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NEW YORK - Google Inc.’s online communities have little traction in the United States, but the search leader continues to seek a spot in the social-networking hierarchy.

First, it must contend with Facebook, the No. 2 online hangout behind MySpace.

Days after Google unveiled Friend Connect, which lets the sites of musicians, political campaigns and others incorporate profile data from several social networks, Facebook began to block the program.

Although Google was taking advantage of the same tools that Facebook made available free to other outside developers, Facebook said Google was violating Facebook’s restrictions on data sharing. The two sides remain in a stalemate.

Google, whose Orkut social network has tens of millions of users in Brazil, tried to reach further into social networking with the November unveiling of a consortium called OpenSocial, which lets developers write applications for use on multiple social networks. News Corp.’s MySpace has joined, but Facebook hasn’t.

This month, Google unveiled Friend Connect, which promises to pool profile data from Facebook, Google Talk, Orkut, LinkedIn, Plaxo and hi5, though not MySpace. The profile information gets incorporated into other sites — a political campaign, for instance, can build communities of supporters by tapping existing networks — with Google serving as the intermediary.

Facebook quickly objected, citing privacy concerns. Normally dealing with other companies one on one, Facebook can block a service it feels violates its rules. With Google as the intermediary, Facebook lost that leverage, so it decided to block Friend Connect entirely.

In a blog posting, Facebook developer Charlie Cheever said Google’s Friend Connect “redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge, which doesn’t respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect.”

Google responded, acknowledging it passes along data. But it said sharing is limited to links for profile photos of users and friends who have expressly consented to sharing with that particular site. The user’s name and numeric ID on Facebook are replaced with Google’s own identifiers, Google said in a company blog post.

Google also said it purges Facebook data from its systems every 30 minutes, more frequently than the 24 hours required by Facebook.

Facebook has run into privacy challenges before, most recently when it unveiled a marketing tool called “Beacon” that tracked purchases Facebook members made on other Web sites and sent alerts to their Facebook friends about the transactions.

But Rachel Happe, research manager at IDC, said the dispute is ultimately about control rather than privacy. She said Google’s Friend Connect “starts to eat into other people’s value proposition, which is why you saw Facebook object to it.”

Just days after Microsoft announced it would directly a range of standards-based document formats in a future update to its Office suite, New York's chief information officer issued a report calling for the state to embrace an open document policy.

The report, called “A Strategy for Openness: Enhancing E-Records Access in New York State,” was cosponsored by CIO Melodie Mayberry-Stewart and state archivist Christine Ward and recommends legislative and executive action to support the state's stated policy of “conduct(ing) its business in an open, interoperable and transparent manner.”

New York law requires officials to study how “electronic documents . . . can be created, maintained, exchanged and preserved.” The law also requires officials to take into account other states' policies, guidelines for the state archives, the needs for public access, expected storage life, costs of implementation and potential savings.

Charged atmosphere

Unlike the firestorm created in 2005 when Massachusetts promulgated regulations standardizing on the open source Open Document Format (ODF), New York's recommendations are likely to cast it as a peace-maker, Peter O'Kelly, research director for the Burton Group, said.

“This is a very politically charged domain and a contentious debate,” O'Kelly said in a telephone interview. “The good news is there is a key shift is from proprietary and binary file formats to standards-based XML file formats,” he said. “That opens up a lot of new opportunities for people to unencumber themselves from vendor tie-ins.”

The CIO's report specifically cautioned against nominating specific technologies as state document standards. “The State Legislature should not mandate in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technologies, as technologies can easily become outdated,” the report said.

Technology agnostic approach

The report noted that, “In the office suite format debate, there currently is no compelling solution for the State's openness needs.” Openness is only one factor in the state's overall requirements.

Another key factor is the need to preserve documents in a form as close to the original format as possible. “State Archives emphasizes creating records in open formats makes it easier to preserve their essential characteristics and demonstrates they are authentic,” the report said.

Indeed, O'Kelly, said, “there is no one right answer.” The appropriate format is the one that is “most expressive and useful for what you're trying to do.” For instance, ODF is likely an appropriate format for reports and memos, while Microsoft's OpenOffice XML (OOXML) may be better suited for documents with complex spreadsheet calculations and visuals.

Check the facts

“That's not a huge crisis; part of being XML means you can transform it,” O'Kelly said. “ODF is simply not as expansive a model as OOXML. ODF didn't start with a goal of having Office compatability, whereas Microsoft started on day one to ensure interoperability with Office versions past, present and future.” Thus, documents created in Office and saved in ODF are likely to lose context.

In the midst of a contentious debate that is infused with deep suspicion — some of it well-deserved by years of anticompetitive behavior — over Microsoft's motivations, New York appears to be taking a deep breath. “They're saying let's check the facts here,” O'Kelly said. “People are saying Microsoft is trying to subvert the standards. As objective entities like New York check the facts, the reality emerges that there are very good formats in this area and which one you choose is a function of the kind of work you're doing.”

WASHINGTON - The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Friday he wants to regulate fees charged to cell phone users who cancel their wireless contracts early.

At a news conference, FCC chief Kevin Martin would not say whether he endorses an industry plan to help consumers avoid “early termination fees” as detailed by The Associated Press earlier this week.

But Martin said he supports regulating the fees at a federal level, even if it affects a series of class-action lawsuits against carriers in state courts.

Consumers would benefit from a national standard that addresses many of the problems with the current fees system more than a potential lawsuit that may affect consumers in one state, Martin said.

Martin said industry and consumer groups were negotiating to reach an agreement to ease the fees, which have infuriated consumers. But so far, they have been unable to reach consensus.

Citizens will be able to speak their minds on the subject during a public hearing at the commission’s next meeting, scheduled for June 12.

Verizon Wireless, the nation’s No. 2 cell phone company, has offered a plan that would give consumers a break on fees charged when they quit their service early. But it also would let cell phone companies off the hook in state courts where they are being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars by angry customers.

Cell phone companies routinely charge customers $175 or more for quitting their service early. Under the wireless industry proposal, consumers would have the opportunity to cancel service without any penalty for up to 30 days after they sign a cell phone contract or until 10 days after they receive their first bill.

The proposal would require companies to reduce fees month by month over the course of a contract based on how long customers have left, according to people familiar with the offer who spoke on condition of anonymity because the FCC has not approved it.

It would not abolish cancellation fees entirely and would not refund such fees to anyone who already paid them.

The sticking point for consumer groups is that the proposal would take away states’ authority to regulate the charges. Consumers Union called the provision a “get-out-of-court-free card.”

AARP, another organization mentioned by Martin as key to a successful agreement, appeared to oppose the plan Thursday, noting that the industry offer “does not change AARP’s position or activities,” according to a statement by David Certner, the organization’s legislative policy director.

Wireless companies say cancellation fees are necessary to recover the cost of cell phones, which they subsidize under long-term service contracts, and to defray their costs for signing up new customers. Consumer groups said the fees are unreasonable and intended to discourage customers from switching among providers.

The expensive fees have led to class-action lawsuits in several states and legislative proposals on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures around the country.

The industry’s proposal would link cancellation fees to actual costs incurred by a wireless company, and it would require companies to prorate any fees over the course of the contract. Verizon Wireless currently prorates fees down to $60. AT&T Inc. will begin prorating fees Sunday.

The proposal also would prohibit a wireless company from imposing a termination fee on customers who change terms of their contract or end one contract period and begin another.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Verizon Communications Inc. and the Vodafone Group PLC of Britain. Verizon Wireless, with about 66 million subscribers, is second to AT&T Inc., with 70 million customers.

Aero Quartet has released version 3.7 of SimpleMovieX, software the company describes as a “lightweight Mac OS X movie editor with a feature set roughly similar to QuickTime Pro.”

Among its changes, the new version improves support of the iTunes Library metadata, languages, and artwork are now preserved through editing and saving. The program also includes native editing for AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 video, which means no re-encoding is required to save edited movies. SimpleMovieX also lets users cut commercials out of TV shows.

SimpleMovieX costs $35. While the $30 QuickTime Pro is not required, you will need Apple's $20 QuickTime MPEG-2 Playback Component to take advantage of SimpleMovieX's MPEG-2 capabilities.

(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs added Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to its Americas conviction buy list, saying shares will likely benefit from the launch of the company's third-generation iPhone next month, as well as from the sharply higher projections of iPhone sales for the second-half of the year.

Analyst David Bailey also raised his target on the stock to $220 from $185, and said Apple should be able to increase its available iPhone subscriber base by more than 80 percent this year due to aggressive expansion into international markets.

“We continue to expect Apple to beat its 10 million unit goal for calendar year 2008 driven by broader global distribution and the availability of third-party applications, which should keep Apple well ahead of the competition,” Bailey wrote in a note dated May 22.

Apple has signed deals to bring the iPhone to Singapore, India, Australia and the Philippines this year. Earlier this month, an Apple spokeswoman said the iPhone would make its debut in those countries “later this year,” but declined to comment on plans to bring the iPhone to Japan and China.

Bailey, who rates the stock “buy,” expects iPhone unit shipments to increase to 11 million in 2008 from 3.7 million in 2007.

“We also expect Apple to continue to drive Mac unit growth 3 times the PC market this year,” he added.

On Friday, theflyonthewall.com reported that Merrill Lynch had raised its price target on Apple stock to $215 from $186, and maintained its “buy” rating. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Apple shares rose nearly 3 percent to $181.68 in trading before the bell Friday. The stock has soared 42 percent in the past three months as investors regain confidence that Apple can sustain growth even in a weakening economy.

(Reporting by Tenzin Pema in Bangalore; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. on Thursday postponed a looming showdown for control of its board, giving itself more time to prepare a defense — or negotiate a sale to Microsoft Corp. that would cause activist investor Carl Icahn to call off the mutiny.

The showdown pitting the slumping Internet pioneer’s board against Icahn and other unhappy shareholders was supposed to come to a head at the Sunnyvale-based company’s July 3 annual meeting.

But Yahoo is dragging out the drama by pushing the meeting back to an undetermined date in late July, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This is the second time Yahoo has postponed its annual meeting, usually held in May or June. The previous delay, announced in March, gave Yahoo more time to explore alternatives to Microsoft’s unsolicited takeover bid, which was withdrawn this month in a pricing disagreement.

Spurred by shareholders upset with Yahoo’s board’s handling of Microsoft’s last offer of $47.5 billion, Icahn has nominated a slate of candidates to replace the current directors — a process known as a proxy contest.

Two other unidentified shareholders intend to nominate themselves to become Yahoo directors, the company disclosed Thursday. A third shareholder plans to submit another opposing sale of directors, according to Yahoo. The company said it believes these three shareholders haven’t met the rules for nominating alternate candidates, meaning they could be disqualified at the annual meeting.

Yahoo already has lost one director with the resignation of Arthur Kozel, whose departure was disclosed Thursday in a separate SEC filing.

Kozel, a former Cisco Systems Inc. executive who was on Yahoo’s board for eight years, had been planning to step down since February so he could move his family to Europe, the SEC filing said. Yahoo doesn’t plan to replace Kozel, leaving its board with nine members.

The postponement of Yahoo’s annual meeting “raises a lot of interesting questions,” said Claudia Allen, a Chicago lawyer specializing in corporate governance issues.

“It could be that they are exploring some other potential transactions, with the most likely one being some sort of deal with Microsoft that satisfies Mr. Icahn,” Allen said.

In its SEC filing, Yahoo said it needs more time to prepare and obtain SEC approval for all the material it plans to file in the upcoming proxy battle.

Icahn didn’t respond to a request for comment about Yahoo’s postponement.

Microsoft and Yahoo have acknowledged they have renewed talks about a possible transaction with Yahoo since Icahn mounted his challenge, although both companies say the discussions so far haven’t included another attempt by Microsoft to buy Yahoo in it entirety.

The two sides had previously parted ways after they couldn’t agree on a sale price, prompting Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to withdraw an offer to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang — speaking on behalf of the board — wanted $37 per share, or about $52 billion.

Microsoft has reportedly proposed buying Yahoo’s search technology — an idea that has been panned by many analysts as impractical. The Redmond, Wash.-based software hasn’t ruled out another attempt to buy Yahoo’s entire business in a marriage that Icahn is trying to make happen.

Yahoo also has been exploring a possible partnership that would allow Internet search leader Google Inc. to sell some of the ads that appear alongside the results users see when they run searches on Yahoo’s Web site. A two-week trial completed last month indicated Google’s technology would help to boost Yahoo’s profits and perhaps its stock price.

But any alliance between Yahoo and Google would face antitrust obstacles because the two companies combined control more than 80 percent of the U.S. search market.

If Microsoft were to negotiate a similar partnership with Yahoo, instead of trying to buy its rival outright, it might not face the same antitrust problems because Google would still control more than half the market.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore has banned access to two pornographic websites in a “symbolic statement” of the country's societal values, its media regulator said on Friday.

The two sites, which the regulator declined to identify but local media named as YouPorn and RedTube, work in a similar fashion to popular video-sharing website YouTube. The two Web sites allow users to add and download sex videos.

“It should be noted that the hardcore pornographic videos posted on these sites are very easily accessible by the young as each video will start streaming for free once a user clicks on the related link,” said Jason Hoong, an official from the Media Development Authority (MDA).

The sites, which were banned after the authorities received feedback from the public, are the latest additions to a list of 100 “mass impact objectionable” pornographic websites banned in Singapore.

Singapore, which disallows the possession, distribution and making of pornographic films, defends its action as necessary to protect the young.

Online responses to a local media report on the ban have been unfavorable, with users condemning it as unnecessarily moralistic.

“I will definitely surf the Internet by proxy from now on, to be defiant so as to preserve my rights,” wrote one user.

(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Neil Chatterjee and Roger Crabb)

In announcements that could have implications for iPhone users, AT&T reported this week that it has nearly completed deployment of its high speed packet access nationwide network and also announced that users of its wireless Laptop Connect cards will have access to the firm's 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots.

The company has been gradually adding to its HSPA network and said that the HSPA's HSUPA protocol and its HSDPA technology will be the first fully deployed HSPA broadband infrastructure installed on a nationwide basis in the U.S. The technology is an extension of the GSM infrastructure pioneered primarily by Nokia and is considered a way station on AT&T's path to super-high-speed LTE broadband infrastructures, which aren't likely to be available for a few years.

With the HSUPA technology, AT&T 3G users can use uplink speeds between 500 and 800 Kbps, the company said.

“The ability to quickly upload large files from a laptop is no longer a luxury — it's a necessity,” said Kris Rinne, senior VP of architecture and planning for AT&T's wireless operations, in a statement.

With new iPhone models expected to be unveiled during the week of June 9 by Apple and their general availability expected shortly thereafter, the HSPA network will be in position should any of the new iPhone models have HSPA capability. AT&T is one of the national networks that have had exclusive deals with Apple to offer the iconic phone.

Some European countries, however, are breaking the exclusivity arrangement, with multiple providers offering iPhones. Recent unconfirmed reports suggest that among the new iPhone models will be an unlocked phone that will be usable on different networks.

As for AT&T's $59.99-a-month Laptop Connect card service, the system can be used in 17,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots without extra charge. AT&T's Wi-Fi hotspots are also available without additional charge to users of qualifying AT&T broadband services.

See original article on InformationWeek.com

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation's largest public power company, was found to lack adequate cyber security, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released on Wednesday.

“TVA had not fully implemented appropriate security practices to secure the control systems used to operate its critical infrastructures at facilities GAO reviewed,” the GAO report said. “Multiple weaknesses within the TVA corporate network left it vulnerable to potential compromise of the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of network devices and the information transmitted by the network.”

The GAO found that “almost all of the workstations and servers that GAO examined on the corporate network lacked key security patches or had inadequate security settings.” It also found that the TVA's control system networks weren't adequately secured.

William McCollum, TVA's chief operating officer, said in prepared remarks that the TVA had already started addressing 17 of the 19 issues raised by the GAO when the GAO began its investigation last October. The TVA, he said, concurs with the GAO recommendations and is working to implement them. He said that the TVA had hired a penetration testing company to try to break into its systems. The hired hackers were unable to access TVA's process control network, but McCollum acknowledged that “the process identified several opportunities to further insulate and protect the security of our systems.”

Concern about the security of the nation's power plants was heightened last year when the Department of Homeland Security leaked a video that demonstrated how a hacker could damage a power generator using only code. The problem has since been referred to as the Aurora vulnerability.

Such scenarios aren't merely theoretical: In January, CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue confirmed that online attackers had caused at least one blackout in a city outside the United States.

PA Consulting Group traces the rising number of cyber incidents at utilities to the urge to connect to the Internet, which put an end to security through obscurity. “Historically, process control systems were designed and constructed using proprietary technologies and installed in isolation from corporate IT systems,” the firm said in a recent report. “However, recent trends include basing newer systems on more cost effective platforms, such as Intel or Microsoft Windows.”

It would be unfair, however, simply to blame Windows. There isn't a vendor out there that writes invulnerable code. In May, for example, Core Security identified a vulnerability in Wonderware's SuiteLink software, which counts about a third of the world's power plants as customers.

A 2004 study by PA Consulting Group and the British Columbia Institute of Technology found that half of all control system incidents came through corporate networks. The study estimated the average cost of such incidents to be about $1.8 million. Targeted attacks could cost over $10 million, according to the report.

At a hearing held by the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology on Wednesday, Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI)was critical of both the government's and private industry's efforts to address infrastructure security.

“I think we could search far and wide and not find a more disorganized, ineffective response to an issue of national security,” said Langevin in prepared remarks. “Everything about the way this [Aurora] vulnerability was handled — from press leaks, to DHS's failure to provide more technical details to support the results of its test, to NERC's dismissive attitude, to the industry's half-hearted approach towards mitigation — leaves me with little confidence that we are ready or willing to deal with the cybersecurity threat. ”

Testifying at the hearing, Joseph T. Kelliher, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), said in prepared remarks that progress has been made in the three years since Congress established FERC oversight of the nation's power system. But he also said that more needs to be done to secure critical infrastructure.

Kelliher noted that because compliance with critical infrastructure protection rules is voluntary, there's often confusion about how to respond to security problems such as the Aurora vulnerability. He suggested allowing the FERC to set mandatory, enforceable standards in circumstances when a national security or intelligence agency identifies a national security threat to the power system.

See original article on InformationWeek.com

To improve the requirements capture of a variety of stakeholders, Doors is now designed to be used by the project manager, business analysts, marketing and quality assurance specialists as well as the software development team. Doors' new TraceLine tool allows different types of users to track requirements through the steps of a complex development process.

Requirements and their related history can be exported from Doors to Microsoft Visio or MindJet's MindManager, two common applications for diagramming systems, he said. Doors is also linked to Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, which allows requirements to be dragged and dropped onto work items in Visual Studio's software development process.

Through a new Web access feature, requirements and the discussion around them can be viewed from any Web browser as well as the Doors user interface, making Doors' requirements accessible by a widely distributed development team, Carillo said.

Likewise, there are more team aspects to the next release of Telelogic Change version 5.0. Change basically is a change management system that captures changes to source code and establishes an audit trail of all changes to a system. In this function, it's been integrated with the open source Subversion change management system so that independent teams may submit their code from a Subversion-based project, Carillo said.

But Change 5.0 is also now geared “for a different kind of change, collaborative change” between designers, developers and product managers. Change serves as the underlying, shared repository for information on both software and design changes.

Change 5.0 is meant to “do problem tracking, change request tracking and workflow management,” Carillo said. It's also been integrated with the IBM Rational ClearCase configuration management tool. Once an application is configured to its operating system and hardware and committed to production, any changes to that configuration need to be available in the tools that maintain the application, he said.

Telelogic System Architect release 11.1, a software and business process modeling tool, has been integrated to work with Change. The integration allows analysis of software services and business processes, relating captured changes to such questions as: “Why was this changed? Who made this change? What is the impact of this change?”

Being able to relate changes in existing software back to original models and requirements allows system architects to track dependencies, foresee other changes that must be added and model how the system should work in the future, Carillo said.

Telelogic executives report to the Rational Software unit general manager, Danny Sabbah.

Telelogic AB, a Swedish software development tools company, was acquired by IBM six weeks ago. Instead of disappearing inside Big Blue, Telelogic continues to function in part as an independent subsidiary as opposed to being fully absorbed into IBM's Rational tools unit.

As if to prove it, Telelogic officials announced on Tuesday that the firm has updated its own distinct tool set, carrying out enhancements that were underway before the $845 million acquisition.

“There's some overlap with Rational tools,” concedes John Carillo, senior director at IBM/Telelogic, but many aspects of Telelogic's offerings are distinct to the high end requirements of their users in telecom, automotive, aerospace and defense, he said in an interview.

Telelogic at the time of the acquisition was one of few independent software tool vendors still standing. Microsoft is a platform vendor with its Visual Studio tools; IBM's Rational unit both serves the mainframe and other platforms. But few independent, broad-based tool vendors survive. Borland has become an application lifecycle management vendor and sold its tools unit, CodeGear, to Embarcadero Technologies earlier this month.

There's still Compuware, a $1.23 billion a year company with its OptimalJ Java tool and application lifecycle management systems, and Sun Microsystems, with NetBeans serving the Java platform, but not many others.

Telelogic stands out as a tool supplier to vertical industries who, among other things, want to embed software in complex products. Telelogic tools are used in the automotive industry to build brake anti-lock systems. They're used in defense and aerospace for control and management systems and navigation systems.

Earlier this week, Carillo explained the updates to the existing Telelogic tools, Doors, System Architect and Change.

Doors is a set of requirements management tools that track not only the software changes required in a product but any other changes as well. With a prospective product dependent on its software, hardware devices and external software dependencies, keeping requirements in one tool makes for a smoother development process, Carillo said.

See original article on InformationWeek.com