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SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Google has set out to enable all websites, free of charge, to be imbued with common social networking features as the Internet evolves toward becoming a giant community along the lines of MySpace or Facebook.

Google Friend Connect was previewed at a Campfire One gathering of third-party software developers at the company's “Googleplex” campus in Mountain View, California on Monday.

The unveiling of the plan comes just days after top social networking websites MySpace and Facebook broke down walls of their online communities to let members share profile information at other websites.

“Social is going mainstream,” Google director of engineering David Glazer said during a conference call with reporters.

“What used to be hard and proprietary is becoming easy and open. It's the evolution of social networking.”

Glazer described the MySpace and Facebook announcements as “big steps forward in giving users control over their data” and said Friend Connect is intended to further advance the movement.

“We see the web moving toward an end state where people can use any application on any website with any of their friends,” Glazer said.

“Social activity on the web has been bottled up in a handful of sites. As things mature on the web they become more open and more interoperable.”

Friend Connect lets website owner's add social-networking features such as registration, member galleries, message boards, and fun or useful third-party applications called “widgets” by simply adding snippets of free computer code.

People visiting websites using Friend Connect will be able to interact with contacts they know from online communities such as Facebook, Google Talk, orkut, Plaxo or hi5.

To demonstrate, an iLike application was incorporated into an official website of musician Ingrid Michaelson so that visitors don't have to leave to connect with friends at their social networking profiles.

All website operators using Friend Connect see are user nicknames and images, if any, posted along with them.

Concerns about protecting people's profile data prompted Google to decide to work individually with website operators interested in Friend Connect, according to Glazer.

Website owners are invited to put their names in a “white list” queue online at www/google.com/friendconnect.

Google wants to be at the heart of the Internet trend of people building online identities that play, share, and conduct business in virtual environments, according to Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle.

“Much like Google kind of controls the overall online advertising experience I think this is Google trying to figure out how to own the virtual representation of a person on the web,” Enderle told AFP.

“Monetizing the virtual person on the web is where the money is and they are trying to figure out how to do that. If you want to have the door into my wallet you want to be as close to my information as you can get.”

Google plans to phase in more websites and social networks in the months to come, with the Open Social software platform as a basis for interoperability. Google launched Open Social last year to promote common protocols so developers can make applications that work on any social networking website involved in the effort.

“The web is moving rapidly to being more open and more social and that is good for everyone,” Glazer said. “And, yes, it is good for Google. When the web is healthy, and more people have more ways to be engaged online, our business is healthy.”

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Any Star Trek fan knows that space travel is not always easy, but Microsoft Corp wants to make traveling the “final frontier” as simple as turning on your computer.

The world's largest software maker launched a free software application called WorldWide Telescope on Monday that allows everyone from space novices to astronomy professors to easily explore galaxies, star systems and distant planets.

The WorldWide Telescope stitches together 12 terabytes — the data equivalent of 2.6 billion pages of text — of pictures from sources including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The experience is similar to playing a video game, allowing users to zoom in and out of galaxies that are thousands of light years away. It allows seamless viewing of far-away star systems and rarely-seen space dust in breathtaking clarity.

A test version of the software is available for download at http://www.worldwidetelescope.org.

Microsoft archrival Google Inc also has its eyes to the skies. Google Sky started as an extension of space data and images into Google Earth before eventually unveiling a version that can be used through a Web browser.

Google's version is also free.

Microsoft said it will release the WorldWide Telescope free of charge as a tribute to Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher who went missing off the coast of California while sailing last year. Gray worked on projects with astronomers to organize the vast amounts of data and images being pulled from satellites.

Microsoft expects the technology used in the WorldWide Telescope to help the company in future software applications, but the goal for this program is to spark the interest of children to want to learn more about space and possibly pursue careers in science and engineering.

“My idea of success is if WorldWide Telescope changes how people see the universe and for a generation of kids to have a degree of knowledge about space that they are just not getting now,” said Curtis Wong, manager of Microsoft's Next Media Research Group.

“Contextualizing astronomy is missing right now. You see all of these Hubble images and they're amazing, but you have no idea about how big they are, how far away it is.”

The software allows users to develop their own guided tours of the universe to share with others or take part a guided tour created by astronomy experts.

(Reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi; Editing by Kim Coghill)

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - NBCUniversal said Monday that it is forming the Digital Health Network, a group of Web sites that will distribute health-focused videos produced by the network.

At launch, the network will consist of Healthline Networks and RightHealth, two outside sites, and YourTotalHealth.com, the health section on NBC Universal's iVillage property. The destinations will distribute health-related videos produced by NBC News, NBC Local Media and the company's Healthology.com.

In March, NBC Universal formed its Auto Network and invested $6 million in DriverTV, the centerpiece of that network, for a 35 percent stake. For the Health Network, though, NBC Universal is not investing in the outside sites; rather, it will partner with them for distribution.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) is in talks to buy technology outsourcing company Electronic Data Systems Corp (EDS.N) for $12 billion to $13 billion in a deal which would vault it to a close second to IBM in technology services.

The acquisition would be HP's biggest since its $19 billion acquisition of Compaq in 2002. Shares of EDS rose nearly 28 percent, taking its market value to about $12 billion.

HP shares fell nearly 5 percent amid some skepticism that slow-growing EDS, still considered in turnaround mode, would provide more than a one-time boost, and might not be worth a premium of as much as 37 percent.

A source briefed on the matter told Reuters about the talks and that the plan was to announce a deal by the close of Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal first reported the discussions, and later HP and EDS both said they were in talks about a business combination but gave no details.

“While Hewlett-Packard has over time built up its own outsourcing practice, this clearly is a move by Mark Hurd to challenge IBM in the services area,” said David Garrity, director of research at Dinosaur Securities, referring to HP's chief executive.

A bigger HP could compete better against International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N) in going after large clients and help it keep costs in line, analysts said. If HP completes the acquisition, it would be by far the largest under CEO Hurd.

“It would put Hewlett-Packard in the sweet spot of an IT spending trend. It would definitely improve their position against IBM,” said CRT Capital Group analyst Ashok Kumar.

SKEPTICISM ABOUT TARGET

HP has long considered an acquisition to beef up its tech services business, a sector that offers relatively stable income and high margins even in an economic downturn.

Worldwide computer services revenue rose 10.5 percent to $748 billion in 2007, according to data released on Monday by market research firm Gartner Inc.

IBM continued to be the leader, with 7.2 percent share. EDS weighed in at No. 2, with 3.0 percent of the market, while HP was No. 5, with 2.2 percent market share.

Together HP and EDS would have roughly $39.4 billion in services revenue, compared with IBM's $54.1 billion last year.

“HP gains a very strong No. 2 position in total services market share and professional services market share behind IBM,” said Gartner analyst Allie Young.

If EDS were to remain independent it would have a tough time holding on to its number 2 slot in IT services market, Young said.

EDS brings to HP a strong base in infrastructure outsourcing, Young said. But neither HP nor EDS is strong in high-end consulting, which is a strong suit for IBM.

Yet there was some skepticism about HP's target, EDS.

“Unless HP has some synergies where they can dramatically impact earnings growth of EDS, I'm not sure why they'd want to buy it,” said Jim Huguet, co-chief executive at Great Companies LLC. He noted that EDS's earnings growth has averaged 2.8 percent.

“EDS is trading at about half its historical PE, so they're obviously seeing it as a value, which it is if you can generate earnings growth at 15-20 percent. But my question is whether it will become a drain on Hewlett-Packard?”

In April, EDS reported a 62 percent decline in first quarter profit, though the results had topped Wall Street expectations. Despite the beat, analysts said EDS faced intense competition from Indian rivals and saw little catalyst for growth.

“Growth could temporarily stall but then the opportunity is for the merged operations to be extremely strong and competitive,” Young said.

Besides HP and IBM, EDS also competes with Accenture Ltd (ACN.N) and Computer Sciences Corp (CSC.N) in the United States, as well as Indian companies Infosys Technologies Ltd (INFY.BO), Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS.BO) and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp (CTSH.O).

“EDS has been relatively stagnant over the past few years. HP has been trying to promote themselves as a major services organization over the past few years. This will certainly help them with that,” said Chad Hersh, an analyst at Novarica.

EDS has cut thousands of jobs to boost profits, and also is generating revenue from contracts including a lucrative deal last year with the U.S. Navy.

“We believe that Hewlett would be acquiring a fairly clean book of business, at least one that has been well scrubbed. So there shouldn't be any untoward surprises,” Garrity said.

In 2000, HP pulled out of talks to buy the consulting business of PricewaterhouseCoopers for as much as $18 billion. IBM in October 2002 closed its $3.5 billion acquisition of PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting division.

(Reporting by Jui Chakravorty, Tiffany Wu and Ritsuko Ando in New York, Jim Finkle in Boston, and Duncan Martell in San Francisco; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Carol Bishopric, Toni Reinhold)

Nokia is extending its mobile navigation system to the Web via its Ovi.com site, where people will be able to save map locations and routes and then synchronize them with their phones.

Maps on Ovi, unveiled Monday at the Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, California, builds on Nokia's next generation of mobile-phone navigation technology, Nokia Maps 2.0. It also signals Nokia's growing focus on software and services, even for use independent of its mobile phones.

Ovi is a Nokia Web portal for Internet services such as content sharing. Maps on Ovi will let people use and mark up maps on the Web and then upload their changes to a cell phone, said Michael Halbherr, vice president of context-based services at Nokia. For example, before traveling to another city, a user could pick out places to visit and the routes to those sites from his hotel. Once saved on Ovi, that information would be copied onto his phone automatically at the next synchronization, Halbherr said.

In addition, the user could walk or drive around the city and save his route on the phone, then upload that to his Ovi map. Sights along the way that he marked as interesting could be uploaded to the Web map, which eventually could provide a wealth of information about those places from a variety of sources. Nokia expects to deliver that information on the Web-based map through mashups with partners, which might include user-generated review sites such as TripAdvisor, Halbherr said.

Later, Nokia will let users of Ovi share their routes and tips with friends. For example, a company could put together a set of suggestions for employees visiting its headquarters city, Halbherr said.

Maps on Ovi will become available by the end of September, Nokia said. It may or may not be in beta at that time, but it will be fairly close to production quality in any case, he said.

Initially, Maps on Ovi will work only with Nokia phones, but the company intends to make it independent of its hardware. Nokia intends to succeed as a software and services company independent of its phones, Halbherr said. This is true even in the U.S., where Nokia's smartphones have had trouble gaining traction.

“We are running a software business,” Halbherr said. “We'll do whatever we need to do to make (inroads) in the U.S. It may be a Nokia device, or it may not.”

Maps 2.0 is a set of navigation capabilities, the fruit of Nokia's acquisition of Gate5, that was introduced in February and is now in beta for Nokia's Series 60 operating system. It includes features such as routes and directions designed for pedestrians instead of drivers. That software will emerge from beta by early next month for Series 60 phones, which include N-Series and E-Series smartphones as well as some less expensive devices, Nokia said. By the end of this year, a reduced version of Maps 2.0 will become available in beta for the company's lower-end Series 40 OS, Halbherr said.

SAN FRANCISCO - Hewlett-Packard Co. is negotiating to buy technology services provider Electronic Data Systems Corp. in a deal that could help the world’s largest personal computer maker snap up more data management and consulting contracts.

Palo Alto-based HP and Plano, Texas-based EDS confirmed the talks Monday shortly after The Wall Street Journal reported a deal could be reached as early as Tuesday. Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the Journal said HP will pay $12 billion to $13 billion — a price that translates to $24 to $26 per share.

The two companies declined to comment beyond their confirmation of the talks.

EDS shares soared $5.27,or nearly 28 percent, to finish Monday at $24.13. HP shares dropped $2.49, more than 5 percent, to close at $46.64 as investors fretted over the deal’s logistics.

HP ended January with nearly $10 billion in cash. With a market value of about $115 billion, HP could easily use its own stock to finance the purchase.

Like many corporate marriages, bringing together HP and EDS could trigger cultural clashes that ruin the union, said AMR Research analyst Dana Stiffler. “Palo Alto versus Plano wrangling will destroy any short-medium term benefit unless there’s a strong integration roadmap,” she predicted.

If the deal is completed, it would be HP’s biggest acquisition since it bought Compaq Computer Corp. for $19 billion in 2002.

HP has been trying to expand its technology consulting and data management business for years, hoping to challenge rival IBM Corp.’s leadership in the lucrative field. In 2000, HP attempted to buy PricewaterhouseCoopers’ consulting division before those discussions unraveled. IBM wound up buying PricewaterhouseCoopers’ consulting arm instead.

The demand for technology consulting and customer support services have steadily grown during the past two decades as the automation of corporate America and the rise of the Internet prompted more businesses to hire outside help to help ensure all the computer software and hardware runs smoothly.

IBM’s technology services division brought in revenue of $54 billion year, accounting for half of the company’s total sales. Combined, EDS and HP’s technology services division had about $39 billion in revenue last year.

Acquiring EDS also could yield more government work for HP, which had about $500 million in prime federal contracts in fiscal 2007. EDS is far better connected, with deals worth about $2.5 billion — putting it among the top 10 among government technology contractors.

Combined, HP and EDS still would lag significantly behind government contractors like Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co.

EDS earned $716 million on $22.1 billion in revenue last year.

The Texas company has been linked with possible deals previously, including a reported interest by Deutsche Telekom late last year and Dell Inc. before that. None of the companies ever confirmed reports that they were talking.

Former IBM salesman H. Ross Perot left IBM to start EDS in 1962 and practically invented the business of running other companies’ computer systems, now called information-technology or IT services. Perot sold EDS to General Motors Corp. for $2.5 billion in 1984 and eventually became so disillusioned with how that deal worked out that he sold his remaining EDS shares to the car maker so he could start a rival service bearing his name.

An outspoken billionaire, Perot became even more famous for running for U.S. president in 1992 and 1996. GM spun off EDS as an independent company in 1996 and remained its largest customer.

EDS was riding high at the start of the decade, despite the dot-com bubble’s bursting. But in late 2002, earnings shortfalls led to investor lawsuits, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, the ouster of the chief executive, and a sharp drop in the stock price.

The company lost $1.7 billion in 2003, but it gradually righted itself under CEO Michael Jordan, a retired CBS and Westinghouse CEO who was hired to lead a turnaround. Jordan fixed some money-losing contracts, including a multibillion-dollar deal to build a communications network for the Navy and Marine Corps, and began cutting costs by sending thousands of jobs to low-cost countries such as India.

Although he hasn’t seen any signs to suggest EDS has been looking for a buyer, Jefferies & Co. analyst Joseph Vafi said the company’s board might have decided a sale would create a quicker payoff for shareholders than trying to grow the company in the highly competitive technology services industry.

HP has been on a roll since it hired Mark Hurd as chief executive three years ago. Since then, it has surpassed IBM as the world’s largest technology company, based on revenue and supplanted Dell as world’s the top seller of personal computers.

The success has helped HP consistently deliver profits that top analyst estimates, which has helped to more than double the company’s stock price since Hurd’s arrival.

Under Hurd’s leadership, HP bought business software maker Mercury Interactive Corp. for $4.9 billion in 2006 and last year paid $1.7 billion for data management provider Opsware Inc., which sold a large chunk of its operations to EDS in 2002.

___

AP Business Writers David Koenig in Dallas and Dibya Sarkar in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story.

LOS ANGELES - Will people remember three-second video ads on their mobile phones? Do high-definition commercials on big screens get people’s hearts racing more than other pitches? Is the sports ticker crawl distracting or does it add value to the 30-second TV spot?

A laboratory in Austin, Texas, to be founded by The Walt Disney Co. by the end of the year aims to answer these questions and more by testing the biometric reactions of a pool of up to 4,000 people to advertising that takes advantage of the latest technology.

In a controlled living room setting, scientists will measure heart rate and skin conductivity and track the gaze of participants who are exposed to new ad models over the Internet, mobile devices and TV screens.

The first results are expected by early 2009.

The media giant, which owns ABC and ESPN, is seeking to learn whether consumers are more engaged by new and interactive ads and ultimately if the company can charge more for them.

Disney planned to announce the formation of the lab to advertisers attending its upfront sales pitch for the coming TV season in New York on Tuesday.

“One of the reasons for engaging in an initiative like this is to determine, once and for all, if there is additional value,” Artie Bulgrin, senior vice president of research and sales development for ESPN, told The Associated Press.

The sports media juggernaut says subscribers to its premium high-definition channels were economically better off and considers them more attractive to advertisers. Now, it will clinically test whether HD ads have more impact, Bulgrin said.

The lab will be headed by Duane Varan, executive director of the Interactive Television Research Institute at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

Varan said biometric testing helps cut to the heart of audience reactions to visual ads, which can sometimes be missed by focus group surveys.

“TV is not a rational medium, it’s an emotional medium,” Varan said. “We can get to a deeper layer of what’s motivating people by seeing how they behave, observing them in experimental settings and seeing how their body reacts.”

The initiative comes as media companies are struggling to recover from the 100-day Hollywood writers strike that depleted scripted shows and hurt network ratings.

It also affirmed the rapid growth of Internet advertising.

Disney chief executive Robert Iger said in March that the company expected to reap $1 billion in annual online revenue by September, including content downloads, online game subscriptions and other e-commerce.

Video advertisements on the ABC.com full episode player already have clickable portions and some come with games attached.

“We want to drive developments in technology, advertising and serving the consumer, not react to them,” said George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports.

___

On the Net:

The Walt Disney Co., http://www.disney.com

San Francisco - Matching up critical components in the SOA space, SOA Software, which provides SOA governance automation, said Monday it has acquired SOA repository and governance vendor LogicLibrary.

The combination creates an integrated SOA automation solution, SOA Software said. Enterprises can accelerate adoption of SOA with rapid delivery of services for distributed and mainframe environments, the company said.

The addition of LogicLibrary technology extends SOA Software integration capabilities across governed deployment platforms, such as IBM, JBoss, Microsoft, and SAP, SOA Software said.

“Basically, what LogicLibrary brings to us is SOA asset lifecycle management as well as SOA development governance and SOA repository,” said Roberto Medrano, executive vice president at SOA Software. “Those are important to complete our integrated SOA governance [portfolio].”

“From our standpoint, this provides complementary technology so we can provide [an] end-to-end integrated governance solution,” added Brent Carlson, who was founder and CTO of LogicLibrary and now has become senior vice president of technology for SOA Software. The merger provides a natural fit between the SOA Software Workbench for software policy governance and the LogicLibrary Logidex repository, Carlson said.

SOA Software did not release the monetary value of the transaction. The deal closed last week.

SANTIAGO, Chile - A prosecutor was appointed Monday to investigate how a computer hacker accessed government data for 6 million Chileans and posted it to the Internet.

Prosecutor Jose Ignacio Escobar, a specialist in high-tech crime, opened the probe as the government announced plans to step up data protection.

Police chief Jaime Jara said the weekend data leak did not include financial records and was less serious than first thought.

The information accessed by a hacker included identity card numbers, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mails and academic records.

“For what we have seen until now, the leaked data does not include information related to banking accounts, salaries or other economic aspects,” Jara said.

The data was taken early Friday from servers at the Education Ministry, the Electoral Service and the military, he said.

The administrator of a local technology-oriented Web site, Leo Prieto, discovered the errant information on the Internet early Saturday and contacted police. It is not clear exactly when the data was posted online.

The information was promptly removed from the Internet, but Prieto said some people may have downloaded it “and it may still be around on the Internet.”

Jara said police have no suspects. The hacker left a message saying he was trying “to demonstrate how poorly protected the data in Chile is, and how nobody works to protect it.”

He signed off as “Anonymous Coward.”

Deputy Telecommunications Minister Pablo Bello said the government is drafting legislation to improve protection of personal data. He did not elaborate.

Government agencies played down the significance of the breach.

The head of the Electoral Service, Juan Garcia, said the information from his agency that appeared on the Internet was not confidential but available to the public upon request.

“Our database is intact, secure and protected,” he said.

The army said the hacker disclosed information pertaining to 8,919 youths out of 146,593 who have registered for military service.

The Education Ministry described its data as a list of credentials for students to get low fares for public transportation and university applications.

The leaked data includes around 2 million telephone numbers. There was no immediate comment from telephone companies.

While Sun executives have said that JavaFX, the company's nascent rich Internet application (RIA) development product family and eventual competitor to Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight, will be entirely open source, a FAQ page on Sun's site appears to contradict that.

“The JavaFX Script language, currently being developed with the community's help (see OpenJFX project), will have a grammar and syntax that are open source. Some parts of the language are already open source,” it states, but adds, “the JavaFX compiler, runtime engine, player, and tools currently under development are not expected to be open source.”

Simon Brocklehurst, CEO of software development company Psynixis, noted the FAQ's wording in a recent blog post.

“I'm pretty sure that potential JavaFX developers would be interested in getting some better understanding on this,” Brocklehurst wrote. “Certainly, the lack of clarity has stopped me getting my hands dirty with JavaFX technology for the time being.”

A Sun spokeswoman declined to provide a direct response to the FAQ statement, but said Sun is looking into revising it and will reveal more information regarding JavaFX and open source later this year.

“Sun will be rolling out our open source strategy for JavaFX concurrent with the release of version 1 of JavaFX Desktop in the fall,” she said in a statement.

She noted that a number of components are already open source, including the JavaFX Plugin for NetBeans. Sun has also started the OpenJFX Compiler project.

The company announced JavaFX in 2007. During last week's JavaOne conference, it presented some demonstrations of the technology and provided a road map.

Although Sun is coming to market with an RIA platform after some competitors, the company believes it has a built-in advantage due to the pervasive reach of Java.