If the pitch was very broad and Zuckerman merely refined it, the idea could be 99 percent his. If the students provided Zuckerberg with complex blueprints, legal experts said, it would be a different scenario.

On the other hand, social-networking analysts doubt the Facebook drama with ConnectU had any impact on which social network consumers use.

“I would be willing to bet that most of its users have never heard of the lawsuit. I doubt it was a factor in deciding which social network to use,” said John Barrett, a social-media analyst at Parks Associates. “Your average person out there on the Internet, especially teenagers, have probably not heard that Facebook is in legal trouble.”

Settling the lawsuit, if in fact it is about to settle, is surely a relief to Facebook from the perspective of legal expenses. But Barrett doesn't expect a boost in the user base. Few, he said, were holding out on using Facebook to see the conclusion of this case.

San Francisco - Nokia remains at work on its answer to the Apple iPhone, codenamed “Tube,” a company official said on Monday.

Shown in a slide at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Redwood City, Calif., Tube looks similar to the popular iPhone. The Nokia device showed graphical displays, such as a promotion for the movie Shrekthe Third. Other capabilities will be featured, such as the ability to upload photos.

“It's our first touch device,” said Tom Libretto, vice president of Forum Nokia. Interfacing with the system is done via touch similar to the iPhone. He said the company has not published the planned date of shipment for Tube.

Nokia believes it can compete with iPhone, and during his presentation, Libretto compared volume shipments of iPhone to Nokia's shipments of phones. Since the launch of iPhone in June, Apple has shipped 5 million to 6 million of the devices, paling in comparison to Nokia's device shipments, Libretto said. “We've done that [volume] since we've had dinner on Friday,” he said.

(Apple afterward said 4 million iPhones had shipped worldwide by January.)

The Tube will support Java, something Apple has been reluctant to do with iPhone.

Music-oriented social-networking site imeem announced Monday it is acquiring SNOCAP. SNOCAP is a digital-rights and content-management technology, and imeem is the third largest social network in the U.S. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Dalton Caldwell, imeem's founder and CEO, called SNOCAP a great technology platform. He added that the acquisition will “give labels and independent artists new ways to promote and sell their music through imeem, MySpace” and other locations on the Web.

ID, Digital Registry

SNOCAP's proprietary content-identification platform and digital registry was created in part to give unsigned and independent artists, as well as labels of various sizes, control over how their music is distributed online. Over the last year, imeem has been using the SNOCAP technology to identify music uploaded by users to determine if the content owner allows full streaming, and to manage payments for the use of the music on a particular site.

Artists and labels whose work is streamed on imeem, for instance, share in the site's music-advertising revenue. There are more than 7 million songs currently in SNOCAP's digital registry, and more than 110,000 unsigned and unaffiliated artists and labels sell their music through the SNOCAP MyStores. SNOCAP MyStores also sell the music of well-known performers, including The Rolling Stones, Coldplay and others.

In its announcement, imeem indicated that SNOCAP will continue to offer products and services to its current accounts. In addition to MySpace, SNOCAP offers services to the Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, TVT Records, Ryko Group, and others.

Looking for a Buyer

SNOCAP was started in 2002 by a group that included Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster, and there had been reports that it was looking for a buyer.

Mike McGuire, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner, said that he wasn't surprised at the sale, since “SNOCAP let it be known that they were looking to be acquired.” He noted that one question now is what happens to the MySpace and other stores run by SNOCAP, where the platform now owned by imeem would be providing services to that social-networking site's competitors?

On the other hand, he pointed out, a larger base gives SNOCAP more leverage to acquire more music. “The old rule books about who is your competitor are currently being rewritten,” McGuire said.

Susan Kevorkian, a program manager at IDC, said it looked as if imeem “was hedging its bets,” and that it might want to expand SNOCAP's role as a licensed service provider.

She also noted that music is increasingly becoming a key part of the strategy for social-networking sites. Last week, for example, MySpace announced it was launching a music store with three major music labels.

WASHINGTON - Ten months before the nation flips to digital television, technology companies and TV broadcasters are fighting over the virtual remote, with different ideas of what to do with the unused airwaves.

Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others on Tuesday are launching an advertising and lobbying blitz to convince Capitol Hill that these unoccupied airwaves, or “white spaces,” could be used for affordable high-speed Internet service, greatly benefiting rural areas and spurring competition and innovation.

Tech companies say the technology is there to allow low-powered, unlicensed devices, such as cell phones, laptops and BlackBerrys, to operate in the empty spectrum without interfering with over-the-air TV programming and wireless microphone signals.

The Federal Communications Commission is trying to figure if the technology can do this, although several publicized tests have failed.

Such stumbles are exhibit A in the case TV broadcasters are making against opening up white spaces. The broadcasters, who’ve aired their opposition through an equally aggressive lobbying campaign, say if such use is allowed it will interrupt, namely freeze, TV pictures. Viewers could be stuck staring at Paula Abdul’s face while this week’s winners of “American Idol” are announced.

Programming disruptions are why broadcasters want white-space access to require a license. They’ve proposed auctioning off the spectrum for licensed use that could turn the white spaces into a private estate instead of a free public park.

That’s not what lawmakers will be hearing starting Tuesday.

Over the next several weeks, members of the Wireless Innovation Alliance, will tout white-space benefits to lawmakers, who they say are not getting the full picture because their opponents — namely the National Association of Broadcasters — are playing politics and spreading lies.

“We want science to play it self out at the FCC. Broadcasters don’t. They want politics to mess up science,” said alliance spokesman Brian Peters, who’s a lobbyist for the tech trade group Information Technology Industry Council.

When the nation makes the switch to digital TV in February 2009, broadcasters will occupy channels 2 through 51. But almost half those channels in some cities will remain fallow, especially in rural areas where there are fewer broadcasters. Those white spaces are considered valuable because they can travel long distances and go through walls.

But the white spaces are not completely empty either. Many licensed wireless microphone signals — popular in sports venues, concerts, Broadway theater and even houses of worship — have used them for decades.

There’s “virtually no record” of microphone signals interfering with TV broadcasts, said Mark Brunner, a spokesman for Niles, Ill.-based Shure Inc., one of the country’s largest makers of wireless microphones and other audio equipment.

The microphone industry is singing the same tune as broadcasters: unfettered white space use could harm signals and licensed use may be an answer.

The tech alliance says technology to detect and avoid broadcast programming and permit broadband transmission is doable and point to the testing of similar equipment by the U.S. military and other countries, such as Great Britain.

Microsoft, Philips Electronics North America Corp., Adaptrum Inc. and Motorola Inc. have submitted devices to the FCC, which plans to issue a report sometime this summer. But twice this year, Microsoft devices have broken down during tests. Last year, the agency gave another Microsoft device a failing grade.

Three strikes in the lab, say broadcasters, should keep the devices out of the market.

“You would not have Google, Microsoft and others engaging in a broad, wide-ranging political lobbying effort if their equipment worked,” said David Donovan, president of the Association of Maximum Service Television, the technical arm for the TV broadcasting industry. “They’re in trouble.”

Peters says that’s false. Lawmakers want something done with the spectrum, he says, as long as it doesn’t interfere with programming — a desire shared by his group.

The FCC is collecting data to write safe-operating rules for unlicensed devices in the spectrum. The devices that have failed are not prototypes for consumer products.

Google recently suggested additional safeguards from interference, but opponents shot them down.

Broadcasters and wireless microphone say auctioning the spectrum off — an idea also proposed by the CTIA — The Wireless Association, the telecommunications industry’s main lobbying group — would hold a licensee responsible for interference problems and remedies. With unlicensed portable devices tapping in, they say it’s virtually impossible to find the source to any interference.

“Let’s see how serious they (technology companies) really are instead of getting a free ride and threatening the digital television transition,” said NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton.

Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., last year suggested such an auction although he hasn’t formally proposed any legislation.

Edmond Thomas, a former FCC engineer whose law firm represents tech companies supporting white spaces, said licensing the spectrum makes no sense. He said a single gatekeeper will tightly control access and service and offer devices that won’t be as appealing and innovative as in an unlicensed regime.

“You’ll have so many innovators all exploring ways for it be used,” he said.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Lower-than-expected sales have driven chip maker Advanced Micro Devices to reduce its revenue outlook for the first quarter and begin trimming its 16,000-person workforce by 10 percent.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said Monday it now expects revenue of $1.5 billion for the quarter ended March 29, down 15 percent from the 2007 fourth quarter.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had forecast higher quarterly sales of $1.62 billion.

AMD says it will complete the job cuts by the end of the third quarter and take a related charge in the second quarter. It didn’t disclose restructuring costs.

LOS ANGELES - Music social networking Web site operator imeem Inc. said Monday it has agreed to acquire Snocap Inc., the digital content tracking company founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning.

San Francisco-based Imeem did not disclose financial terms of the deal.

Snocap developed a digital fingerprinting technology that checks media files uploaded to a Web site against a registry of copyrighted works to determine if a song has been cleared for playback in its entirety online.

It also tracks payments to record labels and artists whose music is streamed on sites like imeem.

In addition, Snocap powers technology that lets users of News Corp.’s MySpace sell downloads of original music directly through their MySpace Web pages.

Snocap’s technology for buying music downloads on MySpace will continue to be operated by imeem.

Fanning, who created the Napster online file-sharing service as a college student, founded Snocap in 2002.

He was a member of the board of directors but had not been active in the company in recent years.

In October, the San Francisco-based company cut its work force by nearly half so it could focus on selling itself.

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On the Net:

Snocap Inc.: http://www.snocap.com