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Celebrity birthdays for the week of April 27-May 3g:

April 27: Actor Jack Klugman is 86. Actress Anouk Aimee is 76. Announcer Casey Kasem is 76. Actress Judy Carne is 69. aSinger Ann Peebles is 61. Singer Kate Pierson of The B-52’s is 60. Singer Herbie Murrell of The Stylistics is 59. Actor Douglas Sheehan (”Knots Landing”) is 59. Guitarist Ace Frehley (Kiss) is 57. Singer Sheena Easton is 49. Actor James Le Gros (”Ally McBeal”) is 46. Bassist Rob Squires of Big Head Todd and the Monsters is 43. Singer Mica Paris is 39. Singer-guitarist Travis Meeks of Days of the New is 29. Singer-guitarist Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy is 24.

April 28: Actress-singer Ann-Margret is 67. Actress Marcia Strassman (”Welcome Back Kotter”) is 60. Actor Paul Guilfoyle (”CSI”) is 59. “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno is 58. Actress Mary McDonnell is 55. Singer-bassist Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth is 55. Rapper Too Short is 42. Actress Simbi Khali (”3rd Rock From The Sun”) is 37. Actress Bridget Moynahan is 37. Actor Chris Young is 37. Rapper Big Gipp of Goodie Mob is 35. Actress Elisabeth Rohm (”Law and Order”) is 35. Actor Jorge Garcia (”Lost”) is 35. Actress Penelope Cruz is 34. Actor Nate Richert (”Sabrina the Teenage Witch”) is 30. Actress Jessica Alba (”Dark Angel”) is 27.

April 29: Singer Carl Gardner of The Coasters is 80. Actor Keith Baxter is 75. Bluesman Otis Rush is 74. Country singer Duane Allen of The Oak Ridge Boys is 65. Singer Tommy James is 61. Bassist Wayne Secrest of Confederate Railroad is 58. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld is 54. Actress Kate Mulgrew (”Star Trek: Voyager”) is 53. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis is 51. Actress Michelle Pfeiffer is 50. Actress Eve Plumb (”The Brady Bunch”) is 50. Country singer Stephanie Bentley is 45. Singer Carnie Wilson of Wilson Phillips is 40. Actress Uma Thurman is 38. Rapper Master P is 38. Country singer James Bonamy is 36. Bassist Mike Hogan of The Cranberries is 35. Actor Zane Carney (”Dave’s World”) is 23.

April 30: Actress Cloris Leachman is 82. Singer Willie Nelson is 75. Talk show host Gary Collins is 70. Actor Burt Young is 68. Singer Bobby Vee is 65. Actress Jill Clayburgh is 64. Actor Perry King (”Riptide”) is 60. Singer Merrill Osmond of The Osmonds is 55. Director Jane Campion is 54. Actor Adrian Pasdar (”Heroes”) is 43. Rapper Turbo B of Snap is 41. Guitarist Clark Vogeler (The Toadies) is 39. Guitarist Chris Henderson of 3 Doors Down is 37. Country singer Carolyn Dawn Johnson is 37. Singer J.R. Richards of Dishwalla is 36. Singer Akon is 35. Singer Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees is 35. Actor Johnny Galecki (”The Big Bang Theory,” “Roseanne”) is 33. Rapper Lloyd Banks is 26. Actress Kirsten Dunst is 26. Country singer Tyler Wilkinson of The Wilkinsons is 24.

May 1: Country singer Sonny James is 79. Singer Judy Collins is 69. Singer Rita Coolidge is 63. Actor Dann Florek (”Law and Order: SVU”) is 57. Singer-songwriter Ray Parker Jr. is 54. Actress Maia Morgenstern (”The Passion of the Christ”) is 46. Country singer Wayne Hancock is 43. Bassist Johnny Colt (Black Crowes) is 42. Actor Charlie Schlatter (”Diagnosis Murder”) is 42. Country singer Tim McGraw is 41. Bassist D’Arcy Wretzky (Smashing Pumpkins) is 40. Actor Darius McCrary (”Family Matters”) is 32.

May 2: Singer Engelbert Humperdinck is 72. Country singer R.C. Bannon is 63. Singer Lesley Gore is 62. Country singer Larry Gatlin is 60. Singer Lou Gramm of Foreigner is 58. Actress Christine Baranski is 56. R&B singer Angela Bofill is 54. Actress Elizabeth Berridge (”The John Larroquette Show”) is 46. Country singer Ty Herndon is 46. Wrestler-actor The Rock is 36. Actress Jenna Von Oy (”Blossom”) is 31. Singer Lily Allen is 23. Actress Kay Panabaker (”Nancy Drew,” “Summerland”) is 18.

May 3: Folk singer Pete Seeger is 89. Actress Ann B. Davis (”The Brady Bunch”) is 82. Singer Frankie Valli is 73. Sports announcer Greg Gumbel is 62. Singer Mary Hopkin is 58. Singer Christopher Cross is 57. Country drummer Cactus Moser of Highway 101 is 51. Keyboardist David Ball of Soft Cell is 49. Country singer Shane Minor is 40. Country singer Brad Martin is 35. Actor Dule’ Hill (”The West Wing”) is 33. Dancer Cheryl Burke (”Dancing With The Stars”) is 24.

NEW YORK (AP) — Yoko Ono is suing the producers of a movie that challenges the concept of Darwinian evolution, saying they used the song “Imagine” without her permission and led the blogosphere to accuse her of “selling out.”

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Ono accuses the producers of “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” of suggesting to viewers that those who guard John Lennon’s legacy somehow authorized or sponsored the film.

The producers of the film, which features Ben Stein challenging Darwinian theories that prevail in academic circles and suggesting that life could have emerged through intelligent design, said they used only “a very small portion of the song.”

“Based on the fair use doctrine, news commentators and film documentarians regularly use material in the same way we do,” Premise Media said in a statement. “Unbiased viewers of the film will see that the ‘Imagine’ clip was used as part of a social commentary in the exercise of free speech and freedom of inquiry.”

Ono’s lawsuit claims the producers did not ask for permission either because they knew they couldn’t get it or because they did not want to pay for the rights. It objects to the way “Imagine” is listed in the film’s credits, saying it suggested to members of the news media and others that the song’s use had been approved.

“Internet ‘bloggers’ immediately began accusing Mrs. Lennon of ’selling out’ by licensing the song to defendants,” says the complaint, filed this week.

The lawsuit calls “Imagine” Lennon’s signature song, saying it “has become closely associated with and is synonymous with John Lennon.”

The complaint, which also names other firms involved with the movie, asks the court to stop the filmmakers from distributing, selling and promoting the movie, and it seeks financial damages. It was filed on behalf of Ono, Lennon’s sons Sean and Julian, and EMI Blackwood Music Inc.

“Expelled” earned the No. 10 spot at the box office this weekend, bringing in nearly $3 million in its first weekend in wide release. Stein, an actor, quiz show host and former speech writer for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has been visiting some state capitals to screen the movie for lawmakers.

Beyond commercial success, developers of social applications must aspire to trigger significant change via their software and aim to improve lives and businesses, keynote speakers said Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Expo.

Focusing only on generating loads of revenue is the wrong approach and will derail software development efforts, speakers told hundreds of attendees at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Web 2.0 application development is still in its early days and plenty of opportunities exist to tackle big problems and make society better, said Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly Media, the event's organizer. “We really can change the world,” he said.

He listed examples of Web applications designed to keep citizens better informed about the workings of government and to track environmental problems. “I don't know if there's money there, but damn, it's important,” he said, drawing applause from the audience.

Later, Max Levchin, founder and CEO of Slide, reminded developers in attendance that the key to creating a popular Web application is to make it useful for people.

“If you build something of great value, you have nothing to worry about,” said Levchin, whose company has developed many of the most popular applications and widgets on social networks like MySpace and Facebook.

Levchin, who answered questions on stage from Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li, reiterated that if developers “focus on something that is of real value to users” then “you have a business.”

Of course, if you have a business, you have to generate revenue, especially at a company like Slide that has raised half a billion dollars in funding from investors, as Li pointed out while inquiring whether Slide, with its entertainment-focused applications, is a fad or whether it can justify its valuation.

Levchin said he's confident about Slide's ability to capitalize on its applications' popularity via online advertising. Because Slide's applications are so intensely engaging for users, advertisers, including large brands, recognize the value of marketing themselves within the applications' “context,” he said.

The link the applications can provide between people and advertisers is much more interactive and ultimately effective than conventional online ad formats, like banners, he said. “Every [ad] campaign we've run in [Slide application] SuperPoke has been a smashing success for advertisers,” said Levchin, a PayPal co-founder.

Asked how Slide viewed the problem of application spam, which boils down to social applications that have self-promoting– and often intrusive and annoying– features, Levchin said it is “one of the most intellect challenging issues” in this market.

The reason is that social networks' user bases are very heterogeneous, so what might feel like intrusive spam to a set of users might not be objectionable to another set of users, he said.

Scott Berkun, author of the book “The Myths of Innovation,” said that developers and entrepreneurs, as a prerequisite to innovating, must have identified a specific and difficult to tackle problem.

“What problem are you trying to solve?” he asked, adding that this is a question that software developers can't afford to skip or answer unsuccessfully. “Sometimes we forget the need to find a real problem.”

At Microsoft's TellMe division, their problem is clearly defined: injecting voice recognition and voice commands into mobile applications, which rely too much on “typing and touching,” said Dariusz Paczuski, TellMe's executive in charge of consumer services.

This is particularly important given that mobile phones increasingly pack more and more applications and are used for a rising variety of tasks in multiple scenarios, such as driving, Paczuski said.

“There has to be a better way and voice can be a part of that solution. People should be able to say what they want [from their mobile application] and get it,” he said.

Web 2.0 Expo runs through Friday.

Big vendors like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft are all over the show floor at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, testimony that new Web-based technologies are making their way into the enterprise. But some attendees are still wondering, what is an enterprise mashup, and what will it do for me?

Enterprise mashups are lightweight applications that combine data from two or more sources to create something more valuable than the sum of their parts. They are often developed to solve a particular problem, implemented in days rather than months, and use standards like POX (plain old XML), Atom and RSS to make sharing and subscribing to them easy. They often combine internal and external sources of data.

That's according to John Musser of ProgrammableWeb, which maintains a catalog of public Web APIs (application programming interfaces) available to programmers for building mashups. It added 120 new APIs to its directory in the first three months of the year, up 150 percent from a year ago, and now has about 700 in total. “The slope is increasing fast,” Musser said in a talk at the Web 2.0 Expo on Wednesday.

The mashup world is still immature, and there are hurdles for businesses that need to be addressed. Service-level agreements aren't always available, data quality is hard to assure and there are a host of security and regulatory issues to grapple with. But still some companies are taking the plunge.

Great Lakes Educational Loan Services used an external e-signature service from DocuSign to help it deal with the flood of loan requests it gets around this time each year. It combined the service with its loan application system on its Web site. In the first two months, 80 percent of its 72,000 applicants used e-signatures, which cut its costs in this area by 75 percent, Musser said.

Car maker Audi used to collect data manually from 20 sources, including its inventory system and competitors' Web sites, to do competitive analyses. Developers at the company used a data mashup tool from Kapow Technologies that now automates the process, and it took only four days to build.

Mashups began in the consumer world and are often traced back to HousingMaps.com, which combines property listings from the Craigslist bulletin board with Google Maps to make apartment hunting easier. The enterprise world lags behind the consumer world by 18 to 24 months, according to Musser, but mashup tools from vendors like IBM, Serena Software, Tibco Software, JackBe, Nexaweb and others are closing the gap.

Service-level agreements are becoming more common too. Last week Amazon rolled out two levels of paid support for its hosted storage and developer services, and Google offers paid support options for its Maps API. A service ecosystem is also emerging around mashups, including data feeds from companies like Xignite and StrikeIron, and services for monitoring a Web API's performance, like one offered by WebMetrics. And big companies like BT Group, Orange and FedEx increasingly offer Web APIs.

Mashups can address the “long tail” of demand for internal IT projects, or the small projects that can be done quickly on an ad hoc basis, according to Musser. Just as business users have learned to customize Excel to meet their productivity needs, easy-to-use composer tools could make mashups “the Excel of the future,” he said.

Duane Nason, lead Web engineer with Gap, came to the Web 2.0 conference to learn what role mashups might play at the clothing retailer. He said he can imagine a useful tool that plots Gap stores or distribution centers on Google Maps, although he also wondered whether third parties usually charge to use their APIs. (Some do, some don't.)

Mashups are closely related to the SOA (service oriented architecture) model, which promotes building loosely coupled applications that can be combined and reused. Some see mashups as a way for companies to get more return on the big investments they made in SOA.

The iPhone, with its full Web browser, is driving mashups to the mobile world, said Rod Smith, an IBM vice president for emerging Internet technologies. He showed a mashup on an iPhone here that displays property foreclosures in the U.S. by zip code, along with their for-sale prices. It uses APIs from StrikeIron, Trulia and Google Maps, he said, and took three weeks to create.

But he also noted a problem for enterprises that may require a cultural change to embrace mashups: IT departments that for years have been asked to protect corporate data may be unwilling to suddenly offer it as a service that can be consumed by anyone.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Megan Fox was named the world's sexiest woman on Wednesday by an annual online poll, while the world's most Googled woman, Britney Spears, barely scraped in at No. 100 after a shocker of a year.

Fox, 21, who starred in last year's hit movie “Transformers,” grabbed the title from actress Jessica Alba, 26, topping online men's magazine FHM Online's (www.FHMonline.com) reader poll of the 100 Sexiest Women in the World for 2008.

Alba dropped to No. 3, coming behind American actress and former model Jessica Biel but ahead of Canadian actress Elisha Cuthbert who was ranked fourth after appearing in horror movie “Captivity” last year. U.S actress and singer Scarlett Johansson, 23, rounded out the top five.

“Megan Fox is the deserving winner of this year's FHM title. She's young, she's hot, she's a rising star and her sex appeal has definitely transformed this year's list. She's got a great future ahead of her,” said FHM Online U.S. Editor JR Futrell.

Fox debuted on the list at No. 68 in 2006 and was ranked No. 65 last year. But playing the lead female role in “Transformers,” a blockbuster $700 million hit at worldwide box offices, markedly raised her profile.

Also in the top 10 were Emmanuelle Chriqui, Hilary Duff, Tricia Helfer, Blake Lively and Kate Beckinsale.

Newcomers to the list included Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice from British pop band the Spice Girls, who moved to Los Angeles with her husband, English soccer playerDavid Beckham, last year. She made her debut at No. 99.

Spears, 26, whose career has been buried under an avalanche of personal and mental health problems, managed to make the list at No. 100, a steep decline from 2004 when she was voted the world's sexiest woman.

FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World poll is now in its 14th year with nearly 9 million votes cast this year by FHM readers worldwide to choose the sexiest women in film, television, music, sports, and fashion.

This year's list also included reality TV stars to reflect the genre's increasing popularity with three girls from the “The Hills” making the list, including Heidi Montag at No. 44 and Audrina Patridge at No. 80 and Lauren Conrad at No. 95.

From “Dancing with the Stars,” actress Shannon Elizabeth returned to the list at No. 46 after being absent last year. She was joined by Cheryl Burke at No. 40 and Karina Smirnoff at No. 78, who made their debuts.

“It's no surprise to us that so many reality stars made this year's list,” said Futrell. 'The Hills' is one of the most popular shows on MTV, and 'Dancing with the Stars' is the No. 2 reality show in America after 'American Idol.' We expect even more to be added next year.”

Reuters/Nielsen

SANTA ANA, California (Reuters) - A computer hacker testified on Wednesday that a News Corp (NWSa.N) unit hired him to develop pirating software, but denied using it to penetrate the security system of a rival satellite television service.

Christopher Tarnovsky — who said his first payment was $20,000 in cash hidden in electronic devices mailed from Canada — testified in a corporate-spying lawsuit brought against News Corp's NDS Group (NNDS.O) by DISH Network Corp (DISH.O).

The trial could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in damage awards.

NDS, which provides security technology to a global satellite network that includes satellite TV service DirecTV, denies the claims, saying it was only engaged in reverse engineering — looking at a technology product to determine how it works, a standard in the electronics industry.

After an introduction by plaintiff's attorney Chad Hagan as one of the “two best hackers in the world,” Tarnovsky told the court that he was paid on a regular basis by Harper Collins, a publishing arm of News Corp, for 10 years.

Tarnovsky said one of his first projects was to develop a pirating program to make DirectTV more secure.

But lawyers for DISH Network claim Tarnovsky's mission was to hack into DISH's satellite network, steal the security code, then flood the market with pirated smart cards costing DISH $900 million in lost revenue and system-repair costs.

Smart cards enable satellite TV converter boxes to bring in premium channels.

The suit was brought by EchoStar Communications, which later split into two companies, DISH and EchoStar Corp, with DISH being the primary plaintiff.

“I never got money for reprogramming Echostar cards,” Tarnovsky said. “Someone is trying to set me up.”

DISH attorney Chad Hagan asked, “This is all a big conspiracy?”

“Yes,” Tarnovsky answered. He conceded that he constructed a device called “the stinger” that could communicate with any smart card in the world.

Another hacker, Tony Dionisi, testified on Tuesday that Tarnovsky bragged about creating “the stinger” and that he knew of another hacker and NDS employee who reprogrammed 50 EchoStar smart cards with the device.

The trial is expected to last another two to three weeks. It is being heard in southern California because both Tarnovsky and NDS are located there.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb, Gary Hill)

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Apple Inc.’s fiscal second-quarter profit jumped 36 percent on blistering sales of Macintosh computers — and beat Wall Street estimates — but its stock dipped on a lower-than-expected profit forecast.

The Mac and iPod maker is believed to be especially vulnerable to slowing consumer spending in the United States because of its stronger presence here than overseas and because many of its products carry a premium price tag. Those fears have contributed to a 20 percent decline in Apple’s stock price since the start of the year.

But the company has traditionally issued conservative financial forecasts, and sales in the United States were particularly strong in the latest quarter, rising 40 percent over last year. So many investors were left scratching their heads about how to interpret Apple’s guidance.

Apple shares fell $1.18, or less than 1 percent, to $161.71 in after-hours trading, climbing back from a dip of nearly 5 percent right after the close of trading and the release of the earnings report. The shares had closed up $2.69, or 1.7 percent, at $162.89, during the regular session.

“The stock was all over the place, but I thought it was a great quarter,” said Jane Snorek, senior analyst of technology stocks at First American Funds.

“The most important part is that the Apple consumer seems to be immune to economic weakness,” she said. “This is a very U.S.-centric story. The guidance could have been horrendous. They could have said they were seeing pricing pressure, or the stores weren’t doing well. But I see it as, I’m perfectly safe buying the stock now.”

The Cupertino-based company earned $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per share, in its second quarter, which ended March 29. That’s 9 cents per share better than what analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were expecting on average.

During the same period last year, Apple earned $770 million, or 87 cents per share.

Revenue jumped 43 percent in the period to $7.51 billion — also beating Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts were predicting Apple would rake in $6.96 billion.

Apple said this year brought the strongest sales and earnings performance during the March quarter in Apple’s history.

Apple’s chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, would not specifically address in an interview how Apple might be affected by slowing domestic consumer spending, but he noted that Apple’s sales growth overall is expected to continue accelerating, a sign the company is faring well despite the economic downturn.

Management is aware of the economic pressures but is focused on running the company, which performed “exceptionally well” and turned in an “awesome” quarter, he said.

The company forecast profits for the fiscal third quarter of $1 per share, short of the $1.10 per share in the average analyst estimate and at the low end of what all analysts polled were expecting.

The company expects sales of about $7.2 billion, slightly above the $7.16 billion Wall Street was expecting.

Apple sold 2.29 million Macintosh computers during the second quarter, a 51 percent jump over a year ago. The company sold 10.6 million iPods during the quarter, one percent higher than last year, and 1.7 million iPhones.

Apple’s stock, which had quadrupled from its recent low of $50.67 in July 2006 to a high of $202.96 in December of last year, has suffered recently amid worries about intensifying competition and fears it could be hurt by economic jitters that are tamping down consumer spending.

The stock dropped as low as $120 earlier this year but has since rebounded on signs Apple’s Macintosh business is gaining more market share and optimism about the iPhone.

Apple unveiled new software in March for the iPhone that allows third-party developers to build applications for the multimedia gadget — they had been locked out before — and makes the iPhone compatible with Microsoft Corp.’s Exchange software, which opens the door to corporate e-mail users.

The latter is Apple’s attempt to woo more business customers while addressing a key weakness in the iPhone and placing it in more direct competition with Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and Palm Inc.’s Treo smart phones.

Apple executives reiterated the company’s goal to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.

They also said the company plans to delay recording revenue from iPhone sales between March 6, when the software upgrade to the multimedia gadgets was announced, and summertime — when the upgrade actually ships to consumers.

Apple executives said the move hurt profit margins in the second quarter and would continue to in the third but is required to properly account for a new product not being delivered in completed form to consumers.

San Francisco - Tracing the history of mashups to the music business, an Oracle executive touted enterprise-class mashups Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco.

In the music space, mashups pulled together tunes that were not connected originally but can be pleasing. In the Web vein, mashups pull together data from different sources, said the executive, Vince Casarez, vice president for product management at Oracle.

To be successful, enterprise mashups need to be easy to use, have performance on par with the Web experience, and provide relevant content, Casarez said. Mashup builders also need to know their audience, and understanding the business is crucial as well, he stressed.

“If you don't necessarily spend some of the time understanding what the business [is] and what the business needs, then it's just as good as having a bad venue for what you're trying to do,” Casarez said.

Interviewed afterward, Casarez emphasized that the major benefit of mashups for enterprises is the context-focused content these applications provide.

“I think what it allows them to do is kind of put that enterprise content in the context of what the end-user does,” Casarez said. “[For example], I have plenty of sales figures, I have plenty of information, I just want to put it in the context of the task that I'm doing.”

He listed four types of enterprise mashups:

* Back-end mashups, which tend to target a wide audience and have users filtering out the information. These, however, offer limited reusability across applications as well as limited or no end user customization. * Business mashups, which coordinate different process orchestration events. Examples include employee on-boarding and incident management systems. * Front-end mashups, which are typically done by technical leads in lines of business and include information embedded in the page and visualization of related data sources. Some examples of a front-end mashup are ones that overlay sales data on a map and pair inventory data with customer orders. * Social enterprise mashups, most often built by developers. These offer social interaction as the key to tying information together and include activity streams tied to applications.

An industry survey from early last year that said only 4 percent of enterprises were ready to deploy mashups at that time, Casarez said. “I think there's some confusion as to where the right use case is,” he said.

Casarez advised attendees to take a look at different mashup products from companies, such as JackBe, Kapow Technologies, Serena Software and Oracle. He also suggested taking a look at the programmableweb.com/mashups Web page, which features mashups.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two cable companies said on Wednesday they had exited a wireless phone venture with number-three U.S. wireless company Sprint Nextel Corp.

Spokesmen for Comcast Corp, the leading U.S. cable operator, and Cox Communications said they were pulling out of the two-and-half-year-old joint venture and switching their mobile phone customers to a similar Sprint package.

The $200 million venture, branded as Pivot last year, also included Time Warner Cable Inc and Advanced/Newhouse Communications, but failed to spark much consumer interest.

The cable companies and Sprint had hoped customers would be interested in a single integrated service that combines cable television, Internet access, fixed-line phone and wireless on one bill. It also planned to offer integrated services such as TV clips and e-mails on cell phones or a single voicemail.

A Comcast spokesman said Pivot did not satisfy the cable company's wireless ambitions.

“We decided to discontinue the service because the product required a lot of operational complexities, so we decided it wasn't the approach we wanted for the long term,” he said.

Comcast would not confirm how many subscribers took the Pivot service.

Sprint spokeswoman Melinda Tiemeyer referred Reuters to each company for confirmation of their plans, but the other joint venture partners were not immediately available to comment on whether they would also pull out.

“We will maintain our relationship with all our cable partners and will continue to talk with them about other wireless ventures going forward,” Tiemeyer said.

Last month it was reported that Comcast and Time Warner Cable were in talks with Sprint and Clearwire Corp to form a joint venture for WiMax wireless service. A source close to one of the companies said the WiMax joint venture talks were not affected by anything that happens with Pivot.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Braden Reddall)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) posted a higher quarterly profit on Wednesday, boosted by demand for chips in advanced cell phones, but its forecast for the rest of the year fell short of Wall Street expectations.

Shares of Qualcomm fell 3 percent in extended trading after it said fiscal third-quarter earnings would drop from a year ago, raising concerns that cheaper cell phones with less profitable chips would sell better than expected.

“I think people were looking for more upside in the forecast,” said Charter Equity Research analyst Ed Snyder. “The end market is favoring lower price products.”

Qualcomm's results follow a disappointing forecast from rival Texas Instruments Inc (TXN.N), whose biggest client is Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE). On Monday, Texas Instruments warned of slower than expected demand for chips used in advanced phones.

Qualcomm Chief Financial Officer Bill Keitel said growth in demand for low-end phones was as expected. But he was upbeat on the growth for advanced phones with high-speed data links.

“We're seeing a little bit more of high-end (demand) than we had expected,” Keitel told Reuters in an interview.

Some analysts were encouraged by Qualcomm's second-quarter profit, which was slightly ahead of their expectations.

Global Crown Capital analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez said the company appeared to benefit from growth at major customers like LG Electronics (066570.KS) and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), which compete with cell phone leader Nokia.

“The market is growing faster than people believe and Qualcomm customers LG and Samsung are gaining market share,” he said. He noted the company had a reputation for giving conservative forecasts.

Qualcomm's net profit rose to $766 million, or 47 cents a share, for the second quarter ended March 30, from $726 million, or 43 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue grew to $2.6 billion from $2.22 billion.

Excluding its investment arm and other items, it earned 54 cents per share, below analysts' average estimate of 52 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

U.S. STILL GROWING

Qualcomm executives said that despite concerns over a weaker U.S. economy, the company was benefiting from growth in both the United States and other parts of the world.

“We're pleased with how the business is running and how it's diversified geographically,” Chief Executive Paul Jacobs said on a call with analysts.

For the third quarter, Qualcomm expects earnings per share of 50 cents to 52 cents, before items, down from 55 cents in the year-earlier quarter and below the average analyst forecast of 52 cents as compiled by Reuters Estimates.

The company raised its forecast for full-year earnings before items to $2.04 to $2.09 per share, from its earlier target of $2.01 to $2.07. But the midpoint of that range was below the average analyst forecast of $2.09.

Qualcomm estimated lower earnings from cash and marketable securities for the full year, but said that would be more than offset by better-than-expected growth in its wireless chip and technology licensing businesses.

“The interest rates are lower so they're making less money on that big cash balance,” said Charter Equity's Snyder. He estimated Qualcomm's cash balance at about $10.5 billion, including marketable securities.

Qualcomm is embroiled in legal battles with rival Broadcom Corp (BRCM.O) and No. 1 phone maker Nokia. It said it would need a “business defense” budget for fiscal 2008 of $300 million, mostly for legal costs.

Qualcomm said 2008 revenue would be $10 billion to $10.4 billion, up from its earlier $9.6 billion to $10 billion target. On average, analysts expected revenue of $9.96 billion.

Qualcomm shares fell to $41 in after-hours trading from their close of $41.89 on Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew, editing by Richard Chang)